Bingo. Now I feel weird openly saying I like BDSM because I would seem like an abusive exploitative asshole.

Story Time

I had to have a serious multi-hour long conversation with my gf about this very same topic. She's a very vanilla like girl when it comes to sex but we've been slowly working up to some more eccentric flavours.

Then this movie came out. She was dragged to see it by her sister and her friends. I didn't complain, I just told her to watch it with a grain of salt. She came home later that night and simply said the the movie was "okay" (I found out later that her friends loved it).

Fast forward a week or so. I noticed that she was being more reclusive and reserved every time we had sex.

"I'm ok" she would say but her demeanor would say otherwise.

I sat her down one Saturday night and told her that we had to talk about what was bothering her. After a little coaxing she told me that she was kinda scared of me or what I could become. That the movie had shown her what BDSM could be like, the dark side of it.

I laughed and told her that: "If I start to abuse you; if I start to truly manipulate you; if I start to do anything without your ONGOING informed consent - then its not BDSM anymore, I'm just an asshole who doesn't deserve you".

We talked some more about communication and honesty in sex and BDSM for the rest of the night.

She was lucky that she had someone who could actually help her differentiate between the two (BDSM and the movie). However, other women and men aren't so lucky. Some of them might then think that BDSM is an exploitative, abusive freak show; while others might actually be in abusive relationships and think that its just BDSM.

TLDR: Movie is bad for people within the BSDM culture, naive people, and simply everyone.