In defense of Joss Whedon

Don’t hate me. Joss Whedon is one of the best directors of all time and an avid collector of comic books. I get that the best is a strong word, but it is subjective. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Besides that, if you look at his filmography, The Avengers, BuffyThe Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Age of Ultron, and he also contributed to other projects as well. So why suddenly everyone started questioning his methods? What exactly changed?

 

Justice League - The darkest chapter of DCEU

Zack Snyder started this universe with the Man of Steel. Some loved it, some hated it, and the rest were in the middle wondering where they stand? Regardless, he still continued with Batman V Superman - Dawn of Justice and was not the success Warner Bros hope for. With such a divisive response from the audience, people at Warner Bros. started shifting some stuff around. Zack Snyder was still a Director, but this time he wasn’t in control. Snyder force to add comedic bits, and it was shown in the first two trailers. It almost seems like everything is going in the right direction. And the tragedy struck. Snyder lost his daughter and with that, Warner Bros forced to make changes.

 

Pic Courtesy - Justice League

Who's the Doctor?

Have you ever saw a movie scene where one person starts choking in the restaurant or going through some distress? And one person shouts, Is there a doctor in here, who's the doctor? 

That is the exact situation that happened over here. DCEU started the chocking and the only way to save it is to call the Doctor which in this case was the man who handled the movie with Onsomble cast before. Nobody was at that moment was more qualified than Joss Whedon. Being a Whedon fan, I was excited to see his take on the upcoming Justice League. 

Pic Courtesy - The Avengers

The Good Old Days

This is the time when we first time got the test of Shared Universe. There were many films before which had continuity but this was different. It was not just a movie franchise. It was a Universe, a Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bringing us characters from 4-5 different movies together to fight Evil. This stuff can only be seen (back then) in Comic Book and now MCU is becoming like a Comic Book. This was the most difficult task for any director on the planet. Whedon could’ve sabotaged it. Because TBH they did not have any interesting characters other than Hulk and Loki. It could’ve been Justice League before Justice League. But Whedon took this job and made the best Avenger movie ever. 

 

Downfall of Whedon

After The Avengers, naturally, Whedon took on the responsibility of the second installment of the Avenger franchise. Similar to many movies these days it was subjected to a lot of criticism. Some hated it, some loved it, and so on. Many inside sources have said that Whedon was not intended to present the Age of Ultron the way it was shown. The studio did meddle with its every choice. He even has to fight for the Hawkeye’s Barn scene. This put him in a very uncomfortable situation. He loves comic books and got the opportunity to work on those and After Age of Ultron, he was always subject to criticism and hate. It bottled up so much that he had dropped out from the Infinity War Part One and Two as well (Yeah, it was not supposed to be Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game). 

 

Pic Courtesy - Geek Culture

Conclusion

The point of all of this is to tell you that making a film is not an easy task. Not everything works very well. There are a lot of factors involved in the filmmaking process. Coming back to the Justice League, it was in the process of paradigm shift anyway and bringing Whedon back gives them ample opportunity to tweak some more details. Ideally, studio heads are very good at their job. They always take into consideration those things that directors might not look at or even understand. In fact, it is not the directors' responsibility to look into those things. Blaming one person for mistakes that he might not commit or maybe he did but he might not be the only person responsible, is wrong. The last thing I wanted to say in a defense of Joss Whedon wish him luck for his future we might get to see his best work. The End.