Something very peculiar happened upon the release of David Fincher’s Fight Club: a slew of people started to see Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden as the hero of the film. Yes, he essentially starts a terrorist organization and, yes, he is utterly violent and reprehensible and called for chaos and anarchy. But to some, he was just spouting wisdom. This was not Fincher’s intention.

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was met with anger from some because certain viewers said the film endorsed the misogynistic and ugly life style of its drug-addicted lead character. This was not Scorsese’s intention.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty told the tale of the search for Osama Bin Laden. As has been revealed, some of this search included Americans torturing suspected or even non-suspected terrorists to get information. It was brutal, ugly and wrong but Zero Dark Thirty showed this shameful act in order to maintain accuracy. There were many who said the film was condoning the torture. This was not Bigelow’s intention.

This has happened time and time again. Audiences perceive a message in a film that doesn’t exist. They misinterpret characters’ intentions and turn villains into heroes and it makes things very awkward. Warner Bros knows this and is stepping out in front of the release of Joker to remind people that the Batman villain is just that: a villain. A bad guy. A terrorist and evil killer. It’s unfortunate that a studio is having to explicitly state the vision of filmmakers but I can understand where they are coming from.

It all started when families of the victims from the Aurora movie theater massacre wrote a letter to Warner Bros, telling them the discomfort they felt about a movie that made the Joker the protagonist. That’s understandable considering the mad man behind the massacre that shattered their lives wanted to be known as the Joker and idolized the comic book character. But the families didn’t ask WB to delay or cancel the film. They simply wanted the studio to stop supporting politicians who prevent gun control and to support victims and speak out against gun violence.

And now Warner Bros has responded with this message:

First of all, good for the victims’ families for not calling on the film to be delayed. I wish more people who were unhappy with a film’s release didn’t call for its cancellation but instead tried to produce something positive from it. Secondly, good on WB for releasing a statement supporting the victims. It’s sad that WB has to say anything but as the examples above show, sometimes movies are misconstrued.

People find what they want in these movies. Todd Phillips isn’t trying to glorify the character of the Joker but that is exactly what some people will do. You can bet that confused, uneducated hot takes about the movie will soon be popping up on your Facebook feed in the next few weeks. That’ll be followed by some awkward pictures of people dressing up like Phoenix’s take on the character and spouting off quotes from the movie. This movie WILL inspire people. Hopefully it won’t inspire violence but, even if it did, that’s not the movie’s intention or fault. Fincher wasn’t endorsing Tyler Durden’s world view and Scorsese wasn’t endorsing Jordan Belford’s and Bigelow wasn’t endorsing Dick Cheney’s. These movies are trying to be truthful to their characters and the world they inhabit but they’re not coming out championing their actions. A world filled with only happy movies telling happy stories featuring happy characters is a boring world indeed.

Joker is a tricky case because of how the character influences so many troubled young men — there is a whole underworld of people who view the Joker as a prophet. And due to the past events in Aurora, Colorado people are ultra-sensitive because we have seen the results of someone worshipping this character.

Unfortunately, as Joker proves, people gravitate to villains like this. So sometimes movie studios need to make intentions clear. It’s not ideal, it’s hopefully not the wave of the future but it’s understandable.