Supergirl's score ticked up to 54 on its first HBO Max weekend, and it wasn't kinder viewers
Supergirl arrived on HBO Max on Thursday, September 10, eleven weeks after it opened in theaters, with an HBO premiere following on Saturday night, per Variety. The conversation about it, which had thinned to around thirty relevant reactions a day through August, came back at once: 126 on Thursday, 197 on Friday, and 80 by Saturday afternoon. The score moved from 53 to 54.
A one-point move is about what 400 new reactions can do against a base of more than 5,000. The score peaked at 62 in the film's third week in theaters, slid a point every few days through July and August, and had sat at 53 since September 5. This morning it is 54 from 5,599 reactions at very high confidence.
What changed is who is talking. During the theatrical run, 46% of relevant reactions came from people who said they had actually seen the film. Since Thursday it is 62%. The positive share went from 34% to 39% and the negative share from 35% to 27%. But among people who had watched it, the split barely moved: 45% positive and 32% negative in theaters, 43% and 30% on streaming. The people who saw it feel about the same as they did in June. What faded is the crowd reacting to a movie they had not seen.
The story is getting a second hearing. Among reactions that talk about the plot, the share that is positive went from 30% during the run to 49% since streaming. Pacing went from 15% positive to 35%, and originality from 24% to 41%. Milly Alcock, the one thing nearly everyone agreed on in June, is at 77% positive on streaming against 70% before. Jason Momoa's Lobo, at 36% positive across the theatrical run, is at 54% now. The director and the studio, who drew 150 and 110 mentions at 11% and 12% positive while the film was in theaters, have all but disappeared from the streaming conversation.
Two cautions. The streaming sample is 403 reactions against 6,479 from the run, and Saturday is only part of a day. And the people who chose to watch Supergirl at home two months after its reviews are a self-selected group. The score is built to handle that: a reaction from someone who watched the film outweighs one from someone who heard about it, and five thousand earlier reactions do not vanish because a few hundred new ones are friendlier. It updates every night. The live number and the full breakdown are on the Supergirl page.
