Justice league box office: What went wrong

[Osiris-Rex]

It brought much better box office result than SR. Better audience score as well.

No, both are important, MoS got flaws but the action scenes were probably the best among the superhero movies. It finally showed us how such powerful beings fight like.

Man of Steel didn't get that much better domestic box office than Superman Returns. Adjusted for inflation, MoS made $291 million and SR made around $258 million, about a $33 million difference domestic.
Worldwide doesn't really count because older movie weren't as big overseas as they are now.
And Superman Returns had a better critics score, Certified Fresh at 75% while Man of Steel was Rotten at 55%. Let's pretend audience scores are meaningful. MoS was 75%, SR was 61%, only a 14% difference.
And both upright popcorn tubs.

Transformers had three movies out already that showed how powerful beings fight by the time Man of Steel came along, so that was hardly anything new or innovative.

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

No. The verdict was returned long ago.

The only verdict i remember was a hung jury.

[Slowpokeking]

Man of Steel didn't get that much better domestic box office than Superman Returns. Adjusted for inflation, MoS made $291 million and SR made around $258 million, about a $33 million difference domestic.
Worldwide doesn't really count because older movie weren't as big overseas as they are now.
And Superman Returns had a better critics score, Certified Fresh at 75% while Man of Steel was Rotten at 55%. Let's pretend audience scores are meaningful. MoS was 75%, SR was 61%, only a 14% difference.
And both upright popcorn tubs.

Transformers had three movies out already that showed how powerful beings fight by the time Man of Steel came along, so that was hardly anything new or innovative.

That's already a big difference, SR wasn't even able to get a 5M+ which is the line to get a sequel. MoS has better audience score as well.

SR is pretty much a remake of Superman 1 plus some weird idea of Singer, also NO big fight sucks.

TF is far from Superman's level.

[Osiris-Rex]

That's already a big difference, SR wasn't even able to get a 5M+ which is the line to get a sequel. MoS has better audience score as well.
.

Neither did Batman Begins, but it got a sequel. In fact Superman Returns made more worldwide than Batman Begins. And the audience score of Man of Steel wasn't
significantly higher than Superman Returns. Plus Superman Returns was Certified Fresh while Man of Steel was Rotten. Justice League also gets a high audience score
and people at WB are getting shifted around. While Star Wars: The Last Jedi is getting poor audience scores and it is already making a ton of money with no talk of
anyone getting fired. So I don't think audience scores count for much. If all that can be said of Man or Steel is it got a higher audience score, that isn't saying much.

[Gaastra]

Off topic so i'll delete it.

[AJBopp]

Deleted. Shouldn't have replied to a non-JL post in this thread

[Da Boat]

I have little interest in watching indestructible beings fight each other. I had the same problem with Thor vs Hulk.

Man of Steel was worse in my opinion because the fight made no sense. The bad guys would wale on Superman and he would get all groggy and the movie wanted you to bite your fingernails with worry about him. Then within 60 seconds he would be back on his feet and unloading on the bad guys as if he wasn't injured at all.

The inconsistency in whether they could actually be hurt or not was finally climaxed by the clear plot point that Kryptonian necks aren't actually invulnerable after all, and all it takes is a good twist to break a bone when blows of tremendously greater force could evidently not break other Kryptonian bones.

I think that is part of what is meant my no emotional involvement. It was a special effects explosion with no rationale behind it. Kind of makes you think Superman could have pulled a similar move on Doomsday but, well, the plot needed Superman to die so...no.

The Superman from Man of Steel would have ended Doomsday in B v S in 5 minutes. (or they would have kept punching each other over and over and it would have been boring)

[brettc1]

I have little interest in watching indestructible beings fight each other. I had the same problem with Thor vs Hulk.

Man of Steel was worse in my opinion because the fight made no sense. The bad guys would wale on Superman and he would get all groggy and the movie wanted you to bite your fingernails with worry about him. Then within 60 seconds he would be back on his feet and unloading on the bad guys as if he wasn't injured at all.

The inconsistency in whether they could actually be hurt or not was finally climaxed by the clear plot point that Kryptonian necks aren't actually invulnerable after all, and all it takes is a good twist to break a bone when blows of tremendously greater force could evidently not break other Kryptonian bones.

I think that is part of what is meant my no emotional involvement. It was a special effects explosion with no rationale behind it. Kind of makes you think Superman could have pulled a similar move on Doomsday but, well, the plot needed Superman to die so...no.

Neither Thor nor Hulk are indestructible.

I also don't have a problem with the neck being more vulnerable to torsion that the rest of the body is to blunt force trauma. Kryptonian's only mass about as much as normal humans, so obviously the force of their blows is going to cause 'knockback' as it was called in the DCHeroes RPG.

Finally, if you watch BVS again, just before the nuke hits Superman has his arm around Doomsday's neck like he is indeed trying to snap it.

[Osiris-Rex]

Neither Thor nor Hulk are indestructible.

I also don't have a problem with the neck being more vulnerable to torsion that the rest of the body is to blunt force trauma. Kryptonian's only mass about as much as normal humans, so obviously the force of their blows is going to cause 'knockback' as it was called in the DCHeroes RPG.

Finally, if you watch BVS again, just before the nuke hits Superman has his arm around Doomsday's neck like he is indeed trying to snap it.

Do you think this is what went wrong with the Justice League box office? People just figured that Superman was going to snap Steppenwolf's neck? So been there, seen that?

[brettc1]

Do you think this is what went wrong with the Justice League box office? People just figured that Superman was going to snap Steppenwolf's neck? So been there, seen that?

I think that the problem was two fold.

First, the low opening weekend is clearly a sign that people were wary of this movie in the first place. The chickens of BVS had come home to roost.

Wonder Woman got a solid opening weekend because she was the best part of BVS for most people. Superman was aloof, Batman was a borderline psychotic. Or, as the HISHE video pointed out "You [Batman] killed a lot of people and you [Superman] forgot to smile." But even so, Wonder Woman started off slow.

The advantage WW had was that is was a damn solid movie. Once word of mouth got around, people were flocking to see it. Its weekend drops were incredibly small. Of course it also tapped into the female demographic in a way that no superhero movie had ever done before - and I mean EVER! Most female led comic books movies have been disasters and even the best were made for male audiences. This was different and tapped into a whole new demographic. Women taking their 60+ year old moms to see Wonder Woman [I saw it happen].

But with Justice League, people were again nervous. Wonder Woman was in it, but this was the same crew that brought us BVS and everyone knew that Superman and Batman were going to feature large. So the initial reaction by audiences was very cautious.

Even so, they had room to succeed. Wonder Woman did, right? But Wonder Woman is, as I said, a solid movie well told and well edited, with engaging characters. It's a comic book movie that watches like a war drama. It has action, romance, comedy and tragedy in just the right mix.

Justice League has almost none of that. Word of mouth quickly killed this moive's chances. Clumsy action, awkward story telling, bad visuals [a lot of it is just ugly to look at] and a general lack of depth. The romance theme was shallow and badly presented and the climax... well, it just wasn't actually. In fact it was probably the most anti-climactic resolution in any superhero movie I've seen. Superman shows up, throws out a few quips - punch, yank, done. I think even people not invested in the characters as comic book readers were wondering why the hell the rest of the League were needed?

People who saw it told people they knew, and that was the end of that. The consensus of many became "I can wait and see it on Netflix" or whatever, while those who saw it largely decided it was not one they needed to see again. Comic book movies thrive largely on repeat viewings. With JL I think the overwhelming majority opinion was it was a 'one and done' deal.

[Wandering_Wand]

The complete lack of advertisement can also be to blame.
I saw about twice as much marketing material for Wonder Woman as I did for Justice League. I really think WB didn't sink very much cost into the advertisements for JL. I saw Wonder Woman commercials for weeks after it was released. I've only seen two TV commercials between now and the last 3 months for JL in total.

[Osiris-Rex]

The complete lack of advertisement can also be to blame.
I saw about twice as much marketing material for Wonder Woman as I did for Justice League. I really think WB didn't sink very much cost into the advertisements for JL. I saw Wonder Woman commercials for weeks after it was released. I've only seen two TV commercials between now and the last 3 months for JL in total.

So probably not the hundreds of millions of dollars for advertising that some people are claiming. It has made twice as much box office as it cost to make. With the theaters getting half, that would be the break even point
if not a lot of money was spent on advertising.

[brettc1]

The complete lack of advertisement can also be to blame.
I saw about twice as much marketing material for Wonder Woman as I did for Justice League. I really think WB didn't sink very much cost into the advertisements for JL. I saw Wonder Woman commercials for weeks after it was released. I've only seen two TV commercials between now and the last 3 months for JL in total.

But on a world wide basis it would still run into a big $ amount. I've seen billboards with "Brisbane is all in" and there was plenty of pre movie advertising.

WW got more after release because WB saw it was doing well and capitalised on the momentum. Good reviews and great word of mouth. Obviously with JL they saw which way the wind was blowing and decided that sinking in extras advertising $ would just be throwing good money after bad.

[CliffHanger2]

Dropping this movie a month before SW probably wasn't WBs brightest moment either.

[AJBopp]

The complete lack of advertisement can also be to blame.
I saw about twice as much marketing material for Wonder Woman as I did for Justice League. I really think WB didn't sink very much cost into the advertisements for JL. I saw Wonder Woman commercials for weeks after it was released. I've only seen two TV commercials between now and the last 3 months for JL in total.

I saw about three times as much advertising for JL as I did for WW pre-release. My anecdotal evidence is no more valid than anyone else's though. Post-release, I saw more advertising for WW than for JL, but that's to be expected, because WW was still selling enormously well, so there was still reason to capitalize on it. More commercials were not going to make more significantly more people go see JL.

Personally, I trust the industry experts estimating that $150-200 million was spent promoting JL.