Movies That Angered Their Real-Life Characters

Admit it: you've thought about how cool it'd be to have a movie based on your life. You've wondered who would play you, and the only possibly problem is that the studio executive would get fired for green-lighting such a boring film.

In general, a movie about you'd be pretty great, right? Well, not necessarily. Just how great it'd be depends largely on whether or not the people behind the cameras cared about little things like "accuracy" and "the truth."

If you're a great football player, chances are pretty high that you're going to wind up becoming a household name (at least among sports fans). That is, unless you're an offensive lineman. For the most part, the big uglies up front go ignored in favor of the flashier players they protect, like the quarterbacks and running backs. So you'd think that when The Blind Side came out, making Michael Oher the most famous offensive tackle in the world, he'd be pretty stoked ... right? Not remotely, as it turns out. Oher has gone so far as to say that the film hurt his career.

The Blind Side is about a magical white woman who adopts a giant young black man and teaches him the ways of football, setting him on a path to college and, ultimately, NFL stardom. Thank God for Sandy Bullock! Only, as Oher has said time and again, that's not remotely how things went down. Yes, the Tuohy family took Oher in, and they have indeed become his family. But in the film, Oher is portrayed as a gentle giant who's unfamiliar with football but tests high in "protective instincts" (because, sure, that's a thing on standardized tests), so he's put on the football team and taught how to be great by the little white woman. In real life, by this point, Oher had already been playing football for years.

In the past year or so, Oher has come to terms with the film, by saying "that's not me" and treating it, more or less, as an inspirational fictional story that kind of resembles his own life.

Ah, Remember the Titans. The movie that taught us that racism can be cured through football and Motown music, and the moment in time when Hayden Panettiere stopped getting any taller. It's no secret that a lot of the movie was fudged a bit, because this is a Disney film, after all. For instance, the high school in question had been desegregated about five years prior to the season (1971) depicted in the movie, and while there was some racial tension in town (this was Virginia in the early 1970s, after all), it wasn't nearly as prevalent or violent as the movie suggested when it came to the football team and the coaches.

But according to one former real-life member of the TC Williams Titans, there was a major antagonist that the film seriously mischaracterized as a hero: Herman Boone, played in the film by Denzel Washington. At least, that's what Greg Paspatis, who played for the Titans in 1977, had to say. Now, obviously, since he played six years after the season depicted in the film, you won't remember this particular Titan. But Paspatis was decidedly livid with how his former coach was portrayed.

According to Paspatis, Boone was the biggest jerk who ever walked the streets of Alexandria, Virginia, and before the decade was over, he was forced to walk away from his coaching job when his players mutinied. So what we've got here, according to a former kicker for the Titans, who later became a volunteer statistician for the school and a local sports historian (so he does speak with some authority on this particular subject), is a disgraced former coach who was pretty widely hated by his players, elevated to legend status by Denzel Washington and Mickey Mouse. Seems fair.

You probably remember the story of Jessica Lynch, right? The American soldier who was captured and kept as a prisoner of war in Iraq, and whose rescue later became the subject of a made for TV movie on NBC called Saving Jessica Lynch? Well, while Lynch was taken prisoner, and she was a soldier in Iraq, and she was ultimately rescued, that's about where the parallels end between fact and fiction. And Lynch herself would be the first one to tell you that. See, Lynch was less than pleased with how both she and the rescue mission were portrayed, with enormous movie liberties being taken to heighten the tension and excitement level of how things played out.

It turns out, according to Lynch, that the Iraqis had tried (unsuccessfully) to give her back to the Americans earlier. And when the rescue operation found her in the hospital where she was being held and treated, there were precisely zero Iraqi soldiers there. No one resisted, and the entire "rescue" operation amounted to a group of Americans strolling into a hospital and taking Lynch out of there without anyone saying a word against their efforts.

Now, don't get us wrong, Lynch absolutely views the soldiers who came to get her as her heroes. It's never fun to be a prisoner of war, even if your captivity amounts to being in a hospital bed with no enemy soldiers anywhere to be found. News accounts and the film played up her own heroism, as well, which bothered Lynch even more, since she didn't want to be held up as a symbol, particularly when she insisted that everything being said about her was grossly overstated. She didn't ask to be a hero, and doesn't want to be portrayed as a hero. But, really, when has that ever stopped Hollywood before?

It's a scientific fact that everybody loves Tom Hanks, and the man he portrays in 2016's Sully is a bona fide hero. Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III was the pilot who pulled off the Miracle on the Hudson, so named because it was one of the most insane emergency landings ever attempted, and it went off without a hitch. The film shows us a riveting account of the near-disaster, then details the National Transportation Safety Board hearings in the aftermath—during that the heroic pilot was railroaded by antagonistic investigators who are convinced that the plane could've been landed safely at one of two airports. Sully's name is finally cleared after a drawn-out battle and multiple simulations, and the evil investigators are forced to admit that they really just hate heroism.

Okay, so we're exaggerating, but not much—and if the film's plot had been true to the actual events, it would have been over in half an hour. There was never any significant doubt as to whether Sully made the right call. The first set of simulations, shown in the film to constitute damning evidence that the emergency landing was unnecessary, showed just the opposite, and the final report praised both Sully and the crew for their heroism. The real NTSB investigators were none too happy about this, accusing director Clint Eastwood of making manufactured villains out of them for the sake of dramatic tension and stating their hope that the film wouldn't cause real pilots to expect such unfair treatment. Now-retired lead investigator Robert Benzon complained that the film had hurt his reputation, while putting its level of realism "somewhere between Sharknado 2 and Sharknado 3." His words, not ours.

Aside from her fling with the late Notorious B.I.G., rapper Lil' Kim is mostly remembered for being brash, short, and half-naked. When the B.I.G. Biopic Notorious was released in 2009, those who knew the legendary MC were mostly pleased—but not Kim. She began trashing the film before she had even seen it, saying that the screenplay was inaccurate and that she felt like she was being "played" when she was interviewed by the screenwriters—and it only got worse once she got around to watching the movie.

Kim complained that her relationship with B.I.G. came off as shallow and only based on sex, and the actress who played her (Naturi Naughton) was "terrible." She went on to accuse B.I.G.'s mother Voletta Wallace and ex-wife Faith Evans of undue influence, prompting responses ranging from "that's just sad" (Evans) to "get a life" (Wallace). Not everybody took her to task, however. Sean Combs told MTV that Kim had "every right to feel that way," and agreed that she was more than B.I.G.'s hookup buddy. Combs could always set the record straight by making his own biopic, but considering his production style, this would mean simply re-releasing Notorious in its entirety with a different title.

Tom Hanks—everybody loves him, we've covered this. Everybody, that is, except for the crew of the Maersk Alabama, the shipping vessel hijacked by pirates in an event dramatized by the 2013 film Captain Phillips. In the film, Captain Richard Phillips (Hanks) has his ship boarded by pirates, managing to heroically outwit them and force them to leave on a lifeboat, which is complicated when they turn the tables at the last minute and force Phillips onto the lifeboat with them.

Much was made in the film of Phillips's close adherence to protocol: running anti-piracy drills, sticking only to approved waters, and going by the book once his vessel was boarded. But a lawsuit filed against the shipping company by the Maersk Alabama's crew tells a slightly different story: Phillips, they say, was a sullen, arrogant man who never ran a single drill and absolutely insisted on cutting through known pirate-infested waters to save time, despite the pleas of his crew. Moreover, many crew members expressed the opinion chief engineer Mike Perry, who had only a small part in the film, was the real hero of the incident—he attacked and detained the lead hijacker at one point, trying to use him as a bargaining chip to secure Captain Phillips's release.

Nine crew members filed a lawsuit against the shipping company upon their return home. It was settled out of court with undisclosed terms but had the effect of scaring the entire shipping industry straight. New safety regulations and procedures were quickly implemented in 2013 as a direct result of the suit, and go figure: in 2014, the number of attacks by Somalian pirates stood at 0, saving the industry billions. It's almost as if giving the slightest damn about employees is good for business.

The 2014 film Foxcatcher told a story even stranger than fiction: that of John DuPont, millionaire heir to the DuPont family fortune, who became interested in Olympic wrestling and set up a training facility known as Foxcatcher Farm (there may be some relation to the movie's title there, we're not sure). He recruited Olympic gold medalists Dave and Mark Schultz to train the next generation of Olympic wrestlers, a plan that went seriously awry when a mentally unstable DuPont shot and killed Dave in 1996.

Despite being heavily involved in the film's production, Mark Schultz (played by Channing Tatum in the movie) was a tad bit unhappy with his portrayal upon the film's release—particularly its implication that he had been close with DuPont, and maybe even sexually close. He took to social media to call director Bennett Miller a "punk" and a "liar," among other, more unprintable things, saying the film had ruined his legacy and threatening to destroy Miller's career or, you know, just kill him. And then he did an abrupt 180 a few months later, saying that he had been "temporarily insane," and calling the film a "miracle" and Miller "the greatest director ever" (no, seriously). And that was the end of—wait, no, Schultz was talking to the press again a few months after that, complaining that the film had glossed over seven months of his life and focused only on the darkest parts of the story. To clarify, Schultz won the gold in wrestling, but we're thinking he also could have done well in the 100-meter flip-flop.

Straight Outta Compton proved that despite assertions to the contrary, exactly zero people forgot about Dr. Dre. That said, the movie's memory faltered when it came to Dre's history of hitting women. That changed with the 2015 Sony production, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Michel'le. As the name suggests, the movie delves into Dr. Dre's rocky romance with Michel'le, a '90s singer with a 9-year old's speaking voice.

Michel'le has gone on record about their relationship, depicting Dre as a brutal abuser who shattered her nose and held her at gunpoint. And according to The Independent, Dre had something to say about that –- namely, "stop saying things about that." Incensed about the film's depiction of him brutalizing his longtime girlfriend, he demanded the film be pulled and promised to sue. In an attempt to foster skepticism about his portrayal, the creator of Beats by Dre (a really poor name choice in retrospect), pointed out that over the years he dated her, Michel'le never pressed charges against him and allegedly didn't seek medical help.

Of course, most incidents of domestic assault go unreported, so a lack of criminal charges wouldn't be surprising. However, this isn't the place to litigate the past. Apparently, Mr. Beats also opted not to litigate, despite the film airing on Lifetime against his wishes. However, the Doc can take comfort in knowing that celebrities have Teflon reputations, even when they're flat-out guilty of brutalizing women, because life's super fair.

In an age where news outlets consistently get pilloried for alleged bias and fakery, Spotlight provides a noble portrait of journalistic courage and integrity. Boasting bigtime actors like Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, and Rachel McAdams, the Oscar-winning movie highlights (spotlights?) how the Boston Globe exposed heinous sexual abuse and a dastardly cover-up by the Catholic Church. A picture this serious demands a standard of honesty worthy of the journalists it represents, but the truth had to suffer for cinema's sake, apparently.

Specifically, Spotlight paints school representative Jack Dunn as morally ambiguous, if not downright villainous, through the use of fictional dialog. As per the Boston Globe, the movie includes a scene in which Dunn, a then-spokesperson at Boston College, makes a highly questionable statement. Speaking to a Boston Globe reporter, his character utters, "It's a big school, Robby, you know that. And we're talking about seven alleged victims over, what, eight years?" At first blush, the line leaves Dunn looking pretty dismissive about molestation. At worst, he looks like the Voldemort of concealing sex crimes.

Dunn sued for defamation. The filmmakers cried foul, claiming that the scene simply showed Dunn arguing that administrators may have been ignorant of the abuse. However, that seems somewhat undercut by Dunn's character accusing journalists of "reaching" for a story. Ultimately, the filmmakers reached for their wallets, according to the New York Times. In 2016, they apologized to Dunn and paid him an undisclosed sum as part of a settlement.

The Wolf of Wall Street stars enormous piles of drugs that assume the forms of Leo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. Based on the duplicitous rise of corporate conman Jordan Belfort, the movie takes you on an intoxicating odyssey of unabashed decadence, but not everyone appreciated the picture. According to Andrew Greene, the picture is nothing short of cinematic slander.

If Andrew Greene doesn't ring any bells, don't worry. The Hollywood Reporter mockingly pointed out that his character is barely a blip on the film's radar. But in Greene's mind, The Wolf of Wall Street unfairly picked on him, depicting him as a dope-swilling degenerate who arranged illegal transactions for Belfort. Moreover, his alleged onscreen equivalent, Nicky "Rugrat" Koskoff wears a toupee and gets treated like the verbal equivalent of a porta-john. In one scene, Belfort and associate Donnie Azoff (played by Jonah Hill) crack jokes about choking Koskoff to death and question his sexuality with extremely colorful language.

Greene took those digs and indignities as a huge affront and sued for $25 million, which doesn't sound remotely like a cynical cash-grab. Paramount Pictures, Red Granite Pictures, and other entities named in the suit sought to have the case thrown out, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That effort fell flat, however, and a New York judge even ordered Leonardo DiCaprio to testify about the film. However the case turns out, Greene will probably end up more infamous for suing than for anything The Wolf of Wall Street implied.