10 Controversial Movies Everyone Misunderstood

8. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Many felt that Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi was too far a departure from the warm blanket of nostalgia that was Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Fans cited not only Johnson's decision to discard many popular fan theories, but tone down the fan service, alter Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) characterisation and "shoehorn progressive 'SJW' politics" into the Star Wars franchise.

While there are certainly many valid reasons to dislike The Last Jedi, the controversy surrounding the movie was overblown to the point of exhaustion, where even those who liked the film quickly got tired of talking about it.

Unfortunately a lot of Star Wars fans are unable to accept the possibility of a filmmaker not strictly adhering to their precious head-canon, where anything different is immediately terrible.

As for the film's "forced" politics? There's nothing tokenistic about The Last Jedi's more diverse cast, and ultimately getting angry about a Star Wars film having a powerful female lead and an ethnically varied supporting roster says more about the complainers than it does the movie itself.

Luke Skywalker, meanwhile, is a changed man when we finally meet him again in The Last Jedi, because who among us doesn't change drastically over the course of 30 years?

Unfortunately so many viewers, whether they loved it or hated it, became so defensive and embattled over the movie's merits (or lack thereof) that the discussion wasn't so much about the film itself but exterior politics that Johnson's film clearly wasn't much interested in.

At least with the likelihood that J.J. Abrams' upcoming The Rise of Skywalker will be a decidedly safer trilogy-capper, the discussion might be a little less insufferable.