Patty Jenkins is making the rounds to promote the upcoming release of Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas Day. Since her DC Comics sequel will be debuting at the streaming service that will be making Zack Snyder‘s cut of Justice League available to the masses, she was inevitably asked about her opinion on the theatrical cut of Justice League put together at the last minute by Joss Whedon. The Wonder Woman director certainly wasn’t shy in her response.
When CinemaBlend asked how Patty Jenkins felt about Joss Whedon’s take on Justice League, the director didn’t hesitate to say, “all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did.” That sound you hear is Zack Snyder suddenly swelling with strength and energy, like Superman flying near the sun. Jenkins explained her adverse reaction to the theatrical cut of Justice League:
“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? I was like… you would have to play ball in both directions in order for that to work.”
For Jenkins, it was important that her movies reflect the Wonder Woman that we met in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and it seemed Zack Snyder was also supportive of what Jenkins wanted to do with the character and would have incorporated her insight into how Wonder Woman appeared in Justice League. But Jenkins felt the theatrical cut wasn’t really true to Diana’s character, or most of the other superheroes in the movie. The director said:
“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.’”
Indeed, Joss Whedon’s cut of Justice League played rather fast and loose with the DC Comics superheroes, showing inconsistencies with how they were portrayed in the previous movies directed by Zack Snyder. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
No matter how little one might care about the forthcoming director’s cut, we can still all agree that the movie we saw in theaters was a disaster on multiple levels. Whether that’s directly Joss Whedon’s fault or merely a result of a director tasked with “fixing” a massive blockbuster in such a truncated window remains to be seen. But I think even Whedon would admit that this isn’t great work on his part.
We’ll find out whether Zack Snyder’s approach to Justice League fares better with fans and critics when the *checks notes* four-hour miniseries cut of the movie is released on HBO Max sometime next year.
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