Justice League has now hit the theatres and the reaction from the fans are amazing. The movie is really great according to the fans and each and every moviegoer whether he/she is a comic book fan or not is coming out having a good time watching the movie. The critics, on the other hand, are still following the same trend that they were with pre-Wonder Woman DC movies. The Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie currently stands at 40%.
DC has suffered a lot due to the harsh reviews of the critics which has led to a backlash from the fans as well. But this time around, it seems like Justice League will not suffer from that as the fans are totally loving the movie. But there is still one thing about the movie that feels very bad being a fan as well, which is similar to the previous movies like Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad- They shot 4 hours’ worth of movie and a lot of stuff ended up being slashed out of the movie.
Earlier there had been a rumor going around about the runtime of the Justice League movie. Some sources said it that it was about 180 minutes, some claimed that it was about 145 minutes. Well, recently the runtime was confirmed and now the movie is officially 121 minutes i.e. 2 hours and 1 minute. That means excluding the credits and everything, the movie was only about 1 hour and 50 minutes long.
WB had ordered Joss Whedon to keep the movie about 2 hours exactly and this is why a lot of material that was shot was taken off and reshot by Whedon and the reshoots itself cost about $25 Million. Amidst this cut material, there was a huge Aquaman character that was completely taken out of the movie. Along with him Aquaman’s whole backstory was stripped off and shortened to one scene.
While Mera made her remarkable debut in Justice League and even got to be a part of a pretty kick-ass scene, there was one more character that was supposed to be in the movie but was cut off.
It was Nuidis Vulko, who is played by Willem Dafoe, and Jason Momoa revealed that he was cut from the movie because there just wasn’t enough time to show him as well.
Fans had high hopes for Aquaman’s story in Justice League, but most of it wound up on the cutting room floor and that led to Aquaman getting very less screen time in the movie. All of the underwater shots and the marketing of the movie hinted at a rich Aquaman mythology Almost all of which, sadly, ended up being tossed aside, including entire performances of big characters which have been talked about above. But, the story about Aquaman’s parents takes a big hit.
As we saw that the theatrical cut of the movie clearly makes less of a role for Jason Momoa’s Aquaman than Snyder intended. Even if Momoa chooses to keep silent on the cuts made for the two-hour runtime, and what was re-shot to fill in the blank, Snyder’s determination to make Aquaman a star suggests much, much more than we got in League.
Jason Momoa promises Aquaman will still be the origin story fans so desperately crave, and it was clear early on that League would tease out more of his own place in the world, in Atlantis, and in the grey area in between, until WB and Whedon made their changes to Justice League as we also saw a shot of Aquaman swimming in towards his brother, but that was reshot and altered.
In a way, it may be good that the mythology was cut and the main narrative was focussed in the movie, but still, it has become a trend with DC and this hurts a lot as fans always end up wanting more than they actually get.
The reason why Justice League was always going to be around 2 hours and why Warner Bros. is so adamant about keeping it that way is that each and every theatre and screen has a limited number of screenings that it can do in a day, and making it 30 minutes shorter would ensure having one more screening in a day, which means more earnings. So, this is a strategy behind making the movie shorter. Let’s just be optimistic about this one and hope that everything turns out to be the best and this one does not face the same backlash as Dawn of Justice.
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