In Toronto I wrote to my friend Jeffrey Wells about "I,Tonya":
“A fairly straightforward re-dramatization of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan figure-skating fiasco. It portrays Harding as typical white trash surrounded by more white trash. Doesn’t necessarily paint her as crooked or mean — just naive, indifferent and completely aloof about the whole situation. Robbie’s performance great, Gillespie’s direction solid but [this is nonetheless] conventional filmmaking.”
The important part of that email was the depiction of Tonya Harding as innocent, aloof to what was happening around her. The film implies that she didn't know Harding would be hurt to this extent, but a pushback is happening towards "I, Tonya" and for good reason. J.E. Vader, who spoke to The Oregonian, reported on the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident when it actually happened:
“It was painful to hand over the money for a ticket, knowing that some of it would go to an unrepentant felon, and knowing all too well how much money means to her.”
“Harding has changed her story over and over in the past 24 years, but it’s always that she is a victim and everyone else is horrible. She is habitually ‘truth-challenged’ — this fantasy film is Harding’s dream come true,” writes Vader. All of this is at the expense of Kerrigan, the actual victim in the story, who’s reduced to “comic relief” in Craig Gillespie’s film."
“There’s also the fact that, according to Vader, several of the most important scenes are complete fabrications meant to portray its heroine as something she wasn’t then and isn’t then: a hapless bystander to the infamous attack. Vader writes that initial plans for the attack “included killing Kerrigan, or cutting her Achilles’ tendon, before settling for breaking her landing leg and leaving her injured wearing a duct-tape gag in her hotel room — and that Tonya Harding was well in on the plans and impatient when Kerrigan wasn’t disabled right away. (Makes Tonya a tad less sympathetic, no?).”