10 Controversial Movies Everyone Misunderstood
Before Joker, there was Fight Club.
All anybody's been able to talk about lately is Todd Phillips' Joker and the ensuing, exhausting controversy surrounding it.
To some, it's seen to be empowering angry, sexless young men - or "incels" - to take up arms against a society that doesn't care about them, while others rubbish this claim, viewing it instead as a class commentary wrapped around a plea for more compassionate attitudes to mental health.
Either way, the film's merits have largely been overshadowed by the online bickering and blatant misreadings of the film's true themes and intent - whether in good faith or not.
Joker is just the latest in a long line of controversial films which were misinterpreted by a massive slice of not only general audiences but also critics and the mass media, the latter of whom just might have a vested interest in pervading that misreading.
These 10 films, all of them understandably divisive and incendiary, nevertheless mark out a clear intent to switched-on audiences paying attention to what they're watching.
Yet even today, many will use their own prejudices and politics to view these films through a lens that's clearly not what the filmmaker was going for...