I never said there was no story, just that they forced scenes with a totally different tone over it, resulting in a diluted story from what we were gonna get. The story was *worse* because of studio meddling.
I honestly don't see what you see, i saw brief glimpses of a good movie with a good story and good characters in the theatrical cut, but that is all that they were, brief glimpses, we got a deformed story and characters.
It's not deformed, though. It's a complete story, with complete character arcs. The characters are pretty recognizeably the characters.
I understand what you're saying, in that there was even more that may have gone into the film, other story points, origin elements, etc. But based on the track record seen in BVS and to a lesser degree, WATCHMEN, including those elements may actually have resulted in a less cohesive film.
The jokes were awful, most of them from reshoots, some decent from before.
Some of the jokes were awful. Like two or three of them are just lousy. Plenty of people liked much of the humor. It clearly did not all land, but not every piece of humor in JUSTICE LEAGUE is awful, or lowbrow, or what have you. Quite a lot it works, not just as a humorous moment, but a character point.
I think i am not understanding at all your point, how is it BvS less cohesive than JL, which is practically two movies into one?
Because BVS was less cohesive. It may have been a better crafted film, but it was less cohesive.
It just was.
I liked BVS a lot, but it's difficult to argue that BVS somehow conveyed its meanings and themes (meanings and themes that are still being debated) more effectively than JUSTICE LEAGUE did, or that it is more apparent how the scenes in BVS fit together than the ones in JUSTICE LEAGUE do.
JUSTICE LEAGUE was a far more straightforward film, storywise, thematically and structurally, even morally. If anything, it was perhaps too straightforward. But that does not lead to a lack of cohesion.
BvS is leading somewhere from the very first scene, JL is a frankenstein monster, that it also has a certain coherence if you imagine that is one movie, but when you are watching a scene and the scene is interrupted by another scene with the same actors shot in the same place with the same clothes and everything but feels totally different in tone, there is where it loses the "cohesive" part, if you get what i mean which is kinda hard to explain.
The scenes in JUSTICE LEAGUE all lead somewhere, too. They don't exactly "meander" through the film with no relevance or purpose. They are clearly structured, clearly related from a story and thematic standpoint, and generally appropriately paced as well. If Whedon did something well in the film, it was that. The character arcs are clear, well drawn, and generally well executed for an ensemble film with such weird concepts in it.
I don't recall a sequence in JL where within a single scene, "everything felt different in tone" to the degree that you are referring. Maybe compared to the same scene in trailers, but not within the same scene.
I recall some moments where Ben Affleck's hair was styled differently (because Aquaman had just thrown him against a wall) or Aquaman was standing in brighter lighting with a more garish background than he previously had been, but you'd have to be more specific beyond that. The filmmakers were pretty careful to reshoot key portions of the film, which is why some of the key moments in trailers differ from the corresponding sequence in the film itself. Yes, I know that some sequences in the film are clearly part of the reshoot process, but that's based on a knowledge and endless discussion of said reshoots. I doubt the average person would notice, and in fact, there are people who didn't even notice Superman's CGI mouth until it was pointed out to them.
Look, you can find continuity issues or minor differences in reshoots in almost any film, if you know where to look or look hard enough. Those kinds of things just don't bother me. I know I'm watching a movie that someone made on different days, I'm not looking to poke holes in the illusion any more than I have to.
Not only that, but both WW and AM have a clear Snyder influence in the way they are shot, they were all in this together before the studio ruined everything (how scummy is to have "directed by Zack Snyder" in the Justice League movie by the way)
He directed a lot of it. There are directors guild rules about this stuff.
DC was always darker, it is more mythological, while Marvel is more "cheerful" (but the base of Marvel and all superhero stories is tragedy) and human. I still cannot believe how WB ruined everything, we could have both DC and Marvel shared universe just like in the comic books, instead we have a total mess.
You realize that in the comics, there are times things don't work, right? Changes have to be made because something wasn't received well. I don't think everything has been ruined in the least. The DC universe is bigger than one or two characters, villains or storylines. One of them didn't work as well as it could have. There are so, so many that still could.
A movie franchise is never going to be just like the comic books, with hundreds of intertwining stories and characters. Nor should it be. The focus of the DCEU needs to be on making good films that honor the characters and their mythologies, not on simply blowing it up into a universe at every opportunity.