While the reports of Joss Whedon injecting a lighter tone into Justice League have been heavily focused on, his other changes might be even more significant.
Whedon took over for director Zack Snyder after he stepped away due to a family tragedy. Whedon will now be bringing the project through to completion, but not without some major changes. According to /Film’s Peter Sciretta, that involves the ending.
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Sciretta said “From what I’ve heard is happening, Joss Whedon has been brought in to make it lighter, as has been reported, but he’s also redoing the ending of the movie”
Sciretta says the original focus wasn’t on Steppenwolf at all, and that’s going to change. “Originally this movie is all about the Mother Boxes Ya know. The bad guys are trying to get the Mother Boxes. Steppenwolf is trying to get the mother boxes and he’s trying to get the earth ready for the coming of Darkseid. And the original ending of the movie from what I understand was, he was kind of playing the Silver Surfer role, with Darkseid playing the Galactus role, and the ending of the movie was a cliffhanger and Justice League 2 was going to be Justice League vs Darkseid, Ya know, Darkseid arrives at Earth. This kind of down, dirty ending, and from what I understand that has been completely removed. The ending ends the movie like a movie, it doesn’t end on a huge cliffhanger now.”
Part of those reshoots also involves giving Steppenwolf enough lore to stand on his own, which will be achieved with the help of Robin Wright’s Antiope.
“They did a reshoot with Robin Wright from Wonder Woman, and that’s going to be, to setup a flashback explaining who Steppenwolf is and Steppenwolf is now the big bad of this movie, whereas Darkseid was this looming threat that won’t now come I don’t think.”
It seems Warner Bros. wants to perhaps take the Thanos approach, leaving their big bad for future films instead of using him so early in the process. Only time will tell if this all makes for a better movie, but assuredly fans will be pleased with the non-cliffhanger ending.
Justice League holds a 4.19 out of 5 on ComicBook.com’s anticipation rankings, and you can find the description for Justice League below.
In Justice League, fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroesโBatman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flashโit may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
Justice League hits theaters on November 17, 2017.