The Surprising Amount Of Time Zack Snyder's Justice League Is In Slow Motion
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Contains minor spoilers for Zack Snyder's Justice League
Considering Zack Snyder has been talking about what he originally wanted to do for his cut of Justice League for several years now, there's plenty we were expecting going into it. For starters, the film gives us an actual look at Darkseid (Ray Porter), and it does a more explicit job of setting up that he's the one coming to Earth now that Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) is out of the picture. Due to some leaks ahead of time, fans were well aware Jared Leto's Joker would be making an appearance at some point, but it seems as though a few surprises were kept hidden until the film debuted on HBO Max.
Judging from conversations on social media, people were really taken off-guard by how much slow motion is in the movie. Over on Twitter, you'll find plenty of comments like, "I'm almost 2hrs in with [Zack] Snyder's Justice League, there are so many slow motion scenes" and "Slow motion was definitely abused in Justice League." While the technique is common in Snyder's filmography, it's all the more apparent here due to the film's four-hour runtime, which is why you run into statements like this from @ThatRyanParrott: "Interesting fact: If you run all the slow motion shots in JUSTICE LEAGUE at regular speed, the film is only 96 minutes."
It may be an exaggeration, but it does beg the question, "How much slo-mo is actually in Zack Snyder's Justice League?" Fortunately, IGN has already done the heavy lifting on this one.
IGN estimates roughly 10% of the Snyder Cut is in slow motion
IGN gave its best people the mission to find every slowed-down sequence in Justice League — not an easy task by any measure. First, there are plenty of shots that could be disputed. After all, is it actually slow motion or is someone just standing still for an extended period of time? For the purposes of the experiment, they only included shots that definitively had the technique applied. With that criteria in mind, they came to the consensus that Zack Snyder's Justice League contains 24 minutes and 7 seconds of slo-mo. Without taking into account the end credits, the Snyder Cut clocks in for a total runtime of 233 minutes and 7 seconds, which brings the total percentage of slo-mo in the film to 10.35%.
It's hard to judge how much shorter the film would be if those scenes played at normal speed, since the rate of slow motion can vary from one scene to the next. We're guessing it would be closer to a three-and-a-half-hour film instead, which isn't really saving a whole lot of time. While that still seems like a ton of slo-mo, it's nowhere near the slowest Snyder movie out there. Back in 2014, CinemaSins did a breakdown of 300 where the channel estimated there's approximately 30 minutes of footage of slow motion in that film. Considering that movie's only 116 minutes in length (with credits), that means roughly 25% of 300 moves at a snail's pace.
What else did we honestly expect? Asking Snyder not to slo-mo is like taking away J.J. Abrams' lens flare. With Zack Snyder, there are two things you know you're getting — breakneck action sequences and ample slow motion. Once again, he delivered in spades.