Movies That Garnered Controversy Just From The Trailers

The Trailer: The trailer for Terminator: Genisys does something that most trailers try to avoid: it reveals too much.

The Controversy: Director Alan Taylor addressed his concerns to Uproxx, explaining the following:

I had a few heads-ups and a few unpleasant conversations where I squawked about this or that… I think they felt like they had to send a strong message to a very wary audience that there was something new, that this was going to new territory. They were concerned that people were misperceiving this as kind of a reboot, and none of us wanted to reboot two perfect movies by James Cameron. I think they felt they had to do something game-changing in how the film was being perceived.

Taylor’s issues centered around the second trailer released to market the film. He said of the trailer:

I certainly directed those scenes with the intention that no one would know.

The trailer included scenes showing John Connor’s fate, a big reveal, and a plot twist in the film’s third act. Including it in the trailer spoiled everything in the movie Taylor wanted to keep quiet.

The Trailer: One trailer for Megalopolis didn’t follow any of the standard trailer tropes of merely advertising a film without giving too much away. It begins with title cards of director Francis Ford Coppola’s most celebrated films, throwing in negative one-line reviews of Coppola’s past movies. It seems this was done to suggest that people discounted Coppola’s movies when they were released but came to love them not long after. While that’s all well and good, the trailer includes nothing but fake quotes.

The Controversy: Including fake headlines with real people’s bylines from legitimate organizations is duplicitous at best. An immediate outcry led Lionsgate, the film’s distributor, to pull the trailer. Lionsgate issued an apology, saying they screwed up in releasing the trailer filled with bogus film critic quotes. Using real film critics for these invented quotations compounded the issue. It was only one of many controversies surrounding the film, which was a critical and financial bomb.

The Trailer: The trailer for The Creator details the conflict between humanity and robots. The narrator describes how the AI designed to protect humanity detonated a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, and then it shows the blast. The problem isn’t with the trailer’s contents or anything like that; the problem has to do with the blast footage, which was real and taken from a horrific event that caused widespread destruction and cost hundreds of lives.

The Controversy: In the trailer, a few scenes flash by until the narrator says:

Ten years ago today, the artificial intelligence created to protect us… detonated a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles.

For whatever reason — perhaps to cut costs — the folks who made the trailer didn’t include film footage and instead used real footage taken from the 2020 Beirut Explosion that killed more than 215 people and utterly devastated Beirut, Lebanon.

The film’s director, Gareth Edwards, addressed the explosion footage in the trailer during a Reddit AMA. After he was asked about it by one user, Edwards wrote the following:

It was never meant to be included in the trailer and never appears in the actual movie. Just by way of explanation: the reality is that archival footage is commonly used as reference for temporary VFX.

Edwards’s answer makes sense, as it’s not uncommon to use placeholder clips during production. Unfortunately, none of the trailer’s studios noticed or replaced the placeholder, leaving the original footage in place. Fortunately, the footage wasn’t included in the film, and its use in the trailer was isolated from the director’s movie.

The Trailer: The trailer for The Tigger Movie features its eponymous lead and other characters dancing about to the “doot-doot-doot” part of Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life.” Interestingly, it’s not what’s in the trailer, but what isn’t that raised some eyebrows.

The Controversy: The song chosen for the dancing created some problems for Disney. “Semi-Charmed Life” includes lyrics that shouldn’t be even tangentially related to a Tigger film. These include “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” and “She comes round and she goes down on me.” A Disney spokesperson claimed she wasn’t aware of the song’s sexual content, and the whole thing died down because, fortunately, the song’s more adult bits didn’t make it into the trailer.

The Trailer: One of the biggest challenges in making a trailer is ensuring that not too much is given away. The people responsible for making the trailer for Tulip Fever must not have gotten the memo. The trailer created problems by showing graphic sex. The trailer is appropriately rated R, but it was too racy to play on television, so it was banned.

The Controversy: The trailer features several graphic scenes of sex, including male and female nudity. While the trailer details the film’s subjects of infidelity and seduction with aplomb, it simply wasn’t appropriate for television broadcasts. You can still watch the trailer on YouTube, but it’s appropriately age-restricted. The MPAA approved the love scenes that caused some problems, but there’s no denying it’s too risqué for TV.

The Trailer: Disney’s penchant for recreating its animated classics in live-action has caused controversy online among fans who don’t want to see their beloved films remade. Despite this, Disney continues the trend, and in 2024, the trailer for a live-action Snow White was released. In it, Rachel Zegler stars as the titular princess, hanging out with her animal friends and the Dwarfs, and therein lies the problem.

The Controversy: While Zegler’s race isn’t an issue for many fans, others had a problem seeing her as the eponymous lead. Zegler is of Polish and Colombian ancestry, and she doesn’t exactly fit the visual description of the character described as having “skin white as snow.” Ultimately, the issue wasn’t with Zegler’s ability to play the character; it was with her race, which she didn’t appreciate. Zegler took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to address the issue by explaining she didn’t want to deal with it:

Extremely appreciative of the love I feel from those defending me online, but please don’t tag me in the nonsensical discourse about my casting. I really, truly do not want to see it. so I leave you with these photos! I hope every child knows they can be a princess no matter what.

Zegler posted pictures of herself as a young girl dressed in Snow White and other Disney princess costumes.

The Trailer: The United 93 trailer is objectionable because of its content — the film is about United Flight #93, which was hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. Because the attack was still so fresh in people’s minds, seeing it dramatized in such a way on the silver screen via a trailer was difficult for some viewers, resulting in controversy.

The Controversy: Some may have seen the trailer and found it exploitative, while others could conceivably have physiological reactions like panic attacks from witnessing the tragedy brought to life. Universal’s president of marketing, Adam Fogelson, addressed the trailer, noting it would only play before R-rated or adult-themed PG-13 films, but it wouldn’t be pulled:

The film is not sanitized or softened; it’s an honest and real look [at the events on United Airlines Flight 93]. If I sanitized the trailer beyond what’s there, am I suggesting that the experience will be less real than what the movie itself is? We, as a company, feel comfortable that it is a responsible and fair way to show what’s coming.

Universal’s stance on the trailer was honest, but it still caused problems. Relatives of victims of that attack were especially unprepared to see the trailer, as one noted with the following:

A film is something you elect to go see, you pay money, and you’re prepared for it. A trailer is, you’re sitting there to see another film, and then you see something you’re unprepared for.

Another victim’s family member said the following:

It’s not the first time someone is trying to exploit the history of this event. I don’t have a problem with it. But there’s a warning that ought to be put in advance of the trailer. I don’t know how these things can be treated in a more sensitive manner. But that’s the issue.

One theater in Manhattan stopped showing the trailer after several people complained.

The Trailer: Yesterday’s trailer doesn’t feature anything obscene — nothing about it could offend anyone. Still, it created a problem for Universal when a couple of viewers sued them over the trailer. The issue was that Ana de Armas is featured in the trailer, but she’s not in the movie.

The Controversy: Armas was cut from the film but was featured in the trailer and some other promotional material. When a couple of viewers rented the movie from Amazon, they were upset over de Armas’ absence, so they sued. The problematic part of the trailer shows Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) singing “Something” to Armas while appearing on James Corden’s talk show. Armas hugs him after singing, and it seems like it would have been a fun scene, but it was cut, though a segment featuring Corden did make it into the film.

After they watched the movie and didn’t see Armas, Peter Rosza and Conor Woulfe sued Universal for $3.99 each. Some issues in the trial arose, and the two men ended up being on the hook for Universal’s legal fees totaling $126,705. It’s unknown what the conditions were, but the case was ultimately settled, though neither side received any money through the settlement.

The Trailer: The trailer for I Feel Pretty features Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) in a series of incidents that make her feel unattractive. She hits her head doing SoulCycle, and from that point forward, she sees herself as gorgeous. This gives her confidence and improves her life considerably, which sent a message some viewers didn’t appreciate.

The Controversy: Most people who watched the trailer came away thinking that the film’s message centered around the idea that confidence in oneself could only be achieved through appreciation of their body image. The film’s writing team of Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn addressed the backlash with Variety:

We were disappointed because people were discussing a movie that they hadn’t yet seen, which always is going to leave a lot of holes in their understanding.

Schumer also addressed the film’s message and the issues people had with the trailer:

I think if you have anything you’re worried about or you’re afraid someone’s going to insult you — call you ugly, call you fat — it’s a deterrent. I don’t want anything keeping women from living up to their full potential, and this movie’s about that.

The Trailer: The Gangster Squad trailer doesn’t have anything in it that’s too objectionable, though it is filled with violence. Of course, that’s the point, as the film depicts real events with some dramatization thrown into the story. Unfortunately, the trailer had to be pulled because one scene shown at the end came at a controversial time in the US, as its release soon followed the movie theater shooting in Colorado at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

The Controversy: Neither the film nor the trailer, in and of itself, was controversial, but real-world events made it so. On July 20, 2012, a man walked into a theater and shot into the audience, killing 12 and injuring 70. The Gangster Squad trailer includes a scene in which four men armed with machine guns stand behind the screen at a movie theater and open fire into the crowd.

Warner Bros. removed the trailer and did its best to scrub it from the Internet. The studio issued a statement saying it and the filmmakers are “deeply saddened to learn about this shocking incident. We extend our sincere sympathies to the families and loved ones of the victims at this tragic time.”