The awaited release of “Justice League” on HBO Max, did manage to pull in quite a lot of viewers during its first week, but the four-hour running time may have been too much for more than half of them.
According to a study that was done, only about 36% of the one and a half million households that watched the Snyder Cut stayed to the end of the movie.
I know a lot of critics of Zack Snyder and his films will try to use this news as a way to say that the movie wasn’t good enough to hold the average viewer’s attention or that it simply wasn’t a good movie and so people just lost interest.
But I think it’s more complicated than that. Or…maybe it’s not. Maybe the answer is very simple.
It could be that a large number of viewers tuned in just to see what all the hype was about and never had any intention of sitting down to watch the whole film. It could be that some viewers watched to a certain point and then had to come back at a later time. There are a number of variables here. However, even with people not sitting all the way through to the end, Forbes calculated that the Snyder Cut was a solid investment (via SlashFilm). With there being 1.48 million new downloads of HBO Max, and assuming those are all paying subscribers at $14.99 that will continue the service, that adds up to around $22.2 million monthly — a solid number against the $70 million invested to complete the film.
This is how some viewers reacted to watching at least most of the movie:
#TheSnyderCut of Justice League is better than the original by a pretty wide margin. Given the road it took to come to fruition—I did not expect that. It still has a couple of bumps and it’s too long but, it is easily my favorite of the Zack Snyder directed DC films.
— Travis Nuckolls (@visway) March 28, 2021
There's no way I can watch Zack Snyder's Justice League all in one sitting, it's waaaay too long 😱 I'll do the Lord of the Rings method: 1 hour and half and then a break 😂
— Marta Clelia 🌻 (@martacruclelia) April 3, 2021
Zack Snyder's JUSTICE LEAGUE is the biggest surprise of 2021, a sci-fi fantasy epic about fractured families & absent fathers, a Greek Tragedy via cape and cowl. It's an hour too long and not everything works, but I was dazzled, amazed and truly moved. Easily his best in the DCU. pic.twitter.com/HA5UEN6fLC
— Brendan Hodges (@metaplexmovies) March 19, 2021
Zack Snyder's Justice League is good.
— UpwardBoss (@UpwardBoss) March 28, 2021
It's too long, probably should've been 40 minutes shorter or so, but it's actually a pretty good movie.
…
WOW I DID NOT EXPECT TO BE SAYING THIS
But another viewer had an interesting take that I think many should also consider:
With all due respect, shouldn’t people, you know, WATCH Zack Snyder’s Justice League before saying the runtime is too long? It is the first Justice League movie, after all.
— #DeathstrokeHBOMax (@DeathstrokeHBO) January 17, 2021
