Hollywood's Most Controversial Moments Of 2023 Explained
2023 was a strange year for the movie business. Just when it seemed theaters were recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole industry got put on hold over labor disputes. Of the movies that did get finished and released this year, the moviegoing public had strong opinions about the ones they went to see — and sometimes even stronger opinions about the flops nobody saw. As screenwriter William Goldman famously put it, in Hollywood, "nobody knows anything" — and that was true as ever in 2023.
From stars losing major roles to whole studios in crisis to movies you can't even mention without hitting upon something questionable, there's been plenty of controversy to go around. This article will examine the most significant movie-related controversies of the past year. Please note that this list is sticking to controversies that directly impacted how certain movies were seen (or not seen), as opposed to broader celebrity gossip with no direct movie-based connections.
The writers' and actors' strikes
The Hollywood news story of the year was easily the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes. Writers went on strike in May after contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed. Issues the WGA was striking over included the lack of minimum staffing requirements in writers' rooms, the lack of residuals from streaming, and the threat of being forced to work with AI-generated material. The AMPTP went months without negotiating, but eventually, a satisfactory deal was reached in September and ratified in October.
The SAG strike, which began in July, was dealing with similar problems to the WGA regarding streaming residuals and AI, along with concerns about background actors losing work to digital scans. The strike concluded with a tentative agreement in November, though concerns about loopholes regarding the usage of digital doubles and AI stirred additional controversy before its ultimate ratification in December.
Effects of the dual strikes — the first simultaneous actors' and writers' strike since 1960 — were felt most immediately on television. Late-night talk shows were gone from the air as soon as the WGA strike began, and fall network lineups were unusually empty. As the months dragged on, theaters were impacted as well, with major films like "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," "Dune: Part Two," and "Kraven the Hunter" delayed until the actors could finally promote them. The full impacts of the strike will still be felt in 2024, with even more delays due to the AMPTP's reluctance to negotiate fair deals.
Superhero fatigue finally sets in
Critics have talked about feeling "superhero fatigue" for as long as superhero movies have dominated the box office, but in 2023, the general public seemed to finally be experiencing the same phenomenon. Great superhero movies can still attract crowds, as the success of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" shows, but for every one of these success stories in 2023, there were multiple historic flops.
The final films in the DC cinematic universe before James Gunn's reboot were a string of financial and (mostly) critical failures. "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" grossed less than half of what the first "Shazam!" did. "The Flash" was absurdly hyped up as one of the "best superhero films ever made" and failed to live up to the hype. Combined with controversies over the criminal actions of star Ezra Miller and the usage of uncanny CG replicas of actors, both dead and alive, it ended up among the biggest money-losers of all time. "Blue Beetle" got better reviews but failed to make money in theaters, and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" hasn't been tracking great either.
If Warner Bros. and DC's failures were expected, Marvel's came as a shock. "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" had a huge opening weekend but fell off following the worst reviews in the franchise — at least until the finale of "Secret Invasion" on Disney+. "The Marvels" ended up the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first flat-out box office bomb, and the ensuing scramble over who's to blame for its failure sparked further controversy.
Disney's underwhelming centennial
The MCU's struggles in 2023 were just one part of what proved to be a very disappointing centennial for The Walt Disney Company. Of the studio's main slate of releases, only "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" was an unqualified box office success. The third "Ant-Man" film, "The Little Mermaid," and "Elemental" were roughly in the range of breaking even, with the latter recovering from a weak opening with strong word of mouth. But "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," "Haunted Mansion," "The Creator," "The Marvels," and "Wish" all proved to be major box office bombs for the company. In the case of "Wish," an animated film specifically designed to celebrate 100 years of the animation studio's existence, the failure must be particularly galling.
CEO Bob Iger, who returned to his post after replacing Bob Chapek in 2022, has attributed the company's recent struggles to "quantity [...] diluted quality" (via Business Insider). That assessment seems pretty agreeable, both in terms of the mediocre reviews most of the big 2023 Disney flops have received and regarding how the sheer quantity of content produced for streaming has trained families to watch stuff on Disney+ rather than in theaters. Other assessments of Iger's — such as claims that "The Marvels" required more executive supervision and that filmmakers have focused too much on messages over entertainment — are a fair deal more questionable.
Warner Bros. vs. Coyote vs. Acme
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery sent shockwaves through the film industry with the decision to shelve two nearly complete movies, "Batgirl" and "Scoob! Holiday Haunt," for the sake of tax write-offs. Despite assurances at the beginning of 2023 that this was part of a one-time restructuring, the company once again announced plans to bury a completed film for tax purposes: the live-action/animation hybrid "Looney Tunes" movie "Coyote vs. Acme."
The plan to write down a $70 million production for a $30 million tax break was baffling on a number of levels. Test audience scores for "Coyote vs. Acme" have been much higher than the previous Warner Bros. write-downs, and industry insiders have praised it as on par with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Canceling this film would seem to threaten the studio's relationships with talent including star John Cena, producer James Gunn (who's in charge of reworking WB's DC film slate), and writer Samy Burch (a major presence on the 2023 awards circuit for her screenwriting debut "May December").
The outrage over the "Coyote vs. Acme" cancellation was loud enough among fans, industry professionals, and even members of the United States House of Representatives that Warner Bros. reportedly changed its tune about the write-down and is open to selling distribution rights to other studios. Even so, the idea that David Zaslav's Warner Bros. is unable to sell a "Looney Tunes" movie by itself is not a great sign for the studio's health.
TCM's near-death experience
Making the worst decisions possible before reversing them and taking credit for fixing the problem you created might as well have been David Zaslav's MO running Warner Bros. Discovery in 2023. Case in point: the downsizing of Turner Classic Movies. The cable channel, beloved for its commercial-free curation of old Hollywood and world cinema classics, has been consistently profitable, but that didn't stop Zaslav from laying off the channel's whole executive leadership team in June.
It took the efforts of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson to get assurances from Zaslav that TCM wouldn't be canceled entirely or defunded into irrelevancy. The official company line is that Zaslav called a meeting with them, though reports claim it was Scorsese who arranged the meeting and corporate decided to give Zaslav credit to make him look good. The three famous directors are now involved as consultants for the channel, and important staff such as senior VP of programming and content strategy Charles Tabesh and TCM Enterprises vice president Genevieve McGillicuddy have been rehired.
Everything to do with Sound of Freedom
Is there anything you could say about "Sound of Freedom" that won't be controversial? You could describe the plot of the film, based on the true story of Tim Ballard (played by Jim Caveziel) and his anti-sex trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, but then you have to get into the controversies over the major factual inaccuracies and embellishments, as well as questions about OUR's efficiency and the sexual misconduct of Ballard himself.
You could then describe the film's surprise box office success, but that comes with its own asterisk: How much of its massive gross is attributable to the unorthodox "pay it forward" scheme where people were asked to donate to buy tickets for other moviegoers? The film undeniably got attention, but reports of sold-out yet empty theaters call into question just how many people were actually watching it.
Then there's the even messier issue of the film's connection to QAnon conspiracy theories — the conspiracies don't appear in the film itself, but Caveziel is a believer in the conspiracy, and the film's marketing directly targeted the QAnon crowd. Add in the issue that multiple producers from the film's crowdfunding campaign have been arrested or investigated for abuse of minors, and "Sound of Freedom" was easily the most controversial single theatrical release of 2023.
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Bradley Cooper's fake nose in Maestro
With issues of authenticity in casting growing in importance in Hollywood, there's been some debate over whether Jewish actors should be prioritized for playing Jewish characters. Opinions on the subject vary wildly, but one common view has been that Jewish and Italian actors have played each other's ethnicities so much that such casting is kosher. By that standard, half-Italian Bradley Cooper playing Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein in the Netflix biopic "Maestro" shouldn't have caused much of a fuss — and it might not have, if not for the nose.
For many Jewish viewers, the large prosthetic nose Cooper dons while playing Bernstein edged the performance uncomfortably close to antisemitic caricature. That Jake Gyllenhaal, who is actually Jewish, lost the Bernstein biopic rights to Cooper only made the issue more uncomfortable. Cooper, for his part, defended the makeup as part of his process for getting into character; the Anti-Defamation League and Bernstein's children have also pushed back against accusations of antisemitism. Even setting aside whether or not the makeup is antisemitic, however, there's fair debate over whether it's distracting.
Will this controversy hurt Cooper's chances of winning an Oscar? Possibly, but then again, the similarly heated makeup and authenticity controversies over Brendan Fraser's fat suit in "The Whale" didn't stop Fraser and that film's makeup artists from both picking up Academy Awards.
Across the Spider-Verse's working conditions
Over the past few years, there's been many discussions about how extremely crunched working conditions in the visual effects industry have resulted in a lot of substandard effects making it to theaters. The Vulture report about the production of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" serves as a reminder that even the best computer animation can be subject to the same troubling conditions.
According to the article's anonymous artist sources, writer-producer Phil Lord was unable to make important decisions during the layout process, which is typically the optimal place for experimenting with bigger changes in animation. As such, animators repeatedly had to render completed scenes to show Lord, only for him to request major changes to the completed animation and force the process to start over. This process reportedly caused over 100 burnt-out animators to quit.
The general consensus was that "Across the Spider-Verse" was only barely finished in time for its release date (and with alternate versions released showing different animation variations), and there had been so little work done on the follow-up, "Beyond the Spider-Verse," that it couldn't possibly make its original March 2024 release date. Sure enough, "Beyond the Spider-Verse" was delayed indefinitely, hopefully allowing the animators the ability to complete the film on a much more reasonable schedule.
Firings related to Israel-Palestine conflict
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a fun subject to talk about (to put it lightly), but following Hamas' terrorist attack on October 7 and Israel's bombardment of Gaza in the following months, the difficult conversations are hard to avoid. In Hollywood, there have been open letters pleading for President Joe Biden to help free the hostages taken by Hamas and pleading for him to back a ceasefire in the war. Basically, any opinion on the conflict opens one up for backlash from one group or another, but it's been those expressing support for Palestine and harsh criticism of Israel who have faced the most significant career consequences.
Melissa Barrera was fired from "Scream 7" over social media posts describing Israel's treatment of Gaza as a "genocide" — a concern shared with some Jewish Holocaust scholars and United Nations officials but which Spyglass Media executives, the producers of the "Scream" series, deemed antisemitic. Jenna Ortega quit "Scream 7" soon afterward, officially due to scheduling issues — but some suspect the choice was made in solidarity with her fired co-star. Susan Sarandon lost management over a speech at a pro-Palestinian rally — she later apologized for the parts of her speech that minimized antisemitism. Tom Cruise had to step in personally to protect his agent Maha Dakhil from losing her job after making "genocide" comments. Black critics of Israel, including Ava DuVernay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Boots Riley (who is Jewish), appear disproportionately targeted; Saira Rao told Variety that Hollywood is "punishing people of color for speaking out."
The rise and fall of Jonathan Majors (and Kang?)
For the first three months of the year, 2023 looked like it was going to be the year of Jonathan Majors. The actor stole the show as the villain of "Creed III," his performance as Kang the Conqueror was the only thing most critics liked about "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," and there was talk that he could possibly win an Oscar for his Sundance film "Magazine Dreams." And then on March 25, Majors was arrested on charges of strangulation, assault, and harassment.
As of this writing, the trial is still in progress, and the details of the case are beyond the scope of this article. What we can talk about is how drastically the arrest interrupted Major's rising star narrative (the release of "Magazine Dreams" has now been delayed indefinitely), and put the future of his role as the main villain of the MCU's Multiverse Saga into question. He was not replaced as Kang in "Loki" Season 2, but rumors have spread about the character being recast for future movies or even being phased out entirely.
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The Snow White backlash
At this point, "anti-woke" backlashes against major franchise films are so predictable that they scarcely warrant attention. However, the backlash against Disney's upcoming "Snow White" remake, now set for release in 2025, feels unusual in how much the talking points have crossed over into mainstream discourse. On some level, this makes sense with the growing exhaustion over Disney's live-action remakes of animated classics, but it's nonetheless taken some ugly turns with personal attacks on star Rachel Zegler from unexpected places.
Where the far right hates Zegler for being a Latina playing a traditionally white role, others have attacked her on different grounds. Zegler's comments on the new "Snow White" movie being more feminist than the old one have drawn criticism on TikTok, while her active participation in the SAG-AFTRA strike was used by haters to paint her as acting entitled. Some people who were actively defending Halle Bailey from the racist backlash over her casting in "The Little Mermaid" were happy to join in the anti-Zegler backlash due to believing the actress "disrespectful" of the original movie — though Bailey herself has been a big supporter of Zegler.
The new "Snow White" also drew controversy for allegedly replacing the seven dwarfs with a diverse, mostly average-sized group of human characters — though it turns out those were a separate group of characters and the dwarfs are included in uncannily cartoon-accurate form. Conservative outlet The Daily Wire announced its own "Snow White and the Evil Queen" movie in response.
Barbenheimer controversies
The informal double-feature known as "Barbenheimer" was the biggest moviegoing event of 2023, but anything so popular is going to face some backlash. "Barbie" faced a number of minor controversies, both expected (conservatives got upset about its feminist message) and unexpected (it was banned in Vietnam because unintelligible scribbles on a map got interpreted as pro-Chinese propaganda). "Oppenheimer" was the subject of much debate about whether or not the film should have represented Japanese and Native American perspectives on the bomb, as well as over its sex scenes, which were censored in some countries.
But it was the "Barbenheimer" meme itself that resulted in the most awkward controversy. While American moviegoers found humor in mashing up a toy-based comedy with a serious drama about the atomic bomb, the latter's subject matter was no laughing matter for many Japanese people. When an official Warner Bros. account on X (formerly Twitter) shared "Barbenheimer" memes, #NoBarbenheimer started trending, with Warner Bros. Japan offering an apology for the offending memes. Some Japanese X users responded with "Barbie 9/11" memes in an attempt to illustrate the tastelessness of "Barbenheimer" to Americans — unaware that a lot of Americans find such tasteless humor hilarious.