Zack Snyder's Justice League: Was Joss Whedon being RACIST? Reviewer points out details

Zack Snyder's Justice League has been endlessly compared to Joss Whedon's Justice League ever since the former has been released by its makers, pleasing the fans of the director who had been campaigning for the same for nearly half a decade. Amongst the many things that Zack Snyder's Justice League has been hailed for, reviewers have given the makers of the same credit for restoring and even adding scenes featuring Ray Fisher's Cyborg in Justice League and the sequences involving the daughters of Themyscira. But, an Independent reviewer who goes by the name of Grace Randolph has pointed out certain distinctions between Joss Whedon's Justice League, which is now popularly known as Josstice League and the film that was released on March 18th. These distinctions majorly focus on actors of colour. The video can be found below.

Grace Randolph's Zack Snyder's Justice League review:

The relevant contents of the video:

In the video above, as and when it crosses the 5 minute and 40-second mark, while on the subject of the diversity that she got to witness whilst watching the sequence that ended with the sacrifice of the daughters of Themyscira, the reviewer can be heard saying that, "And also, much more diverse group of Amazons here than we've actually seen in any of the Wonderwoman stories, you know, in the DCEU. And so it is a consistent and really odd theme that, you know, Joss Whedon and Geoff Johns cut out almost all the characters of colour in their cut. I mean, it's just really weird. And all these actors did such a wonderful job. You know, that Amazon, who almost wants to touch the mother box, and it activates. She was phenomenal"

After 26-odd minutes into the video, Randolph dives into one of the biggest distinctions of the film, which is the screen-time of Ray Fisher in Justice League. Praising the performance of Ray Fisher in Justice League right off the bat and then briefly discussing the fact that he was left on the cutting room floor back in 2017, Randolph can be heard saying that, "Cyborg! Wow! This character has so many layers, it is shocking that they would be cut out of the film. Who looks at that and says "I don't think we need this"?, I mean, it's very suspicious, as I said, that Whedon and Jeff Johns have cut pretty much only the characters of colour from the movie."

As reported earlier, amongst the many actors that were left on the cutting room floor was a certain Amanda Maud, who stars as a financially struggling single mother who becomes a millionaire after winning a local lottery in the film, courtesy Ray Fisher's Cyborg. Maud, who is an American actor of Chinese descent, quite recently inquired about her part, which was edited out of the Whedon cut, through Twitter. The tweet can be found below.

Previous controversies featuring Joss Whedon:

It is a known fact that much before the news pieces concerning Ray Fisher, who is an actor of African-American descent, and Whedon surfaced, Whedon had been accused of oversexualizing the Scarlet Witch, which was played by Elizabeth Olsen in what was her first-ever MCU film, which was Avengers: Age Of Ultron. The accusations came after it was noticed that Olsen's Wanda Maximoff displayed an unnecessary amount of cleavage. Years later, reports regarding Gal Gadot refusing to film a scene that sexualised Diana Prince/Wonder Woman began to surface. Gone February 14th, a publication known as The Cut released a piece that specifically focused on the controversies that Joss Whedon was at the heart of. One of the subheadings of the report was, "Whedon has been skewered for his sexist first attempt at a Wonder Woman script.". Additionally, while talking about the non-feminist nature of the director, a blog dedicated to him, titled https://josswhedonisnotafeminist.tumblr.com/. highlighted certain portions of The Avengers script which was reportedly released by Industry Insiders that pointed towards a sexist bias against the female characters in the film. One can see that in the script, Whedon has described his lady characters as "sexy" way too often and has talked about their body shape/type. On the other hand, when it came to the male characters of the same, Whedon has described them without objectifying them in any manner.