Justice League Production Sounds Like A Big Mess

If Justice League does indeed fail at the box office and a DCEU movie again doesn’t live up to expectations, you can guarantee the blame will fly.

Case in point is that it’s already being said Justice League is not a Zack Snyder film, and that a Zack Snyder 3-hour cut exists.

Now THR has posted an article with Justice League composer Danny Elfman who offers an inside look into the production following the departure of Zack Snyder. While true, with Zack Snyder having left would of course cause problems, it seems lots of things were changed from Zack Snyder’s vision. Instead of Whedon simply having to cut Zack Snyder’s footage, Whedon reshot tons of footage by the looks of things and did lots of rewrites. Now whether that is the fault of Whedon alone seems in doubt as WB seems to be major factor–particularly with it known that WB CEO Kevin Tsujihara mandated Justice League come in under 2 hours.

• Elfman says that much of the film was being shot as he wrote the score, and that he never scored any of the retooled Snyder footage that didn’t make it into the film. Things were so last-minute that at times he wouldn’t be composing to actual footage.

• “I had a lot of storyboards in place of action. There would be full scenes and then a five-minute sequence of storyboards. Honestly, it was like working on an animated film,” says Elman. “I didn’t score any of the unused footage, the movie that came out is the movie I scored, it was just in very rough form.”

So we see from Elfman’s comments that lots of changes were made when Whedon came on board. Elfman was actually given storyboards to use and not footage because it hadn’t been even filmed yet as Whedon was doing the reshoots at the time. Elfman actually compares it to doing an animted movie!

This also means if they did new storyboards that the story changed. Whedon also booted Junkie XL, which more than likely means that Junkie XL’s theme was more in line with the music of Batman vs. Superman and Man of Steel, which further means Zack Snyder’s Justice League was more in line with those films as well.  

It doesn’t seem too hard to put things together in that WB wasn’t happy with Zack Snyder’s vision and wanted it lightened up a lot in addition to shortened. Honestly, it seems as if the WB execs just wanted Justice League over with and didn’t bother giving it their full attention. If that’s not the case, then why not delay the release of Justice League?  

Justice League has a November 17, 2017 release directed by Zack Snyder, with the story by Chris Terrio and Zack Snyder, the screenplay by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon, and stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon and Willem Dafoe an Atlantean, Nuidis Vulko.

Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.