In defense of Joss Whedon: a Justice League rant

 By  title alone, I just enraged 2 sets of people:

-people with bad taste in movies who worship a mediocre Michael Bay wannabe.

-people who love witch hunts and would toss their entire family into the fire for "woke points".

My rant is directed at the first group. This is because, I don't care if Joss Whedon is a racist, sexist, whatever. I can't judge his character on hearsay. Or judge him today on his behavior 30-ish years ago. This is about the Snyder Cult and their crazy theories about Whedon "ruining Justice League".

Whedon did nothing wrong. Just because YOU didn't like it, doesn't mean he "did it wrong". He didn't do a bad movie on purpose. He didn't sabotage the movie to serve Disney. He did his job. Was it a good job? No, but not because of Whedon being "a bad director". It was a "hack job" because WB wanted an impossible feat to be done. Fit a 4 hour story into a 2 hour runtime WHILE REDOING EVERYTHING in less than half a year. In this case, Warner bros. was the villain here. Whedon was brought in as a script doctor. Snyder was supposed to do some reshoots with the changes mandated by the studio. Due to his daughter dying, he couldn't and WB, did what they did to protect their assests and profits. 

A 5 months deadline, less budget than an indie movie, an uncooperative cast, and a studio changing their minds on their demands quite often... no wonder Whedon was pissed off and angry most of the time. Whether hate the 2017 theatrical release or not, Whedon must be commended for delivering a mostly watchable movie with those limitations. As much as you may want to deny it, the Theatrical cut WAS very similar to Snyder's in hindsight cut. It had a lot cut out in order to fit the studio mandated runtime, but a lot of what was left as very similar to what Snyder delivered.

Focus on the similarities, not on the differences and you will see how little pure Whedon is in the movie.

Before you mention cringy lines like "Barry discusses brunch" Need I remind you of the entire "Barry trying to get a dog walker (not to be confused with Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic) job" scene. Don't even start with sexism and mention the anime cliche scene by Whedon, when Snyder had Alfred check out WW, Barry asking Cyborg if Diana would go for a younger man, or Barry creepily caressing Iris's hair as she flies to her death... And before I forget, Snyder had Creepy shirt sniffer. So, don't go there...

The "Brunch speech" was to showcase Barry's awkwardness. This  was done to compensate for the removal of Barry's rants about the old lady at the bus and the whole Résumé lines. Had Snyder faced the same limitations as Whedon had for the 2017 version, the end result would have been similar... don't believe me? Now if we had a Snyder movie that had to be edited down to a shorter runtime losing themes, subplots and being almost a different movie from the Director's cut...

If only there was some movie that could show how bad Zack Snyder's movies could be when edited down to fit a runtime...

Is there even such a movie?

Dammit, nothing comes to mind. He said with sarcasm dripping out of his mouth...

Any director put on the situation where Whedon was for Justice League would've made a bad movie, BECAUSE OF WB BEING MORE INTERESTED IN SECURING Q4 PROFITS. And THAT is the real problem.

It's no secret that I HATE over 90% of Zack Snyder's choices for the DC Universe, but most of the blame lies on Warner Brothers. They have the track record of royally screwing directors and demanding changes to the point of making a director and their star quit, forcing the studio to find a replacement actor and director...

If WB got rid of Tim Burton and Michael Keaton because of HappyMeals in the 90s, screwing over Zack Snyder AND Joss Whedon was a piece of cake to them. 

Yes, you did, Joss... You tried and you managed to pull something despite EVERYTHING being against you. 

Now here is a challenge for Zack Snyder:

Zack Snyder's Justice League: The 2 Hour cut. Simply taking his 4:02 movie and making it a 2 hour film and keeping up with the studio demands for a mild PG-13 tone. Can he do it? The answer is no.

Then again, Zacky poo is the kinda huy who gets butthurt when people criticize his work.

As Much as I dislike Scott Mendelson, he made a decent point back when the Snydercut trailer was released... and look at butthurt Zack Snyder's reply. Why do I bring this up? Because Zack "I've never seen the theatrical cut of Justice League" Snyder is always throwing shade at it. And by comparatively calling it equal to a Saturday morning cartoon, shows his lack of understanding of the DC Universe.

So, yeah, despite all the bullshit Warner put him through, Whedon managed to pull off a somewhat OK product. He could've walked away, but didn't. He could've refused the offer, since he was only there to work as a script doctor. The guy Literally put his career on the line trying to salvage an impossible project. He was blacklisted after his attempts to salvage Justice League and even more due to Ray Fisher's vendetta. 

Joss Whedon may be a sexist prick, douchebag, and any other insult you may want to throw at him, but until the harassment campaign known as Release the Snyder Cut, he was the last line of defense Zack Snyder had to get something close to what he intended. Whether you like it or not, he did the best he could to mitigate the damage from Studio interference while catering to their whims.

Remember that Burton was replaced by Schumacher... We dodged a McG bullet... think about it.

I will acknowledge Zack Snyder's passion for this project, even if I fundamentally disagree with 90% of his choices. I challenge you tp acknowledge Whedon's passion for this project. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so angry about having to piece this out and appease the studio...