The Most Controversial Movies Of 2025 (So Far)

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No movie is going to make everyone happy, as much as Hollywood's four-quadrant marketing strategies wish it were so. Some movies, however, leave one portion or another of the audience so angry, offended, or just flat-out baffled by what they've seen that the ensuing reactions make headlines. Because news and rumors about behind-the-scenes drama spread rapidly online, even movies that are almost universally beloved — as well as ones so mediocre that no one would expect them to provoke any strong reaction — can, for reasons disconnected from their actual content, end up fanning flames of controversy as high as any intentional work of provocation.

From documentaries on hot-button political subjects to family blockbusters that accidentally waded into culture wars while trying play it safe, from productions targeted by frivolous gossip drama to films tragically connected with serious crimes, here are the movies that have gotten audiences arguing the most in 2025 so far.

Delayed by a year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023, Disney's live-action version of "Snow White" has been making headlines for years now. Rachel Zegler faced backlash for being a Latina actress playing Snow White, for voicing feminist criticisms of the 1937 animated movie, and for her anti-Trump and pro-Palestinian political statements — the latter becoming an issue for producer Marc Platt, whose son Jonah attacked Zegler's outspokenness as "narcissism." Meanwhile, the casting of Israeli actress Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen sparked backlash on the opposite side of the political spectrum, with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel demanding a boycott of the film.

The Seven Dwarfs also drew controversy. Peter Dinklage opposed the idea of remaking "Snow White" in the first place due to the dwarfs, a position other little person actors disagreed with. Set photos of the seven bandit characters were misreported on as replacements for the dwarfs. The movie's actual dwarves — who are never referred to by that word in the film — ended up being CGI creations that many agreed looked bad. Ultimately, "it looks bad" appears to have outweighed the many political and celebrity controversies surrounding the production in terms of the main reasons why the 2025 "Snow White" bombed at the box office.

For about three months in early 2023, it looked like "Magazine Dreams" was destined to be a serious awards contender. Searchlight spent $10 million on the rights to the film at Sundance, where its director Elijah Bynum won a special jury award for creative vision. Its unrelenting brutality led to divisive reactions, but everyone who saw "Magazine Dreams" at Sundance agreed that Jonathan Majors' performance as obsessive bodybuilder Killian Maddox was astonishing. Audrey Fox predicted in her review for Looper, "'Magazine Dreams' will serve as a calling card for Majors' irrepressible talent, and one of 2023's defining performances."

Well, that calling card got revoked when Majors was accused and found guilty of assaulting and harassing his former girlfriend. Portraying the depths of toxic masculinity is no longer that impressive if we're unsure how much of the portrayal is acting. Searchlight dropped "Magazine Dreams" after Majors' guilty verdict. The movie eventually got picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment — a distribution company making a name in releasing films other studios won't touch, such as "The Apprentice" — and quietly released in theaters over two years after its world premiere.

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Almost no one saw "Rust" in theaters. Most people probably couldn't recognize the film from its title, but they've definitely heard about it — they just know it as "The Western Where Alec Baldwin Accidentally Shot and Killed Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins." Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal accident, wherein Baldwin's prop gun contained a round of live ammunition, while first assistant director David Halls pled no contest to charges of negligent use of deadly weapon. Baldwin was charged twice for involuntary manslaughter and pled "not guilty" both times; the charges were dropped the first time and dismissed with prejudice the second time due to withheld evidence.

This behind-the-scenes tragedy sparked debate about the use of working guns as movie props, with some calling to ban their use entirely now that special effects can replicate realistic gunfire. In light of the headlines about the production of "Rust," it's no wonder people found it hard to enjoy the film itself. Premiering at the Camerimage festival in Poland in 2024 before a summer 2025 release, "Rust" got mixed reviews from critics, though many singled out Hutchins' cinematography as its strongest quality.

"No Other Land," a collaboration between two Palestinian directors (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal) and two Israeli ones (Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor) documenting the campaign against the demolition of the Masafer Yatta villages in the West Bank, received a one-week awards-qualifying run in 2024, ultimately winning the Oscar for best documentary feature. However, it wouldn't get a full theatrical release until 2025 — and that release ended up self-distributed because no studio was willing to license the documentary in the United States.

Extreme political backlash has followed "No Other Land" since its premiere at the Berlinale, where German government officials absurdly decried a Jewish director's awards acceptance speech as "antisemitic." The film has been condemned by Israeli culture minister Miki Zohar for its heavy criticism of the Israeli government. Miami Beach mayor Steven Meiner threatened to cancel an arthouse theater's lease for screening it. It has also been boycotted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, who claim the Israeli directors' participation "normalizes" the occupation (many of those in Masafer Yatta object to this characterization of the film).

The controversy around "No Other Land" reached a new level of scariness on March 24, 2025, when co-director Hamdan Ballal was attacked by settlers and detained by the Israeli military. He was freed the following day. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was reluctant to make a statement in support of the recent Oscar winner until over 800 Academy members petitioned the organization.

"Captain America: Brave New World" is yet another 2025 film that built up a reputation for controversy years before anyone even saw it. Racist trolls had their knives out for Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) becoming the new Captain America from the start, but other groups found reasons to get upset with the production over the course of its extensive reshoots and delays.

The film's original title, "Captain America: New World Order," played into conspiracy theories. The character of Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) was changed from the Mossad agent superhero Sabra from the comics into an Israeli ex-Black Widow; neither pro-Israel nor anti-Israel groups were happy with how the character was handled, and the film became another boycott target. More people got upset with Mackie for a comment at an Italian press event downplaying Captain America as a representation of America, though he quickly responded to the backlash with a patriotic clarification post on Instagram.

When the movie itself finally came out, critical response was mixed and leaning negative. Some critics were particularly bothered by "Brave New World's" ending, wherein Cap emphasizes forgiving President Ross (Harrison Ford) despite his many crimes. Attempting an "apolitical" approach to extremely political subject matter ultimately left no one fully pleased.

Disney's live-action remakes of animated classics find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay too faithful to the old movies and there's no reason to watch the new version, but make too many changes and the fans will complain. The live-action version of "Lilo and Stitch" changed the story's ending, leaving fans divided (to put it lightly).

In the original, Nani (Tia Carrere) is fighting to maintain guardianship of her younger sister Lilo (Daveigh Chase). In the remake, Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) puts Lilo (Maia Kealoha) in foster care so she can go to college in California. The charitable interpretation of this ending is that Lilo's new foster mother (Amy Hill) was already part of her non-traditional ohana, thereby fitting the spirit of the original. But in light of the continuing history of the U.S. government separating Indigenous families, it raised many viewers' alarms that this remake would discard the cartoon's commentary on such issues in favor of uncomfortable government-knows-best implications.

Another change that upset fans is that Pleakley (Kevin McDonald in the original, Billy Magnussen in the remake) no longer dresses in drag, instead using technology to disguise himself as an ordinary human male. While reducing the presence of the alien characters may have been a budgetary issue, director Dean Fleischer Camp's defeated-sounding "I tried" answer on the subject (via TikTok) has many suspecting that Disney was deliberately de-queering "Lilo and Stitch" as they have other recent projects.

"Another Simple Favor," the direct-to-Prime Video sequel to 2018's "A Simple Favor," reunites Anna Kendrick as writer Stephanie Smothers and Blake Lively as criminal Emily Nelson (as well as another twist character). Lively's been a favorite target of the tabloids, especially amidst the various lawsuits between her and Justin Baldoni regarding issues on the production of 2024's "It Ends With Us," and so gossip circled around "Another Simple Favor." Rumors spread that Kendrick and Lively were feuding at the film's SXSW premiere. Director Paul Feig directly denied those rumors.

More drama surrounded an actress who didn't appear in the film: Sharon Stone. The "Basic Instinct" star complained on Instagram about being "cast and removed from my role unexpectedly for no reason at all." Insiders clarified Stone was never actually cast in the film and had only had discussions about a role. The movie's queer incest story was also controversial for obvious reasons (between "Another Simple Favor" and "The White Lotus" Season 3, queer incest sure is having a moment in 2025...).

Does anyone even remember "The Electric State," the Netflix movie about a robot uprising in an alternate 1990s starring Millie Bobby brown, Chris Pratt, and the voice of Woody Harrelson as robot leader Mr. Peanut? This is the epitome of the type of Netflix movie that millions watch but nobody cares about. Alistair Ryder absolutely demolished "The Electric State" in his review for Looper, giving it a 1/10 score.

So what makes this bad movie noteworthy enough to be controversial? Mainly the fact this bad movie cost $320 million. Even considering the big name stars in the cast and the extensive CGI, it's wild to think this streaming slop cost more than the first "Avatar" and almost as much as "Avengers: Infinity War." There's also the issue that the source material, a graphic novel Simon Stålenhag, is actually good, making the film's crappiness even more upsetting for fans of the original. And then there's the film's use of AI — while reportedly only used for voice modulation here, directors Joe and Anthony Russo's support for increasing the use of AI in filmmaking continues to spark outrage.

As of this writing, "A Minecraft Movie" is the most successful American film of 2025 at the global box office. It's the sort of blockbuster that would normally garner headlines about its success "saving theaters"... if not for the problem that many of the kids going to see the movie were literally destroying theaters. In the vein of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" but with less horniness and more live chickens, "A Minecraft Movie" is the latest in a long line of films that sparked chaos in cinemas.

Older people have approached the phenomenon of rowdy Zoomers going nuts over the "chicken jockey!" scene from a number of different angles, from panic and condemnation to bemusement and sometimes reluctant acceptance. Some screenings have had to add pre-show warnings discouraging the throwing of popcorn, while other screenings have gone the opposite route and been specifically marketed to both embrace and contain the wild energy of the fans.

Alex Garland's "Civil War" was among the most controversial movies of 2024, both for its charged premise of political conflicts breaking apart the United States in the near future and for the way it avoided explicit contextualization of said politics. Garland's next film, "Warfare," co-directed by NAVY Seal Ray Mendoza and based on Mendoza's personal experience in the Iraq War, never became quite the powder keg "Civil War" did, perhaps because not as many people went to see it, but it did stir up some controversy about the nature of war movies.

Many reactions to the movie's trailer dismissed it immediately as military propaganda. The choice to mock up military vehicles and uniforms rather than submit to Department of Defense approval to use real ones would seemingly speak against propaganda as Garland and Mendoza's intention, and when the film itself proved far less "rah rah America" than early doubters feared, it ended up being Garland's most universally acclaimed film on Rotten Tomatoes. But even among positive-leaning reviews of "Warfare," some critics voiced discomfort with applying the context-free style of "Civil War" to this true story and noted a film like this from Iraqi perspectives would never get made.

As an actual movie, "Sinners" is pretty uncontroversial. Critics love it, audiences love it, everyone seems to more or less get its messages, and its blockbuster success is a heartening rejoinder to Hollywood's growing fear of diverse narratives in the second Trump administration. The big controversy surrounding "Sinners" has had little to do with the film itself and everything to do with the way Hollywood and the major trades attempted to downplay its success.

According to a report by Vulture, executives were fearful that if "Sinners" succeeded, it could "end the studio system." The thing these executives feared was Ryan Coogler's somewhat unusual deal with Warner Bros., in which the rights to the vampire film will revert to the director in 25 years. "Sinners'" $48 million domestic opening weekend was the biggest for an original movie since COVID, but headlines reporting on this box office were oddly un-celebratory, trying to downplay the success by pointing out the $90 million budget.

There was no such hedging when Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," which cost at least $90 million and had a similar deal where the rights will revert to the director, opened to $41 million pre-COVID. Many commentators questioned this double standard: Why is a white auteur earning his worth celebrated while a Black auteur doing the same gets treated as a threat to the system? Coogler got the last laugh — "Sinners" had absurdly strong legs and has now made over $350 million worldwide.

"Together," Michael Shanks' body horror film about a couple (Alison Brie and Dave Franco) whose bodies start merging together, received some of the most enthusiastic responses at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Critics gave it unanimous praise, with a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Neon spent $17 million to get the distribution rights. But was the idea for the movie stolen?

A lawsuit filed by writer-director Patrick Henry Phelan alleges that "Together" plagiarized his 2023 film "Better Half." Beyond a shared premise, reported similarities between the two films include a "near verbatim" reference to Plato's "Symposium," ending the film by playing a Spice Girls vinyl, and a scene where the conjoined lovers hide outside the bathroom while their genitals fuse. Phelan's case that these similarities are more than coincidence rests on the fact that the production company StudioFest sent the "Better Half" screenplay to Brie and Franco's agents in 2020 — while the defense has pointed out a draft of Shanks' "Together" screenplay was registered with the WGA a year earlier in 2019.