Controversies hover over holiday releases including 'Last Jedi,' Spacey film

Controversy and movies have gone together since the dawn of cinema.

This holiday season, controversies before and behind the camera seem to dominate the traditional messages of peace on Earth and good will toward men.

In fact, you'd have to do a lot of good will hunting to find it in some upcoming productions, such as Ridley Scott's “All the Money in the World.”

As you read this, Scott and his crews might still be furiously reshooting scenes of Kevin Spacey as billionaire J. Paul Getty, replacing him with Christopher Plummer in a race to hit the film's original Dec. 22 release date.

Reports of Spacey's attempted seduction of a 14-year-old boy, and other charges of sexual harassment, put the production into a tailspin. The 11th-hour switcheroo might add up to $10 million to the film's budget.

Then comes the case of ill will between big newspapers.

Some veteran New York Times journalists are rankled at Steven Spielberg's “The Post,” the fact-based story of how Washington Post publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) published the classified Pentagon Papers detailing a secret history of the Vietnam War.

Wait! The New York Times, not the Post, broke the Pentagon Papers story. The landmark 1971 Supreme Court case affirming the right to publish the classified materials was the Times' victory, not the Post's. And the Times, not the Post, won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service for its expose.

Defenders of “The Post” say that the drama concentrates more on Graham than on “The Pentagon Papers” (the film's original title). We shall see on opening day, Dec. 22.

Now we come to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the subject of more rumors than Russia's influence on the last presidential election.

Rian Johnson's “Last Jedi” escaped the sort of bad press that befell “Solo: A Star Wars Story” after Ron Howard replaced “Lego Movie” directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, then reportedly reshot 80 percent of the movie.

Still, “Last Jedi” has been beset by what could be big spoiler leaks. These include star Adam Driver's offhand remarks about a secret identity, plus a possibly foreshadowing image on the “Last Jedi” poster. It opens Dec. 15.

Finally, when Sony Pictures announced that “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” would be released Dec. 25, 2016, internet chatter went nuts with unhappy fans charging that the sequel's release came too soon after original star Robin Williams' suicide on Aug. 11, 2014.

Apparently, the new Dec. 20 release date for “Welcome to the Jungle” (which takes place 20 years after the original story) seems to be OK.

Four high school students discover an old “Jumanji” video game (not in the original movie) and get sucked into the game's jungle world as Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart.