Zach Snyder is a shit director.. change my mind - Has Snyder made a single watchable film?

[Product Placement]

He has talent for sure especially when it comes to visuals, just needs a good tard wrangler to rain him when has a bad idea or becomes too self indulgent pretty much the same thing I would say about Rian Johnson. Even his down right awful movies like Sucker Punch I will give this, they still feel like they come from a person and from not a soul less production line like the Disney live action remake movies.

With his cut of JL and now Army of the Dead, he also needs someone to make his movies shorter from the script level, JL had 30 minutes of footage you could remove with editing for the better, and the story Army of the Dead is trying to tell has no business being 2 and half hours.

 

[Kornula]

Now it's rumored Snyder is openly expressing his desire to ruin Frank Millers: "The Dark Knight Returns". The animated version is.. "eh" at best..but Snyder will suck all the life and joy out of it.

Was this thread specifically started to get that one guy who appeared in the RedLetterMedia thread to pitch a fit?

Nope.. I started this thread because I genuinely HATE Snyder and his crap films.
I have not seen one RedLetterMedia video to this very day.
My disgust for Snyder is 100% organically grown.

 

[JamesFargo]

He panders to people who treat funny books as some kind of religion. They were made for each other.

 

[Kornula]

I liked 300 and Watchmen. If you dislike the 300 movie, you wouldn't like the source material because the film is practically a 1:1 per page adaption of the movie with some added stuff for run time. At the time, 300 was pretty stylistically different and it's just entertaining to watch.

Watchmen just appeals to my 80s autism. It's funny because I was never a big fan of the source material, not clear reason why, but the film I can sit down and watch any time.

As others have said, Snyder is nowhere near as bad a JJ Abrams. JJ doesn't have a single good film and I believe his success is all due to luck and industry cocksucking.

Sin City; The graphic novel is amazing.
Sin City: The Robert Rodriguez movie is equally amazing. However, the film did something that Snyder cannot seem to do; convert most of the Graphic novel into cinematic elements. As you stated, Snyder just copied and pasted the 300 Graphic novel. Comic books, especially Frank Miller Graphic Novels, are not movie story boards...That's why 300 and The Watchmen failed utterly as movies.

Mr. Rodriguez not only boiled down the essential parts of the whole "Sin City" epic - and its visual style into cinematic elements. Snyder does not understand that concept at all. which proves he does not understand cinema whatsoever

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Mr. Rodriguez not only boiled down the essential parts of the whole "Sin City" epic - and its visual style into cinematic elements. Snyder does not understand that concept at all. which proves he does not understand cinema whatsoever

Which begs the question of why Zack Synder became a big-time director. I'd say it's through connections with his wife, but I only know her because of his movies.

 

[Kornula]

Which begs the question of why Zack Synder became a big-time director. I'd say it's through connections with his wife, but I only know her because of his movies.

Hollywood has a long standing history of elevating unskilled/untalented hacks through nepotism....

 

[Übertroon]

I don't hate his directing. The worst thing in Zach Snyder movies is always the writing. Which begs the question of why he keeps working on movies written by people like David Goyer and Chris Terrio

 

[66andtwothirds]

was he Superman Returns? that one was so boring.

I remember being dragged to Sucker Punch by a classmate. why he wanted to see this is beyond me. looking back it belonged more in the gamergate era with the proto-sjw shit.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Now it's rumored Snyder is openly expressing his desire to ruin Frank Millers: "The Dark Knight Returns". The animated version is.. "eh" at best..but Snyder will suck all the life and joy out of it.

Nope.. I started this thread because I genuinely HATE Snyder and his crap films.
I have not seen one RedLetterMedia video to this very day.
My disgust for Snyder is 100% organically grown.

In that case, you might get a kick out of this.

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

 

[The Valeyard]

was he Superman Returns? that one was so boring.

No, that one was Bryan Singer. He chose that over directing the third X-Men film and brought James Marsden with him, which is why Cyclops gets killed early on.

Zack Snyder did Man of Steel and Batman v Superman.

 

[biscuitscilia]

Zack Snyder has a better understanding of film language compared to Michael Bay, but that's about it. I think he's a guy who depends a lot on his team; give him a good cinematographer, a decent writer, and a producer who can reign him in and I think he can make a decent film. His director's cut of Justice League is proof that he's capable of making something coherent with the right crew. The legend that has been formed around him is weird because he's never made a film that was that widely praised. I think 300 and Watchmen were the peak of his career and since then it's gone down hill. My own theory is that "Snyder is a genius" was partially a DC fan push to paint the DCEU, or really the "Snyderverse", as the artistic and auteur answer to the MCU and partially it was irony turned unironic. When you have a community that tells you something is great over and over, you start to believe it. I think that's what happened with Snyder's career and is what helped turn him into a maverick with millions of people pushing for the completion of his DC universe.
Personally, I think Warner Bros' greatest mistake was hiring Snyder to direct Man of Steel (and David S. Goyer as the writer. Almost any film that Goyer touches comes out worst for it). If they picked a more talented writer/director duo, they probably could have had an actual rival franchise to the MCU. But I guess you can say that about any movie.

 

[Titos]

He's not as bad as people paint him out to be and not as good as his pajeet fanboys paint him to be. It's very obvious he got his start in Music Video direction though, you can feel it when watching his movies. 300 is pretty fun, Watchmen is ok, his superhero movies are garbage.

 

[Foltest]

He has more hits then miss but I will say this. I don’t forget his films and when I see a Snyder film, I recon his style. I would say one issue he have, is that his ambition outweighs his capacity for good story telling.

 

[Dom Cruise]

He made dumb but entertaining action movies that at least tried to be a little deeper, Dawn of The Dead, 300, Watchmen and Sucker Punch are simply entertaining movies.

However then he tried to actually be an "artistic" filmmaker with Man of Steel and the movie was garbage, he's a guy who desperately wants to be a deep thinker but simply isn't, I can respect him for trying but he should have known his limitations.

I haven't bothered with anything since Man of Steel, Army of The Dead did raise my interest and I might give it a watch at some point, but it doesn't sound like it's great.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

300 was good. Watchmen was a bit plodding but ultimately I'd give it a thumbs up. Barely. But I think those are exceptions that prove the rule.

The rest of his movies are dreary slogs. I think what sealed the deal for me was the TV aspect ratio for his Justice League. That's a guy who is just completely out of control and up his own ass. People like Hitchcock and Spielberg and maybe Nolan can get away with that kind of thing. Not you, smartypants.

 

[Mullti Port RDRAM]

Watchmen was Zach's last good movie. Its been consistently bad since, Man of Steel being tolerable until the second act. The dude has no chill, because all of Batman v Superman was clearly him trying to explain away all the silliness of Man of Mass Murder.

And for the record, I think The Dark Knight is the masterclass of comic book movies, although it feels more and more like an ultraconservative circle jerk crime drama than it does a comic book movie. I haven't really given any comic book movies my time outside of Captain America and Avengers.

 

[Oats12345]

Which begs the question of why Zack Synder became a big-time director. I'd say it's through connections with his wife, but I only know her because of his movies.

He's really underrated director in my eyes.

He made dumb but entertaining action movies that at least tried to be a little deeper, Dawn of The Dead, 300, Watchmen and Sucker Punch are simply entertaining movies.

However then he tried to actually be an "artistic" filmmaker with Man of Steel and the movie was garbage, he's a guy who desperately wants to be a deep thinker but simply isn't, I can respect him for trying but he should have known his limitations.

I haven't bothered with anything since Man of Steel, Army of The Dead did raise my interest and I might give it a watch at some point, but it doesn't sound like it's great.

The Army of The Dead was personally ok to me. Not great or mind blown. But not the worst movie I have see.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

*states an opinion in a way that lets everyone know that it’s deeply held and unlikely to change*
*asks people to change their mind about it*

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I thought Watchmen was alright. Substituting Dr Manhattan for the squid is problematic, but the original graphic novel ends with Veidt’s plan about to be discovered, so the ending was always meant to be imperfect.

The big flaw for me was the fact that it was so stylised. It didn’t feel like it took place in the real world, which is pretty key. I can’t buy that Dreiberg is a middle-aged schlub when he fights like a dancer. Veidt doesn’t feel superior when a psycho like Kovacs has the same fight choreography.

I read an essay once that described Snyder as a director who wants to be Christopher Nolan but thinks like Michael Bay. I think that’s a decent summary.

 

[Lollipop Head]

I thought Watchmen was alright. Substituting Dr Manhattan for the squid is problematic, but the original graphic novel ends with Veidt’s plan about to be discovered, so the ending was always meant to be imperfect.

The big flaw for me was the fact that it was so stylised. It didn’t feel like it took place in the real world, which is pretty key. I can’t buy that Dreiberg is a middle-aged schlub when he fights like a dancer. Veidt doesn’t feel superior when a psycho like Kovacs has the same fight choreography.

I read an essay once that described Snyder as a director who wants to be Christopher Nolan but thinks like Michael Bay. I think that’s a decent summary.

I mean at least he's a pretty nice person in person or at works from what I reads at least not as bad as some peoples in Hollywood.

Althrough some of his later works is polarizing but I like 300 and Watchmen.He's has a styles which differs from a hacks. So Zack Snyder is not a hack. End of discussion. A hack doesn’t care about what he does. A hack doesn’t have a vision. A hack doesn’t try. None of these things are true about Snyder. He has a vision. He tries. And he can make good movies. He might have (ironically) been the best person to adapt Watchmen precisely because he doesn’t seem to have understood the metaphor, and he was unquestionably the best person to direct 300. Dude can block the hell out of an action scene, and he has wagered his career more than once on some really dubious prospects because he believed in them. Sucker Punch was not made by a hack, like it or not. The Owls of Gerwhoosit or however you spell the name was not made by a hack. He makes his choices and he commits to them.

People are complicated. Snyder is the real deal. He’s an incredible producer and his best suit is in making movies where action is a critical part of the story. You feel the power of the superheroes he helps bring to the big screen. He lacks in making scripts that work for most people, but that can be fixed the same way it was fixed for George Lucas — find a really amazing partner and let her (or him) dive in and make sure the script makes sense.

Every one of us has limitations. Snyder too. What we CAN NOT say is how much he’s responsible for the floundering DCEU. We can’t say that because none of us knows fully all the details behind the scenes of the movies he’s made.

As others have said, Snyder is nowhere near as bad as JJ Abrams. JJ doesn't have a single good film and I believe his success is all due to luck and industry cocksucking. Or Paul Feig who is a hack that ruined Ghostbuster

End of my autism rant.