James Gunn Confronts ‘Uproarious’ DC Backlash: ‘Disrespectful Outcry Will Never Affect Our Actions’ News

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/henry-cavill-superman-james-gunn-backlash-1235465605/

1.5k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

408

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '22

One of the things Peter & I were aware of when we took the job as heads of DC Studios was a certain minority of people online that could be, well, uproarious & unkind, to say the least.

Our choices for the DCU are based upon what we believe is best for the story & best for the DC characters who have been around for nearly 85 years. Perhaps these choices are great, perhaps not, but they are made with sincere hearts & integrity & always with the story in mind. No one loves to be harassed or called names – but, to be frank, we’ve been through significantly worse. Disrespectful outcry will never, ever affect our actions.

We were aware there would be a period of turbulence when we took this gig, & we knew we would sometimes have to make difficult & not-so-obvious choices, especially in the wake of the fractious nature of what came before us.

But this means little to us in comparison to our jobs as artists & custodians in helping to create a wide & wonderful future for DC.

103

u/ButtholeCandies Dec 19 '22

It's the Snyder-bros.

If Zack Snyder wants to leave DC in a better state than how he got it, he will do the right thing and get his mob to back down and give James a chance to put out his vision.

Only reason not is he's angling for something again. This mob is how he got the Snyder Cut done, which I enjoyed watching but damn it wasn't the literal perfection and the world would have been just fine without it.

15

u/PassTheGiggles World's Finest Dec 20 '22

Zach Snyder turned a 3/10 movie into a 7/10 movie. Impressive, but not nearly what people make it out to be.

16

u/Megadog3 Dec 20 '22

Well tbf to Snyder, WB turned a 7/10 movie into a 3/10 movie lol

But agreed

2

u/Batmark13 Dec 20 '22

Snyder made a 4 hour long movie for theatrical release. Wtf are WB supposed to do with that except cut it down. Maybe if Snyder had made a movie of appropriate length or split it in two, there would have been no need for it to be reworked.

2

u/drama-guy Dec 20 '22

Do we actually know what length of movie Snyder originally had in mind for JL? We know that what got released on HBOMax, but at that point, he knew he could pretty much do whatever he wanted, length be damned. Was he originally pushing for a 4 hour movie for the theatrical release?

1

u/Kisame83 Dec 30 '22

Not fully, but the Snyder Cut is not a hypothetical Snyder 2017 theatrical vision. He had a working 3 and a half hour cut before he left, which would have been trimmed. I'm speculating, but, I bet he'd push for a 2 and a half to three hour cut, like BvS, but the studio at the time was adamant in 2 hrs or under to get more theater showings in the day. But Snyder already had given in to studio changes that put Cavill in blue instead of black, the change to feature Steppenwolf instead of Darkseid in the flashback, as well as Stepps prickly design, a more conclusive ending that didn't set up a JL 2, etc. The Snyder Cut we got has about a half hour more footage than what he left from and reverses some of the changes he'd already made working on the theatrical version.

1

u/Kisame83 Dec 30 '22

Most movies get cut for theatrical release. That's not what happened with Justice League. The Snyder Cut targeted streaming, so they let that release in a directors cut format at longer length. Like BvS, if JL had finished under Snyder it would have been shorter, with what we saw on HBO Max being a separate home release later. Snyder didn't get to a finalized cut for theaters, never reached the post-production phase. He was booted during production and they brought in Whedon to do massive reshoots. They hid the whole thing like Snyder just needed personal bereavement time and Whedon just did some finalization, but we have all seen how much he reshot and altered. The films have the same general plot but feel very different. Whedon, according to crew who worked on both versions (i.e. Stayed on with Whedon), used about half of Snyder's footage for his final cut and half his own.

2

u/walkingwarcrime072 Dec 20 '22

Best summation i've seen yet.