It’s not every day that a $300 million superhero movie is such a trainwreck that it gets a mulligan. But that’s what’s about to happen with Justice League, the DCEU’s woebegone attempt to craft their own Avengers-style ensemble romp. We’re a few months away from getting the “Snyder Cut,” which will restore something closer to original director Zack Snyder’s original vision. But for now we still have the one awkwardly assembled by Avengers director Joss Whedon, which has few fans — not even a fellow DC director.
Patty Jenkins, who helmed Wonder Woman and its forthcoming sequel (plus the 2003 serial killer drama Monster, which nabbed Charlize Theron her Oscar, let’s not forget), appeared on the CineBlend podcast ReelBlend (as caught by The A.V. Club), and when asked how closely she studied Justice League when designing Wonder Woman 1984, she had a good answer: she didn’t.
“I think that all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did,” Jenkins said, not exactly pulling punches. But that wasn’t because it was bad, necessarily. “I felt that that version contradicted my first movie in many ways, and this current movie, which I was already in production on. So then, what are you going to do?”
She had, however, been following what Snyder was doing with his original, far more ambitious version of the film, before he had to leave the project for family issues. She elaborated:
“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.’
It’s true that the version of Justice League that hit theaters, with a large percentage of Whedon re-shot material, didn’t exactly gibe with what came before. Superman suddenly had a completely different personality, for one. And Wonder Woman herself was mostly regulated to hen mother duties, rolling her eyes at being surrounded by a bunch of boys (plus Ben Affleck’s pretty melancholic Batman).
Will the “Snyder Cut” align more closely with Wonder Woman 1984, and the other DCEU titles that have come out in the original Justice League’s wake? You’ll find out soon. Meanwhile, enjoy Jenkins speaking off the cuff, especially after delivering a far more measured response to the Warner Bros.-HBO Max brouhaha than did fellow DC director Christopher Nolan.
(Via CinemaBlend and The A.V. Club)
