The 27 Most Controversial Movie Characters

Alex DeLarge

The stylised, sexualised ultraviolence of Malcolm McDowell's Alex and his dandy band of thugs is still a steady shocker today, thanks to the elegance of Stanley Kubrick's direction and the queasy moral no-man's-land of Alex's rehabilitation.

Copycat crimes followed (the film was associated with a manslaughter trial and a rape case in which the attackers sang Singin' In The Rain) and threats received by Kubrick's family led the director to withdraw the film from release in the UK until the time of his death.

Jesus Of Nazareth

Willem Dafoe's earnest depiction of Christ in Martin Scorsese's provocative biopic asks the strictly non-Gospel question: what if Jesus was free from sin, but not free from human desires and temptations?

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The answer is: if you ask this question Christians all over the world will get really mad with you. Ignoring the theological value in the film (it's meant as a way of understanding Jesus rather than degrading him) several countries banned the film, and a riot in France ended with one cinema being firebombed. Do unto others, eh?

Paul

It's really difficult to have your character engage in blasphemous, pig-baiting, butter-lubed anal sex without stirring up just a little bit of controversy, it turns out.

Brando's debauched, despairing widower throws himself furiously into an anonymous sexual tryst with Maria Schneider's young woman, resulting in scenes which shocked the world. Director Bernardo Bertolucci was convicted of obscenity in Italy, while the Village Voice hilariously reported that New York screenings were met with vomiting by "well-dressed wives."

The Architect

Controversial because, if there's a single character who embodies The Matrix's fall from world-wowin, out-of-nowhere marvel to inexplicable philosophical amateur hour, it's this digital Colonel Sanders.

The Architect spouts a stream of flamboyantly awful gibberish, turning Neo from interdimensional ass-kicker to the sad remainder in some cosmic long division sum. Awful.

Paul Kersey

Charles Bronson is the middle-class architect whose life becomes a modern-day Western when his wife and daughter are attacked by CRAZED DRUG ADDICTS in this undeniably effective Michael Winner thriller.

The story surrounding Kersey is so manipulative - bleeding heart liberal, conscientious objector in the Korean war, only takes up arms when evil touches him personally - that the character is barely more than a propagandist cypher. But the film's popularity sparked fears of a wave of vigilantism.

Sean

Cameron Bright's creepy ten-year-old pretender sneaks his way into the life of Nicole Kidman's longing widow and begins a distressingly intense relationship with her by claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband.

The setup is provocative, and the payoff - the pair apparently sharing a bath together, naked - totally outrageous. In fact the scene was carefully filmed to avoid any such coming together, but hey, they still totally kissed.

Borat

A double layer of controversy from Kazakhstan's favourite son. The most predictable - the outrage in Kazakhstan when, in between exposing racism and stupidity in America, Sacha Baron Cohen's outrageous satirical lightning rod made up loads of arguably racist and stupid things about Kazakhstan.

Then there was the backlash from those who unwittingly appeared in the film, many of whom filed lawsuits against Baron Cohen for misrepresentation (including the residents of Glod in Romania, where the Kazakhstan scenes were filmed) . And that's before we even start on the naked wrestling scene...

Brian Cohen

The Pythons maintain that their brilliant, religion-baiting satire is heretical rather than blasphemous - mercilessly tearing comic strips from the practices of organised religion, rather than attacking the foundations of faith itself.

That didn't stop a tidal wave of protest and censorship (it was banned in several American States and in Ireland for eight years), or prevent lead character Brian (born on the same night as Jesus, only down the road) from becoming a poster-boy for outrage and agitation.

Jar Jar Binks

Accusations of racial stereotyping were slung around over Jar Jar (and the bizarrely East Asian-accented Trade Federation) but the real reason he makes the list is because, as we all know, he totally ruined Star Wars forever .

Or at least he symbolises everything that did. It's beyond debate that Jar Jar is physically painful to watch, and he's evidence of just how far George Lucas' judgement had eroded in the two decades between trilogies.

Amy Sumner

The pretty wife of an American scientist who's relocated to rural Blighty, Susan George's Amy is subject to a barely actable scenario in which she's raped by a former lover, apparently begins to enjoy it, and is then raped by a second man.

It's an excruciating watch - so unlikely, it's tough not to see it as a thunderously misogynist fantasy - and made the character the focus of feminist complaints and censorship.