Joss Whedon opens up and criticizes the Justice League cast and their "rude" behavior during the reshoots on the infamously troubled film. The fifth installment in the DC Extended Universe served as a follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as the world is still reeling from the death of Superman. Feeling a new extraterrestrial threat is on the horizon, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince begin recruiting for a new team of superheroes to protect the world, reaching out to Barry Allen/The Flash, Arthur Curry/Aquaman and Victor Stone/Cyborg.
Ben Affleck led the ensemble cast of Justice League alongside returning DCEU stars Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Connie Nielsen and Jeremy Irons and properly introducing Ezra Miller as The Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman and Ray Fisher as Cyborg after making brief cameos in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The production of the film suffered a major setback halfway through when original co-writer/director Zack Snyder stepped down due to a combination of his daughter's suicide and creative differences with Warner Bros. over the vision of the film. The studio subsequently brought in The Avengers' Joss Whedon to rewrite and reshoot a large portion of the film, ballooning its budget to $300 million and seeing its theatrical cut released to largely divisive reviews from critics and audiences alike.
Nearly five years after the film first hit theaters, Joss Whedon has sat down with Vulture to discuss the troubled production of Justice League. The filmmaker, who was accused by multiple stars of harassment and toxic behavior on the set, criticized the film's stars and their behavior during reshoots, stating he had never worked with "a ruder group of people" and writing off Gadot's accusations of his threatening to kill her career. Whedon also criticized fans of Snyder for turning the Internet and his former actors against him in the name of the original filmmaker and their efforts to get the original vision of the film restored. Whedon closed out the interview with the statement below:
"The beginning of the internet raised me up, and the modern internet pulled me down. The perfect symmetry is not lost on me."
Whedon's Justice League criticism comes as a surprise and at a bizarre time following years of accusations and criticisms leveled at his behavior on the set of the film. Ray Fisher memorably began a campaign to expose Whedon's poor behavior during reshoots for the DCEU title, calling the filmmaker's treatment of him and his co-stars "abusive" and "unprofessional" and accusing him of racism for cutting down his scenes due to racist intentions. This would only be the start of his apparent downfall in the industry as Gadot would later back up Fisher's accusations with her own stories from the set, Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Charisma Carpenter would accuse him of toxic behavior with corroborations from co-stars Amber Benson and Michelle Trachtenberg and he would exit the HBO series The Nevers.
The most interesting thing of note for Whedon's Justice League criticisms is that this is the first time he's spoken out regarding any of the accusations leveled against him in recent years. Given his past in the superhero genre and the reshoots being the start of this wave of allegations, it's understandable he would want to clear the air with the film before moving on to address the others. However, with Whedon's comments directly critiquing those speaking against him, it seems unlikely he'll receive much support from even those who tried to defend him in the past.
Source: Vulture
