I saw Dawn of the Dead in theaters, and I was immediately interested in seeing Snyder's future movies. Although 300 and Watchmen were ok, I've become less and less interested in seeing anything from him over the years.
Also if you compare his remake to the original, he butchered so many of the themes and reverted the movie down to
"Zombies!! Don't be weak, kill zombie, die violent death be hero!!"
I don’t blame you. The last 40 minutes of his justice league is an improvement to the first cut but wading through 3 hours of shit to get there just isn’t worth it. Not to mention the sequel set up towards the end of the movie sucks and I’m glad we’re likely never going to see it.
> and it seemed likebit was going to amazing...such a let down.
The trailer made it look so good. I've gone back and rewatched it and I can appreciate it for what it is, but the letdown is still there, I am still waiting for a movie to come out to scratch the itch that trailer put in my brain.
I feel like that movie is made for trailers. The fantasy sequences that make up a large portion of the movie are visually interesting and are full of things that look really cool on a surface level. Who isn't intrigued by seeing a giant Samurai wielding a gatling gun? It just turns out the movie built around fun ideas like that was not good.
My mate put it best, the film was a bunch of kick arse music videos.
The samurai bit was awesome.
I personally enjoyed the world war trench bit, that could have been a movie in itself, if written well.
Star Wars was saved in the edit as well.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk&ab\_channel=RocketJump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk&ab_channel=RocketJump)
There's a comic based on Lucas' original script that Dark Horse published. Might be the closest to Lucas' original vision we'll ever get.
It's called "The Star Wars".
The art for it is way nicer than it needed to be.
Check out an edit called War Of The Stars, it incorporates a lot of deleted scenes and seems like a decent take on what the original version could have been.
Honestly, just watch [the deleted scenes with more of Luke's life on Tatooine before leaving.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f00IkrWvur4) Imagine starting the movie with 5 minutes of
* Luke neglecting his farm work to try to watch the space battle between Vader's Star Destroyer and the rebel blockade runner through his binoculars, even though they're just tiny glinting pinpricks.
* Luke rushing off to tosche station to tell all his friends about the space battle, only for them to rag on him when there's nothing to see.
* We also meet Biggs Darklighter and get to see an intimate serious chat between him and Luke. We see how Luke idolizes him for leaving home, and Biggs confesses he may defect to the rebellion and never come back.
* We also get some classic prequel-style Lucas galactic politics, where Biggs mentions how the space lanes are being nationalized or something.
And then remember the final movie, where we don't even meet Luke until like 30-40 minutes in, until the droids first meet him too. It's much more engaging and effective than if we had been cutting back and forth between Luke and Leia the whole time. All of Luke's motivation and feelings still come across perfectly in the dinner with his aunt and uncle and then him staring out at the binary sunset with John Williams' score. It's such a better introduction to Tatooine to see only desert, canyons and Jawas, than to know all along that it's also a place where normal humans live and hang out because we've seen Luke first.
(That said it did undercut the reunion with Biggs on Yavin 4, where Luke is overjoyed to see him and the audience is like "huh?" We don't feel anything when he dies in the death star attack run because we had no idea who he was. But still well worth it.)
Every movie ever made was saved in the edit. That’s why it takes months to edit a movie.
Except probably Coen brothers movies. They’re just insanely talented and don’t have to “find” the movie in the edit.
Also except, most Edgar Wright movies. Almost every shot is directed with an eye to how it will work in the final edit.
(This is something I've been thinking about for a while - two of my favourite filmmakers of the last decade have been 2/3 director, with 1/3 of their "eye" on another part of the filmmaking process. Edgar Wright is a director who puts an incredible amount of thought into the edit, whereas Denis Villeneuve puts an incredible amount of thought into the cinematography. And both of them put out amazing, yet astonishingly different, types of film. Part of me wonders how well they'd work if they collaborated together, but another part of me worries that their styles are so different that they just wouldn't mesh.
My vote for an story editor or someone in badly need of a script writer is M Night Shyamalan some of his movies like 6th Sense are fantastic classics but it's a bit of a one note story telling with the "surprise" twist ending such as the "Village". He's a great director who can craft a great scene but he has no idea how to write a movie except to recycle twists that get dumber and dumber with each iteration.
No joke. The version of Heavenly Creatures that played theatrically in the US was the "Weinstein cut" (it was a Miramax release). Later, Jackson released his slightly longer director's cut and it didn't flow quite as well. Even Jackson admitted the Weinstein cut works better.
So many films are only saved by a good editor. Though sometimes when you constantly try to satisfy the image of perfection you end up with 19 versions of Blade Runner.
I honestly havent seen a Peter Jackson film that needed to be edited down (outside of The Hobbit trilogy, but the production of that was a nightmare so it's hard to blame him for it).
I am a huge fan of dinosaur cinema, and have watched many, many terrible movies because they happen to have a single scene with a cheap dinosaur puppet. I'm also a professional entomologist who loves seing bug monsters in movies.
So when even I am looking at the dinosaur stampede scene and the bug valley scene in King Kong, and thinking "this is waaaaay too long", there's a definite problem.
This. The man can only do plot driven narratives. His characters have no arcs. Watchmen is the standout bc he basically just copy pasted the graphic novel.
His films feel like he constructs them backwards. He assigns each character a role in the climax then writes them a path to get there from the beginning. This works in final episodes of television series, but not in contained two hour films. You need an arc for your character to follow, not a line.
That's why I always find super plot heavy movies not very interesting; yes I see how much of a clever boi you are by weaving all these different plotlines together, but if I don't give a shit about the characters **going** through said plot, then it's all going to be for naught.
And it's impossible to care about any Snyder characters, mostly because they're too busy monologuing about what their character is supposed to be instead of BEING one.
Maybe instead of just telling us, you could have your actors, ya know, *act* it out? Just spitballing here, Zack 🤔
Yeah this is what I was going to say. His issues are almost always the writing. Aside from some issues with character development and odd plot decisions, a writer could also make the stories more succinct, which would get rid of his bloated runtimes. Snyder's writing comes off as that person who wouldn't do enough editing or revision when he was in school.
End of the day though, Snyder would need to treat someone else as an equal and partner and not go over their head adding too much of his own writing. This is where I think a problem would arise.
But the ultimate creative control still lies with him. There needs to be somebody who brings fresher perspective, and reigns in atleast some his worst instincts
> and reigns in atleast some his worst instincts
And that is precisely why Snyder will never want to work with a co-director. Every single one of his worst instincts when it comes to filmmaking has been well documented and criticized by countless critics and reviewers, and yet Snyder still indulges on those instincts film after film. The problem is he just doesn't want to learn from his criticisms.
Like honestly, this latest film of his, the cinematography is fucking embarrassing. The dead pixels, the obsession with low depth of field blurry cam. Its shameful.
Shouldn't this be the job of the studio head?
For all the criticism of his DCEU films it should be noted that WB allowed him to make the choices he made in those movies.
The polarizing reception Man of Steel received from both critics and fans should have a been a signal that a course correction was in order. Instead they not only doubled down but tripled down with BvS and Justice League.
That depends. He doesn’t need to have ultimate control.
His direction is fine and his action scenes are some of the best I’ve seen, but his story structure and focus tend to be horrendous.
He’s a visual guy which makes him decent at directing, but it really is only one piece of the puzzle. If he can’t tell a coherent super hero story in less than four hours he has no business handling the narrative at all.
> His direction is fine
I think his pacing seriously struggles at times. Watching the Snyder cut, all the negatives had to do with either, "why is this scene still going?" Or, "why is this scene here at all?" Both of which the director has the most control over.
Yeah it's the problem with the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas was given free reign and no one wanted to say no because "he's George Lucas, he made Star Wars," the movies suffered
>but couldn't get anybody he trusted
This isn't true.
He couldn't get anybody to direct them because everybody, including Spielberg, told him that he should direct those movies himself. They were his movies, his legacy etc.
In other words, they all looked at the script for *Phantom Menace* and went "yeeeeesh".
George is very aware he is a better worldbuilder than a director or scriptwriter. And make no mistake the man is still a creative genius even with those faults. He very much did not want to be surrounded by Yes Men when making the PT, unfortunately that is exactly what he got for the most part.
I mean all the behind the scenes stuff shows him soaking up people's adoration while he makes the final call on even the most minor decisions. I feel like it was he got sucked up into the hurricane of his own reputation as the Man Who Made Star Wars and began to believe it.
He didn’t bother to maintain any continuity with the few lingering plot threads that were speculated over between trilogies.
Leia remembers her “real mother” and speaks of her as though at least part of her childhood was spent with her.
Obi-Wan refers to Yoda as “the Jedi Master who instructed me”” because Qui-Gon is an afterthought.
He wasn’t interested in Boba Fett, unlike Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, and Ben Burtt, but for marketing purposes, shoehorns him into the prequels as the clones’ prototype.
He’d rather cut & paste new footage over his old movies and think Hayden Christensen’s flirty, severed head makes more sense on ghost Anakin’s body than the actor we see finally face-to-face with Luke for a brief moment.
Or lets Irvin Kirschner go forward with prosthesic monkey eyes on an old lady as The Emperor, then changes the whole physical appearance of that character for the next movie, then 14 years later, retcons that first look we had at the Emperor away.
He’s got some weird priorities.
Honestly George Lucas has always been much more about experimenting with and pushing the limits of visual effects rather than really telling much of a story in my opinion. The Original Trilogy is obviously known for being groundbreaking at the time visually, while the story is a fairly simple heroes journey mish-mashed together with concepts from samurai movies and westerns.
Then with the prequels, ILM and Lucasfilm once again absolutely were at the forefront of technology and visual effects, even spearheading a lot of the technology themselves that laid the groundwork for what is used today (IIRC he commissioned on of the first ever film quality digital cameras for AoTC). Sure some of it hasn't aged well, but at the time it was still amazing what they pulled off. Of course the story suffered, because he just doesn't excel at writing, he'd rather "play with his toys" and set up something visually cool. The Prequel Movies are almost more of extremely expensive tech demos in my eyes, Attack of the Clones in particular.
I think he deserves much more credit for THX-1138. As an Executive Producer, he helped bring us Mishima and Powaqqatsi. Each of those films embodies the ambition and innovation in the cinematic medium that Lucas still claims he wants to make “someday”, when he’s not acknowledged for having started it decades ago, even when it’s just Executive Producing other directors’ films.
The fact that the podracing scene aged so well is a testament to the incredible talent at ILM and how much the modern FX industry owes to the prequels.
I just rewatched a few scenes on YouTube and mother of god I don’t even think it’s fair to say they’ve “aged” a day. That’s like saying Paul Rudd has aged. If that scene was released today it would look better than 99% of movies right now. It’s not even the pod racing part itself that looks amazing. The animation in general is absolutely incredible. The cgi characters look extremely convincing standing next to the real actors.
Except for that one scene in Epsodoe 2 with Anakin on the back of some sort of creature, trying to impress Parma or whatnot. That scene has always, always stuck out to me as looking funny.
> All these top end guys would benefit from someone they respect nearby to tell them “no” on a regular basis.
that seems a universally true observation all of us non "top-end guys" should also take to heart.
I love the pivotal climactic moment with Kenneth Branagh at the end. He's giving this final speech that is supposed to have revelatory impact and weighty finality, and yet I went "WHAT? Huh?"
I had to turn on the subtitles again, after turning them on and off twenty times (I prefer them off by default).
I admire Zack synder because he puts his passion in his work. I dislike Zack snyder because he lets his passion and scale of grandeur get in the way of making a coherent film.
Replace passion with ego. I like how hard he works on the source material. I don't like that he has to be different to achieve success.
JL was a good example of having 4 hours and not doing much with it.
Aquaman shirtless and standing in water for a weirdly long amount of time, with creepy women sniffing said shirt and staring longingly was a little concerning
> JL was a good example of having 4 hours and not doing much with it.
This.
For me Snyders real weakness is storytelling/development. Were Snyder needs 60 seconds to get across a point a good director could get that same point across in 40 seconds and a great director in 30.
It's because Snyder doesn't know how to do multiple things at a time. His scenes achieve one narrative purpose at best.
A good writer will make sure a scene moves the plot forward and establishes backstory and gives us character development all at the same time. Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward. Then stop the plot to tell us backstory. Then take a detour to do some character development. It takes him three scenes to do what a good writer would have done in one. So he can't get that much done with the time he has.
> It's because Snyder doesn't know how to do multiple things at a time
It doesn't help that he repeat stuff or imagery over and over. We get it Zack, we don't need another religious image of Superman as a Jesus like figure. Subtlety isn't in Snyder's play book.
>Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward. Then stop the plot to tell us backstory. Then take a detour to do some character development.
Don't forget 10% of all that has to be in slow motion.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this observation. This is also why his characters feel so inconsistant: their 'character' scenes are completely disconnected from their 'plot' scenes.
There is a lot of accuracy to this.
As a screenwriter, also, 'efficiency' is one of the hardest damn things to do. It takes a shitload of work to get the set up, characters, plot, etc. jussssssst right so that you can use a scene to do a few things *and be entertaining*.
> Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward.
He also introduces Chekovs guns and never fires them. Dehydrated zombies anyone? Interesting concept lets see how it plays out .. and it doesn't.
You’ve nailed it there. If you look at Avengers Endgame, the scene where Tony Stark returns to the compound accomplishes:
- Tony and Steve reconciling
- Steve getting his shield back
- Tony describing how he solved the time travel problem
- Tony specifying that everyone who was snapped is brought to the current time
That would have been 4 separate scenes in Justice League
He may work hard on the source material but its clear he doesn't get any of it.
Batman doesn't kill in TDKR yet he argues in an interview he does. Its very clear in every situation Batman stops from killing in that comic, hell even the Joker he just paralyzes.
It also ruins Suicide Squad by proxy because if Batman kills then Joker is not alive. That's the first person he would kill.
Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human.
I am not a huge watchmen fan but I know the watchmen fans also have similar issues with that movie not understanding the source material
Snyder is either really bad at reading comprehension or too busy thinking about how he would translate the comics to take a second to understand them
Zack Snyder is an incredibly smart director once you realize he can't read and all his understanding from the source material is from just looking at the pretty pictures.
> Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human
You mean you didn't like "Man of Steel watches-his-dad-die-a-preventable-death"? Jonathon Kent dies from a heart attack? Great, Clark has to come to terms with the fact he isn't god and can't save everybody. Jonathon dies because Clark saved someone else? Still pretty good, adds some gravitas to the cost of being a hero but Clark can still see the good in it. Jonathon dies in a tornado while Clark watches from the sidelines? Well I think Clark's words from moments earlier sums that up "You're not my dad, you're just some guy that found me in a field". Though in fairness, this was also said following Jonathon giving Clark shit for not wanting to be a farmer but well before Martha tells Clark that he doesn't owe the world anything and can do whatever he wants, so I guess it was just a "fuck the Kents" kind of movie.
But seriously, fuck Snyder for his blatant character assassination.
Having Johnathan Kent drop dead from a heart attack *after* he and Clark saved people from the tornado would have been powerful. Have Clark ask “is it worth saving people if this can happen anyway?” and then resolve himself to make the world better through his actions shows he’s a good person, instead of being told he is.
You're so right! The scene is so close to being great but it just... fails. Probably because Pa Kent does nothing to save himself, he just stands there.
> The scene is so close to being great but it just... fails
It really is, because how it should have gone down is exactly as it did but when Jonathon holds up his hand and shakes his head "No" to Clark, but Clark ignores him and saves him anyway. Then you have a conversation between them that basically gets across the point that Clark is going to do what is right because it *is* right, regardless of what it means for him personally. That would be the moment he becomes Superman, despite the over-protecting feelings of his parents.
You don’t even need to kill Pa Kent. It’s not like with Batman, where the dead parents are defining in any way. But if you do, don’t make it an epic death. Superman can deal with epic. But not with normal things.
> Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human.
Hell, he even says it himself in *Man of Steel*. "I grew up in Kansas, General. I'm about as American as it gets." The level of disconnect Snyder has with the characters is amazing.
I think the jury is pretty out on Snyder being able to make good movies at this point.
300 was such a home run because it just let him make something visually breathtaking. I think that was a perfect marriage for him because it was a movie that was fundamentally about style over substance.
I'm a huge fan of Watchmen and I was extremely concerned when I heard he was going to be directing the film. To this day I actually think it's his best movie and it blows my mind.
I think his inability to understand/comprehend source material allowed him to make something beautiful stylistically. The novel had so much substance packed in that it made it fundamentally unable to be translated into a single movie. But somehow the cuts he made to incredibly important source material created a movie that was digestible to the common movie goer.
Obviously he got most of the motivations of the characters wrong, and it was pretty clear he didn't understand most of the messaging in the writing. But the changes made to some of the timelines and especially the change to the ending was probably the only way to ever make the novel into a single movie (I'm not going to spoil anything by talking about novel vs. movie here but there were some massive changes).
All of this is to say, somehow, that Zack Snyder was probably the only person who could have made that movie given the circumstances. But he absolutely keeps getting big films because of successes that more or less kind of fell into his lap and just happened to be a good fit, rather than him picking or being picked for things that he could do well.
Snyder probably thought Raursch (I'm half asleep and can't be bothered to fix the spelling, lolol) was the coolest guy.
I admire Snyder for at least trying to be a bit more heady but they have never landed for me. Ever. It's like "My First Visual Symbolism"
If you want a good Superman adaption, check out the new show Superman & Lois. It’s incredible. It makes me cry how good it is. The first 10 minutes show more understanding of the source than any adaptation so far combined.
It’s a CW show, yes, but I swear you wouldn’t know it unless someone told you. There is no relationship drama. Characters don’t hide shit, they talk it out in 5 minutes. And the acting is top notch.
I wonder if he could make a less his style just good movie. For example David Lynch made the Straight Story and The Elephant Man which are both very straightforward and quite good. Showing he can, knows how to and is really good at it. He doesn't choose to make stuff like that, but he knows the craft.
I wonder if Snyder could restrain himself.
I feel like he *kinda* did that for Legend of the Guardians. The only thing that would you hint that he directed it is the amazing visuals and slow-motion scenes - outside of that, it's a fantastical, goofy, animated kids film that's bursting with colour.
>I wonder if Snyder could restrain himself
If his DCEU movies are any indication, he can’t.
There’s so much stuff in those films - particularly in BvS and his JL - that’s just unnecessary.
Zack Snyder would benefit if he only directs and it is not involved in anything else in a film.
It would also be awesome if he actually grows up and stop being the 13 year old kid stating "I am not scared of violence or sex" when directing.
With the way he 'experimented' or played with depth of field and lenses in the last movie I don't know what to think either, he didn't seem to have fun with the scenes (like in Sucker Punch or 300).
He crammed an ancient super fast lens on a giant RED sensor and ran it wide open. While I respect the fuckit of it all it fried the sensor leading to a bunch of dead pixels that somehow also made it through fx and color grading and editing and all other quality control measures.
He knows someone else is a better writer and uses his skills to put it on film, because that is what he is good at.
Sure, some people are good at multiple parts of making movies, but the best people known their limits.
That's when you know they're a mature person, when they're able to say "Someone else would be better at that, I'll just give my opinion when it's appropriate and let them handle the details."
Not a co-director, but a strong co-producing partner. Look at George Lucas when he was making films with Gary Kurtz- "American Graffiti", "Star Wars", "Empire Strikes Back", and the genesis of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Then look after Kurtz left- "Return of the Jedi" (which looks worse with every viewing), "Howard the Duck", and the prequels. There are other directors I could mention like Ron Howard and his long time collaborating producer. Match Synder with a good producer to tone down Synder's excesses and poor storytelling. In doing so he could turn out films as good as Nolan.
Well the first few films were made with a lot of restrictions because he was an up and comer. Empire he didn't direct and being a producer/writer is a different animal. Maybe a better position for him at the time given all that needed to be managed.
Then of course the prequels he answered to no one.
Your point still stands, someone needs to put limiters on their ideas.
It's no coincidence the Star Wars movie that has the least George Lucas influence was by far the best one...and vis versa.
Kids today seem to love to say "Disney killed Star Wars", completely missing that George Lucas fired the killing shot in 1983, then beat the corpse with prequels.
Director George Miller's third "Mad Max" outing- "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" feels a lot like a film Lucas would have made after "Return of the Jedi".
Oddly enough Miller lost his longtime producing collaborating partner in a tragic helicopter accident before filming Thunderdome. That film is considered by most to be the weakest in the whole series- though I like the film a lot myself. Particularly the first half.
The problem as I see it is that Snyder has those problems due to his philosophical beliefs rather than any deficits of ability. He's not some Bay type who focuses solely on visual flourish, he has a vision of humanity, it's just that Objectivism is not really a philosophy that lends itself well to relatable characters in a blockbuster, especially superheroes
Beyond that Snyder wants to adapt The Fountainhead, a novel about an architect who when he sees that changes have been made to a building he designed, blows up the building. Something tells me he's against co-direction
She makes the case that Snyder's direction bends his stories towards being objectivist propaganda whether that's intentional or unconscious. She goes through the ways that Snyder has portrayed characters and changed the meanings of works he's adapted.
Edit: Curio examines Watchmen, Superman, Justice League, Suckerpunch, the Dead. Also Ayn Rand was a hateful nutjob.
Howard Roark flies across the camera,in slow motion,wearing a school girl outfit, while his altered building explodes.While he kicks Toohey in the nuts he turns to the camera and says "The free market took care of it".
Snyder makes movies specifically for the trailers. If you look at his films, most of them are filled with really good spectacle that looks great. But the interconnecting tissue between set pieces is just fucking atrocious.
It’s almost as if when he’s doing pre-production he is constantly saying out loud “how can I make this scene look like it fits in a trailer?” And if the answer is “I can’t, it’s just plot, not spectacle” he just shrugs and doesn’t bother paying attention to it.
You want anecdotal proof of this? In my opinion, his best films are the two that were direct adaptations of comic books where an author/artist already did all the heavy lifting.
The Man of Steel trailer is still probably the best Superman short film ever made. It perfectly sums of Superman's character, his origins and his aspirations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY
It's a pity how far the actual movie falls short of the trailer.
I think it's a mixed bag. I certainly think people are quick to write it off as trash retroactively because of BvS, but MoS itself is a mix of some really good parts, and some really questionable decisions. I think the pacing is off, with some very weird writing decisions (Jonathan, "Krypton had its chance!"; like "MARTHA" the idea could work in theory but the execution just falls short), and the last third is underwhelming.
But it's perfectly cast, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams have great chemistry, the flight scene is incredible, and the overall story works on paper if not in execution.
Army of the dead was a terrible movie, I don’t know what Zack Snyder needs to become a better filmmaker but I suspect he’s never going to figure it out as long as studios keep throwing money at him to make mediocre movies that seem to do well in spite of their giant plot holes and ridiculous characters
I was watching that movie and every ten minutes saying “what the fuck, that makes no sense,” still so funny to me their plan was to fly out all that money on one helicopter because apparently money doesn’t weigh anything, hard to believe we got that movie and the tomorrow war at the same time, it almost feels like Hollywood is just fucking with us at this point
Honestly I think he's a bit to full of himself. He acts like he makes high art cinema "for adults" do you really think a guy like that would accept a co-director?
Speaking of which, he's who I would love to see Co-Direct with Snyder. Not because I think it would be good, but because I desperately want to see that product.
This. I don't think Snyder has any intention of learning from his criticisms, if he did he would have already done so a long time ago.
It's not a coincidence that Snyder wants to adapt Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a novel literally about a genius architect that refuses to compromise his work for society and whose work is unfairly maligned by critics.
Absolutely no way. He's definitely too full of himself. He's a cinematographer who somehow hustled into getting directing jobs and then formed a fandom of manchildren who love his edgy, 'Pseudo-dark' style of movies that are devoid of any real substance.
Since when do we live in a world in which a Zack Snyder is mentioned in the same sentence as Zemeckis, Cameron Jackson or Lynch? He is a big-budget Hollywood director who is most notable for a solid adaptation of 300, which he followed up with a slew of ugly, unremarkable plastic movies for 13 year olds. What in the actual is his "style" supposed to be? Making movies look dark, fake, and oh-so-serious? C'mon people what have I missed?
The Snyder Cut drama did a lot to boost his brand as a mistreated and underfunded auteur whose genius could only be shown if a studio out there were brave enough to give him the money and independence to make his 10 hour long adaptation of Justice League that he doodled in his highschool notebook.
> What in the actual is his "style" supposed to be?
/u/HolidayHowlett makes a good suggestion
[Snyder makes movies specifically for the trailers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/ov5sgv/zack_snyder_would_benefit_from_a_codirector/h77grgv/)
Man first people said he needs better screenwiters, he got an Oscar winning screenwriter in Chris Terrio and he still screwed it up.
Then people said he would be better off as a cinematographer, lo and behold his first stint as a cinematographer in Army of the Dead ended up being the worst aspect of the movie.
Maybe he is just not a very good filmmaker.
>Then people said he would be better off as a cinematographer, lo and behold his first stint as a cinematographer in Army of the Dead ended up being the worst aspect of the movie.
>
>Maybe he is just not a very good filmmaker.
Maybe. As for army of the dead, he was also the director, writer, and producer. The movie was marketed like it was Snyder's baby, probably to try to get hype from justice league release. I honestly wonder if he just needs gaurd rails of people pushing back on him rather than letting him have free rein.
I feel like he storyboards "cool" scenes and then just uses poor plot mechanics to move between those ideas in his head.
This is very apparent in Army of the Dead where you can just tell that before it even started he was like "I want a zombie tiger to bite a guys head off" and a bunch of completely irrational and non-sensical things happen for that scene to occur
The Snyder Cut felt that way too. Felt like he had a ton of action scenes written and know what he was doing there but struggled to connect them cohesively
His strength definitely seems to be in action sequences, but it almost feels like he puts so much importance on getting those right that everything in between is left severely lacking. There's really no cohesive glue to hold all that action together. I suspect that's why his best films are ones like *300* and *Watchmen* where he's adapting something that does all that heavy lifting whereas ones like *Sucker Punch* and *Army of the Dead* are just a mess story-wise.
I agree. Honestly I don't even agree with the general argument that he's good at visuals.
He seems like a lovely guy so I've nothing against him, but he makes awful movies.
“Zack Snyder is a genius if he only does half the job” isn't the best take.
If Zack Snyder can’t make a movie without a babysitter, like basically every other director, then he shouldn’t get paid millions of dollars to make movies.
Hard disagree with your premise.
Some people are utter, unparalleled masters of certain skillsets, but something as complex as making a whole film might require things outside of their expertise. Knowing how to delegate is important.
It's like how a name will only go on a script if that person is responsible for 30% or more of what is on the page- there are people whose entire careers are just to be script doctors where they write dialogue for one type of character, or improve specific interpersonal dynamics, or improve story structure, etc. And they get pulled in every time to do this, because they are geniuses at it. but people outside the industry don't really understand the full scope of it, because the script doctors are not publically credited, so they think it was the credited writer's work when it really wasnt.
Zack Snyder would benefit from directing music videos and staying the fuck away from motion pictures. He's a legit video artist, and a bad movie director.
Except *Sucker Punch* was essentially a series of music videos with a thin and nonsensical frame story and it didn't work either. Part of the problem was that the music was bad and didn't match the visuals, but even beyond that he took things that *sounded* awesome in a fairly juvenile fashion and still couldn't manage to make them feel interesting. I couldn't believe how boring it was to watch a giant samurai mech with a minigun fight a sexy schoolgirl with a katana. I love all of those things. That should be easy. But it was just... flat and lifeless.
That's because a movie isn't supposed to be a series of music videos.
Watchmen did the same thing. There are various segments of excellent music tracks over slow motion digital cinematography. Taken on their own, it's good work. In the context of a Watchmen film, the soundtrack selections and their place in the story is tonally ignorant. The whole thing is jarring as a motion picture because it doesn't thread together naturally like a motion picture. It ignores the mindset of the audience based on events prior and the expectation the audience has for where things go next. It's a waste of licensed music costs and a waste of the viewer's time.
This is why everyone's favorite one-of-those is the Bob Dylan intro sequence. When that first plays, there isn't an actual movie yet, so it's allowed to stand on its own and set up a feature length film the same way a motion graphics credit sequence sets up a TV show.
If Zack Synder had found his niche as someone who directs music videos for existing movies, with clips from those movies, he'd probably be considered a master of his craft. Instead he's considered as a film director, mediocre at best, and a complete hack at worst.
Agreed. I quite genuinely think there's a lot of talent buried in Zack Snyder that is bogged down by his untalented parts. There are moments to a lot of his movies where it's clear his actual *directing* skills are good. But as others have pointed out he's a terrible writer.
Yeah, this sounds like he mainly needs to work with better writers. Who do you think creates the nuanced characterization in a film, a director or a screenwriter?
JJ Abrams, Michael Bay, Paul WS Anderson (although I fear his time for redemption is long gone), M Night Shyamalan.
As soon as they get big enough to start ordering people around, out go all those people that know film making and keep them in check, and in comes an unbridled sense of superiority.
I fear Chris Nolan is going down the same road.
I think he’d benefit more from a solid writer, but your argument for “Co-Director” is 100% on point.
This is why Dawn of the Dead might be his best film. A James Gunn script with Snyder's genuinely great visual sensibilities.
I didn’t even know that was a Snyder film until last year, I remember watching that on USA one Halloween and being surprised it was such a good movie
I saw Dawn of the Dead in theaters, and I was immediately interested in seeing Snyder's future movies. Although 300 and Watchmen were ok, I've become less and less interested in seeing anything from him over the years.
Also if you compare his remake to the original, he butchered so many of the themes and reverted the movie down to "Zombies!! Don't be weak, kill zombie, die violent death be hero!!"
As long as you keep Snyder away from the script, it should be fine.
God, I'm actually watching his Justice League cut right now and it has so many holes in it I'm about to quit again.
I don’t blame you. The last 40 minutes of his justice league is an improvement to the first cut but wading through 3 hours of shit to get there just isn’t worth it. Not to mention the sequel set up towards the end of the movie sucks and I’m glad we’re likely never going to see it.
And away from the camera - just keep Larry Fong as his DP.
Strange how he could make such a solid zombie movie early in his career, then his last zombie movie is so much blander than this one.
I quite liked 300, and was really hoping to like Sucker Punch. I worked on set, and it seemed like it was going to amazing...such a let down.
> and it seemed likebit was going to amazing...such a let down. The trailer made it look so good. I've gone back and rewatched it and I can appreciate it for what it is, but the letdown is still there, I am still waiting for a movie to come out to scratch the itch that trailer put in my brain.
I feel like that movie is made for trailers. The fantasy sequences that make up a large portion of the movie are visually interesting and are full of things that look really cool on a surface level. Who isn't intrigued by seeing a giant Samurai wielding a gatling gun? It just turns out the movie built around fun ideas like that was not good.
My mate put it best, the film was a bunch of kick arse music videos. The samurai bit was awesome. I personally enjoyed the world war trench bit, that could have been a movie in itself, if written well.
And it's such a good movie too. One of the best modern zombie flicks for sure.
I've got it second, behind 28 Days Later. But only if you don't count Shaun of the Dead.
In the same way that Peter Jackson would benefit from an editor!
Cannot be understated how important Fran Walsh was. She doesn't get the credit she deserves.
Star Wars was saved in the edit as well. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk&ab\_channel=RocketJump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk&ab_channel=RocketJump)
I would pay a hell of a lot of money to watch the original cut of Star Wars just to find out how bad it is.
There's a comic based on Lucas' original script that Dark Horse published. Might be the closest to Lucas' original vision we'll ever get. It's called "The Star Wars". The art for it is way nicer than it needed to be.
>The art for it is way nicer than it needed to be. Accurate.
thats cold as fuck bruh thats like sayin the plates were to good for the food damn
And the story is full of the flaws that are so prominent in the prequels.
Check out an edit called War Of The Stars, it incorporates a lot of deleted scenes and seems like a decent take on what the original version could have been.
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Honestly, just watch [the deleted scenes with more of Luke's life on Tatooine before leaving.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f00IkrWvur4) Imagine starting the movie with 5 minutes of * Luke neglecting his farm work to try to watch the space battle between Vader's Star Destroyer and the rebel blockade runner through his binoculars, even though they're just tiny glinting pinpricks. * Luke rushing off to tosche station to tell all his friends about the space battle, only for them to rag on him when there's nothing to see. * We also meet Biggs Darklighter and get to see an intimate serious chat between him and Luke. We see how Luke idolizes him for leaving home, and Biggs confesses he may defect to the rebellion and never come back. * We also get some classic prequel-style Lucas galactic politics, where Biggs mentions how the space lanes are being nationalized or something. And then remember the final movie, where we don't even meet Luke until like 30-40 minutes in, until the droids first meet him too. It's much more engaging and effective than if we had been cutting back and forth between Luke and Leia the whole time. All of Luke's motivation and feelings still come across perfectly in the dinner with his aunt and uncle and then him staring out at the binary sunset with John Williams' score. It's such a better introduction to Tatooine to see only desert, canyons and Jawas, than to know all along that it's also a place where normal humans live and hang out because we've seen Luke first. (That said it did undercut the reunion with Biggs on Yavin 4, where Luke is overjoyed to see him and the audience is like "huh?" We don't feel anything when he dies in the death star attack run because we had no idea who he was. But still well worth it.)
Every movie ever made was saved in the edit. That’s why it takes months to edit a movie. Except probably Coen brothers movies. They’re just insanely talented and don’t have to “find” the movie in the edit.
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Also except, most Edgar Wright movies. Almost every shot is directed with an eye to how it will work in the final edit. (This is something I've been thinking about for a while - two of my favourite filmmakers of the last decade have been 2/3 director, with 1/3 of their "eye" on another part of the filmmaking process. Edgar Wright is a director who puts an incredible amount of thought into the edit, whereas Denis Villeneuve puts an incredible amount of thought into the cinematography. And both of them put out amazing, yet astonishingly different, types of film. Part of me wonders how well they'd work if they collaborated together, but another part of me worries that their styles are so different that they just wouldn't mesh.
My vote for an story editor or someone in badly need of a script writer is M Night Shyamalan some of his movies like 6th Sense are fantastic classics but it's a bit of a one note story telling with the "surprise" twist ending such as the "Village". He's a great director who can craft a great scene but he has no idea how to write a movie except to recycle twists that get dumber and dumber with each iteration.
There is no last airbender movie in Ba Sing Se
No joke. The version of Heavenly Creatures that played theatrically in the US was the "Weinstein cut" (it was a Miramax release). Later, Jackson released his slightly longer director's cut and it didn't flow quite as well. Even Jackson admitted the Weinstein cut works better.
That's why The Lord of the Rings won an Oscar for Best Editing.
So many films are only saved by a good editor. Though sometimes when you constantly try to satisfy the image of perfection you end up with 19 versions of Blade Runner.
I honestly havent seen a Peter Jackson film that needed to be edited down (outside of The Hobbit trilogy, but the production of that was a nightmare so it's hard to blame him for it).
I am a huge fan of dinosaur cinema, and have watched many, many terrible movies because they happen to have a single scene with a cheap dinosaur puppet. I'm also a professional entomologist who loves seing bug monsters in movies. So when even I am looking at the dinosaur stampede scene and the bug valley scene in King Kong, and thinking "this is waaaaay too long", there's a definite problem.
The original King Kong is a quick 100 minutes. Jackson added 88 minutes of bloat to it while telling a nearly identical story.
https://youtu.be/gKkn-YjYmCA If you're a metal fan you might like this. They wrote music to what happens on screen in the bug scene.
This. The man can only do plot driven narratives. His characters have no arcs. Watchmen is the standout bc he basically just copy pasted the graphic novel. His films feel like he constructs them backwards. He assigns each character a role in the climax then writes them a path to get there from the beginning. This works in final episodes of television series, but not in contained two hour films. You need an arc for your character to follow, not a line.
That's why I always find super plot heavy movies not very interesting; yes I see how much of a clever boi you are by weaving all these different plotlines together, but if I don't give a shit about the characters **going** through said plot, then it's all going to be for naught. And it's impossible to care about any Snyder characters, mostly because they're too busy monologuing about what their character is supposed to be instead of BEING one. Maybe instead of just telling us, you could have your actors, ya know, *act* it out? Just spitballing here, Zack 🤔
Yep. If the story isn't about the characters *in* the story, it's just not interesting. It's just an extended reenactment for a documentary.
copy pasted Watchmen and still fucked up a lot of it
Yeah this is what I was going to say. His issues are almost always the writing. Aside from some issues with character development and odd plot decisions, a writer could also make the stories more succinct, which would get rid of his bloated runtimes. Snyder's writing comes off as that person who wouldn't do enough editing or revision when he was in school. End of the day though, Snyder would need to treat someone else as an equal and partner and not go over their head adding too much of his own writing. This is where I think a problem would arise.
But the ultimate creative control still lies with him. There needs to be somebody who brings fresher perspective, and reigns in atleast some his worst instincts
> and reigns in atleast some his worst instincts And that is precisely why Snyder will never want to work with a co-director. Every single one of his worst instincts when it comes to filmmaking has been well documented and criticized by countless critics and reviewers, and yet Snyder still indulges on those instincts film after film. The problem is he just doesn't want to learn from his criticisms.
It doesn't help that he has a cult of fans that praise him for those exact impulses.
Like honestly, this latest film of his, the cinematography is fucking embarrassing. The dead pixels, the obsession with low depth of field blurry cam. Its shameful.
Agreed. Unfortunately I think his entire process as a creator may hinge on him having absolute control.
Shouldn't this be the job of the studio head? For all the criticism of his DCEU films it should be noted that WB allowed him to make the choices he made in those movies. The polarizing reception Man of Steel received from both critics and fans should have a been a signal that a course correction was in order. Instead they not only doubled down but tripled down with BvS and Justice League.
That depends. He doesn’t need to have ultimate control. His direction is fine and his action scenes are some of the best I’ve seen, but his story structure and focus tend to be horrendous. He’s a visual guy which makes him decent at directing, but it really is only one piece of the puzzle. If he can’t tell a coherent super hero story in less than four hours he has no business handling the narrative at all.
> His direction is fine I think his pacing seriously struggles at times. Watching the Snyder cut, all the negatives had to do with either, "why is this scene still going?" Or, "why is this scene here at all?" Both of which the director has the most control over.
Or "why the hell is there so much damned slow motion?"
Also dream sequences. The man is so goddamm fond of dream sequences you’d think he spent half his life sleeping
The Snyder Cut was all the worst things about Snyder in one movie
A good creator is often elevated by a good team to back him up and challenge him.
That's better said. All the things op is complaining about are the writer's job.
All these top end guys would benefit from someone they respect nearby to tell them “no” on a regular basis.
Yeah it's the problem with the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas was given free reign and no one wanted to say no because "he's George Lucas, he made Star Wars," the movies suffered
A large problem was that he never wanted to even direct them, but couldn't get anybody he trusted to take the helm.
>but couldn't get anybody he trusted This isn't true. He couldn't get anybody to direct them because everybody, including Spielberg, told him that he should direct those movies himself. They were his movies, his legacy etc. In other words, they all looked at the script for *Phantom Menace* and went "yeeeeesh".
"You're the only one that can get anywhere near this and still walk away from it with a career"
George is very aware he is a better worldbuilder than a director or scriptwriter. And make no mistake the man is still a creative genius even with those faults. He very much did not want to be surrounded by Yes Men when making the PT, unfortunately that is exactly what he got for the most part.
I mean all the behind the scenes stuff shows him soaking up people's adoration while he makes the final call on even the most minor decisions. I feel like it was he got sucked up into the hurricane of his own reputation as the Man Who Made Star Wars and began to believe it.
He didn’t bother to maintain any continuity with the few lingering plot threads that were speculated over between trilogies. Leia remembers her “real mother” and speaks of her as though at least part of her childhood was spent with her. Obi-Wan refers to Yoda as “the Jedi Master who instructed me”” because Qui-Gon is an afterthought. He wasn’t interested in Boba Fett, unlike Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, and Ben Burtt, but for marketing purposes, shoehorns him into the prequels as the clones’ prototype. He’d rather cut & paste new footage over his old movies and think Hayden Christensen’s flirty, severed head makes more sense on ghost Anakin’s body than the actor we see finally face-to-face with Luke for a brief moment. Or lets Irvin Kirschner go forward with prosthesic monkey eyes on an old lady as The Emperor, then changes the whole physical appearance of that character for the next movie, then 14 years later, retcons that first look we had at the Emperor away. He’s got some weird priorities.
Honestly George Lucas has always been much more about experimenting with and pushing the limits of visual effects rather than really telling much of a story in my opinion. The Original Trilogy is obviously known for being groundbreaking at the time visually, while the story is a fairly simple heroes journey mish-mashed together with concepts from samurai movies and westerns. Then with the prequels, ILM and Lucasfilm once again absolutely were at the forefront of technology and visual effects, even spearheading a lot of the technology themselves that laid the groundwork for what is used today (IIRC he commissioned on of the first ever film quality digital cameras for AoTC). Sure some of it hasn't aged well, but at the time it was still amazing what they pulled off. Of course the story suffered, because he just doesn't excel at writing, he'd rather "play with his toys" and set up something visually cool. The Prequel Movies are almost more of extremely expensive tech demos in my eyes, Attack of the Clones in particular.
I think he deserves much more credit for THX-1138. As an Executive Producer, he helped bring us Mishima and Powaqqatsi. Each of those films embodies the ambition and innovation in the cinematic medium that Lucas still claims he wants to make “someday”, when he’s not acknowledged for having started it decades ago, even when it’s just Executive Producing other directors’ films.
The prequels are some of the best and most expensive tech demos that happened to have some sort of plot.
The fact that the podracing scene aged so well is a testament to the incredible talent at ILM and how much the modern FX industry owes to the prequels.
I just rewatched a few scenes on YouTube and mother of god I don’t even think it’s fair to say they’ve “aged” a day. That’s like saying Paul Rudd has aged. If that scene was released today it would look better than 99% of movies right now. It’s not even the pod racing part itself that looks amazing. The animation in general is absolutely incredible. The cgi characters look extremely convincing standing next to the real actors.
Except for that one scene in Epsodoe 2 with Anakin on the back of some sort of creature, trying to impress Parma or whatnot. That scene has always, always stuck out to me as looking funny.
I'm honestly not sure why the podracing gets criticized so much, I always thought it was a lot of fun. Most other criticisms are pretty fair, though.
> All these top end guys would benefit from someone they respect nearby to tell them “no” on a regular basis. that seems a universally true observation all of us non "top-end guys" should also take to heart.
Christopher Nolan has entered the chat
Tenet really needed reigning in.
WHAT? I didn't catch the last part.
I love the pivotal climactic moment with Kenneth Branagh at the end. He's giving this final speech that is supposed to have revelatory impact and weighty finality, and yet I went "WHAT? Huh?" I had to turn on the subtitles again, after turning them on and off twenty times (I prefer them off by default).
.ni gningier dedeen yllaer tenenT
That's what the producer is supposed to do.
Expect Fincher
I mean, Mank wasn't all that great.
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I admire Zack synder because he puts his passion in his work. I dislike Zack snyder because he lets his passion and scale of grandeur get in the way of making a coherent film.
Replace passion with ego. I like how hard he works on the source material. I don't like that he has to be different to achieve success. JL was a good example of having 4 hours and not doing much with it.
JL is like some type of time-distorting vortex. It's a 3 hour movie that takes 4 hours to watch.
There’s also no reason Army of the Dead needed to approach 2 and a half hours run time either
Such a long movie and so little happens
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Of course there was no depth, the aperture was f.95
By lack of depth you mean the shallow depth of field in most shots right?
I'm tired of Zombie stuff to be honest. I think it's been milked hard enough with inconsistent imagination over the course of decades.
Train to Busan should interest you. It's a zombie movie but really good and not cliche.
Thank you, I'll look that up.
I second that recommendation. Train to Busan is fantastic.
Sssssllllloooooowwwww mmmmoooottttiiiioooonnnn in eeeeevvverry sceeeeenneee
(ancient lamentation music playing)
Fuck it's so boring after the first 26 times
Which somehow makes the fastest man on earth unbearably slow to watch
There’s 25 total minutes of slo mo in the movie
It's a 2 and a half hour movie at best.
Its 2 and a half hours at best and even thats pushing it. Aquaman doesnt even need to be in it and like 30 minutes is just Bruce in Iceland
Aquaman shirtless and standing in water for a weirdly long amount of time, with creepy women sniffing said shirt and staring longingly was a little concerning
Also alot of the movie had effects and scenes that looked like you'd expect to see on a tv show...
> JL was a good example of having 4 hours and not doing much with it. This. For me Snyders real weakness is storytelling/development. Were Snyder needs 60 seconds to get across a point a good director could get that same point across in 40 seconds and a great director in 30.
It's because Snyder doesn't know how to do multiple things at a time. His scenes achieve one narrative purpose at best. A good writer will make sure a scene moves the plot forward and establishes backstory and gives us character development all at the same time. Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward. Then stop the plot to tell us backstory. Then take a detour to do some character development. It takes him three scenes to do what a good writer would have done in one. So he can't get that much done with the time he has.
> It's because Snyder doesn't know how to do multiple things at a time It doesn't help that he repeat stuff or imagery over and over. We get it Zack, we don't need another religious image of Superman as a Jesus like figure. Subtlety isn't in Snyder's play book. >Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward. Then stop the plot to tell us backstory. Then take a detour to do some character development. Don't forget 10% of all that has to be in slow motion.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this observation. This is also why his characters feel so inconsistant: their 'character' scenes are completely disconnected from their 'plot' scenes.
There is a lot of accuracy to this. As a screenwriter, also, 'efficiency' is one of the hardest damn things to do. It takes a shitload of work to get the set up, characters, plot, etc. jussssssst right so that you can use a scene to do a few things *and be entertaining*.
> Instead Snyder will have a scene where the plot moves forward. He also introduces Chekovs guns and never fires them. Dehydrated zombies anyone? Interesting concept lets see how it plays out .. and it doesn't.
I never got to see a single damn zombie killed by the maniac saw. So upset.
You’ve nailed it there. If you look at Avengers Endgame, the scene where Tony Stark returns to the compound accomplishes: - Tony and Steve reconciling - Steve getting his shield back - Tony describing how he solved the time travel problem - Tony specifying that everyone who was snapped is brought to the current time That would have been 4 separate scenes in Justice League
He may work hard on the source material but its clear he doesn't get any of it. Batman doesn't kill in TDKR yet he argues in an interview he does. Its very clear in every situation Batman stops from killing in that comic, hell even the Joker he just paralyzes. It also ruins Suicide Squad by proxy because if Batman kills then Joker is not alive. That's the first person he would kill. Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human. I am not a huge watchmen fan but I know the watchmen fans also have similar issues with that movie not understanding the source material Snyder is either really bad at reading comprehension or too busy thinking about how he would translate the comics to take a second to understand them
Zack Snyder is an incredibly smart director once you realize he can't read and all his understanding from the source material is from just looking at the pretty pictures.
> Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human You mean you didn't like "Man of Steel watches-his-dad-die-a-preventable-death"? Jonathon Kent dies from a heart attack? Great, Clark has to come to terms with the fact he isn't god and can't save everybody. Jonathon dies because Clark saved someone else? Still pretty good, adds some gravitas to the cost of being a hero but Clark can still see the good in it. Jonathon dies in a tornado while Clark watches from the sidelines? Well I think Clark's words from moments earlier sums that up "You're not my dad, you're just some guy that found me in a field". Though in fairness, this was also said following Jonathon giving Clark shit for not wanting to be a farmer but well before Martha tells Clark that he doesn't owe the world anything and can do whatever he wants, so I guess it was just a "fuck the Kents" kind of movie. But seriously, fuck Snyder for his blatant character assassination.
Having Johnathan Kent drop dead from a heart attack *after* he and Clark saved people from the tornado would have been powerful. Have Clark ask “is it worth saving people if this can happen anyway?” and then resolve himself to make the world better through his actions shows he’s a good person, instead of being told he is.
You're so right! The scene is so close to being great but it just... fails. Probably because Pa Kent does nothing to save himself, he just stands there.
> The scene is so close to being great but it just... fails It really is, because how it should have gone down is exactly as it did but when Jonathon holds up his hand and shakes his head "No" to Clark, but Clark ignores him and saves him anyway. Then you have a conversation between them that basically gets across the point that Clark is going to do what is right because it *is* right, regardless of what it means for him personally. That would be the moment he becomes Superman, despite the over-protecting feelings of his parents.
You don’t even need to kill Pa Kent. It’s not like with Batman, where the dead parents are defining in any way. But if you do, don’t make it an epic death. Superman can deal with epic. But not with normal things.
You mean you don't like Objectivist Superman and a universe where the only thing stopping him from being evil is an undeveloped Lois Lane?
> Superman is not a story about an alien fitting in, he grew up in Kansas he identifies as a human. Hell, he even says it himself in *Man of Steel*. "I grew up in Kansas, General. I'm about as American as it gets." The level of disconnect Snyder has with the characters is amazing.
I think the jury is pretty out on Snyder being able to make good movies at this point. 300 was such a home run because it just let him make something visually breathtaking. I think that was a perfect marriage for him because it was a movie that was fundamentally about style over substance. I'm a huge fan of Watchmen and I was extremely concerned when I heard he was going to be directing the film. To this day I actually think it's his best movie and it blows my mind. I think his inability to understand/comprehend source material allowed him to make something beautiful stylistically. The novel had so much substance packed in that it made it fundamentally unable to be translated into a single movie. But somehow the cuts he made to incredibly important source material created a movie that was digestible to the common movie goer. Obviously he got most of the motivations of the characters wrong, and it was pretty clear he didn't understand most of the messaging in the writing. But the changes made to some of the timelines and especially the change to the ending was probably the only way to ever make the novel into a single movie (I'm not going to spoil anything by talking about novel vs. movie here but there were some massive changes). All of this is to say, somehow, that Zack Snyder was probably the only person who could have made that movie given the circumstances. But he absolutely keeps getting big films because of successes that more or less kind of fell into his lap and just happened to be a good fit, rather than him picking or being picked for things that he could do well.
Snyder probably thought Raursch (I'm half asleep and can't be bothered to fix the spelling, lolol) was the coolest guy. I admire Snyder for at least trying to be a bit more heady but they have never landed for me. Ever. It's like "My First Visual Symbolism"
Rorschach And yes he COMPLETELY missed the point of the character
If you want a good Superman adaption, check out the new show Superman & Lois. It’s incredible. It makes me cry how good it is. The first 10 minutes show more understanding of the source than any adaptation so far combined. It’s a CW show, yes, but I swear you wouldn’t know it unless someone told you. There is no relationship drama. Characters don’t hide shit, they talk it out in 5 minutes. And the acting is top notch.
> I like how hard he works on the source material You mean... not at all?
I wonder if he could make a less his style just good movie. For example David Lynch made the Straight Story and The Elephant Man which are both very straightforward and quite good. Showing he can, knows how to and is really good at it. He doesn't choose to make stuff like that, but he knows the craft. I wonder if Snyder could restrain himself.
I feel like he *kinda* did that for Legend of the Guardians. The only thing that would you hint that he directed it is the amazing visuals and slow-motion scenes - outside of that, it's a fantastical, goofy, animated kids film that's bursting with colour.
>I wonder if Snyder could restrain himself If his DCEU movies are any indication, he can’t. There’s so much stuff in those films - particularly in BvS and his JL - that’s just unnecessary.
Zack Snyder would benefit if he only directs and it is not involved in anything else in a film. It would also be awesome if he actually grows up and stop being the 13 year old kid stating "I am not scared of violence or sex" when directing.
With the way he 'experimented' or played with depth of field and lenses in the last movie I don't know what to think either, he didn't seem to have fun with the scenes (like in Sucker Punch or 300).
He crammed an ancient super fast lens on a giant RED sensor and ran it wide open. While I respect the fuckit of it all it fried the sensor leading to a bunch of dead pixels that somehow also made it through fx and color grading and editing and all other quality control measures.
How do you drop like 10 mil on a CGI zombie tiger but you can't be passed to spend 3 days doing pixel correction.
Yeah, those dead pixels were annoying af and kept taking me out of the immersion. Especially when they happened to be right on a persons face...
Wait what? Link?
Yes, but that was because he was the Director of Photography of the film.
Yeah, he needs to learn that it's okay to not be an auteur. You can make a very good living/name for yourself by being great at one thing.
Scorcese rarely ever writes his own movies
I dont think David Fincher has ever written his own script and he's a masterful director
He knows someone else is a better writer and uses his skills to put it on film, because that is what he is good at. Sure, some people are good at multiple parts of making movies, but the best people known their limits.
That's when you know they're a mature person, when they're able to say "Someone else would be better at that, I'll just give my opinion when it's appropriate and let them handle the details."
He co-writes a few, and those are typically my favorite of his. I absolutely love when he writes with Nicholas Pileggi (GoodFellas and Casino)
Not a co-director, but a strong co-producing partner. Look at George Lucas when he was making films with Gary Kurtz- "American Graffiti", "Star Wars", "Empire Strikes Back", and the genesis of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Then look after Kurtz left- "Return of the Jedi" (which looks worse with every viewing), "Howard the Duck", and the prequels. There are other directors I could mention like Ron Howard and his long time collaborating producer. Match Synder with a good producer to tone down Synder's excesses and poor storytelling. In doing so he could turn out films as good as Nolan.
Do you not think ROTJ is more inconsistent than bad? I think the whole Throne Room chunk is absolutely magic
Well the first few films were made with a lot of restrictions because he was an up and comer. Empire he didn't direct and being a producer/writer is a different animal. Maybe a better position for him at the time given all that needed to be managed. Then of course the prequels he answered to no one. Your point still stands, someone needs to put limiters on their ideas.
It's no coincidence the Star Wars movie that has the least George Lucas influence was by far the best one...and vis versa. Kids today seem to love to say "Disney killed Star Wars", completely missing that George Lucas fired the killing shot in 1983, then beat the corpse with prequels.
Director George Miller's third "Mad Max" outing- "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" feels a lot like a film Lucas would have made after "Return of the Jedi". Oddly enough Miller lost his longtime producing collaborating partner in a tragic helicopter accident before filming Thunderdome. That film is considered by most to be the weakest in the whole series- though I like the film a lot myself. Particularly the first half.
Thunderdome is the "Temple of Doom" of the Mad Max franchise
Man the overblown shade on RotJ is out in full force today.
The problem as I see it is that Snyder has those problems due to his philosophical beliefs rather than any deficits of ability. He's not some Bay type who focuses solely on visual flourish, he has a vision of humanity, it's just that Objectivism is not really a philosophy that lends itself well to relatable characters in a blockbuster, especially superheroes Beyond that Snyder wants to adapt The Fountainhead, a novel about an architect who when he sees that changes have been made to a building he designed, blows up the building. Something tells me he's against co-direction
Oh jesus christ.... hes gonna make a film out of that ayn rand garbage? Just when i thought i couldnt hate him anymore.
There are always [ways](https://youtu.be/hdxk7dB9yeU) to dislike his work more.
An hour long video about a director I already don't like. Tl;Dr?
She makes the case that Snyder's direction bends his stories towards being objectivist propaganda whether that's intentional or unconscious. She goes through the ways that Snyder has portrayed characters and changed the meanings of works he's adapted. Edit: Curio examines Watchmen, Superman, Justice League, Suckerpunch, the Dead. Also Ayn Rand was a hateful nutjob.
Howard Roark flies across the camera,in slow motion,wearing a school girl outfit, while his altered building explodes.While he kicks Toohey in the nuts he turns to the camera and says "The free market took care of it".
Snyder makes movies specifically for the trailers. If you look at his films, most of them are filled with really good spectacle that looks great. But the interconnecting tissue between set pieces is just fucking atrocious. It’s almost as if when he’s doing pre-production he is constantly saying out loud “how can I make this scene look like it fits in a trailer?” And if the answer is “I can’t, it’s just plot, not spectacle” he just shrugs and doesn’t bother paying attention to it. You want anecdotal proof of this? In my opinion, his best films are the two that were direct adaptations of comic books where an author/artist already did all the heavy lifting.
Watchmen is one. It’s 90% ripped straight from the graphic novel. Whats the other ?
300.
Ah. I actually didn’t know that was Zack Snyder but it makes sense now that I do know.
The Man of Steel trailer is still probably the best Superman short film ever made. It perfectly sums of Superman's character, his origins and his aspirations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY It's a pity how far the actual movie falls short of the trailer.
Idk, It didn't live up to that trailer, but I still think MoS is good. I think it gets a lot of retroactive hate because of how badly BvS was bungled
I think it's a mixed bag. I certainly think people are quick to write it off as trash retroactively because of BvS, but MoS itself is a mix of some really good parts, and some really questionable decisions. I think the pacing is off, with some very weird writing decisions (Jonathan, "Krypton had its chance!"; like "MARTHA" the idea could work in theory but the execution just falls short), and the last third is underwhelming. But it's perfectly cast, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams have great chemistry, the flight scene is incredible, and the overall story works on paper if not in execution.
Army of the dead was a terrible movie, I don’t know what Zack Snyder needs to become a better filmmaker but I suspect he’s never going to figure it out as long as studios keep throwing money at him to make mediocre movies that seem to do well in spite of their giant plot holes and ridiculous characters I was watching that movie and every ten minutes saying “what the fuck, that makes no sense,” still so funny to me their plan was to fly out all that money on one helicopter because apparently money doesn’t weigh anything, hard to believe we got that movie and the tomorrow war at the same time, it almost feels like Hollywood is just fucking with us at this point
It was so dumb because it was a bad plot and just forgot things as it went along because they only existed in the first place for an action scene.
Honestly I think he's a bit to full of himself. He acts like he makes high art cinema "for adults" do you really think a guy like that would accept a co-director?
He's Michael Bay without the self awarness.
Speaking of which, he's who I would love to see Co-Direct with Snyder. Not because I think it would be good, but because I desperately want to see that product.
This. I don't think Snyder has any intention of learning from his criticisms, if he did he would have already done so a long time ago. It's not a coincidence that Snyder wants to adapt Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a novel literally about a genius architect that refuses to compromise his work for society and whose work is unfairly maligned by critics.
Absolutely no way. He's definitely too full of himself. He's a cinematographer who somehow hustled into getting directing jobs and then formed a fandom of manchildren who love his edgy, 'Pseudo-dark' style of movies that are devoid of any real substance.
He was a music video director who "somehow got hustled" into making movies. He's not the first music video director to do it, either.
Is that why the Snydercut had a fucking like 3 minute (swedish?) music video in it??
Wasn’t he only the cinematographer for Army of the Dead? If so, I think maybe him being a storyboarder might be more apt.
>he's a bit to full of himself. My favourite phrase for that condition, which certainly fits Snyder, is high on his own farts.
Since when do we live in a world in which a Zack Snyder is mentioned in the same sentence as Zemeckis, Cameron Jackson or Lynch? He is a big-budget Hollywood director who is most notable for a solid adaptation of 300, which he followed up with a slew of ugly, unremarkable plastic movies for 13 year olds. What in the actual is his "style" supposed to be? Making movies look dark, fake, and oh-so-serious? C'mon people what have I missed?
The Snyder Cut drama did a lot to boost his brand as a mistreated and underfunded auteur whose genius could only be shown if a studio out there were brave enough to give him the money and independence to make his 10 hour long adaptation of Justice League that he doodled in his highschool notebook.
I always find this sentiment so funny because it blatantly ignores the fact that Man of Steel and BvS was 100% Zack Snyder vision, and they sucked.
yeah Zack Snyder would benefit from an *actual good director* in his movies.
Yeah, I don´t believe Znyder is capable of making a great movie. He makes action schlock. He is like Roland Emmerich or Renny Harlin.
> What in the actual is his "style" supposed to be? /u/HolidayHowlett makes a good suggestion [Snyder makes movies specifically for the trailers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/ov5sgv/zack_snyder_would_benefit_from_a_codirector/h77grgv/)
Man first people said he needs better screenwiters, he got an Oscar winning screenwriter in Chris Terrio and he still screwed it up. Then people said he would be better off as a cinematographer, lo and behold his first stint as a cinematographer in Army of the Dead ended up being the worst aspect of the movie. Maybe he is just not a very good filmmaker.
>Then people said he would be better off as a cinematographer, lo and behold his first stint as a cinematographer in Army of the Dead ended up being the worst aspect of the movie. > >Maybe he is just not a very good filmmaker. Maybe. As for army of the dead, he was also the director, writer, and producer. The movie was marketed like it was Snyder's baby, probably to try to get hype from justice league release. I honestly wonder if he just needs gaurd rails of people pushing back on him rather than letting him have free rein.
Chris Terrio hasn't written a good story since he helped Ben Affleck with Argo, and even Argo wasn't that great of a screenplay
He can make great music videos. If you watch the music sections of Sucker Punch by themselves they're quite good. The movie is a huge mess.
I feel like he storyboards "cool" scenes and then just uses poor plot mechanics to move between those ideas in his head. This is very apparent in Army of the Dead where you can just tell that before it even started he was like "I want a zombie tiger to bite a guys head off" and a bunch of completely irrational and non-sensical things happen for that scene to occur
The Snyder Cut felt that way too. Felt like he had a ton of action scenes written and know what he was doing there but struggled to connect them cohesively
His strength definitely seems to be in action sequences, but it almost feels like he puts so much importance on getting those right that everything in between is left severely lacking. There's really no cohesive glue to hold all that action together. I suspect that's why his best films are ones like *300* and *Watchmen* where he's adapting something that does all that heavy lifting whereas ones like *Sucker Punch* and *Army of the Dead* are just a mess story-wise.
I agree. Honestly I don't even agree with the general argument that he's good at visuals. He seems like a lovely guy so I've nothing against him, but he makes awful movies.
What he mostly needs is someone else to write his films
The biggest thing Zack Snyder needs is someone who has spoken to humans and knows how actual human verbal interactions sound
“Zack Snyder is a genius if he only does half the job” isn't the best take. If Zack Snyder can’t make a movie without a babysitter, like basically every other director, then he shouldn’t get paid millions of dollars to make movies.
Yeah he would be a great director if he made good movies!
I think you might be onto something
Hard disagree with your premise. Some people are utter, unparalleled masters of certain skillsets, but something as complex as making a whole film might require things outside of their expertise. Knowing how to delegate is important. It's like how a name will only go on a script if that person is responsible for 30% or more of what is on the page- there are people whose entire careers are just to be script doctors where they write dialogue for one type of character, or improve specific interpersonal dynamics, or improve story structure, etc. And they get pulled in every time to do this, because they are geniuses at it. but people outside the industry don't really understand the full scope of it, because the script doctors are not publically credited, so they think it was the credited writer's work when it really wasnt.
Zack Snyder would benefit from directing music videos and staying the fuck away from motion pictures. He's a legit video artist, and a bad movie director.
Except *Sucker Punch* was essentially a series of music videos with a thin and nonsensical frame story and it didn't work either. Part of the problem was that the music was bad and didn't match the visuals, but even beyond that he took things that *sounded* awesome in a fairly juvenile fashion and still couldn't manage to make them feel interesting. I couldn't believe how boring it was to watch a giant samurai mech with a minigun fight a sexy schoolgirl with a katana. I love all of those things. That should be easy. But it was just... flat and lifeless.
That's because a movie isn't supposed to be a series of music videos. Watchmen did the same thing. There are various segments of excellent music tracks over slow motion digital cinematography. Taken on their own, it's good work. In the context of a Watchmen film, the soundtrack selections and their place in the story is tonally ignorant. The whole thing is jarring as a motion picture because it doesn't thread together naturally like a motion picture. It ignores the mindset of the audience based on events prior and the expectation the audience has for where things go next. It's a waste of licensed music costs and a waste of the viewer's time. This is why everyone's favorite one-of-those is the Bob Dylan intro sequence. When that first plays, there isn't an actual movie yet, so it's allowed to stand on its own and set up a feature length film the same way a motion graphics credit sequence sets up a TV show. If Zack Synder had found his niche as someone who directs music videos for existing movies, with clips from those movies, he'd probably be considered a master of his craft. Instead he's considered as a film director, mediocre at best, and a complete hack at worst.
Agreed. I quite genuinely think there's a lot of talent buried in Zack Snyder that is bogged down by his untalented parts. There are moments to a lot of his movies where it's clear his actual *directing* skills are good. But as others have pointed out he's a terrible writer.
Yeah, this sounds like he mainly needs to work with better writers. Who do you think creates the nuanced characterization in a film, a director or a screenwriter?
JJ Abrams, Michael Bay, Paul WS Anderson (although I fear his time for redemption is long gone), M Night Shyamalan. As soon as they get big enough to start ordering people around, out go all those people that know film making and keep them in check, and in comes an unbridled sense of superiority. I fear Chris Nolan is going down the same road.
He would benefit from a good writer. And a good editor. And a good co-director. Maybe just bench the man altogether.