It seems that any time a movie fails to live up to expectations, the instinctual response is to blame the studio for meddling. Here, we know that Warners did meddle with Justice League. But I submit, that it was not entirely a bad thing.
One complaint we keep hearing is the run-time mandate. But is it truly indefensible? Watchmen, MOS, BvS, they all have one thing in common: there are portions where they drag. Snyder tends to film redundant, often self-indulgent, but ultimately pointless scenes (see, BvS). Age of Ultron received similar critiques. I can't really blame Warners for wanting to reign in a director who has a tendency to self-indulge and create overly long films. Further, Just because something is longer, doesn't make it better. In fact, IMO, most extended cuts are worse than the original. Very often, scenes are cut for a reason.
The fact that Warners mandated edits is not necessarily what destroyed this movie. In fact, its very possible that it made it less worse. After all, were BvS and MOS so stellar that any of us really believe that there is just a load of brilliant Snyder directed material left on the cutting room floor? I am skeptical of that proposition. I dare say that most of which was cut is probably just typical Snyder. Juvenile and shallow scenes, in the guise of "maturity" because they are dark and include dialogue that sounds like a 14 year old discussing philosophy sprinkled with the occasional adolescent joke about a bodily fluid.
Further, I'm not even convinced that Warners was wrong in checking Whedon a bit. We now know thanks to
Holt McCallany's press that the Whedon penned opening was designed to be comedic, and would've been but for edits by Warners. Look, no one has said more than I that these movies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. But its a bit of an
over-correction to start a crossover epic with a slapstick scene. Imagine if Avengers opened with Loki's attack on SHIELD, but the scene was played for laughs. Its not a pretty mental picture. If these were type of notes that Warners was offering Whedon, and these are the edits Warners made, then Warners made the right call.
Now I'm not saying Warners handled this perfectly. Warners ought to have fired Snyder following BvS and bumped back production on JL. There was plenty of time to pull the brakes. Principle filming had not yet begun. But they didn't. That was their mistake.
But I'm not so sure that their edits were. The notion that the edits hurt the film is a conclusion that a lot of fans are jumping to that is supported by virtually no evidence, and the bits of anecdotal evidence that we have, combined with Zack Snyder's track record, indicates to me that Warners probably wasn't wrong in making edits. In fact, the edits seem to be Warners trying to polish a turd and save this ship from sinking entirely.
I guess what I am getting at is, be careful what you wish for in the form of a Snyder cut. If the fundamental building blocks of the film are flawed, chances are a director's cut will be as well.
