Joss Whedon Takes Over "Justice League"

Yesterday, Warner Bros. announced that Joss Whedon would be taking the helm of the upcoming Justice League movie to see it through the rest of post-production and meet its November release date. The film's director, Zack Snyder, is leaving the project along with his wife Deborah, one of the movie's producers, to be with family after the recent suicide of Snyder's daughter from a previous marriage. Snyder has previously directed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Watchmen, 300, and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, among other films.

As someone who has published papers on Joss Whedon's works in both the academic and popular publications, I am intrigued by this development for a number of reasons. According to reports, Snyder and Warner Bros. had already brought Whedon in to film some new scenes, which is something of a throwback for Whedon to his days as a script doctor, during which he worked on films like Speed, Waterworld, Twister, and perhaps most famously, Toy Story, for which he garnered his first (and only, so far) Academy Award nomination. While directing new scenes isn't quite the same as script doctoring – script writers actually have very little control over the final product in the film world – the idea that Whedon is coming in to keep a film on track and fix any potential story issues during post-production is an interesting twist on the role that brought him so much acclaim in Hollywood, before he became well known as the creator of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

Of course, the biggest items on Whedon's resume that prepare him for post-production work on Justice League are the two Avengers movies he created for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's little doubt that Warner Bros. must have had those movies in mind when discussing who to bring in to help Snyder with finishing the film. Whedon has also reportedly signed on to do a standalone Batgirl film, which makes sense given his history of writing and directing kickass female leads.

However, Whedon's Avengers work might also make some DC Comics fans worry. The first film did generally well, but reviews of Avengers: Age of Ultron were much more mixed, especially among "true" fans of both the comics and the MCU. Even I, as someone who loves much of Whedon's artistic work, have to admit that there were a number of issues with the way Age of Ultron played out. Given this, it's understandable that fans of the Justice League comics and of the preceding DC Comics films might be jittery about Whedon taking over for the next superhero ensemble film.

That said, the situation here is much different than the Avengers films. By the time Age of Ultron was released, Whedon had given more than half a decade of his life to the two-film project, and after the fact he talked loudly and widely about the level of fatigue the effort had left him with. At this point, though, Whedon has been relatively quiet, and at this point he is only coming in to shore up the Justice League film and make sure it gets completed before the November release date. In other words, this is the type of thing he built his career on, before he became a household name, and it's the kind of thing that I think he could end up doing well at.

One final twist in all of this is that back in 2006, Joss Whedon wrote a script for a Wonder Woman film that was never produced. (The script is available here.) Obviously, he didn't direct the film that is being released next week, but now that Whedon is on board to finish Justice League – which of course will include Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman – it'll be interesting to see what, if any, of Whedon's influence on the character will be. I don't imagine he will change much of the primary storyline, given that the movie is already in post-production, but its possible that he could reshoot scenes or edit them in ways that are more consistent with his own vision of what the character should be based on the script written over a decade ago. All of this is conjecture on my part, but it will be interesting to see what gets done with it.

At any rate, I am a bit surprised to see Whedon on such a high-profile project again so soon after Age of Ultron, which came out just a little more than two years ago. After that film's release, he said the movie "a little bit broke me." Of course, time heals all wounds, but it's still a little surprising that he's willing to take on such a big role again even now. Will this one break him as well? Only time will tell…

Of nothing else, at least it might get him off Twitter for awhile.