TIME: 10 Movies Altered Due to Real-Life Events

[JamesG]

Art Imitates Life: 10 Movies Altered Due to Real-Life Events



Gangster Squad (2012)






Mere hours after the movie-theater massacre that took place in the early morning hours at a July 20th Aurora, Colo., showing of The Dark Knight Rises, the scramble to pull the trailer for the upcoming Gangster Squad had already begun.

The trailer, for a film about the 1940s-era Los Angeles underworld, featured a shoot-’em-up scene that takes place in a movie theater. At a time when the sanctity of the cinema had been attacked in an all-too-real fashion, the uncanny echo of that event seemed frightening and insensitive.

After deciding to stop showing the preview—that was to run before some screenings of The Dark Knight Rises—Warner Bros. also decided to re-do the movie itself in order to delete that scene.

In order to accommodate the additional shooting and editing, the movie has been pushed from a Sept. 7, 2012, opening to a Jan. 11, 2013, slot.















The Watch (2012)






This February, when neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, the concept of a do-it-yourself suburban patrol took on a new level of sinister meaning. As people across the country struggled to process the aftermath of the shooting, the national attention it drew and the behavior of Zimmerman, attention fell on Neighborhood Watch.

The film is a raunchy comedy about a suburban alien invasion, but the title—and a trailer that featured young people in trouble and Jonah Hill making gun motions—was too close for comfort.

The movie, which comes out on July 27, was renamed The Watch. An early promotional poster, which featured a gunshot-ridden sign, was also replaced with a one of the star comedians’ friendly faces.















Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)






On Nov. 22, 1963, Stanley Kubrick was supposed to present his new film, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, to the press. Shortly before the screening, word arrived that President Kennedy had been assassinated that day.

The screening was canceled and, because the film treats a U.S. President character with less than the utmost respect, changes were made before the film’s release.



The character of Major Kong had a line describing how “a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas”—but because the President had been killed in Dallas, the line was changed to “in Vegas.”

A pie-throwing sequence that Kubrick found too silly was also cut; it would have included the line “our beloved President has been struck down in his prime.”



The film’s planned London premiere, scheduled for Dec. 12 that year, was also cancelled. Dr. Strangelove eventually opened in the U.S. on Jan. 29, 1964.















Gone Baby Gone (2007)






The Oct. 2007 movie Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s first film in the director’s chair, is a Boston-set tale of an abduction investigation: Casey Affleck plays the detective on the trail of a missing four-year-old named Amanda McCreadie.

The film was completed prior to spring of that year—and based on a Dennis Lehane novel nearly a decade old at that point—but its premise bore an eerie similarity to the real-life case of Madeleine McCann. The British three-year-old McCann was last seen by her parents during a vacation to Portugal that May and has yet to be found.



Although Gone Baby Gone is a U.S.-specific underworld story, far from the life of the McCann family, the actress who played Amanda was also named Madeleine and was, like McCann, blonde.

Out of sensitivity to the case, Gone Baby Gone’s U.K. release was pushed from Dec. 2007 to June 2008.















Phone Booth (2002)






The plot of the movie Phone Booth seems like something that could never happen in real life: after entering a public phone booth to pick up a ringing phone, a man is told that he is in a sniper’s sights and will be killed if he leaves the booth.

But, in October of 2002, the threat of an unknown sniper became very real. Ten people died and three more were injured during a spate of unprovoked shootings in the Washington, D.C., area, before John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were apprehended in connection to the crimes.

Although Phone Booth had been scheduled to open on Nov. 15, 2002, it was deemed frighteningly realistic and pushed back to an April 3, 2003 opening.

[JamesG]

Spider-Man (2002)






After the tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, it took a while for Americans to feel okay about entertainment—and the entertainment industry tried to respond to that reticence with sensitivity.

Many films with plots that might remind viewers of the dangers of terrorism were delayed (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s thriller Collateral Damage, the Tim Allen crime comedy Big Trouble) or scuppered entirely (Nosebleed, in which Jackie Chan was to play a World Trade Center window-washer who stops a terrorist plot).



Images of the Twin Towers were also carefully removed from movies that had been in production prior to the attacks. Perhaps most notably, the first Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man movie had already released promotional material that included a scene of Spider-Man trapping a helicopter in a net between the towers and an image of the towers reflected in the bug-like eyes of his mask.

Those trailers and posters were recalled, and the landmark buildings were edited out of the movie.















Viva Zapata! (1952)






This biopic about the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was the story of a turn-of-the-century struggle in a foreign country, but American filmmakers couldn’t help but worry that, with a 1952 release, it would be as a reflection of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) trials.

Zapata fought against a dictator who supported wealthy property owners, but they didn’t want to portray him as a radical. So even though Zapata (played by Marlon Brando) was a real-life figure, screenwriter John Steinbeck and director Elia Kazan created a fictional character who would prove that he wasn’t so controversial.



Under pressure from the studio, they added Fernando Aguirre (played by Joseph Wiseman), a villain who first sides with Zapata and then turns on him; Aguirre’s radical views and anti-Zapata stance would show that American audiences could root for the film’s hero.

When Kazan was called before HUAC the year Viva Zapata! was released, for the hearing during which he famously named names, he was able to defend the film: “This is an anti-Communist picture,” he told the Committee.















Arlington Road (1999)






Sometimes it’s not the actual events portrayed in a movie that make it a little too coincidental for comfort.

Case in point: the 1999 paranoia thriller Arlington Road, about a man who suspects his neighbor is plotting to blow up a government building. The domestic terrorism shown on screen does echo tragedies like 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing, but that wasn’t what caused its studio to rethink releasing the movie.



Arlington Road was scheduled for a May opening, before the school shooting in Columbine, Colo., occurred that April. The only connection between the movie’s plot and real life is the violence they share.

But the film’s themes of distrust of neighbors, disintegration of community and evil lurking in plain sight led to the decision to push Arlington Road’s release to July.















The Good Son (1993)






The Sept. 1993 Macaulay Culkin vehicle The Good Son was meant to provide the Home Alone star with a more serious role, opposite Elijah Wood, as a young boy with murderous leanings and sinister secrets.

The script had been in the works since the 1980s, but its release happened to coincide with a far more sinister, real-life story.



In February of 1993, two British 10-year-olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, abducted and killed a two-year-old named James Bulger. During the time that followed that horrific event, it emerged that Venables may have seen the movie Child’s Play 3 shortly before he committed the crime—and that several elements of the killing, such their use of blue paint and train track,s echoed plot points in the horror film.



A moral panic over the relationship between violent movies and childhood violence led distributors to cancel the British theatrical release of The Good Son.















Trespass (1992)






The spring of 1992 is remembered for the Los Angeles riots that began in late April, after the police involved in the beating of Rodney King were found not guilty. Much of what is associated with those violent days is the imagery of looting that dominated news coverage of the story.

That July 4 was meant to see the release of a film called Looters, about two Arkansas fireman hunting for urban treasure in East St. Louis and the gang members they have to fight in order to get to the stolen goods.

Following the riots and looting, the film was pushed back to a holiday opening, an odd slot for such a gritty action movie, and given a new name: Trespass.






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