The tragedy of Justice League is not just about artistic integrity, director control, or a movie a bunch of people want to see.

It is about a culture of over-zealous NDAs, studio meddling, relentless audience testing, & political cowardice has creating unsafe work environments.

We need to talk about the fact that the cast & crew of Justice League were hired under the condition that they were working for Snyder, a specific creative team, & a specific creative vision.

That entering into that agreement was a bond of trust that the studio didn't value.

A number of people working in this franchise have spoken explicitly about how risky it is to enter into a CBM in the first place, among them Ben Affleck and Michael Shannon.

They both expressed concerns about being humiliated & being made to look foolish.

They are not the first actors to talk about the trust involved in allowing their performances to be reliant upon CGI effects & certainly not the last to talk about the strain & challenge of working in those environments.

If you listen to what the people involved are saying, you know that much of this cast had to be convinced. Much of this cast wouldn't be here without being sold a specific vision & it's not hard to imagine, a certain on-set culture.

It is a industry norm for the studio to feel fine about violating that agreement & changing the conditions of the working environment of these people without anything approaching consent or reaching a new agreement.

That norm allowed the studio to hire a known abuser to oversee & shape a set with a cast & crew of varying degrees of vulnerability, & for them to make the concerns many actors have signing on to these kinds of projects come true like a nightmare.

We know Joss Whedon humiliated and degraded the cast & crew of this film because we watched him humiliate and degrade them on screen.

We saw him take a labor of love & turn it into a sick joke which then played to a worldwide audience. We have evidence of his lack of respect.

What we didnt know is the abuse, disrespect, & unprofessionalism that happened on set. We didn't know because NDAs as they function in the current Hollywood system shelter abusers & protect studios & their money over the safety, health, & in some cases actual lives of talent.

Ray spoke up because he signed on for a vision of his character that was molded by a black man with all the experience & perspective he could bring. He spoke up because this isn't about just a job for him, it's about black people with disabilities, it's about good representation.

The boss that was forced upon him more than halfway through the completion of this project replaced that very specific, nuanced, and respectful vision that he consented to with the exact racist caricature that he feared going in. He has a right to be upset about that.

I hear a lot of people saying, that's how it is in this industry, & those people are right about that but that is exactly the problem.

Newcomers like Ray should not be asked to acclimate to the current corruption & injustice in the industry; they should be empowered to change it