Joker director Todd Phillips shrugged off controversy over his upcoming movie, comparing the far-left to the far-right, and declaring “outrage is a commodity.”

After being asked in an interview with The Wrap why there has been so much outrage in the media over Joker, Phillips replied, “I think it’s because outrage is a commodity, I think it’s something that has been a commodity for a while.”

“What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda. It’s really been eye-opening for me,” he proclaimed, also explaining in the interview, “It wasn’t, ‘We want to glorify this behavior.’ It was literally like ‘Let’s make a real movie with a real budget and we’ll call it f–ing Joker’. That’s what it was.”

Joker has been at the center of controversy, with some critics claiming the movie could inspire violence.

One group of people who lost family and friends in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, where a shooter obsessed with the Joker from The Dark Knight murdered twelve people and injured seventy more during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, asked Warner Bros. to condemn gun violence ahead of the movie’s release.

According to Vice, “the FBI and the United States military” have also “issued warnings about incel and extremist violence that may occur as it hits theaters.”

In response to the controversies, Warner Bros. issued a statement:

Gun violence in our society is a critical issue, and we extend our deepest sympathy to all victims and families impacted by these tragedies. Our company has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including Aurora, and in recent weeks, our parent company joined other business leaders to call on policymakers to enact bi-partisan legislation to address this epidemic. At the same time, Warner Bros. believes that one of the functions of storytelling is to provoke difficult conversations around complex issues. Make no mistake: neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.

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