I'm quoting your entire post because, honestly, it's perfect. Snyder has a knack for visuals, and just these two gifs prove it. He definitely understands the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words".
But that simply isn't good enough for a head director. Again... I see no evidence that Snyder can tell a story or is in any way competent with characterization.
I'd be perfectly fine with WB keeping him as the head visual director while getting someone else to do characters and story.
Yeah, he'd probably make a better cinematographer or visual consultant of some kind. Or even co-director. The problem with him is that he seems oblivious to his weaknesses or simply disagrees that he has them. The bigger problem is that WB is acting as his enabler.
Fair enough. I suppose I could also posit that, the film being built as a revenge tragedy, and Batman and Superman being basically twin Hamlet figures, Superman had to be presented with some conundrum to wrestle with, his own "to be or not to be" as it were. But I know the rebuttal is basically, "so don't do that with Superman, or it isn't Superman." Am I right?
Nope. My rebuttal is this: feel free to put superman is tough situations in a story, just keep him in character throughout and flesh out his side of things.
It baffles me that a filmmaker is considered a bad storyteller because he does so much of his storytelling with images instead of endless exposition. Film's mandate has pretty much always been "Show, don't tell". That's half its appeal. Not that this film didn't also "tell" plenty.
It also baffles me that people keep making blanket statements about how this person or that person is solely responsible for movie quality, be it good or bad.
Baffles me. It's basically a corporate buzz phrase. Largely meaningless, and not always true.
Look, the idea that a director should be/is solely responsible for the quality of a final product is all well and good, but it's just not accurate on any real level, and it's borderline offensive to the other people involved in making a film. Especially in a massive corporate environment like Warner Brothers. There has to be a structure in place, and other things have to fall into place along the way.
That's not the reason I consider him an inconsistent story-teller (he gets it right sometimes). It's because that seems to be the only, or at least the main, way he gets his point across. BvS, especially at the beginning, just felt like images were being stacked together. There's no flow there. If he could connect things better for pacing and figure out some other methods of story-telling, he'd be great. Great dialogues between characters is as necessary as the images (as seen in works like the Daredevil show).
Also, I don't blame Snyder alone. Terrio's also on the hook for the lack of superman dialogue.
I think it mostly has to do with the story that was told.
There's a definite story, there are themes explored, there are character arcs.
But it wasn't the ones people wanted to see for the most part.
When the dust settles, and the wounds of unfulfilled expectations start to heal, this film is going to grow on people.
I somewhat agree. I think some it does have to do with the story itself because that story is, well, kinda grim. Of all the stories to be told with the characters, why this one?
Still, it's hard to discern such things because BvS's story was shoddily crafted and felt rushed or over-stuffed. If it had been presented better, perhaps people who enjoy the core messages more. I probably would have, at least, since grim isn't something I'm usually miffed about.
^ I think BvS is forcing people to like MOS more. That's a bad sign
Yeah, it is.
MOS's superman had some holes in his characterization, but he was downright poetic when compared to the BvS version.
