In a lot of ways, it’s a miracle that the MCU has managed to keep such a clean sense of continuity for over a decade. Keeping a comic book movie universe contained isn’t easy – just look at the insane chronology and alternate-timelines of the X-Men movies, or, more recently, the threads of the DCEU. While Warner Bros started out by making a purposefully inter-connected DC universe with Man Of Steel and Batman V Superman, it’s since taken a looser approach to that continuity and is now leaning towards its own multiverse set-up that looks set to kick off properly in Andy Muschietti’s upcoming Flash movie. If it’s hard to know exactly how all of the films fit together chronologically, Wonder Woman and WW84 director Patty Jenkins feels that one film in particular doesn’t fit into the established narrative: the theatrical cut of Justice League, as taken over by Joss Whedon after filmmaker Zack Snyder stepped down in the wake of a family tragedy.
“I think that all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did,” Jenkins said in a recent interview with Cinema Blend.“I felt that that version contradicted my first movie in many ways, and this current movie, which I was already in production on. So then, what are you going to do? You would have to play ball in both directions in order for that to work. I knew, when Zack was doing Justice League, sort of where she ends up. I didn’t change her suit, because I don’t want to contradict his films, you know? But yet I have to have my own films, and he’s been very supportive of that. I think that that Justice League was kind of an outlier. They were trying to turn one thing into another. And so then it becomes, ‘I don’t recognise half of these characters. I’m not sure what’s going on.’” As for how it was seeing another director bring Diana Prince to the screen, she said: “It was hard.”
It seems very few people were satisfied with Justice League, then – it didn’t ignite the box office, was met with lacklustre reviews, doesn’t garner much love from fans, and seems to have rubbed fellow DC directors up the wrong way too. Not to mention the current investigations into the reshoots following the allegations of misconduct from Cyborg actor Ray Fisher.
For now, Snyder is back at work on his official Snyder Cut of the Justice League – a four-hour miniseries intended to reinstate his original vision for the team-up between DC’s greatest heroes, including tons of new footage and excising the scenes shot by Whedon. It’s expected to hit the HBO Max streaming service in 2021. And going by the early reactions, Jenkins might be on to another winner with her long-awaited sequel Wonder Woman 1984 – which hits UK cinemas on 16 December, and comes to American screens via cinemas and HBO Max in a simultaneous release this Christmas.