*Courtesy of Stewart Cook/Warner Bros. via Getty.*

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, James Gunn expressed that he is still somewhat puzzled by the conservative backlash that emerged ahead of the release of ‘Superman.’ Prior to the film’s debut, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets criticized the movie, labeling it as “SuperWoke.” The controversy arose after Gunn’s remarks in an interview with the Times of London, where he described Superman as an “immigrant” and referred to the superhero’s journey as “the story of America.”

“I’ve heard people say it was woke, and then I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not. I am curious as to what in the movie is considered woke,” Gunn said to EW. “I think people took something I said — the guy for the London newspaper. Originally, he said that [Superman comic creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants, and they wrote Superman as an immigrant story. And I said, yeah, it’s a story about an immigrant, but mostly it’s a story to me about kindness, which it is. That’s the center of the movie for me.”

The ‘Superman’ director continued: “That’s the thing we can all act upon, is kindness. And so what does that lead to? Well, does that lead to the way you vote? Sure. Does that lead to everything? Yeah. Does it lead to how many people are dying from road rage? Yes. All those things are affected if people just start to value kindness. I mean, people did value kindness in the past. That was an American value, was kindness, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to be that way to me anymore. So that was always the center of the movie for me, and it wasn’t about anything other than that.”

Fox News and former Superman actor Dean Cain predicted Gunn’s “immigrant” quote would result in negatively affecting the film’s box office. Gunn’s brother and frequent collaborator, Sean Gunn, expressed to Variety; “Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”

“We’re definitely performing better domestically than we are internationally, but internationally is also rising and having really good weekday numbers in the same way we are,” James Gunn said to Rolling Stone later on. “So obviously the word of mouth is very positive both here and everywhere else. Which is the thing that we needed to do the most. At the same time, there are certain countries in which it’s really performing well. Brazil and the U.K.”

He concluded: “Superman is not a known commodity in some places. He is not a big known superhero in some places like Batman is. That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment around the world right now. It isn’t really helping us. So I think it’s just a matter of letting something grow. But again, for us, everything’s been a total win. Having the movie come out and be something that has been embraced by people everywhere — this is just the seed of the tree that Peter and I have been watering for the past three years. So to be able to have it start off so positively has been incredibly overwhelming.”

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