People who enjoy the Zack Snyder DC movies, why do you enjoy them?
Because that’s our preferred take in Movies. Everyone has different tastes, nobody is right or wrong in what they like, or dislike. Hence why they have menus at restaurants. I wish in wasn’t so divisive when it comes to Snyder movies.
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I enjoy Man of Steel and BvS because they took the character of Superman and actually made him both interesting and relatable.
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I love Man of Steel because it was an epic scale Superman movie in all the right ways and the ass-kicking cinematic reboot Superman needed after Superman Returns.
BvS…well, I don’t love it. It’s a good movie for what it is, but with regards to the Ultimate Edition, I’ll quote the Spider-Man action figure from the Twisted ToyFare Theater segment of ToyFare magazine when he saw the Director’s Cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
“Great, just what that movie needs: more footage.”
BvS needed a better script and better editing to be better, not an increased runtime.
Man of Steel is my favorite DCEU movie, while BvS is my least favorite.
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I enjoy his style. He’s a visual storyteller (much like Terrence Malick), though I don’t hate the scripts either. Dawn of the Dead remake is probably one of the top 3 zombie films ever made (which is saying a lot of you’re familiar with the genre).
300 captured the book perfectly; folks like to hate on it now (mostly because it was popular) but it was a cultural phenomena when it came out; every dude bro was in the gym after that movie.
Sucker Punch was a lot of fun. Thin script for sure. But it was a visual feast, the action choreography was brilliant, and I adored the music.
Man of Steel is by far my favorite Superman film. It humanized him and made him relatable in a way I hadn’t seen before. I only wish we’d spent more time on Krypton; my god, he nailed that Krypton opening.
BvS and Watchmen are my two favorite CBMs; I enjoy his deconstruction of superhero’s. BvS, for me, is the final chapter of a Superman origin story, a Batman redemption story, and an elseworlds tale all rolled into one. Some say that’s too much. For me it works. It’s filled to the brim with philosophizing and allegory (the retelling Morte D’Arthur during the Superman v Batman face off, Lois as the lady in the water, beautiful stuff). That’s the big thing for me; the layers that are there.
So yeah, Snyder is one of my top 3 favorite directors alongside Tarantino and probably Michael Mann.
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I find his adaptation of Watchmen decent, though it suffers from trying to adapt the whole thing into one movie. The themes of the original work suffer, but they are still there to some degree. The action scenes are generally wrong-headed for the subject matter, but the dramatic scenes are often quite good (less so when Doctor Manhattan, Silk Spectre, or Ozymandias are involved, but they’re not horrible). This will be a recurring trend with his DC movies. I’m not sure if anyone else could have done a significantly better job within the limits of a single feature-length film.
Man of Steel typically works quite well in its quieter scenes (with the one exception being the rather dubious “Maybe” line from Pa Kent in an otherwise effective scene). The religious symbolism is about as heavy-handed as you can expect from a modern Superman movie, but it doesn’t really add up to much of anything this time. The film really could have used at least one example of a good experience Clark had as a kid to achieve some tonal balance. However, it’s the beginning and ending of the movie that really bring it down. The extended action sequence with Jor-El felt like needless excess. And speaking of excess, the final act is just too big. There’s only so much superhuman punching and world engine punching that I can take before I zone out, and the movie trades on 9/11 imagery for no good reason. Still, there’s a good film in here, and if someone at WB had slashed the film’s budget by about $25 million before he started filming, it might have been something special.
Batman v Superman is easily the best of the three. It takes all of the dubious symbolism of the previous film and actually does something with it. The film also takes the time to explore some of the themes that were somewhat under-served by Watchmen. For the first two hours, at least, it’s not only his best film, but one of the best films based on a DC property. It was the most engrossing comic book movie I’d seen in theaters since The Dark Knight. Alas, like TDK (and pretty much every Batman film, for that matter), it starts to fall apart near the end. The “Martha” moment is executed inelegantly, and it elicits some unintentional laughs despite being conceptually appropriate for a movie that is evoking classical tragedies. (We’ve been seeing these characters plummet toward a tragic end because of their hamartia, so it’s only natural that they’d reconcile on Oedipal grounds.) What follows is the best Batman action scene committed to film, but it is unfortunately followed by a big battle with a CG Doomsday that really should have been saved for a sequel. If you chapter skip over the clumsy email scene and then stop the movie once Batman rescues Martha Kent, you have a brilliant motion picture. If you keep watching, you have an okay movie that’s 4/5 masterpiece and 1/5 garbage.
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@TheJonVincent Regarding Michael Mann…could you see him directing a DC movie, particularly one that isn’t a saga of criminals and the police that pursue them, but rather something more fantastical and adventurous?
I’ve long felt that Mann is fully capable of a big, audience pleasing blockbuster. He’s done incredible work on movies like The Last of The Mohicans, Heat and Collateral (among others) but I’d love to see the sensibilities that he applies to most of his movies towards a large scale DC adventure.
If nothing else, a Gotham Central movie if Mann really just prefers his established comfort zone and doesn’t want to step out of it.
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Think MOS is beautifully shot, and you feel the impact of a super power fight in ways other movies don’t pull off. Clark/Superman acts like a normal person with conflicting emotions. BvS has it’s moments, and JL is imperfect but watchable. What I have a hard time understanding is the Snyder is the greatest ever vs Snyder is horrible argument. Everyone has their own take, but the extremes of these positions don’t seem justified to me.
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I think Snyder’s films have become more a lot more divisive because of Snyder’s contempt for those that disagree with his point of view on the character(s). It’s smart on his part, it keeps the films in the public consciousness and people care about them one way or another.
I have my views on his trilogy, but no point in giving him free advertising.
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DeSade what I find interesting is how much people care what others think of his DC films. I thought Captain Marvel was dull, disjointed and unfunny, but I actually liked Larson as the character. But, outside a few wack jobs I don’t think anyone would really care what I think of it. But, have an opinion on BvS…
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Depending on one’s POV, MOS & BvS can be seen as hard breaks from canonical source. Where as Shazam, WW, Aquaman aren’t. I think the reason for very specific opinions on that is a big reason. Most of the debate I see around here, when you distill it down, is largely around that issue.
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I’m fine with differences from the source material. I’m just not fine with bad ones.
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For MOS, another reason I love it is that it also feels like an updated take on elements from John Byrne’s Superman run.
I imagine Goyer did that on purpose and if he did, good on him. If not, then it was a great coincidence.
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I loved BvS for Batman. I love Ben Affleck! I think he’s a great Bruce Wayne/Batman. The opening of him going through Metropolis is one of my favorite openings ever. Never saw Man of Steel, though. I like how dark the Snyder-verse is.
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I feel like it’s dark with no maturity to back it up. Which makes it immature.
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@Awesome_Squid
Yeah. I wrote in another thread that I think got taken down that Snyder thinks a muted color palette and murder makes a superhero movie deep, and that he doesn’t understand what makes superheroes important. He believes that superheroes should be analogous to real-life heroes, who make under-the-table deals, commit a few crimes for the greater good, and embezzle money. Superheroes should stand as an example of a flawless person or have flaws that they overcome to show us we can too.
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He gave us Superman as he should be in modern times. Fallible, relatable, serious, and hopeful. That’s who he is. He isn’t Christopher Reeve.
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Superheroes shouldn’t be flawless, @batwing52. That’s not what has made them memorable, imo. That’s why the Silver Age isn’t memorable really. There was no test or relatability. Just humor and bright colors. Snyder did more than that and wasn’t saying heroes do bad things, but that they make mistakes. These are Gods trying to be human.
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And Snyder isn’t the first to make them analogous to real people. He learned from the best. There’s a pretty clear reason why Superman’s creators wrote Superman as the ultimate immigrant story and why he’s fought so hard for them in numerous stories. Because of xenophobia that was running rampant in the 30s and today.
That’s one of the MCU’s biggest mistake and I say this as a fan of the franchise. They hinge everything on escapism and don’t inspire us. We don’t see these heroes fall like we do and then get back up. To see them rise after that encourages us to.
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Every DC character has killed repeatedly since the 30s. Snyder just adhered to what most writers have always done in comics. I mean, Paul Dini had him chase a guy onto train tracks and get killed by it during his comic run. Others had him pushing bad guys into trash compactors in the 90s
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