We know that due to Zack Snyder’s tragic departure from Justice League, Joss Whedon stepped in to complete the movie that was left. Apparently, he made a lot of changes in the movie and also held the extensive reshoots for the movie which itself cost up to $25 Million. At the theatres when we finally got to see the movie, it was quite visible that what all was Zack Snyder’s part and what all was added by Whedon. So, here is everything that was changed by Joss Whedon.
Whedon reshot much more than they are admitting
We got to see a number of trailers for Justice League and a lot of reports about the sets of Justice League were circling around when Zack Snyder was on board, which gave us more than a glimpse at the movie that we had to expect, but when Whedon came in and the reports about the extensive reshoots came out, everyone at WB including the actors denied about the scale of the reshoots that were happening, and we could easily see in the final cut of the movie that a lot was reshot and was completely different than the trailers and the marketing material that we had previously seen.
To finish it all off, the week of release we were told by producer Charles Roven that Whedon in a total shot around 15-20% of the released film. Now after having seen the film, we all know that this is not true and way more than just a mere 20% was altered from the movie in order to provide a complete tonal shift in the movie.
Almost all of Snyder’s Superman was reshot
We all knew that Superman would be resurrected in this movie and Henry Cavill was coming back as Man of Steel. His return is a major part of the movie and a major part of the reshoots as well. This was already suggested by the reports that were circling the internet during the period of Reshoots. Now how we know this is that during the reshoots Henry Cavill was not able to shave his mustache due to his commitments to the Mission Impossible movie that he was shooting at that time.
So, it was decided that his face will be digitally altered and his mustache will be removed through CGI. And in the final cut of the movie, as the VFX people did not get the proper time to properly remove the mustache, the bad CGI was easily visible on Henry Cavill’s face throughout the movie, which is evidence of the reshoots.
Whedon tried to turn Wonder Woman into a Sex Object
There was a very little romance emerging between Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince right from Batman V Superman, and it was going to be there in this movie as well, but Whedon amplified that a lot and there was a lot of sexual tension between Bruce and Diana throughout the movie. Most of the first half was basically focused upon Bruce and Diana’s subplot and other characters were kind of neglected.
The scenes of active fission between the pair – their brief falling out and reconciliation – are additions there to give a heightened interplay in the team.
He added a lot of jokes
When we saw the first ever Comic Con trailer for the movie last year, we knew that the movie was going to be light heated, but Whedon coming in surely added a lot more jokes from his side. The king of easily noticeable Joss Whedon moments was when Batman said “something’s bleeding” after the Superman confrontation, perhaps an attempt to “payoff” the “Do you bleed?” moment.
The Flash recruitment scene that we saw in last year’s Comic Con trailer, we know was fully Snyder, and in the movie, at the end the camera angles suddenly change and Barry starts rambling about brunch, which, as this moment it called back to in Joss’ mid-credits scene, is clearly an addition. These little Joss Whedon moments were easily identifiable, for example, the Flash falling on Wonder Woman’s chest, Superman saying he feels “itchy” post-resurrection comes from Buffy, etc.
A lot of Snyder’s original footage has been cut
The money shot at the end of this year’s comic con trailer with Alfred and the one who was presumed to be Superman returning, was taken off. Various Flash and Batman fight scenes that we saw in the trailers were missing, Bruce looking at Superman’s projection, and many more scenes were scrapped off the movie in order to make it shorter. Justice League‘s marketing blitz has been intense, which has given us an awful lot of footage from the film which did not make it through to the final cut of the movie.
Whedon changed the tone of Snyder’s Mythology
Perhaps the biggest difference from what you’d imagine Snyder pitched and Whedon gave is the handling of mythology. Justice League was bringing Atlanteans, humans, meta-humans, Amazonians, Kryptonian and other aliens all togetherand the ancient mythology scene featured 3 big residents of Earth fighting together against the Apokolyptic threat of Steppenwolf and the handling of that epic tale appears to have changed. It is a light story, with quick exposition dumps making the very basic changes and differences clear.
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