Justice league box office: What went wrong

[kingaliencracker]

What went wrong? I think it's harder to point out what went right LOL.
I was astonished to see how little they managed to get the characters right. Aquaman was Conan, Barry was an annoying comic relief that wasn't even funny and Wonder Woman could have been better explored. Batman was ok and Cyborg was closer to his comic self, but since his current characterization is pretty dull and depressing, this is one character I wish they changed.
Superman was on a whole other level of shitty writing. "Can you bleed" made me cringe hard.
All in all, it was a pretty terrible movie, with bad CG and an even worse plot. Only the world's best marketing could have saved it from failure.

Wow that's pretty surprising. I've heard this film criticized for a lot of different reasons but most agree this was the best Superman has been written in a non-Reeve film.

[Bukdiah]

At this point, being accused of trying to do it like Marvel could hardly be considered a losing scenario.

It is when people consider you an inferior version of a popular brand ie Marvel. Why would people waste time watching a bootleg Marvel product when they can just watch a real Marvel movie?

There was a video game called Dante's Inferno in 2010 that copied God of War's whole gameplay and sold miserably. It was called out for being a clone.

[Bukdiah]

Wow that's pretty surprising. I've heard this film criticized for a lot of different reasons but most agree this was the best Superman has been written in a non-Reeve film.

Aye, I thought he returned to boy scout mode (don't wanna list spoilers 'cause not sure if that's allowed)

[Wandering_Wand]

Relatively spoiler free.
I'm not sure where to start, so here it goes. I'll post this in a few threads for visibility since there are so many open right now.
I've been wanting to type out a long and winded opinion piece on JL, WB, Whedon, Snyder, the fan base, etc. all weekend.

I saw JL Friday evening in IMAX (I've now seen it twice) and as the opening credits started with the companies and the music, I got goosebumps. I was ready for this movie and after all the years waiting, there I was, about to embark on the first ever live action JL journey.
Once the post credits scene rolled and I was walking out, I left satisfied, but wanting so much more. I knew this movie had more to offer us in terms of story, characters, and villain arc(s). I can say I really enjoyed Superman (he needs to be like that from now on), and I am a fan of Ray Fisher as Cyborg now and am hopping on the Cyborg bandwagon.
Miller as Barry is great, Gal continues to rock, and Momoa needed more screen time! Honestly, the weakest link, IN MY OPINION (which is what all this is), was Affleck. It wasn't his acting, nor his execution. It was simply the fact that he was now sharing the screen and sharing hero duties with the freakin' JUSTICE LEAGUE. Having said that, the characters are all on point and I want to see all of them in either solo/origin films or pairings (Flash and Cyborg, for example).

My biggest issues with the film were what everyone else seem to be saying: the film felt chopped and thus lacked proper development and run time. This movie could have VERY easily given us another 30 mins, which could be about another 5 minutes for every member of the league.
Now, whether that's on Snyder, Whedon, or Tsujihara (who gave the two hour mandate), I think could be argued from multiple angles. Other than that, I can't say there wasn't much else about the film that I had major issues with. One minor issue was Whedon's lame humor and turning Batman into a joke machine (nah, don't do that again). Some scenes you could tell were Whedon, some Snyder. But honestly, I was just there to have a good time (which I did) and I didn't take much notice. Cavill's CGI lip wasn't that bad, and maybe we would have noticed something was off (or not) had we not known about the mustache issue from MI:6.

Steppenwolf wasn't bad either. I really think people go out of their way to bash DCEU's CGI, which I can say is no better, nor any worse than the CGI in Dr. Strange, Guardians, or even Thor. Having watched Ragnarok a couple weeks ago, Hela's CGI in some scenes was atrocious as was Surtur's. But no one bats an eye with the MCU.
Anyway, I liked Steppenwolf's design and thought he was pretty formidable at times.

Anyway, the critics always back hand DC movies since the Nolan films. They really look for things to nitpick and I think the MCU has ruined how CBMs are analyzed and reviewed (Disney/Marvel has a formula and all their movies look the same). Critics (who DO have impact on Box office and fan opinions) overtly compared JL to the MCU many times. It's clear the critics have their templates now.
It's pretty obvious this movie will be considered a dud, unless it has Wonder Woman legs and can hit the $800 millions (which is still a possibility). WB should be very concerned with how they treated this film because it may not outgross Thor: Ragnarok now.

Also, where was all of the advertising?! There was far less than with Wonder Woman and BvS, and I think that may be why this bombed OW. I also haven't seen much advertising towards children.

Anyway, I could keep going and going, but I'll wrap it up this way:

-JL is probably my favorite DCEU movie now (and probably second all time behind The Dark Knight).
-It wasn't perfect, but it sure as hell wasn't as bad as critics made it out to be. It was funny, light, serious, and introduced my favorite heroes.
-Having said that… This movie NEEDED MORE TIME!
-Elfman is done in my book. His score was awful for this movie and completely forgettable.
-I'd rather Whedon take a hike and stay away from the DCEU and have Snyder gracefully bow out the way he chooses (as long as he isn't directing).
-Kevin Tsujihara needs to be fired immediately.
-WB needs to find who their rats are leaking so much information before their movies and take care of it (we didn't need to know about Cavill's mustache before the film).
-Please do NOT reboot!
The characters are all here and I love everyone of them. If anything, get the Affleck situation resolved, but keep everyone else intact and shift focus on truly director oriented solo films. We don't need a big build up to the New Gods or Apokolips. Good stories need to first come from the numerous titles and characters you have at your disposal and we can keep the big ensemble/team up storylines together in JL films (which I hope we see a sequel of in 3-4 years, although unlikely at this point).
-Get Flash, Cyborg, Green Lantern, Man of Steel 2 and The Batman lined up ASAP!



Thank you Zack Snyder for building this universe. I'm sorry you and I couldn't see your finished vision, but I think it's time we move on. Your name as a director for these movies has become very poisonous.

[numberthirty]

LOTS of reasons...

1) Bad reviews.

2) Zack Snyder.

3) WB Interference.

4) Bad release date.

5) Not a very memorable movie.

Yep.

While I don't know about this "Went Wrong"/"Failure" talk, they made just enough missteps to ensure they weren't going to blow expectations out of the water.

For the film they put out, it's making perfectly respectable money.

[Midvillian1322]

Wow that's pretty surprising. I've heard this film criticized for a lot of different reasons but most agree this was the best Superman has been written in a non-Reeve film.

I thought the movie was fun but meh overall but other then barry being a bit annoyong with forced jokes they were all pretty fun imo. Cyborg looked dumb when he took the hoodie off but the actor did a great job. Aquaman was fun,Batman and WW were already good imo. But superman in limited screen time was the best version Canvill has done yet. Though in a biylt of fan service to get ppl to shut up Superman literaly puts his hand up and stops the movie to announce he has to go save some civilians

[AJBopp]

Anyway, the critics always back hand DC movies since the Nolan films. They really look for things to nitpick and I think the MCU has ruined how CBMs are analyzed and reviewed (Disney/Marvel has a formula and all their movies look the same). Critics (who DO have impact on Box office and fan opinions) overtly compared JL to the MCU many times. It's clear the critics have their templates now.

I wonder how you feel about the critical reaction to Wonder Woman, or if you think Wonder Woman was a Marvel Template film.

Also, when even the strongest fans of the movie leave the theater saying "it was good, but not great," one has to wonder what the motivation is for the casually interested, who've already been burned on MoS and BvS, to see it, rather than, say, taking in Thor another time. I think many give critics way too much credit for influencing the audience. It only really seems to happen when a lot of people have a different opinion about a movie than me.

[Punisher007]

Also having him spoilers:

Punk out the entire rest of the JL and then effortlessly deal with the villain that they all struggled with, didn't help matters.

end of spoilers

Also some fans whining about "a conspiracy" or "Marvel bias," or other such nonsense doesn't help the discussion. When people talk about "entitled fanboys," this is the kind of stuff they're referring to. Here's an idea, maybe they didn't like the film, because they didn't find it to be very good.

[regg215]

Also having him spoilers:

Punk out the entire rest of the JL and then effortlessly deal with the villain that they all struggled with, didn't help matters.

end of spoilers

Also some fans whining about "a conspiracy" or "Marvel bias," or other such nonsense doesn't help the discussion. When people talk about "entitled fanboys," this is the kind of stuff they're referring to. Here's an idea, maybe they didn't like the film, because they didn't find it to be very good.

I can certainly see where when people claim "marvel bias" that is seems like they are just making excuses and while I think that the DCEU is certainly behind marvel right now, there does seem to be a fair amount of critics who are incapable of watching a DC movie without comparing it to marvel. While I do think that ultimately critics base their reviews on whether they thought the movie was good or not with DCEU films there seems to be an almost gleeful delight from reviewers when they find things to complain about in DC films. Reviewers tend to exaggerate complaints with DC films, BVS and Suicide Squad had their problems but reviews made it seem like they were some of the worst films ever made and had no good elements. While I agree with most people that marvel has mostly made great films, critics seem to ignore issues that occur in marvel films but blast dc for the same issues. For example, both Civil War and BVS had huge plot holes with how overly complicated the villains plan was in those movies, BVS got blasted for it in almost every review while almost nothing was said about it in Civil war. Both marvel and DC films have Villain issues, yet with DC critics never stop complaining about this issue and trash the film in the review because of it, where as with marvel it gets mentioned but never is used as a reason the whole movie gets trashed. Critics seem to be overly polite in any criticism of marvel and seem to exaggerate any issue in a DC film to ridiculous lengths. In the end you can pretty much make any movie bad if you sit down intent on looking for flaws,it kinda seems like a lot of critics go into DC movies wanting to dislike the films and go into marvel movies wanting to like them. Critics seem to comb through DC films looking for something to dislike, if there is a plot hole in the movie the whole review is affected by it where as with marvel if a plot hole happens, critics just let it go. I don't know if there is an actual bias but I feel like if Justice League was the same exact movie but was released by marvel it would have gotten good reviews. Conversely if DC released a movie like thor the dark world or Iron Man 3 instead of it getting lower reviews but still getting praised it would have been absolutely trashed by critics.

[Colossus1980]

I will always ask how could Suicide Squad, a film that rated 26% rotten, beat the better rated Justice League, that stars the darling of the DCEU(Wonder Woman), with the team that quite a few people have heard of? As well as having Batman and Superman? Although I disliked BVS there still should have been enough interest to propel this movie easily over the 100M this weekend.

I don't blame the reviews because it didn't seem to hurt SS.

[jbmasta]

I think it was that there was so much the movie had to do, least of all introduce and establish three new main characters, that it didn't have time to give them heart. I'd rather have the solo movies first, explaining why Aquaman was the way he was for example.

[Alycat]

For the people I know, it's cause they put of 3 crap movies and 1 good movie. This looks nothing like Wonder Woman and instead reminds them of BvS. So why watch this when a better superhero movie ( Thor) or family movie is coming out (CoCo)?

[Osiris-Rex]

I will always ask how could Suicide Squad, a film that rated 26% rotten, beat the better rated Justice League, that stars the darling of the DCEU(Wonder Woman), with the team that quite a few people have heard of? As well as having Batman and Superman? Although I disliked BVS there still should have been enough interest to propel this movie easily over the 100M this weekend.

I don't blame the reviews because it didn't seem to hurt SS.

People like Harley Quinn, liked her a lot even before Suicide Squad, and Will Smith is still a big star overseas. And whatever else problems Suicide Squad had, people liked Harley Quinn in the movie.
And without Wonder Woman in Justice League who knows how much worse Justice League would have done. Of the audience ratings, women over 25 gave Justice League a whopping 93% positive score.
(https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/just...1-billion.html). So the good will that the solo Wonder Woman movie earned with women carried over to Justice League.
Perhaps women will be able to save Justice League. Wonder Woman started out slow and just kept on going and going.

[batnbreakfast]

Will women be Ok with what little has been done with WW in JL and the butt shots because I want her second movie to do well. Out with Affleck I say. Better for him und better for Batman. Excited for Matt Reeves and the SS2 director.

[Lee Stone]

It was basically marketed as 'BvS II: With Friends!'

Hence, the audience would already be diluted as opinions on BvS swayed interest one way or the other.
And, of course, most of the audience that did go see it would probably like it because it would consist of mostly people that liked BvS.