NY Times: Zach the Visionary?

Kane52630

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/business/media/16watchmen.html?ref=business

Marketers at Warner Brothers may have set a new standard on stretching the truth by heaping an unusual amount of praise on the director of the forthcoming superhero film “Watchmen.”

Billboards for “Watchmen” are causing some double takes in Hollywood because they call the director, Zack Snyder, a highly regarded but relatively inexperienced filmmaker, a “visionary director” above the title of the film.

Mr. Snyder’s pre-“Watchmen” résumé consists of two movies. The first was “Dawn of the Dead,” a 2004 remake of the 1978 film about flesh-eating zombies in a mall. It sold a respectable $59 million in tickets at theaters. His other film, the visually stunning mock-historical “300,” was a smash in 2006, selling $211 million in tickets at domestic theaters.

People have been debating the “visionary” label online since December, when Warner Brothers used the adjective in a trailer. Wired magazine called “such hyperbole” a sign “that ‘Watchmen’ may not have the goods.” Comments on sites like I Watch Stuff have been even less kind.

A Warner Brothers spokeswoman declined to comment.

The studio — which was recently forced to share revenue from “Watchmen” with 20th Century Fox after losing a copyright dispute — is betting big on Mr. Snyder in part because the movie, due out in March, lacks star appeal. (With Billy Crudup the biggest name in the cast, Warner has featured Mr. Snyder in television ads as well.)

By publicly crowning the affable Mr. Snyder a visionary, Warner may have hurt its own cause in one regard: His agents at the powerful Creative Artists Agency certainly have a new angle to work in future salary negotiations with the studio.
 
lets face it, its all an attempt to sell tickets. nothing more.

is snyder a visionary? its subjective. i definitely think he's more visual than your average director, he has a visual flair and style thats pretty recognizable. does that make him a bona-fide visionary? one day, with a few more films under his belt, i can see that being true.
 
Wow. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
 
I wouldn't eat my fish and chips off a page of the New York Times.
 
Eh, dont really care. my ticket is sold regardless
 
well that's the thing. visionary generally means someone with a "vision." that is to say, they have something to say or something like that.

snyder is a "visual" director. and his movies look really cool. he has a great gloss to his flicks and they seem to have good art direction and cinematography. but in the technical sense, a "visionary" has a great sense of imagining. so i guess he qualifies.

i would never call him a visonary, but of course it's a not big deal. it gives me a nice chuckle when i see the trailers. but nobody cares. they have to mention his name and 300 or nobody would see the movie. so if calling him a visionary puts asses in the seats, that's cool.
 
Agreed on the visionary thing--waaay misused
 
Don't forget these amazing words from the visionary mind of Zack Snyder:

http://www.ew.com/article/2008/07/17/watchmen-chat-director-zack-snyder/2

The average movie audience has seen — well, I can’t even count the amount of superhero movies. Fantastic Four, X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man. The Marvel universe has gone nuts; we’re going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we’re not careful. Thor, too! We’re on our second Hulk movie. And Iron Man — $300 million domestic box office on a second tier superhero! And not to demean Iron Man — my point is that we all know about superheroes now. I can ask my mother, ”Mom, when the Hulk isn’t the Hulk, who is he?” ”Bruce Banner. Why? What a weird question.” I could ask her, ”What happened to Bruce Wayne’s parents?” ”They were killed at an opera.” You’re getting to that saturation level where superhero movies, it’s hard for them to figure out what more to do.

I honestly want to know what went through the minds of the WB execs when they made him the head of the DCEU.
 
Well, he certainly is a visual director, so they were half right.
 
I guarantee Snyder's name wont be in the JL trailer
 
And thus is the truism "Whenever a newspaper article ends in a question mark, the answer is 'no'" shown to still be valid.
 

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