We're not that far away from Justice League hitting theaters, and when it does it may look like a very different movie than when Zack Snyder began it. The most recent trailer released at Comic-Con felt entirely different than what we'd seen before, and that was clearly the influence of Joss Whedon, who came on to replace Snyder after a terrible family tragedy. Even if little of the footage was Whedon's, the footage was cut to present a lighter, more colorful film.
That was the suggestion given by co-star Joe Morton, who plays Dr. Silas Stone, the father/creator of Victor Stone aka Cyborg (Ray Fisher). He tells IGN that the recent reshoots headed up by Whedon did the job of adjusting Cyborg's character to make him less serious, and the brighten the film's mood overall...
“… the stuff that I had to do were just really small little bits and pieces, nothing necessarily having to do with tone. I know that with Ray [Fisher], the young man who plays Victor, there were some adjustments that they made in terms of the tone of that character. I think what I heard was that there was a need from the studio to lighten up the film in a way, that the film felt too dark. I don’t know what that meant in terms of how it actually got translated in terms of the reshoots but that’s what I heard. That’s what I thought some of the reshoots were about.”
A guy who may have a grander perspective on the reshoots is Ben Affleck. It seems he'll be sticking around...for now at least, and he's enthusiastically chatting up the film and what it's been like having two directors on it. And at least according to him in comments to EW, the process went swimmingly, even if he admits it was "unorthodox" at first.
“It’s a little bit unorthodox. Zack had a family tragedy, and stepped off, which was horrible. For the movie, the best person we could’ve possibly found was Joss. We got really lucky that he stepped in.” Affleck went on to say that Justice League is “an interesting product of two directors, both with kind of unique visions, both with really strong takes. I’ve never had that experience before making a movie. I have to say, I really love working with Zack, and I really love the stuff we’ve done with Joss.”
Whedon and Snyder couldn't be more different, so the big question is how everything will fit together. They're smart guys and should be able to figure it all out. I doubt we'll get another disjointed mess like Suicide Squad turned out to be. If the tones don't balance, it could be a real problem.
We'll see. Justice League opens November 17th.
