Patty Jenkins slams Joss Whedon's Justice League: "I don’t recognize half of these characters"
Aux Features Film
After years of smiling and making-nice, the dam surrounding Joss Whedon’s version of 2017's Justice League appears to be well-and-truly ready to break. Today, Cinema Blend reports on a podcast appearance recently made by Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984 writer/director Patty Jenkins, expressing her discontent with Whedon’s version of the film: “I think that all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did,” Jenkins told the ReelBlend podcast. “But also, I felt that that version contradicted my first movie in many ways, and this current movie, which I was already in production on.”
For those feeling a little fuzzy on the timeline, Jenkins’ first Wonder Woman was the second cinematic appearance of Gal Gadot’s Diana, after she was introduced in Zack Snyder’s 2016 Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. The largely standalone Wonder Woman (2017) went on to be both a major critical and commercial hit for Warner Bros., nearly matching Dawn’s box office performance on roughly half its budget—before being followed by the more expensive, less successful Justice League, which Whedon took over after Snyder was forced to depart the project after the death of his daughter.
Whedon’s film was mostly met with shrugs at the time, but has come under increasing ire in the last three years: From fans, who demanded (ultimately successfully) that the not-actually extant “Snyder Cut” be restored. From Snyder himself, who said he’d rather “blow that fucking thing up” than use a second of Whedon’s footage. From actor Ray Fisher, who alleged that Whedon was abusive on the movie’s set. And now from Jenkins, who gave the film a cold appraisal of the changes to its tone that Whedon attempted to implement:
The only thing I have done, and have always tried to do, is — I knew, when Zack was doing Justice League, where she sort of ends up. So I always tried… like, I didn’t change her suit, because I never want to… I don’t want to contradict his films, you know? But yet, I have to have my own films, and he’s been very supportive of that. And so, I think that that Justice League was kind of an outlier. They were trying to turn one thing into, kind of, another. And so then it becomes, ‘I don’t recognize half of these characters. I’m not sure what’s going on.’
Whedon has been extremely quiet over the increasingly loud backlash over the film—the last he’s made to date. Meanwhile, Snyder’s version of the movie is set to be released in four installments on HBO Max in 2021.
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This movie is number 2 on my list of shit I’m completely fucking sick of hearing about, right behind Donald Trump’s month long temper tantrum over being a loser.
If I never hear about this movie again, I will be so happy. I can’t even anymore.
Personally the last thing I am waiting to hear about the movie will be when the Snyder cut is finally released, it’s as garbage as his other films, and we get a few delusional diatribes from Snyder fans on how good it actually is. That will help confirm there is some sanity to the logic of reality.
Joss Whedon’s Justice League: Rigged Very Badly
I’ll say this for Zack Snyder, as dumb as he seems to be in interviews, he’s done a tremendous job of convincing the world that a crappy film with his name on it was completely the fault of some other guy.
I mean, before the movie ever came out or was even close to coming out, everyone just assumed it was gonna be kinda crappy, right? Am I misremembering that? From the set design to the overall darkness, it just looked… bad. Like, “OK” was all anyone was hoping for. And then Whedon gets put on it, everyone thinks he’s going to magically save it. And then the movie sucks, but people seem more disappointed that it sucks because Whedon was on it. So now… people think Snyder’s original vision will NOT suck?
There’s no universe where this movie didn’t suck. And even when Whedon was brought in by Warner Brothers to salvage the thing, it seemed like a desperate move to recreate the first Avengers movie. But it’s weird that the guy who laid all the ground work for and filmed a bunch of the movie is somehow not responsible for the quality of that film, but the dude the studio brought in as a last-minute attempt to save their investment is.
Because Whedon completely remade the film…that’s why he’s responsible
What’s truly amazing about this rolling tire fire is that almost everyone involved is either a dirtbag or dumb and greedy as shit. Everybody but Jenkins could disappear off the face of the earth and we’d all be better off.
Yeah, I understand Whedon has made himself an easy target over the years, but let’s not pretend this is all on him. Among the many problems with Justice League is that it’s both figuratively and literally too dark for no reason, the villain is boring as shit, and the characterization is mostly crap. That slate sounds suspiciously similar to the issues with Snyder’s other movies for DC, and most of his other movies period.
The ONLY thing worth a shit in all of Justice League is the Whedon dialogue, which very occasionally causes the movie to be mildly fun.
the blame for the debacle that is Justice League lies squarely with the studio execs. They wanted a light and fun movie ala The Avengers, then they hired Zach Snyder to direct it and gave him carte blanche. Then somehow they were shocked that he was making a grimdark slog, just like every single other movie he’s ever made.Shocked.
Okay. I’m not wholly DISagreeing, but can we acknowledge that Christopher “Fuck You Plebs, Go Get COVID at the Theater” Nolan’s (Grim)Dark Knight Thrillogy is also to blame for the DCEU aesthetic? Those master(bation)pieces made WB a ton of money so of course they hit CTRL-C CTRL-V on that shit.
They might’ve thought they hit CTRL-C with Nolan having his producer credit on Man of Steel, but Snyder couldn’t CTRL-V the Dark Knight trilogy worth a damn. They didn’t know that what they’d copied was actually Snyder’s Watchmen, just without Dave Gibbons’s storyboards or Alan Moore’s dialogue.
It’s only to blame because studio execs have no idea that apples and oranges aren’t the same fruits.
No.We can’t.Snyder chose to try and emulate (and modulate) that style (FOR FUCKING SUPERMAN), not Nolan. Warner Bros signed off. If your problem with Man of Steel, BvS and Justice League is that it’s all too dark and that it’s Nolan’s fault, please Google cognitive dissonance. This was the decision of a flmmaker, and I do not understand why people want to have a scapegoat not named Zack Snyder for a film directed by.. Zack Snyder.Whedon came in at the request of the studio and tried to convert a dark film into something less dark. Did he succeed? Only technically, it is a brighter film. That is the only improvement.
As for his treatment of actors, not one time has anything specific been cited as poor treatment that I’ve read. I’ve been waiting for it, expecting specifics from Ray Fischer. Nothing’s been really made of it with any specificity at all – one person’s skin was altered post-production, which could be really weird – but it’d be good to know what Whedon did that was abusive. Genuinely, if he’s done some shit, let’s hear it – that’s not okay. But it’s been.. what, 18 months since then with nothing?
It wasn’t even grimdark! Like, there are jokes in the first movie, the second one is a thriller, and the third is meant to be aspirational! And even if, it were a more grounded take…it makes sense for Batman! Not Superman. Not Wonder Woman. Not the Justice League. WB screwed the endeavor from the start.
No, I blame dumbass execs who don’t understand the difference between Batman and Superman or Batman and Wonder Woman,
Guy given dumpster fire and told to try and fix dumpster fire getting blamed for it seems kind of unfair.
More like guy arrives at dumpster fire and “fixes it” by abusing the firefighters.
That certainly is what could have happened.What certainly happened is that Whedon joined an almost-finished project, and rather than finishing up the film in an appearance of Snyder’s shitty style, he added his own shitty touch, so the film’s totally discordant to boot.
Right, but coming into a movie that’s almost-finished and pretty much determined by studio to suck and then told to put some window dressing on it to make it suck much less isn’t on the guy who’s trying to fix it. If you’re down 24-3 in the third quarter, pull the QB and lose the game 49-17, the backup QB shouldn’t be blamed for the loss. Especially if the team is the NFL equivelant of the Snyder movies- the Jets
Excuse my utter lack of understanding of NFL, that goes soaring over my head.That said, Whedon is absolutely responsible for his follow-through, though he isn’t the only person to blame. It’s stupid to bring in somebody to tack on stuff to an already heavily-toned project & add in a different tone- it didn’t change the tone of the whole project, it just made weird tonal shifts throughout. That’s definitely some stupidity on WB exec’s involvement, considering they did the same shit on Suicide Squad; but this time Whedon headed that up, and he should own what he changed, he’s put his name under the goddamn director’s banner.
Jets are a famously inept franchise that hasn’t won a game all season. I just don’t think it’s fair that he’s the guy thrown under the bus when there’s so many other people who should be. Among other things, Whedin has a track record for doing amazing things while Snyder has none and somehow Snyder is seen has some sort of martyred genius despite all the evidence that he is not. It’s Snyder vision and he did the other movies when by all accounts, everybody hates him
Maybe I missed it, but did Whedon ever publicly disclaim fault for JL? Has he gone on record saying “yeah it sucks and it’s not my fault”?
He hasn’t, and I don’t think he needs to either; all the same, I think Justice League was a terrible film, it was going to be a terrible film if it was purely Zack Snyder making it, and it was worse off because of the bizarre tonal shift scene-to-scene, as a result of Whedon taking over the project and not committing to the same focus Snyder had. I don’t think it really sours my image of Whedon any more, but he doesn’t deserve a single laudit for anything he did on Justice League.
Maybe, but I guarantee you Whedon is 100% responsible for how terrible and cringey The Flash is in the movie.
The movie sucks because it sucks. Whedon couldn’t have made it better with what he had.Whedon sucks because he’s an asshole.
I mean it takes a lot of artists to make a movie this bad… well mediocre. Whedon can have some awful takes, but he generally doesn’t make out and out bad movies. (Even his Alien film has some strengths, remember he was trying to save a franchise derailed by Alien 3).And this outing reminds me of his Alien outing. Coming into a really bad situation and trying to make something that was awful into something that is watchable.He didn’t succeed with Justice League, but the failure isn’t really his. Well, it certainly isn’t all him.
Hey, that’s not fair. What punching bag will entertainment media utilize if we take Joss Whedon off the menu?Seriously, the complete 180 on him in ten years is incredible. I get that some shit has come to light, his ex-wife said some pretty painful shit, and he came off quite scummy. And that’s fine, he was a shitty husband, it’s a good thing they got divorced.What.. else dd he do? What crime did he commit? Dude in entertainment cheated on his wife, so.. .. .. and? A lot of men and women have cheated in entertainment. That doesn’t make him good, but it does make him unexceptional.
I think part of it is that the dialogue around Joss Whedon has always been primarily die-hard superfans, and he benefited from that by getting a bunch of high-profile nerd gigs. But a lot of his original fanbase have since aged into consuming better media and have retroactively noticed that what seems amaaaaaahzing when you’re 15 isn’t necessarily objectively phenomenal. And outside of his die-hard superfans he’s never actually been all that popular or well-regarded, not since the first couple of seasons of “Buffy,” anyway. Studios keep mistaking vocal fans for widespread appeal, so they keep giving him chance after chance to blow. There’s a reason all his shows got quickly cancelled and it’s not some industry conspiracy to keep him down.
So I, along with many other people, have always thought he’s not great. I’ve always thought that his main skill is picking fairly charismatic actors that can read his lines pretty well but also aren’t good enough to do any other work, and that his writing is borderline incoherent. Like, the punchlines often don’t follow the set-ups, he is really bad at pre-existing characters (no, MCU Loki is not the sort to threaten mind-control rape after calling a woman a “quim”), he has big ideas but never thinks them through, his insistence on very tiny women who fight exclusively with their legs is same-y and uninteresting at this point, he’s always been incredibly not feminist… It’s just now I can state my opinion on Whedon without having a legion of fangirls and boys flipping their everloving shit about it. So I think it’s not a flip so much as he’s not Nerd Feminist God King anymore so those of us who never thought he was can mention it without getting dogpiled. So we do.
you’re almost describing Dollhouse. a riff on an off chord.
Dollhouse was a big swing that didn’t really pan out, but it’s basically a cyberpunk noir with some human trafficking themes, so a darker tone made some sense, and while it probably took to long for Echo to reveal a core personality, that, too, was baked into the premise. I’d argue there’s a difference between strategic deployment of these characteristics and techniques in context-specific stories and just slathering them haphazardly on every story, no matter what.
He doesn’t seem like a great guy personally, but Whedon has at least shown the ability to recognize this and tell a story without these tools/issues. Snyder less so.
ah, Dollhouse was repetitive, mostly. There’s only so many times you can watch Dushku wake up and go to sleep before you go and take a nap instead. I mean, c’mon, brainwashed humans activated by phone haikus, one season at best. buuut, the questions raised about the artificial construction of human subjectivity and perception were interesting ones, and the end game was cool stuff. Of course, in the real world there’s no Caroline to return to, we’re all feeding in to the machine of production and consumption, everything we read and watch builds a sense of the world that’s outside of the concrete reality in which we find ourselves. There’s no original copy of the personality.
Not a great fan of Snyder’s work. *shrug* a bit too cartoonish in tone, not enough nuance. Well suited for blockbuster superhero stories. Slather away, I say.
Setting aside the question of how much condemnation Whedon deserves for his behavior, has Snyder really done that much to deserve vitriol? Having some stereotypical asshole traits doesn’t make someone an asshole.
Having stereotypical asshole traits is exactly what makes one an asshole, isn’t it? Not to mention the fact that any time he’s faced with criticism, Snyder acts rather openly like an asshole.Now, even assholes have friends. Snyder seems to have goodwill from the JL cast and associated folks like Jenkins, which isn’t surprising since he cast and/or approved the hiring of all of them. Unlike Whedon, he didn’t have the burden of coming in midway through production, and telling everyone that the work that they’d done for months wasn’t all that good and needed to be changed. Having to do stuff like that will put you on the wrong foot with anyone. Also unlike Whedon, who was discarded by the studio after JL underwhelmed at the box office, Snyder’s somehow back in WB’s good graces right now, which makes it a lot easier at this moment to drop a deuce on the theatrical release of JL and act as if Snyder had nothing to do with it.
Snyder acts rather openly, like an asshole:D
[Monocle falls off face.]I see what you did there, sir. Bravo!
I’d think treating people badly would be what makes one an asshole, not just being a stereotypical grimdark edgelord bro type, and despite the vibe his work gives off I haven’t heard anything about him treating people badly in real llife.
A large amount of his real-life communication with the public is spent insulting and belittling anyone who disagrees with him, which is something I would describe as “treating people badly.”Now, I’ve never heard of him mistreating actors or crew, which is I guess what you’re getting at. And one thing that I’ve always praised Snyder for, despite his many flaws as a filmmaker, is that he seems to be a really excellent director of actors—even in lousy films, he gets good performances from his actors. Offhand, the only bad performance I can think of in a Snyder film was the guy who played Ozymandias in Watchmen, and it stands out like a sore thumb, because everybody else in his films really buys into his vision.However, I will point out that at the comparable point in his career, Whedon’s reputation as an actors’ director was as good as Snyder’s, if not better. Outside of his public falling-out with Charisma Carpenter, he was perceived as someone who was such a joy to work for and with that he’d spontaneously call up a few of his pals and they’d whip up a Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog or a Shakespeare adaptation, for fun. Given that it’s been a long while since anyone spoke up on Whedon’s behalf, it would seem that reputation was, at the very least, exaggerated. But that’s all to say that things change pretty quickly, and we don’t necessarily know all the relevant information. It’s pretty hard to believe that someone who’s as thin-skinned and irascible as Snyder is in public isn’t bringing some of that to their professional and personal lives.
What he did to Charisma Carpenter was gross. She says she’s forgiven him and would be willing to work with him again. But character-assassinating a fan-favorite and writing them off the show because the actress got pregnant and needed accommodations would be illegal in most industries.
Absolutely gross, although I don’t think people really got it at the time, and it seemed like their fight was settled when Carpenter came back for one episode in Angel’s final season. Whatever the reason, that didn’t stick to Whedon the way it would’ve in present day.
Because that was the case for all shows back then. I know the Desperate Housewives creator got mad when one of his stars got pregnant. I’m sure they still do, secretly, but a combination of social media and social mores means you have to pretend you don’t mind. I bet showrunners and studios miss the old days where if a star demanded more money or gained 10lbs or supported the wrong politics, you could just fire them and recast their part.
I mean, you get annoyed and then figure out a way to write in the pregnancy or you hide it. You don’t write season 4 of Angel.
Snyder could probably be simmering at “boring bro” levels if he just kept his mouth shut.
Zack Snyder is apparently absolutely lovely to work with.But, y’know, his movies suck.
Making terrible movies that comprise cool scenes with no actual heart or humor is why he deserves condemnation. Not understanding the characters with which he works is why he deserves condemnation.
As a person or just as a filmmaker?
Mainly the latter, but some of the former. It’s his attitude and his apparently Randian philosophies. Art reflects the artist
He is a zealot Ayn Rand disciple. Even translated to his take of Man of Steel and BvS. Not to mention his constant chirping on Twitter, stroking his rabid followers with his sermon. Seems enough assholey to me.
Wait what? I’ve never heard that. Certainly his overt feminism would preclude being an Ayn Rand fanboy. I think Whedon was an ass to his wife and to Charisma Carpenter, but part of the reason fandom turned on him was BECAUSE of how Buffy was this important feminist show for a lot of millennials and a big part of left culture is tearing down our heroes, being the first to find them Bad, Actually. What’s the point in criticising Joel Surnow or 300, when you can be the first to hate the guy everyone adores, the trendsetter, prove you’re not a sheeple. Since we loved him so much, there had to be a huge backlash.
I think they meant that Snyder was a Rand fan, not Whedon. (Whedon has identified as a democratic socialist in the past.)
This article is about Jenkins talking shit about thier coworkers publicly, how is this ok? the Wonder Woman movie made money because everyone loves the character, not because it was a good movie, you think the 80s movie will be good?
Have to bring in President Trump why now?
Can we add the “monoliths” as number 3?
Are we going to be surprised when those monoliths turn out to be markers for motherboxes or something and the whole thing was just a PR stunt for Zack Snyder’s JUSTICE LEAGUE?!
Please don’t speak that into existence. 2020 has been bad enough. Don’t you put that evil on us. 🙂
You are absolutely right. Would you care to talk about the Star Wars Sequels instead?
Oh, HELL no!
I kind of wish it came out this year so we could just leave both behind.
Oughta leave this world behind.
This will be something I flip on late at night with nothing else on and barely pay attention too.
Snider spent seventy million dollars basically remaking a bad film that flopped because it turned out his edited version of it turned out to be worse then the one that got released.
Exactly! If there was a “Snyder-cut” that was supposedly in the can and being suppressed, what was the 70 million dollars for?
Some sort of “The Producers”-style scheme?
Springtime for Steppenwolf?
*nods*
That version is missing all the effects shots and sound editing. Now Snyder is also filming several minutes of new extra scenes.
that’s not a director’s cut, its practically a new movie. $70 million is basically the cost of an entirely new movie.
It definitely is. It would be little like the one seen in 2017. Although technically speaking it’s still a “director’s cut” since it’s using the scenes the credited director wanted to be in the final movie but was cut from it during editing.
No, its literally and technically a whole new movie that happens to use elements from the last one. This is Snyder attempting a “do-over”, because he’s seen the reaction to JL and is attempting to fix it. I don’t know why people think he’s some genius auteur cruelly screwed over by uncaring executives. He is the system, he was powerful enough to get his own way on JL despite the studio execs clearly wanting something different. He has the clout to get an additional $70 million to re-do JL his way. We know what his vision will look like already, it will be exactly the same grimdark slog that MoS and BvS was.
I wouldn’t call what Snyder does “grimdark”. Warhammer 40k is grimdark and they have what are basically a race of Soccer Hooligans whose technology functions because they believe it does. I’d call what Snyder does “Darkness No Parents!”.You can basically sum up Snyder’s career with this gif…
“Grimdark” does seem wrong, may I suggest “edgelord”?
He has literally been showing footage from his version of JL on Vero since 2018.
i have no idea what point you’re making, its a new movie, there is no “Snyder cut” because it never existed, he’s using a budget that would make multiple movies from scratch to remake a movie he didn’t like. Ridley Scott didn’t need a multiple million dollar budget to release a director’s cut of Blade Runner. And Zack Snyder is certainly no Ridley Scott
That’s because ALL of the post production was already completed for those scenes, so it was easy to edit and rearrange. The “Snydercut” as fans clamored for online isn’t remotely what they understood it to be. It was unfinished, with no CGI or post production. That “cut” of the film definitely existed though, and that’s what the “Snydercut” actually was, and it’s exactly what Syafiqjaba is saying. Snyder is filming a few minutes of new footage that was never planned to be in the original, and finishing CGI and post production on the scenes that were previously filmed but not used.
But to say he’s filming a whole new movie is wrong, and everyone is seriously misconstruing and taking what Syafiqjaba said, completely out of context. That $70 million has a lot to do with convincing actors to come back and film scenes (especially Affleck who walked away), contracts for people who worked on it to get paid again because it’s technically a new movie, music rights, licensing, salary for Snyder, and all the cost of finishing up that work. It’s a lot of money, but it’s not just them paying Snyder $70 million to do some CGI touch ups.
Just to get this out of the way, I’m not Snyder stan. I thought Suckerpunch was dumb, I hated Rise of an Empire. I thought his DC flicks were cool, but nothing amazing.
Mank cost less, add in the budget of Happiest Season and whatever else came out recently and you’d get to around $70 million.
So, in other words “Yes, a Synder Cut didn’t actually exist in any meaningful way”.
They filmed all the scenes, that much is true. It’s just missing all the effects and sound. Remember that JL was supposed to be a two-parter, with each part being roughly 2 hours long it seems.
So in other words there wasn’t a finished Snyder cut? If your movie is missing all the effects shots, needs sound editing and additional footage needs to be shot it isn’t a finished cut of the film.
(Because the release the Snyder cut movement claimed that Snyder had a cut of the film that needed to be released- not that he needed to come back, shoot some additional scenes and finish the editing, vfx and sound for the film.)
The Snyder Cut being completed is misinformation. Snyder always said it had post-production work missing. The extra scenes he’s filming were not even planned to be included in 2017.
That’s not true about Zack Snyder. Among other posts he did on vero during the two years following the Theatrical Cut of the film was post this photo of film canisters labelled ‘ZS JL: Directors Cut’ with the words ‘Is it Real? Does It Exist? Of Course It Does.’ Super imposed over the top of it.https://www.cbr.com/zack-snyder-justice-league-cut-photo-evidence/Which to me certainly sounds like he is claiming to have a finished cut of the film.
Because the simple fact of the matter is- if your film still requires additional post-production work (to say nothing of additional photography) you do not have a cut of your film ready yet.
That’s just semantics, really. The film existed in some form but is unfinished, this is really common knowledge among people who have been following this story.
So Zack Snyder posting a photo implying that he had a completed directors cut is just semantics?
And while plenty of people knew that the finished Snyder cut did not exist, there was a sizeable chunk of the #releasethesnydercut group that claimed the film was finished.
70 million more for a couple extra minutes and digital effects and editing? Is your brain pudding? Do you know how many movies get made for way less?
WB is large studio that is not unknown for spending exorbitant amounts of money. Who knows what the total purpose of that 70 million is. Rehiring workers? Extra marketing? Renegotiating rights for streaming?
This is not a reply it is bullshit and you’re an idiot.
Ah yes, new extra scenes for the movie that was “in the can” outside of some effects and sound editing.Of course.
Finishing special effects and apparently there’s a lot of weird legalities involving whether or not it still counts as the same movie for the purposes of various union crew contracts and whatnot. Also, reportedly, with the pandemic shutting down so much of Hollywood, Snyder is finding ways to deliberately create new work for the industry folks completely screwed by work stoppages.
You got a source on Saint Snyder doing this to provide jobs for crews and industry folks?
Not on-hand, this is through-the-grapevine stuff. Google doesn’t turn up anything clear, so I’m probably wrong, and I’m honestly not invested enough one way or another to worry about it. He’s probably just trying to milk WB for all their worth in retaliation for them forcing him off the movie in the first place.Either way, though, I’ll be glad when this is all said and done, it gets a collective “Wait, that’s it?” from most of the people who’ve been losing their minds over it, and the rest of us never have to hear about it again.
Wouldn’t be surprised if he is trying to take care of some production people.Dude’s annoying, but the people who work with him all love the guy.
Such a weird conclusion to come to / thing you decided to invent on your own? If you don’t know of that happening and all?
Look, I heard it from people who heard it from sources they weren’t linking at the time. Whatever sort of ‘gotcha’ you’re trying to get from me, I give you permission to pretend you got it so we can move on with our lives.
I know of like Conan O’brien doing this and making sure his crews get paid during lockdown and when he moved because there are sources. You heard it from someone who heard it from someone and you have no sources? The Snyder cult could have just invented this, there’s a few fans that are quite … special.
What’s weird is that the trailer I saw was 4:3. Why would that be the case? Is the shit hidden outside the aspect ratio?
He’s not remaking anything. Also his version is more than an edit, as is it’s a couple of hours longer with most of the scenes never being put in the theatrical version. This includes entire subplots, changes to the storyline, and even entire characters missing from the story. This is more like Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven which has a director’s cut almost an hour longer than the released version.
I’m not a Snyder fan but the biggest disappointment with Justice League was how visually small it felt, there couldnt have been more then a handful of locations , and none were very interesting. I’m skeptical about how big the movie will feel in the new Snyder version.
Except the “Snyder Cut” as it existed was basically just a rough cut of unfinished footage and CGI. Your entire argument hinges on not understanding how filmmaking works.
Just so you know, Syafiqjaber of Mars is a Snyder Tribalist with a massive victim complex who equates being a Snyder fan to being a black person and compares people who don’t like his movies to Comicsgate. He literally only ever posts comments if its to defend Snyder’s movies.
The funniest part of all of this is the movie is still going to be bad. Even if it’s on the level of Dawn of Justice it’s still going to be bad. You can’t fix being zak snyder
They should just do a Hitchcock; take the hybrid Frankenstiens monster version of JL as it is, add the Snyder grey and rain filter to every scene, a few more bits of slo-mo, play Leonard Cohen over it and release it as ‘The Long Awaited Snyder Cut’. I’m not taking bets on how many fans would change their mind about it overnight but i bet its a lot. Can i have $20 mill to do this please?P.s the worst bit of this people are now asking for The Ayer Cut of Suicide Sqaud. The worst DCEU movie and the worst superhero movie of the last decade. Haven’t we suffered enough this year?
Wasn’t this a scenario where Snyder couldn’t actually finish the film on schedule because of a family tragedy or something?And wasn’t Whedon brought in to salvage *something* releasable?It just seems like a lot of misplaced anger. No matter what you think of Whedon or the film, the lion’s share of the blame seems to me to land on WB.
From actor Ray Fisher, who alleged that Whedon was abusive on the movie’s set.To be clear: All Fisher has ever publicly stated were either vague accusations of Whedon being “abusive” and a secondhand claim that Whedon had a nonwhite actor’s skin digitally altered in editing. By all means, I’m ready to get out the pitchforks and roast Whedon in the court of public opinion if he did something bad. But first I’d like to know what Whedon did that Fisher considered abusive.As to Patty Jenkins comments, I’d agree that having the Flash fall into Wonder Woman’s cleavage like he was in a romcom anime was stupid. It was also stupid when he had Banner fall in Black Widow’s cleavage in Age of Ultron.
But first I’d like to know what Whedon did that Fisher considered abusive.Basically Whedon edited down Cyborg’s role because … Cyborg. I can see Fisher being pissed. But from there the accusations are a bunch of vague nothing.
Cyborg is the Hawkeye of DC. He’s pretty much meh.
Hawkeye rules. Cyborg is… boring.Except on Teen Titans Go as the BFF of Beast Boy.Even in the comics Cyborg is a boring nothing. He’s best with the Titans.
He’s great in Doom Patrol (TV series)
Even in Teen Titans Go he’s the fourth best. But that’s more about how awesome Starfire, Raven and Robin are than Cyborg being lame. Fisher can moan about being made to say boo-yah but, honestly, throwing a live action version of the Teen Titans Go Cyborg into the film would have helped a lot.
Even in Teen Titans Go he’s the fourth best.Respectfully disagree. Love of Bea Arthur and a meatball blaster > Robin’s baby hands.
WHEN I SAY I WANT YOU SAY PIE
Favorite episode is when they give in and turn “SERIOUS”The AC/DC style song is everything.
I have probably only watched a handful of Teen Titans episodes and Cyborg was easily the best part of it. The portrayal was wacky, charming, and hilarious all at the same time.
I enjoyed Matt Fraction’s run on Hawkeye in the comics. There’s potential in the character; it’s just the MCU hasn’t really done anything with it. He really needs a standalone treatment. Putting a guy with a bow next to the god of thunder is going to make him seem silly; give him his own space, with human-sized opponents to deal with, and then he has a chance to be the heart of a compelling story.
Considering the Hawkeye Disney+ show is literally the Matt Fraction run in TV form so far from the set pictures, I think you are gonna be thrilled with it (I know I am!)
Did you late in the news? Haven’t you see leaked photos from the upcoming Hawkeye series, feat. Kate Bishop and Lucky the Pizza Dog?
I mean, at least with Hawkeye you can do some cool arrow shots in your movie. With Cyborg we got… shifting metal like we’ve seen in a billion transformers movies (and practically every movie with cybernetic characters going back to T2)
Cyborg is a Titan. Any time they try to put him into the JL it doesn’t work for me. It’s like, they needed a tech-y guy, but…then tying the origin of his tech into Apokolips is stupid. I’m sorry, it just is. He’s most fun when he’s…hanging out with his friends. Like, the Doom Patrol version of Cyborg is the best live action Cyborg because, while Cyborg has no business being in the DP, it at least gets at the core of his character. He’s a kid who survived and is now trying to be a hero while keeping his humanity in tact.
I like Cyborg, but I also think he’s used a lot because he’s one of the most well-known black DC characters (because of Teen Titans/TTG!) Until recently, a lot of people didn’t know Black Lightning, Vixen is still fairly obscure to mainstream audiences, and I assume John Stewart hasn’t been used in ages because they’re still leery of using Green Lantern in anything.
For a while generation of kids, Jon Stewart IS GL. Cos cartoons. Fuck hal.
Slow your roll there, muchacho! Doom Patrol Vic Stone is amazing. Check it out, really. It’s a cool show.
I mean, if this was about having role reduced and he just said from the start that was what he was upset his role in the movie got reduced, it would be completely understandable.
I’m glad you would understand. (oceans of sarcasm)I’m sorry. I just… You’re really fucking relentless with the attacks on Fisher. Even if he DOES bring a lot of the heat on himself. I’d love for him to STFU already. But I also would love for everyone ELSE to STFU *about* him already. If nobody knows anything because his vague ass is too vague, why do you insist on keeping up the punches?
Why is it so bad that I ask to know what Whedon did? We know he’s a piece of shit who’s done loads of dickish things. But normally we’d be getting specifics about what happened on set that was abusive and we’d have a couple other people come forward to corroborate Fisher’s claims. So far none of this has happened. If he’s not gonna tell the public what happened for months with nobody else corroborating his accusations of abusive behavior than he’s just riling up Snyder Tribalists who already have a load of confirmation biases. He’s either got to give specifics and say in detail what happened or he’s at best wasted everyone else’s time.
He doesnt “have” to do shit. What pisses me off about this goddam repeated mantra of yours is that you and I and everybody else arent OWED ANYTHING. Especially if it’s personal to Fisher and/or involves potentially criminal behavior. When I read about how someone like Kevin Spacey or Harvey Weinstein or Louis CK abused their power it’s upsetting. Now that’s sexual and not as far as I know related to Whedon and Fisher. But the point is that IF those women didnt want to give details, would you feel like you were fucking OWED them? Fisher’s problem with Whedon could be much ado about nothing (see what I did there?). Is LIKELY much ado about nothing. But unless you or I were personally harmed by him making vague or false statements, WHAT RIGHT TO ANSWERS DO WE HAVE? None.The only rational reason to demand answers from Fisher is to satisfy our own curiosity. Outside of that, I’m sorry but it strikes me as shady as shit to question the man’s mental health (which many have done) and stand in biased judgment of a barely-known black actor fighting a rich as fuck entertainment corporation and its hired rich as fuck white director (who has always benefited from the nepotism of family in the business). Does that mean Fisher’s claims have weight? No! But at this point why are we bothering to talk about them? If you’re going to point a finger, point it at AV Club for continuing to stir the shit.
lol
Where did he attack Fisher?
A better question, is why you want to start an internet tiff over how a stranger views the virtue of a celebrity? If you think it’s weird for Laserface to repeatedly bring up their opinion on Fisher, it’s only weirder to track their comment history and call them out on it. Even if you’re correct, it’s not productive, you’re creating petty drama.
I dont have to “track” anything. It’s every time I read an article involving the Endless and Unnecessary Snyder Cut of a Joss Whedon Clusterfuck. Inevitably the article mentions Fisher and inevitably Laserface has to remind us all of what NONE of us need to be reminded of, which is Fisher’s vagueness. We. Get. It. We all know. Fisher creates drama. WB creates drama. AV Club fosters it. And then the commentariat keeps it rolling.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about- that behaviour of yours is absolutely hypocritical if your whinging is over other people whinging. Your recourse ends up being more childish than those complaining about allegedly bad celebrities.
I’m not making demands. It’s not about whingeing. Complain away, but don’t take up some false position of authority.
Haha sorry kiddo, but you’re whingeing, about people whingeing. You’re absolutely hypocritical in what example your actions present, which makes the fact you’re now trying to dictate my actions all the more hilarious. All said, I’m really sorry you take offense to it, but you deserve to get called out of you’re being hypocritical in your call-out.
1. Unless you’re a sixtysomething, please don’t call me “kiddo”. It’s a cheap dismissal tactic.2. It’s not hypocrisy to believe that Laserface has no right to answers to his questions about Fisher. If all he ever did was say “Jesus, this guy again” I wouldn’t care. That’s a sentiment I share. It’s the repeated questioning of Fisher’s mental health and/or honesty and/or self-interest that bugs me. Especially given the dynamic of Fisher’s situation. It feels really sketchy to roll in the mud of he said/they said when “he” is a young black actor and “they” are rich white film institutions.
1. A) I am a sixtysomething, and b) it was a cheap dismissal tactic all the same.2. It isn’t hypocritical to believe that, but you’re a hypocrite for whingeing about it. Your holier-than-thou view of yourself might delude you to think otherwise, but no, if you think you need to gripe about another’s gripe, you a hypocrite. Maybe try not being a hypocrite.
“Basically Whedon edited down Cyborg’s role because … Cyborg.”Boo…no:(I’m not sure if you’ve heard but Cyborg is very angry about his dad and angsty about becoming a Cyborg. That’s not a story that’s usually told about Cyborg, especially in animated/live action media, so I can see why you maybe haven’t heard about it.
Whedon has a history of being abusive on set and people have gone on record about it. James Marsters for one has openly talked about Whedon getting physical with him as well as verbally abusive. Whedon flipped out because Spike was more popular than Angel. You know, that’s just mental.
So yes he has a history of being abusive so it should be easy enough for Fisher to come forward with details. But so far all we have are vague statements from Fisher and nobody else has corroborated Fisher’s accusations in months. If something happened, normally other people would have come forward by now.
James Masters has also talked about how much he loved working with Whedon and respected him as a creator. In that same anecdote where he talks about Whedon being frustrated about the situation with Spike, Masters said Whedon handled that situation better than Masters would’ve personally handled it.Not trying to excuse any abusive behaviour by Whedon- but I feel the internet is being abit too selective with James Masters comments. When the man says 99% positive things about working with Whedon, it feels disingenuous to talk about one instance that Masters himself didn’t consider abusive and frame the story as if James Masters came out with a statement against Whedon.
I’ve seen that interview, and the flip out consisted of “I don’t care if people love Spike and think he’s hot – I’m still fucking killing him off!”Intense weirdo, for sure…but not Alfred Hitchcock or anything.
It also consisted of Whedon putting his hands on Marsters and shoving him.
Marsters words were “he backed me up against a wall” (zero reference to physical contact).Then there’s the fact that, in the same interview, he makes clear that he has zero problems with Whedon, and loves working with him.
I’d flip out too if people loved my rapey badguy more than my tortured heroic guy
Fisher is following the same playbook as the elite Trump Legal Team: shout your accusations as loudly as possible, claim that you have all sorts of evidence, but never actually produce that evidence.
I do not understand 80% of what I just read
There was a thing that was well known as being that way, and, as you know, well, you know how it turned out. So now that person who wrote the other thing says : “It’s like, you know, i think, well, that thing, the other thing is not quite, sort of, like, it’s, yeah, but, because i feel they didn’t, it’s almost the other way”.So, as you’d expect, the AVClub is, like, “boo, yay, yay, boo, yay, boo & boo”. For reasons that, at this point, go without saying.
I guess it costs less to hire writers who are just capable of that.
“They were trying to turn one thing into, kind of, another.”Wasn’t that exactly what Whedon was hired to do?
Yes.
Nobody wanted anything Snyder before Justice League was released, including the studio executives. It’s pure fantasy that Snyder’s version of the theatrical release would have been good, and the idea of an extended Snyder cut makes me sick to my stomach.
Maybe if a movie makes you feel that way, stop for a minute and try to get some perspective.
Do you not feel emotions about art? That is not the adult stance you seem to think it is. It’s… kind of worrying actually?
I mean, it sounds like a barf worthy movie
Eh, it’s reflective of the current discourse in just about everything. A bunch of people throw a fit online and demand things get changed and take it way too far. Five years ago I’d say, “yeah, let’s get some perspective.” But it’s been proven that these rage fits are also good disinformation laundering paths, so the idea that they were successful in demanding a new cut also aids those efforts.
Nah, it fucking sucks and my skin crawls thinking about the piss babies who’ve spent the past 4-5 years harassing people online who aren’t fans.
Ah, the MCU mob? Not sure what that has to do with this, though.
Here’s my take, I think both Man of Steel and Batman V Superman went with the complete wrong tone and are a mess in editing. That being said, I think Snyders Justice League would have at least been more interesting then whatever by the numbers low budget looking thing that was Whedon’s version.
Are you suggesting that it’s strange for a DC franchise film to feature a scene in which Holly Hunter and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy are essentially killed by a jar of pee?
Agreed. BvS is awful, but it is at least an interesting trainwreck to watch, that might actually have some ideas buried in there somewhere (I think the opening sequence is incredibly strong), but JL is just a boring bloated monstrosity.
Synder makes “interesting” movies. More often than not, they are good either. So I don’t care either way. Make a good movie instead of a mess with interesting ideas once in a while.
I think Snyders Justice League would have at least been more interesting
That is damning with faint praise.
Okay, screw Snyder BUT you’re fucking DELUDED if you think those execs “didn’t want anything Snyder”. He is and was a WB “guy”. If they weren’t into his vision, as much as I personally dgaf, they’d dump him. At least shuffle him to another project.
Yes, the studio execs at the time did not want Snyder’s version much to the chagrin of fans of MoS and BvS. But now the management at WB has changed and they have a different focus. It’s not really accurate to say that many who want the Snyder Cut are people disappointed with the theatrical release, although a portion of them are. Most are just people who want more of what they saw in the previous Snyder DC movies. For them it’s not a matter of “if” it would be better, they only care that at the very least it’s similar to what they were promised when watching the previous entries.
I have doubts we’d be getting the snyder cut if it wasn’t for Covid. In a time where they aren’t actually able to film much, they have a whole movie already shot, and presumably there is some amount of the fanbase that actually wants this to exist
In addition, they need more content for HBO Max and their new CEO is focusing the company on to streaming (I think she previously helped run BBC’s online service)
You should probably get some help. That’s a remarkably unhealthy attitude to have about a fucking movie.
Fuck Snyder.
It was also what Snyder claimed he was doing before he left the project, because the publicity push was all about “Message received, you people aren’t sophisticated enough to understand our deconstructed superhero drama, we’ll give you a regular old superhero movie with jokes and heroism and…[sneer extra hard] fun in it.”
Oh for sure, there is so much reactionary film making going on in that movie it is ridiculous. They never stopped to think if the two tones would actually work together, so we got the glorious mess that we did.
SUCCESS!!!!
Yes. And to cut the film to two hours.
And wasn’t one of the things they had Whedon do was put in MORE Wonder Woman compared to what Snyder was planning?
Why are we calling this Joss Whedon’s Justice League? I thought Zack Snyder directed it.
Because Whedon filmed a lot of new scenes and removed major subplots from the movie. For example, the original version had no Russian family scenes, has Cyborg playing a bigger role, and time travel being a key plot device.
Cyborg has a bigger role? Are they also going to give him a personality?
seems like still basically the same movie with a couple different moments…
I think the story ultimately has a similar ending, but how we got there has more story to it. The theatrical version felt a bit rushed, because Whedon essentially made a 2 hour movie out of a 4 hour story; JL was originally meant to be two movies. Superman has more scenes between his resurrection and the final battle, for example.
Zack *pat pat* you got your stupid way that no one wanted calm down.
I just don’t see how adding more movie time can make the story better in this case. I will never deny Snyder’s visuals are incredible and is a master in creating the “look” of a movie. If there is one aspect that Justice League really faltered, it’s the same way Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice did: very poorly written characters. I wish there was a way that Zak Snyder could co-direct movies where he is just in charge of the action scenes and someone else who understands human emotions could handle everything else
I think Snyder is just more accustomed to stories that’s “show, not tell”
sure, they show a lack of understanding of human motivation, emotion, or sense of humor
The new “Snyder cut” on the other hand is a $70 million extra of a movie.
Wait… time travel as well?
I do want to like the DC films. I’ve a soft spot for Man of Steel, I like Wonder Woman and enjoyed Aquaman and Shazam.
But the Justice League is such a mess. There is no way that they’ve “earned” time travel so early in their franchise.
They foreshadowed this in BvS with Bruce seeing future Barry. As JL is a DC project involving The Flash when Geoff Johns was running things, you are getting time travel. Johns more or less made time travel inevitable any time The Flash is part of the story. It’s why it became a big factor in the CW Flash stories too.
I know time travel is Barry’s thing but I still don’t think adding the Flash means you add time travel right away. By “earned” I mean that you know the world, you know the characters and you’ve seen them develop over time. Cramming in the Flash running back in time into a film with a huge amount already going on seems like madness to me.
It’s also why Johns rejected multiple Flash scripts in favor of a Flashpoint story. He wants that story to be told in multiple medium. The guy is really not a good influence on DC media even before you count the abuse allegations from multiple sources. At the very least in JL, it’s treated as this big thing that Barry must do that he’s never done before (it seems his cameo in CW Crisis might be him experimenting with his powers after the JL revelation) and is a desperate move he pulls to fix things.
Don’t forget about the talking pie!
…because Joss Whedon also directed it, after Zack Snyder had to leave part-way through. And to differentiate it from the upcoming version that’s all Zack Snyder.
I feel at this point if someone insists that the theater Justice League movie was on Snyder, they are just being willfully ignorant on the subject.
Just so you know, Syafiqjaber of Mars is a Snyder Tribalist with a massive victim complex who equates being a Snyder fan to being a black person and compares people who don’t like his movies to Comicsgate. He literally only ever posts comments if its to defend Snyder’s movies.
Is there a universe where Justice League was “met only with shrugs”? Because I don’t think it was this one. IIRC the movie was savaged as some sort of unholy frankenstein combo of Snyder’s dourness mixed badly with Whedon’s quippiness, then drenched in ugly looking CGI. It was the death knell of the DCEU, whose reputation is only improving because filmmakers are doing the exact opposite of whatever that was.
Yeah. What WB should do is keep Wonder Woman, keep Shazam, MAYBE keep Aquaman, and torpedo the rest. Snyder’s movies sucked. Whedon’s retool of Snyder’s movie also sucked. The common denominator should not be allowed to touch more movies. Because his movies suck.
aquaman is pretty much the most consistently well received of the bunch so i think, if anything, as crazy as it sounds, aquaman should be in charge.
I remember watching it and being like, “Eh, I’ve seen worse…” And then being disappointed that it wasn’t better because, like, it could have been. If someone else had been the “visionary” behind it, or understood any damn thing about the characters they were adapting.
Now I am confused for a moment. Does this mean the theatrical JL is still canon? Because Jenkins said pretty much all DC directors has ignored that version. There was even a rumor a while back that the makers of Aquaman consulted Snyder for the movie’s characterization. Or is the characterization the only extent, with the story ultimately following up from the Whedon version? Or does the Whedon and Snyder JL ultimately end up in the same place just with very different stories (you can tell from the trailers both versions ended with the JL winning except with Snyder it happened over the course of two movies)?
Do you have any other interests outside of your love Zach Snyder? Because the only reason you seem to be taking Fisher’s vague accusations at face value is becuase of your obsession with defending Zach Snyder You seem to only ever post comments if its to act like you’re being personally attacked by people criticizing his movies. You realize this isn’t healthy right? Believe me, I used to be think that anyone who liked Snyder’s movies was a bootlicking fascist. It was stupid and juvenile. Hell, Hbomberguy, a guy who’s definitely not a fascist, is a fan of Snyder movies. It was an unhealthy mindset to attack people for liking movies I don’t like. Conversely, it’s unhealthy to take personal offense at anyone who dares to criticize Snyder’s movies.You don’t have to be like this. You can like his movies even if Snyder himself is an Objectivist (He literally named his production company after a reference to the Fountainhead.). That doesn’t make you any less progressive. You can still enjoy the movies in spite of Snyder’s politics. If Hbomberguy can like his movies without lashing out at people who don’t them you can to.And regardless of wether or not Whedon did something, Fisher has yet to make any specifics about what he did that was abusive. By all means, if he did something he should face consequences, but we should know what he did first. But like always, you’ll probably dismiss this comment. Just think about what you want to do with your life. Do you want to spend every waking moment obsessing over every person who has an opinion on Snyder’s movies you disagree with or would you rather just like his movies?
Should WE know what he did first? Or should Whedon’s collaborators, peers, employers, etc know what he did first?
Fisher isn’t being specific because there are investigations happening. More than one member of the cast has come out in support of him. Almost makes ya think they saw it happen and are supporting him…weird….
I think WB neither know nor care what they’re doing, they’ve just been throwing stuff at the wall since Nolan’s trilogy came to a close.
I think the WB execs saw the Marvel movie success and were like ‘Do that but with more Nolan Batman, the kids will love it!’ and then went off to snort cocaine and fail upward.
I have zero interest in these films, but I enjoy reading the comments they generate. “And then went off to snort cocaine and fail upward” made me laugh out loud. Good work.
That’s the root of the problem. Marvel knows that they’re making simple mass market entertainment and basically shackles most of their creative forces. WB back at the start of the DCEU wanted the same thing as Marvel but at the same time pretends they’re giving their creators freedom. Imagine hiring Gordon Ramsay to help you compete with McDonalds. Marvel Studios realised this early on and that’s why Jon Favreau went from “creative guide for the MCU” to “Iron Man’s driver” (at least we got Chef out of it, which is why I used the restaurant metaphor).
I think it’s obvious they left all the creative stuff to the filmmakers, then when they didn’t like what they see they tried to meddle in things and made things worse.
Nobody really cares about DCCU canon, honestly.
Nobody really cares about DCCU canon, honestly. ftfy
Canon is overrated anyway.
I mean, the only things we’ve seen that take place after JL are Aquaman and Shazam, i guess? Aquaman acknowledges that JL happened but really his only change in that movie was to go from caring about a single village of fishermen to embracing his role as a hero, which he continues with in his solo movie. Heck, even WW 84 goes back in time so we don’t really know what WW is up to post JL. And it feels like the upcoming Flash movie will be used to revise continuity or establish multiple universes or somesuch.
I could see conculting Zack Snyder for many questions about my movie, such as “Is explosion pretty?” or “Does sad man look sad enough?”
But consulting him on characterization…to what end?
Because they wanted to be consistent, and Snyder helped create these characters and they appeared in his stories first. What you’re talking about are presentations, and individual filmmakers will want to do their own thing with those. In all fairness though, JL’s issues with the depiction of Aquaman and WW might have less to do with that and more with Joss Whedon’s problematic way of writing female characters and interactions with them.
But none of them had well-developed characterizations in Snyder’s films.
There’s plenty for Superman and Batman, and a bit for Wonder Woman in BvS (which was what Patty Jenkins based WW in her movie on). At the very basic level, Superman is someone who sees helping people as his responsbility, and Batman was weary and pass his breaking point but found a new lease on life working with other heroes again. WW loves to battle when it means going against threats to innocent people. Any stories after that should at least use those as a baseline.
I’ve always hated Joss Whedon and I’m happy to see people saying that he sucks, but I’m bummed that this garbage movie, which is garbage in any iteration, is the thing that does it. I’m supposed to align myself with Zack Snyder fanboys? No, thank you. Let’s go back to a kinder, gentler time in “Joss Whedon’s bad superhero movie decisions” where we point out that having Loki call Black Widow and old timey version of “whiny cunt” actually isn’t clever, or even further back so we can talk about how nothing Halle Berry did could’ve salvaged that toad/lightning line because it’s a) terrible, and b) written for Buffy and not Storm.
I think Whedon is one of the guys who needs someone to temper his writing style a bit. His quipy dialogue and pop culture references can go off the rails when not controlled.
I used to work with a guy and we used to goof on his Whedon fanboi love. If you got him talking about anything he was involved with, the game was to see how many times he said, and he always said it like, “Joss Whedon did this..” and one time, in about a minute, he said his name like 7 times. I would make negative comments about Whedon, who I have no use for, and it would get him going on about him again. We would always say we should make a drinking game out of his fawning, but at work, that wasn’t possible. I haven’t talked to him lately, so I don’t know if he’s still a raving fanboi or not.
“But also, I felt that that version contradicted my first movie in many ways, and this current movie, which I was already in production on.” This happened because Warner Bros. doesn’t have a long term plan.
Marvel planned everything out in advance to establish the MCU as a shared world. It has no problem with reigning in directors that try to stray too far from this established style. These guidelines can feel stifling to directors that want put their own mark on a story, but it is better for the overall franchise as characters don’t have wildly different interpretations from movie to movie.
And for what it’s worth, Whedon played a big role in a lot of that initial planning.
Blah, I used “reigning in” instead of “reining in”. It’s too late to fix it now.
I’m sure it’s possible to make an re-edited version of your comment, with correct spelling, and release it on HBO Max.
Except Marvel gave Taika Waititi a ton of room to impose his own style. He was smart enough to do it within the MCU framework, of course, but Thor: Ragnarok has a palpably different feel to it than other MCU films and a built-into-the-foundations critique of colonialism.
It’s not a coincidence they gave him Thor, though. Thor’s first movie was fine but not memorable; his second movie was a low point; the character got *way* better after getting Whedonized in the Avengers. If you view that as an extant vector, Waititi’s take isn’t nearly as radical.
Thor Ragnarok was playing off of the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah it (thankfully) has a different tone that the other two Thor movies which are the weakest films if the MCU, but Ragnarok fit well against Marvel’s other space-based superhero films. Waititi wasn’t “doing his own thing” as much as copying the formula James Gunn has already established for the MCU.
Exactly, and it is awesome. Ragnarok and Guardians both prove that you can take the basic Marvel style and framework, tweak it a bit by infusing more substance and humor, and you get a superior product. Warner Bros tried to do this to poor results with Justice League. I very much doubt that a Snyder cut will be better though. His dark take is just not good. Jenkins should have been their top creative choice from the start.
Patty Jenkins was initially slated to direct “Thor: The Dark World” but passed, saying something along the lines of: “I didn’t think I could make a good movie with that script.” I’ve puzzled over that for a while, because Marvel has a pretty good track record of letting directors leave their individual mark on MCU movies (exhibit A: “Thor: Ragnarok”; exhibit B: “Guardians of the Galaxy”). You can make an action buddy comedy starring Thor, just so long as your treatment is consistent with previous films and includes the elements that set up later films. So what sort of script control was Jenkins denied, that ultimately led to her departure from the project?It’s certainly possible that, as a woman, she was denied the sort of creative control that a male director would have been offered. But I wonder if she wanted to tell a Thor story in a way that would not have served the greater continuity and the DC Universe – where that sort of thing is much less important – suited her better.
One of these things is not like the other.Thor: The Dark World was not a good film. Its script was not good. At all. It was, at best, workmanlike. It told a story, but it was not entertaining, interesting, memorable or much of anything else. It was loud but boring, it was a mediocre sequel to an “okay” debut.Moreover, Marvel when Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok were in production was almost another company in terms of its willingness to be risky. Marvel’s often, rightly accused of being too safe, too formulaic, too cookie-cutter and paint-by-numbers – but that’s not been true for a bit now. It was during Dark World. If your hypothesis is that Marvel wasn’t willing to let Patty Jenkins put her stamp on Dark World, the Dark World that came out really shouldn’t be your comparison point – there’s not much style there.
Yep, exactly. Taika would not have been offered Thor 2, they would have gone with some safe choice at that stage. I think Marvel started to change after GoTG 1. They could see that they could do pretty much what they wanted and people trusted them enough to watch it.
Oh they had a plan, the problem was that plan involved Zack Snyder at the helm.
Grifts are really hip right now. Is this whole thing just a trendy gift? Does that explain the behavior of all involved? Are they pulling a The Sting 2?
Jesus christ, if she’s pushing the morose, depressed, lame version of the characters from the Snyder bombs, that’s the last thing I want to see. Justice League sucked fat butt, but at least the characters were mildly fun.
The “BOO Joss Whedon ‘Justice League’”/”YAY Zack Snyder ‘Justice League’” discourse is the dumbest thing since “STOP THE COUNT”/”COUNT THE VOTES.”
It’s a discourse that will outlive us all. Our grandchildren will shitpost over it.
Hey now, the JL stuff clearly came first, credit where due.
I could get behind “Boo Joss Whedon” and “Boo Justice League”, but they lost me at “Yay Zack Snyder”.
Hopefully the fact that Patty Jenkins is throwing her weight behind Snyder will force certain goombas to reassess their opinions of his often fascinating movies.
Hold on a fucking second here. Hey, Patty, it wasn’t Whedon who dressed your tough AF, badass, strong Amazons in basically bras and panties compared to the kick-ass armor that MADE SOME LEVEL OF SENSE and wasn’t objectifying. Like, what the fuck even is this? There was barely any sense of continuity or plan in the first place amongst all the DCEU. It was a gong show. As if Snyder did any respect to Wonder Woman in any of this. Jesus. Normally I just roll my eyes and wish Zack would go away but this is a really strange take.Albeit: based on her comments, she actually is kind of “i guess, shrug, whatever” about it, but AV Club’s headline makes it sound worse than it is? God. Fuck Zack Snyder and fuck the Justice Leaguye. Can I just watch WW84 yet?
Yeah, wasn’t it in Dawn of Justice that zak snyder did the WW legs spread, crotch shot?
Jesus that shot was fucking awful
But the theatrical Justice League posters had her queefing fire.
Read her comments again. She’s trying REALLY hard not to criticize Snyder because right now that’s the horse WB is backing and it’s incredibly likely if she steps out of line WW84 could get dragged in to the whole pissing match between Snyder/his fans, and civilized society.
THREAD THE NEEDLE PATTI
So, aside from Flash falling in Wonder Woman’s cleavage (which is rather harmless when you compare it to JLU where Wonder Woman willingly placed Atom between her boobs), what exactly was so bad about JL’s Wonder Woman? That she was helpless against Steppenwolf, and thus not as strong as Superman?
How is that so out-of-character compared to BvS, which said that Diana turned her back on humanity for a century because her male lover died?
Clearly the Snyder version is the one to watch, despite being much longer. The eerie remove of the French plantation scene really contrasts with the horrors of the less fortunate outside. And people complaining about the Playboy Bunnies being too much don’t seem to understand that they’re watching a FUCKING WAR going on! Real cineastes get Snyder’s grim vision.Philistines!
Bravo
One thing I definitely recognized going from Jenkins’ Wonder Woman to what would have been the theatrical Snyder’s Justice League was the change from Amazons in armor to Amazons in crop tops. It is weird that we’ll be doing it again in the near future with Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 to the HBO Max Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
“Whedon has been extremely quiet over the increasingly loud backlash over the film—the last he’s made to date.”I think if you held a contest to pick two words that shouldn’t go together, “extremely quiet” would be a frontrunner.
“Snyder’s version of the movie is set to be released in four installments on HBO Max in 2021″Wait. What, now?
Probably some Justice League limited series thing where they’re each, like, an hour to an hour and 15 minutes long.
I envy that you’ve managed to stay away from this news
I remember seeing Justice League in the theater and thinking “meh, it was okay”.I tried to rewatch it a few months later. God, it’s bad. It’s a bunch of generic superhero tropes mashed up poorly into a lame, derivative mess. In places, it’s almost unwatchably bad.There are two moments that I did enjoy, though – Aquaman accidentally pouring out his heart after sitting on the Lasso of Truth, and Flash drawing a mustache on the rude guy’s face. But those were essentially standalone jokes that could have been inserted into literally any movie with those characters. The movie as a whole is exactly what you’d expect of a poorly conceived big-budget project that switched directors halfway through.Wonder Woman deserved better than Justice League.
I kind of feel the same. When I watched, I though it was fine, which was disappointing in itself, but the more I look back on it, the worse it feels.The thing that struck me the most is that I think that the reason MoS and BvsS, both movies I personally liked, are so divisive is that they actually tried to do something. And when you try to do that, you will inevitably get varied of reactions. Now this isn’t to claim that it was inherently good or bad, but they at least took that risk. The Justice League movie didn’t feel like it was trying to do anything. At all. And that made it so unbelievably bland. Another thing, and this is something I would defend, is that I do feel Snyder is a lot better at directing action than Whedon is, especially when it comes to powers. Even if you look at the first two Avengers movies, the action was pretty much punching and rarely really getting clever with superpowers.
Honestly, I walked out of the theater with a huge smile on my face for one reason: Whedon’s Superman acted like Superman. He smiled, he told jokes, he goofed around, and he inspired others. That’s all I wanted from these goddamn movies.
As a film it’s a disaster. But I got what I wanted.
> Aquaman accidentally pouring out his heart after sitting on the Lasso of Truth Consensus seems to be that that was a Whedon-written reshoot. I’ve heard it was taken almost exactly from Whedon’s 2005 Wonder Woman script (though I can’t confirm that as I’ve never read the draft of that screenplay that’s been circulated online).
It’s a good joke, but it did feel a bit tacked on.
I’ve made this claim before, and will do so in the future, but the Justice League movie that got released felt to me a lot more like a Geoff Johns movie than either Zack Snyder or even Joss Whedon movie. I mean, until we get the Snyder cut, we can’t really say which scenes were from the Whedon reshoots, but I would have a few safe bets, but even that was just on the banter and some of the action.The story, the character treatments, especially Batman becoming a punchline, and the latter half of the movie feeling like a Superman fanfic all came across as pure Johns to me.
That movie felt like it was written in dark crayons of dumb by Snyder, and then Whedon came in with some happier-colored dumber crayons. If it wasn’t for my curiosity on how WW would be presented, I would have otherwise not even bothered to go see that shitstorm of a movie. And it was a stupid waste of time, exactly as I expected.
Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard for your decidedly mid tier Marvel level superhero film, lady.
‘I don’t recognize half of these characters. I’m not sure what’s going on.’
Hyperbole, much?Honestly, it was a crap film with a couple of good bits like the Flash/Superman fight and the end where actual Superman finally shows up after almost 3 full films of being someone else. If we could all stop talking about it I wouldn’t complain at all.
Fascinating. It’s like we’ve got a magic window into a parallel universe where Alien 3 was a completely unwatchable mess instead of the barely tolerable version we wound up with.
I have zero interest in getting into the Whedon-vs.-Snyder thing again, but I recently rewatched “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (because I have questionable judgment) and that was another movie that seemed strangely unconcerned with respecting the continuity of previous films. So maybe Whedon is a guy who’s just not really interested in making movies that play nice with the other parts of a cinematic universe.
OK, i’m curious as to which characters she didn’t recognize. Superman, who finally got a chance to act like Superman for a few minutes in the 3rd act? Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg.. all of whom were introduced in this film? Guess that leaves WW and Batman. Batman seemed a bit more like himself in this movie than BvS. But reasonable to disagree on that point.And of course WW. No doubt Jenkins has a pretty good idea about Diana’s character, but i felt like Joss’s take was mostly OK. She’s portrayed as the most formidable warrior of the lot, the only one who can really go toe-to-toe with Steppenwolf before Supes shows up. She plays a fairly typical straightwoman/ mother role for the group, encouraging the newbies and rolling her eyes when the boys can’t get along. And Bruce calls her out for being out of sight all those decades, which seems somewhat appropriate and kind of needed to be addressed (still wondering how this will play out with WW 84). I guess i could see this being way off from what Jenkins envisioned but i’m not sure what she would’ve done differently. And i feel fairly certain that under Snyder we would just have gotten more cheesecake shots and less of a character arc for Diana.
This, exactly this. Maybe she thinks Superman is supposed to be a shitty asshole who doesn’t care about people. I also can’t think of anything WW did in Whedon’s version that would piss her off to a sufficient degree that she’d be upset about it. It’s just a puzzling thing for her to say.
Ok, we get it already, Whedon’s JL sucked. Tell me something Idk
But Zach Snyder’s Justice has recognizable characters? Huh? And what about the Batman Vs Superman crap that set it up? These movies suuuuuuuucccked. And I agree with the folks who already stated this: Who. Cares. Enough already.
Would people generally agree that Whedon’s The Avengers was a better movie than Justice League?I feel like that tends to be overlooked. You know, what one of the fundamental differences between the films is that:1) Zack Snyder was never involved with The Avengers at all. Whedon was.2) Zack Snyder was completely involved in Justice League. Whedon came in at the end to finish when Snyder could not.Short version: A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.
I don’t think Whedon laid down the entirely wrong characterizations of Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman in Man of Steel or BvS. Pretty sure that was another director.
MARTHA!
THIS IS KATANA SHE’S GOT MY BACK
Weird how fragile Joss Whedon’s popularity was. He went from king to pariah, more or less for cheating on his wife, one person’s beef with his behavior, and one bad film that wasn’t entirely his. I’m not necessarily objecting to this. Someone says he was never anything but a performative feminist and his charisma is a smokescreen I think, yeah, that sounds about right. Loved me some second and third season Buffy back in the day, but oh well.
I’m a DC Comics fan. I adore Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. I would have given anything to see the Trinity on the big screen….but if I never hear another goddamn word about this Justice League adaptation, it will be too soon. Burn the tapes, salt the sets, and start anew somewhere else.
Justice League: Bad characterizations, a nothing villain, outer-space boxes subbing for outer-space stones, unnatural lighting everywhere, haze, Superman dead or half-crazy for most of the film, and the camera spattered with fake mud flecks, rushing the story process by trying to do in minutes what Marvel took 10-12 hours spread over five films to build. WB: “We want a superhero franchise, so let’s give it to the guy who made Sucker Punch.” Finished up by an actor who’s whining that his dull character didn’t get enough screen-time.
Lets recall the timeline. Snider started the film. A family tragedy pulled him away from the project. Whedon was called in as a ‘hired gun’ to save the film from being discarded before finishing. Whedon found a mish-mash of filmed scenes and set to work trying to make a semi-coherent story out of them. Feelings got hurt in the process. Maybe the studio should have just let the project die.
Between regular little jabs like this (which would NEVER have been permitted just a year or two ago) and him parting ways with HBO on his new show, I’m feeling pretty confident that investigation into his conduct is bearing fruit we’ll hear about before too long. Whedon is done for a while.
CUT THE SNYDER RELEASE!
Didn’t Jenkins do the same thing to Snyder’s Diana in her series? Dawn of Justice essentially says Wonder Woman wasn’t out hero-ing post WW1, and yet wonder woman 1984 now exists
Hard to tell without seeing 84 if there is a true conflict or not.
We also don’t know the plot of 84 at all. Given Steve Trevor hasn’t aged a day I would assume there’s some shenanigans going on.
Frankly I haven’t recognized Superman since The Quest For Peace.
Her comments are simultaneously critical of Whedon while also trying to toe a VERY fine line in how she talks about Snyder.
And if you know anything about Patti Jenkins, she’s not a huge fan of characters (or characterizations) that no one can recognize.You know? Like a Native American who just happens to be an amazing hatchet chucker. Or a drunk Scot who wears a kilt in combat? How about a blonde haired, blue eyed American spy who, regardless of not being the point of the fucking movie, manages to get that Steve Rodgers/white savior moment anyways?Still, decent movie.
It never made sense to me that Diana quit being a hero after WWI, though both BvS and WW left it vague as to why no one had heard Wonder Woman since then.
Or why she can have a day job in a museum and no one seems to know who she is despite not wearing a mask or even a pair of Clark Kent glasses.
I’m still trying to understand why Diana wears white to a job where she mostly has to clean dusty relics.
Is she gonna beat ‘em, defeat ‘em and mistreat ‘em, even if she’s cheatin’?
They’re fun to watch, but I have difficulty taking any “superhero” movies seriously once the people in tights take the stage & begin shooting fire out of their asses. As Anthony Hopkins said of “Thor,” “There’s no acting required at all, is there.”
Say what you will about Joss Whedon, but I’m sick of people throwing him under the bus for Justice League sucking. It would have been a shitty movie even it Zach Snyder had been able to stick around to finish it, and the Snyder Cut looks like shit from the previews.
I believe that they mean Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon’s Justice League. The majority of film was Snyder’s. Let’s not pretend that those two didn’t make a shitty snooze fest together. No amount of retconning is going to remove the Snyder stink from the DC Universe.
I know clicks count, but that’s hardly a slam, when you read her full statement.
She only said — in a respectfully elliptical way — that she couldn’t mesh her vision of the characters with that film’s vision.I mean, she probably could slam the movie, but she didn’t here.
I mean I feel bad for the lady, but it is what it is.
Man, I hope she’s not one of these Snyder-cut nutjobs. Because it sure sounds like she’s edging towards that here with this dogpile on Joss Whedon.
Ok fair criticism but you cant lay this all at Wheedon IMO.Hired at 11th hour to reshoot another directors work, not great. But add that to fact he couldn’t be further from Synder in terms of his filmmaking. On one hand you have Wheedon who is a dialogue and character interaction guy with a perhaps blander visual palate. Snyder doesn’t really care about characters, he’s about what looks cool and where can i use slo-mo, as a result his movies can look great but lack logic and actual likeable characters. At least some of this is down to WB going ‘Hey, he did Avengers right and that was huge and had superheroes lets get him!’ Its a total misunderstanding of both what film they were trying to make and the talents of the people they were hiring. If they genuinely thought you could mesh these two competing styles and get a cohesive end product, more fool them.Want to run with the darker aesthetic? Why not hire Francis Lawrence or Steve Niles?When #Snydercultists bemoan the ‘Jostice league’ they are in many ways directing their anger at the wrong person.
Tbh I can never actually remember which film was Justice League and which was Batman vs. Superman, because they both live in the exact same “please don’t make me think about this film” part of my brain. But, she’s not wrong. It was just atrocious. But it’s also not that I trust Snyder at all, either. Wonder Woman has been the only DC film I’ve actually enjoyed. (Aquaman wasn’t horrible, but it would be a stretch to say I enjoyed it. It was pretty to look at, but I never need/want to see it again).Though a huge part of that is because Jenkins isn’t being an edgelord with her films. Yeah, WW was dark, but it was dark because it was WORLD WAR 1. And Diana herself was a beacon of light in it. Which was SO much more refreshing than the other films.End of the day, I think the biggest part is that Jenkins felt like the ONLY filmmaker of the DC line who both understood AND loved the character she was making a movie about.
I find it odd how we’ve sort of divorced Snyder from the theatrical cut as if that wasn’t 90% his work. Whedon took over during post and got a couple months of reshoots. He didn’t even get a director credit. We know they changed quite a bit but it’s not like it was a completely different movie from what it would’ve been had Snyder not had to step down. It was already a mess long before then.
So Jenkins was totally happy that the Amazons went from wearing functional clothing and armor in WW to bikinis in the beginning of Justice League?
SO much about the last 10 years, just of pop culture, would blow 13 year old comic nerd me’s mind.If you told me they made a big ass expensive Justice League movie, that mostly followed the costumes and origins of the characters, and it sucked so hard, I’d have been unable to process it. Green Lantern? I’d have been stultified. How do you fuck those up?
SO if that happens, please make sure they show me all the Avengers, GOTG, and Black Panther, and I’ll recover to roughly the level of mess I am now.