1) Let The Creators Do Their Job
And finally, the biggest lesson for WB to learn from not only Justice League, but every movie in the DCEU canon, is the following.
Whether it’s David Ayer for Suicide Squad or Zack Snyder for any movie except Man of Steel, Warner Brothers has all-too-often altered the finished product significantly in the name of making the film more marketable. It’s not in the name of creative differences or anything constructive, but for the purpose of having the movie be more audience-friendly and popular.
WB has made the claim that they’re “creator-friendly” when it comes to these pics, but they’ve yet to choose what the director envisions over what critics would complain about. Zack Snyder may have seen Batman V Superman as a well thought-out deconstruction of Batman and Superman as characters, but WB saw it as a movie that was 30 minutes too long and a less-marketable film than what their competitors were offering. Justice League suffers from some significant identity crisis at points because you’ve got the man with the original vision of the project away from the camera and a studio-embraced option (Joss Whedon) was given more power than he likely should’ve had.
Justice League was meant to be a culmination/celebration of the DCEU films, yet it felt the most out of place among the four other entries. This was because WB didn’t trust Zack Snyder enough to follow his vision to the end. Even if the vision isn’t what you’d expect or what you were hoping for, fans would always rather see a fully-realized vision than one that was altered based on a test audiences response so that it was the most enjoyable to the most people.
Viewers can feel when a film is more factory based than creatively developed (so don’t try and hide it). In the end, it’s vital that WB just acknowledges the vision provided by the filmmakers they hired and embrace it best they can. You hired these talented people behind the camera for a reason guys, now it’s time to let them show off their (unfiltered) product.