Two interesting nuggets of Justice League news broke this evening.
Firstly, to the shock of nobody, the film has been officially rated PG-13. While that comes as no surprise, it does at least suggest that Warner Bros. have finally finished their extensive editing process, and probably won’t need to call Ezra Miller back again to deliver some more snarky one-liners that they can awkwardly edit into the action scenes.
The other, more interesting, story is that Zack Snyder will take the sole directing credit, with Joss Whedon to either go uncredited or receive some lesser billing. Given the complexity of the Directors Guild of America’s rules on crediting, it’s unknown whether they’d have allowed the film to be billed as being “directed by Zack Snyder & Joss Whedon,” but it does suggest the Warner Bros. still ultimately considers this Snyder’s project.
Reports have varied on how much of the film Whedon has reshot, with Gal Gadot saying recently that “this is Zack Snyder’s movie. Joss only did a few weeks of reshoots,” only to be contradicted by Ben Affleck, who said that Justice League is “an interesting product of two directors, both with kind of unique visions.” Hmm.
Personally, I’m hoping for more Snyder than Whedon in the movie. Sure, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was rubbish, but at least it was good looking rubbish and I still nurse a soft spot for Man of Steel, Dawn of the Dead and the criminally underrated and deeply misunderstood Sucker Punch. Meanwhile, Whedon’s two Avengers films were drab, texturally flat and poorly blocked affairs, with his contribution apparently limited to ensuring the characters are delivering on point quips.
But while Warner Bros. are billing Justice League as ‘A Zack Snyder Movie,’ we’ll only really know how true that is once we see the finished product, which we all will on November 17th.
