DIRECTOR FOCUS: Zack Snyder

The first time I saw a Zack Snyder movie it scared the hell out of me. 

Dawn of the Dead, and I saw it with my buddy Brian and his group of friends on opening night. Brian loves zombie movies and showed me the original Dawn of the Dead days earlier, but after seeing Snyder’s reboot, I wouldn’t touch a zombie movie for five years. Not even Shaun of the Dead. Zombieland in 2009 finally got me over it…...and that’s the story of how Zack Snyder scared me off of fictional zombies as an adult. 

Next was 300, again with Brian and mutual friends. Two hours of pure action-packed entertainment that didn’t offend us because we knew it was based off a Frank Miller comic, not actual history. 

Then Watchmen, a book I had read several times, leading me to call it “unfilmable,” but I heard about Snyder’s devotion to the book and his refusal to modernize the time period and keep it in the 80’s. Still, I was blown away by its stunning accuracy to the original story, save for one major change that I personally really liked.  At that point, I was a fan, no doubt about it. 

I didn’t see Sucker Punch at the theater, but Brian rented it. The ending really hit me realizing what happened to Babydoll and how she had gained her “freedom.” It’s still one of the most original films I’ve ever watched, and far too many surface level people simply refuse to understand it as far as I’m concerned. 

Now 2013. Man of Steel, the first time Snyder laid his hands on a Superman story, challenged me and my Superman 1978 upbringing to see Kal-El as an alien immigrant raised by loving human parents who molded him to become the hero he was destined to be. As conflicted as I was the first time I enjoyed it, it has improved on each watch, every time, going on seven years now.

The real fire started three years later with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I will never forget how the IMAX theater I watched it cheered when Wonder Woman appeared and applauded loudly when the credits rolled, with almost everyone talking about how badass the movie was, not knowing there were 30 minutes missing from it. 

I found those 30 minutes months later, after spending too much energy and time on Facebook arguing the brilliance of the film with people who just wanted to whine. Not one of those 30 minutes should have been removed and in retrospect, watching the Ultimate Edition was my first glimpse of the trouble that would soon follow. Things changed so much for me that I needed a blog to get my feelings out, and to let other people hear what I had to say.  

Not long after that was when I found Squadcast Media and started podcasting, just in time for Justice League to drop and bring Zack Snyder back into the good graces of everyone else with his “classic” Superman take. 

We heard the whispers. We saw him step down from the film due to a horrific family tragedy. You know what we were told, you know what really happened and the next two and a half years since seeing that movie thrice in theaters is well documented now. 

“Cognitive delusion,” overtook me those first six months because I couldn’t accept what WB had done to him. I apologized for Justice League and tried to move on but I knew deep down it was never his film. Not the one with the bad CGI mustache. Not the one with the quips and one-liners. Not the one that was only two hours long. 

In 2021, on HBO Max, that will all be ancient history, and what will truly be the seventh film of his I see, regardless of DGA rules and regulations, will be what we should have seen in 2017. That’s my personal history with the work of Zachary Edward Snyder and his legendary passion and attention to detail. When people call him a visual director, it’s not an insult even if they mean it that way, because he observes the oldest rule of moviemaking: “Show, don’t tell.”  Film is a visual art after all, and instead of waiting for that big speech or quotable line of dialogue that you could just as soon hear on the radio, you have to look at what’s happening on the screen to tell the story in Snyder’s films, as it should be. 

He’s also a master of the comic book aesthetic. Somehow it always feels plausible, tactile, grounded, the idea that there could even possibly exist beings that fire lasers from their eyes, run at super speed and fly across the planet in a matter of minutes or less. He is able to make gods walk among normal humanity on screen and make it work and it’s a true testament to how talented he truly is. 

Jealousy and attention fuel his haters. Failed filmmakers, hack YouTubers and faux journalists that use personal attacks against him to attract attention from his fans just so they can cry victim and get their numbers up, all because he dared make Superman the most relatable he’s ever been on the big screen. They wish they could do what he does and command the audience that he has. Simple as that.

The best thing about Zack Snyder is that he is undeterred by those who hate him and loudly supported by all who have worked with him. So long as that remains in place, so does his career, and we win as a result of it.