Movies Changed After Fan Protests:
The advent of social media has made it possible for all of us to make our voices heard. This super-fast word of mouth is a blessing and a curse for movies, franchises, and brands. It provides a platform for the movies to create a buzz and engage the audience but also gave power to the common people to vocalize their opinion. This compels movies and series to walk on eggshells as a single mistake can spark outrage. In fact, many fan backlashes have forced the writers to change the script or take back a particular joke if it is deemed offensive. Find out the 10 Hollywood movies that changed after fan protests.
1. Fantastic Four (2015)
Doctor Victor Von Doom is the most sinister villain in the Marvel Universe. The movie changing his name to Dr. Domashev wasn’t received well by loyal Marvel fans.
This controversy was sparked before the release, giving the film ample time to make the necessary changes. Only if the fans knew the disastrous nature of the movie, they would have asked for a complete redo.
2. Hellboy
Whitewashing the characters has been a practice by Hollywood for decades. But the internet is changing things slowly since millions of voices can be heard now. Hellboy was accused of whitewashing too after it cast Ed Skrein to play Major Ben.
After fan protests surfaced against the casting as the character was originally an Asian, Ed Skrein walked out of the project himself. He was then replaced by Daniel Dae Kim.
3. Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic The Hedgehog was done with the productions and released its first trailer only to be pressed to redo the entire film. The live-action movie trailer was met with about 700k dislikes. That’s really not the start one hopes for their movie! Fans who grew up playing the popular character weren’t okay with the odd changes made to Hedgehog who didn’t look animated at all.
They pointed out that it bore no similarity to the original one. It wasn’t a risk but a certainty that the movie would fail if it didn’t revive the original design. Director, Jeff Fowler and the special effects team added the required changes immediately to match the fan preference.
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
The reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would have changed the characters to aliens. But this news wasn’t received well by fans and Robbie Rist who had voiced Michelangelo in the original movie. The outrage was further fuelled when a leaked script revealed more changes to the fan-favorite characters. The productions were finally forced to nix the project and return later in 2014 that retained the nature and origin of the characters.
5. Ralph Breaks The Internet
Ralph Breaks The Internet broke the internet in real life as well! In one of the scenes, Vanellope ran into a room full of Disney princesses from Bella to Jasmine and even Princess Tiana of The Princess and the Frog.
Netizens called out at Disney for lightening Tiana’s skin stone and changing her hair. The makers had to relent and reanimate the scene to fix the error.
6. Justice League
The poor response for Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice turned the studio quite apprehensive about Justice League that was halfway in the making. On top of that, Zack Snyder’s sudden exit due to personal reasons prompted DCEU to bring changes to the script with the help of Joss Whedon and reshoot the movie.
In order to stay afloat, the studio ended up making a confused and directionless film that drowned its neck. The movie and the CGI were too hard to watch. Now protests from fans and the DCEU stars including Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck to release the Snyder Cut have forced DCEU to finally release the original Justice League.
7. Ghostbusters
The franchise of Ghostbusters has built its own cult of fans, therefore rebooting required utmost attention.
The trailer alone was enough to call for outrage. It instantly became the most disliked movie trailer on YouTube. The movie was released thirty years after the original film and garnered a lot of controversy due to the gender-switch. The makers immediately responded to the criticism by adding some new scenes.
8. Cats
Cats was a hilarious and epic disaster in the history of Hollywood. We doubt if there is a single person from the audience who doesn’t want to unsee and erase human-faced cats from their memory.
The directors didn’t change the movie completely but enhanced the CGI and special effects to some extent following the backlash to the first trailer.
9. Star Trek Beyond
Star Trek Into Darkness wasn’t liked by the loyal fans of original Star Trek for it focused less on the plot and more on the dramatic effects like a conventional blockbuster. So, the writers tried to stick to the true essence of Star Trek in Star Strek Beyond.
10. Alien: Covenant
The franchise of Alien was nothing without the famous monster. But it took Ridley Scott heck lot of criticisms to realize the significance of the character. He wasn’t adding Xenomorph to the sequel of Prometheus but changed his plans looking at fan reaction.
