Christopher R Taylor

DC is really hit and miss in its movies.  They do really great (Batman Begins) or really awful (Catwoman) with huge tentpole movies that give the franchise more life for a while and a bunch of bad stuff in between.
 
I really like Snyder as a director, when he's doing the right sort of stuff for his style and mood.  He's just a terrible choice for doing DC's more mainstream characters.  The problem is that they live in constant terror of people associating them with the 60s Batman TV show again so they go way, crazy, stupid far overboard the other direction

Yeah its the job of an actor to take on a new role that they may  know nothing about, figure out the hook and what makes them work, and make that happen on screen.  While I think they did give Downey a bunch of greatest hits Iron Man stories to read, my guess is he just took a thumbnail sketch "rich playboy inventor arrogant learns a lesson" and riffed on that.  Its what they do for a living, and the good ones do it well.
 
Writers and directors, though... their entire job is to bring a story to life that fits the concept and they need to know, and love the material to do it well.  While I liked Thor, it was pretty clear Brannagh wasn't super familiar with any of the source material and was more working from a "bible" or advice from Feige etc, rather than a real love of and comfort with the character and story.

Im looking at doing something like this for various types of Hero campaigns, for easy jump-in campaigns without full adventure write ups

I think it is a bit disingenuous for people to call the theatrical version of the movie "Joss-tice League", as if Whedon was the visionary mastermind behind what we got. The real culprits were WB execs who couldn't keep their meddling fingers out of the pie, even when Snyder was in charge. Whedon was merely the knife with which they butchered what Snyder had begun. Geoff Johns gleefully engineered Snyder's removal and convinced Whedon to take the reins for a nice, fat paycheck. Whedon was never going to have the time or resources to make what anyone would truly call "his Justice League". His greatest failure, in my view, was in agreeing to the job in the first place, and putting himself in a position to take all the blame for what ended up on screen.
 
The fact that the "Snyder Cut" is, by many accounts, merely different--but not necessarily better--is testament to the fact that the movie was flawed at its foundations, and that no amount of re-working was ever going to save it and make it great. It seems to me that any glowing praise for it is coming primarily from DC fanboys who are desperate for a win here. I would not be surprised if the Snyder Cut fades from memory and is forgotten in a few years as WB moves on to the next series of disconnected movies of inconsistent quality.

It's a shame Amazon Prime didn't see it that way when they were pitched The Boys. Of course, I'm sure they feel mighty proud of themselves given how successful the show has been in connecting with viewers who have as much contempt for superheroes as Garth Ennis does.

Yeah its the job of an actor to take on a new role that they may  know nothing about, figure out the hook and what makes them work, and make that happen on screen.  While I think they did give Downey a bunch of greatest hits Iron Man stories to read, my guess is he just took a thumbnail sketch "rich playboy inventor arrogant learns a lesson" and riffed on that.  Its what they do for a living, and the good ones do it well.
 
Writers and directors, though... their entire job is to bring a story to life that fits the concept and they need to know, and love the material to do it well.  While I liked Thor, it was pretty clear Brannagh wasn't super familiar with any of the source material and was more working from a "bible" or advice from Feige etc, rather than a real love of and comfort with the character and story.

YMMV
The competent professional very confident highly trained warrior is generally reclassified to arrogant hard case by those that have not encountered them. 
So YMMV.

I think you idea is good, but your target subjects are a little off. For the most part, the actors do good jobs in their superhero roles and I can only think of one or two casting choices that didn't seem right to me.. I didn't care much for Edward Norton's Banner and Ryan Reynolds would have been a great Flash or Plastic Man but was a poor Hal Jordan. It's the writers, directors and producers that should have to read the comics. The actors are stuck putting lipstick on the pigs they're given(Affleck especially). 

I wanted to say, people keep saying the movie Joss Whedon made, but truthfully, he didn't. He reshot a couple scenes and added in the part at the beginning with the kids asking about what Superman liked about the planet. This was still, mostly, Snyder's movie. The powers that be brought Joss in specifically to add some lightness to the movie due to the clusterF that Snyder had made of Man of Steel and BVS. I would have been interested in seeing a JL made by Joss, and I guarantee that WW would have been a much bigger gun then she was. For awhile during the final battle, I thought they were making a decent case of her and Aquaman holding their own, but then, suddenly, they weren't.
In the old days of JL, we used to wonder why there was anyone called in to do stuff other then Supes or GL.

Snyder made a better movie than Whedon (which likely wasn't difficult given an extra two hours to work with).
 
But having the whole movie be a set-up for "Superman and His Barely Adequate Sidekicks" wasn't the payoff I was expecting. Or wanting.
 
Yeah, I've said for decades that the Flash's best superpower is that he can run and bring back Superman really quickly. But that's supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
 
Knowing that they were going into the Last Battle for the Planet without having Superman at their side, I would have expected them to have taken some more thought to it. (In particular, Batman saying he was specifically going to draw off the minions so the rest of them would have a clear shot at getting Steppenwolf then all the rest of them a couple of minutes later track down Batman, away from Steppenwolf, to have a "superhero group poster shot" was really annoying.)
 
I would rather have had something like Batman telling the Flash, "Here's my old utility belt. I labelled everything for you. Go and distract Steppenwolf. Put batarang bombs on his back. Tie his legs together with the grappling cord. Tie him to a couple of parademons. Glue his feet to the floor. Put a bag on his head. Pick up rubble from the floor and throw random things at him or at parademons. You're fast enough to come at him from unexpected directions then be gone before he knows you're there. Change things up, keep him guessing. Don't let him tag you. We're going to also use you for emergency extraction if one of us goes down or gets in trouble. Listen for our calls."
 
Then we get to see Flash geek out over opening up the utility belt in combat, fumble with the items, use some of them well, use some hilariously wrong (shining a flashlight in his eye, thinking it was a laser), and occasionally move the other heroes from point A to point B to keep them from getting overwhelmed. Which is a lot more visually interesting than having the Flash run in circles endlessly waiting for Cyborg to get ready to do something.
 
At least doing something like that would make it look like the heroes were thinking and trying. And when Superman comes along to save the day, it doesn't seem like the rest of the heroes had been floundering around helplessly until he came along.

Infinity War's darkness was in the storyline and plot, but the characters weren't grimdark angry and murderous versions of their comic book personas.

Wonder Woman is basically the number 2 powerhouse in the DC universe after Superman but the entire premise of Justice League was that they all suck and only Superman could do it, since he is better than all the rest of them at what they do.  I get that Superman is powerful and they want to emphasize that he's tougher and stronger than Thor x Hulk cubed, but it made the movie just seem like a really long setup for surly Superman to beat up everything in a few seconds.

Wonder Woman is basically the number 2 powerhouse in the DC universe after Superman but the entire premise of Justice League was that they all suck and only Superman could do it, since he is better than all the rest of them at what they do.  I get that Superman is powerful and they want to emphasize that he's tougher and stronger than Thor x Hulk cubed, but it made the movie just seem like a really long setup for surly Superman to beat up everything in a few seconds.

Wonder Woman is basically the number 2 powerhouse in the DC universe after Superman but the entire premise of Justice League was that they all suck and only Superman could do it, since he is better than all the rest of them at what they do.  I get that Superman is powerful and they want to emphasize that he's tougher and stronger than Thor x Hulk cubed, but it made the movie just seem like a really long setup for surly Superman to beat up everything in a few seconds.

Infinity War's darkness was in the storyline and plot, but the characters weren't grimdark angry and murderous versions of their comic book personas.

I think he loves stuff like Watchmen and 300 but not you know, superhero comics
 
I really liked the Lois & Clark show when it was on, even if it went cheap on the superhero stuff.

The Snyder version is the only version I have seen.  The only rhing I would like to have seen addressed is why Bull from Night Court is trying to destroy the world.

That isn't *quite* true;  there are some things missing from Champions Complete, altho I think this is nitpicking.  For example:  Mental Entangle.  The rules say the defense is Mental Defense, yes, but fail to mention the cost for buying additional defense.  In 6E, too, the cost is different, so the text in Champs Complete conflating mental defense with the usual PD/ED, would suggest a cost that's not what's in 6E....as it needs to be, because the + 2 1/4 Advantage still applies, so the 3 points per 2 Def for Mental Def is actually almost *10*...or, the same as +2 PD and +2 ED....
 
 

It took a while, but my group burned out on Savage Worlds. I started with the first release, then revised and so on, none of which seemed to fully address all of the issues with the system. I mean really, how many different stabs at chase rules have they had? 
 
We loved it at first, until all of the characters started to feel identical and it seemed like every roll needed points spending on it because the probabilities are a bit of a mess; and as mentioned above the game collapses at higher power levels due to the nature of its step-dice mechanic. I'm not sure it's possible to fix that. As a superhero game it's at best inadequate and disappointing. 
 
Necessary Evil had its moments, even if it never bothers to give decent advice and support for its core conceit (you're supposed to be playing villains, but the whole setup means you're indistinguishable from heroes), and Savage Worlds is fantastic as a convention game, but I would never consider it for supers. 

I'm curious about the tone. Is it as "dark" as Snyder's other DC movies, or more upbeat?

Shrinking bought as an attack with side effects (always go off) of reduces movement speed and increases range mods would probably work as a GM power.  I'd never allow someone to apply penalties to someone as a side effect on a power for a PC but the rules are different for simulating something as a GM.
 
Or just handwave it and say "you are shorter now: you move a 1/10th speed and range modifiers are in centimeters, not meters."

Im looking at doing something like this for various types of Hero campaigns, for easy jump-in campaigns without full adventure write ups

I kinda wish people would stop calling it "the Snyder cut."
 
"Cut" implies that something was left out. Call it the Snyder version, maybe, or just "every damned thing caught on flim," but "cut" is not the word to use.  At all.
 
 

I watched JL when it released (haven't seen the Snyder cut) and the issue was not the actors IMO.  They all played the parts they were given even if some of them stood out more than others. 
Such as Wonder Woman.  Gadot nailed the character in a fashion I have not seen since Downey became Ironman.   While Gadot may or may not reprise the role, she is Wonder Woman on the screen. 
 
Now the lack of quality and very poor storylines and well as overall just bad movie making that is plaguing most of the DC movie properties is another story.  Perhaps they should hire people that actually like superheroes to direct and write?

I can't help but contrast movie Captain Marvel with movie Wonder Woman. The former follows the trope of having a woman show how strong she is the same way that men are expected to show strength: be hard, suppress your emotions, because emotions are "weakness." Wonder Woman sacrifices none of what are commonly thought of as the "feminine" qualities of compassion and love. Rather than make her weak, they give her strength.