Stream of consciousness...
Via
Twitter Via Vero:
This exchange was on or about March 7, 2017. Zack would have been toiling away on JL. This would have been after he hand-picked Joss to help tweak scenes, dialog, etc. because he knows how to collaborate and knows Joss is a master of a certain tone (humor, sentimentality, etc). Zack might have seen rough cuts of WW and definitely knew the story (Patty's said, repeatedly, that the script was steady and unchanging once they started), the angle, the flavor, and the feelings it was aiming for. He'd probably felt Patty and Geoff's excitement and knew he wanted some of that in his film as well (it was always going to get there, but knows Joss can translate it to screen more accessibly than he has in the past).
So he's completely sincere on March 7th, that he wants Justice League Superman to feel true, inspire, and be beautiful... and he's doing everything in his power to do it. Outsourcing regardless of the narratives some might make of it, because he wants to deliver that in his capstone.
Five days later... his daughter is taken from him.
It's a heartbreaking tragedy to imagine wanting to finally bring something always intended to be hopeful, light, and optimistic... only to be slammed with such real-life darkness. Two things stolen at once... and the one thing where you poured all your heart and soul and passion into it just prior... suddenly a completely meaningless thing by comparison to the loss of the other.
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I know MOS and BvS are considered dark and inaccessible to a lot of people, but they're tinged with the tragedy of reality that life isn't always fair or just or deserving, and we persevere anyways. It drives me a little nuts that Johns, who broke out as a writer with retcons and kicking over sacred cows (challenging the status quo), now spouts superhero platitudes all the time in interviews... and it's seeped into his writing as nostalgic pandering to romanticized versions of the characters (that maybe never were) to reinforce the status quo... which, I guess, is the natural evolution once you
become "the man" you stop challenging it. To me, he's sincere, he's actually drunk the Kool-Aid on his approach. I like to think that he rubbed off on Jenkins in so far as she recognizes the power and appeal of his rhetoric... which is why she now spouts it in all her interviews for Wonder Woman... but knows better in
real life, which is why the actual execution of the film wasn't
as cheesy or ham-fisted or cliche as Geoff's platitudes... even when the day is won by some vague belief in love. Ugh.
Basically, if Snyder is too depressingly real and Johns is too saccharine... then it's good to have a balance of both, a push and pull... Snyder paired with Joss... the director of
Monster (starring a serial killing rape victim) paired with Johns... etc. People keep cheering the positive aspects of Wonder Woman but they're only resonant because Snyder created a hunger for it and set the stage for it (with his prior films and his influence on WW), which he ultimately meant to deliver on with Justice League. If MOS or BvS had been as light as Superman '78, there's no way Jenkins would have been allowed to do the film she did nor would it have received the reception it got.
We know this because of all the preceding attempts
at Wonder Woman. Before there was MOS or BvS setting the stage with the appropriate dramatic lighting, dimmed down so a spotlight could shine... the preceding Supermen films
were light and unreal, so the WB kept chasing inauthentic, insincere, radically reworked visions of Wonder Woman... from Joss, to NBC's pilot, to MacLaren's talking tigers, and so on. Only because Snyder did something so radical and challenging and dark in his take, did it force them to just look for the most straight-forwards, honest, sincere (if safe) take on Wonder Woman with minimal diversion... but even that could be too cheesy and ring untrue if Snyder hadn't pushed for a dark setting more morally ambiguous and more disquieting than tradition. The original WW in WW2 is
too pure, patriotic, and jingoistic if fighting the almost comically evil Nazis where she's morally justified to the utmost and completely unquestionable. That push and pull between the ideals of the original mythos against the ambiguity, darkness, and mess of WWI make her more real and substantive and interesting, instead of pollyannaish... a chance to actually test, challenge, and ultimately affirm her beliefs with nuance, instead of absolutism.
This isn't to take away anything from Jenkins actually doing the work and executing her vision, simply stating that the opportunity and timing owe a great debt to Snyder no matter how controversial or distasteful to some. Even the exact same product would have been received differently if it followed different films (imagine if it came out immediately after First Avenger)... timing and hunger, a stage set, matters.
I hope that they don't forget that the significance of catching Hope in Pandora's box is it's set against all the evil loosed upon the world... not just Pandora admiring all the light and good of hope in isolation.
