Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by DrWally

You're slightly missing the point. Which is that the outcome of BVS was still better than that of the outcome of that of the interfered Justice League. By far. Had Snyder been left alone, JL as released would at least have done better, but we'll never know for sure.

I think we can make an educated guess from Snyder's post-300 track record (three consecutive big budget flops and two big budget major underachievers) and the specific response to BvS that a Snyder version would have bombed. They didn't make last-minute changes because they were happy with BvS or because they thought a Snyder version was at least going to break even - they did it because, like MoS, it made half of what they were hoping for and it was poorly received by the general public as well as critics. Had they not boxed themselves into a corner by setting the start of shooting for two weeks after BvS opened and had expensive pay or play deals with the cast that would have meant massive cancellation costs, it's doubtful they would have gone ahead with a Snyder JL in any form.

None of the BvS statistics were encouraging for a Snyder JL: it made half of its money on its opening weekend, which meant that word of mouth and repeat business was poor - that's not an optimistic sign for doubling-down on Snyder's vision with a sequel. It got nowhere near the $1.5b potential gross that many were expecting. It had one of the biggest second weekend drops ever (even bigger than the second weekend drop for the underperforming MoS) and followed with further big drops.

BvS weekend drops - 69.1%/54.5/61.4%/39.1%
Mos: 64.6%/49.8%/45%/58.7%
JL: 56.2%/59.5%/42%/55.4%

So, as well as scoring a higher Cinemascore rating from OW moviegoers, JL had better holds after its poor start, implying better general word of mouth.

Those drops look even worse compared to Wonder Woman, which had strong WM:

WW - 43.3%/29.5%/39.6%/36.9%

Most damning were the home video numbers - at $80.5m, lower than the lower-grossing MoS ($120m) or Wonder Woman ($98m) by a substantial margin. While home video numbers were dropping year on year, the drop from MoS was above normal and the fact the subsequent WW did better implies that BvS wasn't something that won viewers over on a new cut.

The theatrical JL's lousy opening could easily be put down to the bad taste BvS left in mainstream audiences' mouths: the fact that it held a bit better - making about 59% of its total after its OW (still below average but not as embarrassingly far below average as BvS) implies a more favorable general audience reaction. If you look at rottentomatoes it's not just the critics who preferred it: while BvS got 28% critics and 63% audience ratings, JL got 40% critics and 71% audience.

The very best you can say about Snyder's 'vision' was that it was, to put it kindly, hugely divisive, and dividing the audience for their biggest IPs was simply not what he was hired to do.

JL was doomed from the moment BvS landed with a thud and left a bad taste in too many of the audiences' mouths that they weren't coming back, no matter what (and forget fanboys: studios don't care about them because there aren't enough to make a $250-300m film a hit while most of the audience don't care about who directed their men in spandex movies). I'm pretty sure that by bringing in the director of The Avengers in the studio equivalent of a Hail Mary pass they made more at the box-office than they would have with Snyder.

And creative freedom is never a problem. Ever.

And dammit, we've got some of the biggest and most self-indulgent box-office and critical disasters of all time and a handful of defunct studios to prove it!