BvS The Official Zack Snyder Directs Everything Thread

[ArmsHeldOut]

Re: Superman II,

Superman is clearly killing Zod, but the movie doesn't dwell on it. Everybody is smiling and Superman is not agonising. So when the audience sees it, they smile, and they don't agonise.

Exactly. It's all in the presentation. I think that's why a lot of people (wrongly, in my humble opinion) see Clark as this dark and brooding type in MoS as well. Even though Goyer's take on the character is that of a man who exhibits great tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds, never once sulking or moping around, the movie itself tells a different story.

Audiences are somewhat blinded to all the good Superman actually does in MoS partly because they're focused on other things: the bleak color palette used, the strong themes of fear, rejection and alienation, Cavill's serious demeanor, and so forth.

Getting back to Superman II, I've got to hand it to the writers, producers, et al: they really knew how to sell a potentially controversial scene. Reeve's toothy all-American grin, the incredibly upbeat John Williams score -- everything played a role. It's almost genius in a way, how they were able to successfully manipulate moviegoers of all ages into seeing exactly what they wanted them to see. When observing something even the slightest bit questionable, a healthy mind will, of course, immediately try to discern right from wrong. So, with a film like Superman II, the production team's task was merely to send just the right signals to influence that process.

What's being shown: Superman crushing a now-vulnerable Zod's hand (negative)
What's being heard: dun da da dunnnnn (positive)

 

[Lord]

Fair enough.

 

[The Endless]

I think Snyder has great ideas, but the execution is lacking.

Like with Sucker Punch. A pretty cool concept and i get what he was trying to do with the girls, but it just didn't come off how he intended. He wanted it to be feminist, about strong heroic women... but he totally sexed them up and made them fantasy objects anyway.

With MoS i really liked a lot of what was done. But there are things that are muddled and poorly executed. The scene with his dads death. Could have been a really powerful scene. I totally got what he was going for. But it was just dumb and contrived in my opinion. It was like the film makers sat down and said "we have to have a scene where Pa Kent dies and Clark could have saved him but had to choose not to!" but then they didn't really know how to do it.

I also don't really like the pacing. It's a slow burner up to the last half hour... then just goes crazy. It's jarring to me. Like the film goes from 1st gear straight to 5th. The opening hour and a half is like a Malick film. The final 30/40 mins is like a Bay movie.

One thing that Snyder is undoubtedly great at is visuals obviously. I've always wanted to see a proper super powered fight. MoS has probably my favourite flying scenes from any superhero movie. Great visuals don't add up to much without strong story telling and characterisation though.

 

[MrsKent26]

Lowest Denominator can't be a spot shared?

He drops Zod in the pit in every single version, that doesn't stop him from being taken by the Artic Police soon after. It's not completelly easily visible, but it's still there.

Yeah...I'm not going to bother with this anymore. You'll just keep repeating the same things.

 

[DA_Champion]

Snyder is neither the lowest common denominator nor "the best". He's good, I like his output so far but I'm not interrested in ranking him.

 

[bluerayer]

Snyder is neither the lowest common denominator nor "the best". He's good, I like his output so far but I'm not interrested in ranking him.

Yeah, "the lowest common denominator" is a bit harsh.

This is what i think about that:

[YT]Vdp5tzTtPhE[/YT]

 

[Lord]

With the lowest denominator i meant from the Directors who try to show the audience harsh realities, not worst Director in general. Some of you should look at the context of the sentence.

 

[snpklsdmbldr]

 

[Lord]

 

[Llama_Shepherd]

You are all taking that rule too seriously. The rule is born out of the Comics Code and in an attempt to make Batman more kid friendly.

Don't get me wrong, I love that batman doesn't kill, BUT I actually like what Nolan did with the rule much more than what the comics do.

In the comics, Batmans rule is unbreakable. Sometimes thats just lazy storytelling, for example after Jokers recent attack against all people Bruce loves in Death of the Family. That attack was so close and so personal, that this should have been the moment where Bruce finally says "Enough" and at least attempts to kill him. Throws him down that cliff. Then you could follow that up up with Bruce having actual feelings about what he did and dealing with that in dramatic ways. Then when Joker comes back, you could do an entire story about how Joker reacts to a Batman who tried to kill him.
That Bruce still doesn't even try to kill that monster after something huge like that is just weak storytelling and childish.

What Nolan did was brilliant in my mind. He showed a Batman who has that rule (as he should have), but who is not chained by it.
Example, Harvey Dent. He didn't try to kill Harvey, he tried to save the boy and was unable to save Harvey in the process.

Example Talias driver and Talia: I mean, come on. He has only a few minutes left to save the entire city from a nuclear explosion and you expect him to throw pillows at them? I LOVE that he threw everything that he got, because saving 6 million people is more important than his "one rule" and saving two people who try to murder millions. If he had more time, he would've found a way to stop them another way. Also he didn't kill them directly, because he didn't shot at them. He shot in front of the truck, to make them turn around, or at the engine block to make it stop. That accidently kills them and its completely fine with me.

Again, I like that pragmatic Nolan version of the rule a lot more than a Batman who doesn't even have a human emotion after his whole family and friends got tortured and almost killed. I don't want Batman to be a murderer, but I want him to question and bend that rule if it is to save lifes that are otherwise lost. Like he did in the comics in Final Crisis, when he shot Darkseid with a gun, to save the world. He broke his no killing rule to save millions and thats cool. He also kills Joker in Killing joke (at least in how i read that story) and that was great too. Just sad that noone really followed up on that.

Although I'm fine with killing in the films, providing a closed end to characters. But the reason Batman doesn't kill in comics, although originally because of the CCA, became nullified in in the 60's. It's done because of the circular nature of comic books.

Look at the previous DCU continuity from 1986-2011. We saw Bruce begin as Batman, Dick strike out as Nightwing and leading the Titans, the death and return of Jason Todd, adoption of Tim Drake, inclusion of Damian Wayne and the progression of a Bat-Family without Bruce. New villains, new Batman & Robin.

Now look where we are, Batman is the uppity self righteous dick he was in the 90's, Dick has pretty much had his entire history removed, Tim was never Robin, Babs is Batgirl, everything is back to how it was 25 years ago.

 

[bluerayer]

Lowest Denominator can't be a spot shared?

He drops Zod in the pit in every single version, that doesn't stop him from being taken by the Artic Police soon after. It's not completelly easily visible, but it's still there.

Eh, didn't you place Snyder alongside Uwe Boll? Im sorry that's just crazy-talk.

 

[Lord]

Nope, i said Uwe Boll was worse than Zack Snyder

 

[bluerayer]

Nope, i said Uwe Boll was worse than Zack Snyder

Aha ok, then im sorry. That i agree with.

 

[DA_Champion]

Nope, i said Uwe Boll was worse than Zack Snyder

OK, so there are a lot of directors worse than Snyder and a lot of better ones.

Of course Snyder is not alone in wanting to show harsh realities or in not manufacturing picture perfect happy endings regardless of the plot. However, it is a common feature of his movies and thus it describes him as a director, even if it describes other people too.

 

[I Am The Knight]

Re: Superman II,

Superman is clearly killing Zod, but the movie doesn't dwell on it. Everybody is smiling and Superman is not agonising. So when the audience sees it, they smile, and they don't agonise.

Superman "clearly" kills Zod? Nope. I mean come on now. Do you really think they were going to have Superman AND Lois commit murder right then and there? Superman saves a freaking cat in Superman: The Movie. All of a sudden he's a killer in Superman II? AND Lois too? Come on. I mean, sure, the scene is ambiguos, but it's meant to be a quickie villain defeat, not this "he's clearly killing Zod!" moment you guys are describing. It wasn't meant to be debated, or used as leverage as to why Superman killing in MOS 30 years later is OK...

Superman snapping Zod's neck is clearly killing Zod. Superman throwing Zod into fog? Who the heck knows. I mean there is a reason why that arctic police scene exists.

By the way, the shooting script for the film states that Zod "falls to the floor".

ANGLE ON ZOD

ZOD is hurled helplessly through the air the entire length of the Fortress, crashes against the far wall, drops to the floor.

BACK TO SCENE

LUTHOR horrified, suddenly realizes what's happened.

LUTHOR
He switched it! He did it to them! The lights
were on our here! He was the only one safe in
there!

426 NON rushes at SUPERMAN with a roar, is tossed into the wall in a heap like a rag doll.
LOIS turns to URSA, the new information sinking in.

LOIS
You're a real pain in the neck, you know that?

427 LOIS uncorks a tremendous haymaker, knocks URSA out cold on the floor. SUPERMAN advances on LUTHOR.

http://www.bigapricot.org/scripts/superman_II.txt

So it's clearly a matter of presentation. The villains dropping to the floor isn't terribly exciting. Them dropping into fog is more visually dramatic, but at no point are the filmmakers (Donner or Lester) trying to say "hey, check out this cool Superman kill". The whole thing is ambiguos at best. And again, there is a reason that arctic police scene exists.

Donner shot that arctic police scene during his time as director of Superman II, but when he finally had a chance to release his own version of the film, he decided not to include it. I'm guessing it's because he now thought the scene was too "cheesy" (anyone else loves the music that plays during this scene? Is that Otis' theme?). But then again, the Richard Donner cut is problematic, seeing as it has the same ending as Superman: The Movie, and Superman goes back in time to beat up a person who never met him.

Superman II's production was a bit of a mess. With potentially 3 versions of the film having been released in theaters, TV and DVD/Blu-Ray, I guess the answer to the question of wheter Zod and company get killed is that there is no answer. As I said before, it's really up to you. If you grew up with the TV version you saw one thing, if you only saw the Lester version you saw another, if you read the shooting script you have a slightly different version of what happened but no arctic police, etc. If the Salkinds had not decided to replace Richard Donner with Richard Lester, we would probably not be having this discussion right now.

 

[Lencho01]

It's interesting to read Hackman's lines there. Reading it, it came off as Lex being more excited about the situation compared to how he was in the film.

 

[Micromind]

Most people are not aware of the scene where the Arctic Police take away Zod, hell .. I haven't seen that scene.


The version that many have seen is where Superman throws Zod (who is not super-powered) into an arctic ice pit, chances of his survival are not good.

Also, Lois punches (and pushes ?) Ursa into ice pit. And what happened to Non ? he was mercilessly thrown against a ice-crystal pillar in the fortress, his neck must have snapped.

 

[Anne Hathaway]

You are all taking that rule too seriously. The rule is born out of the Comics Code and in an attempt to make Batman more kid friendly.

Don't get me wrong, I love that batman doesn't kill, BUT I actually like what Nolan did with the rule much more than what the comics do.

In the comics, Batmans rule is unbreakable. Sometimes thats just lazy storytelling, for example after Jokers recent attack against all people Bruce loves in Death of the Family. That attack was so close and so personal, that this should have been the moment where Bruce finally says "Enough" and at least attempts to kill him. Throws him down that cliff. Then you could follow that up up with Bruce having actual feelings about what he did and dealing with that in dramatic ways. Then when Joker comes back, you could do an entire story about how Joker reacts to a Batman who tried to kill him.
That Bruce still doesn't even try to kill that monster after something huge like that is just weak storytelling and childish.

What Nolan did was brilliant in my mind. He showed a Batman who has that rule (as he should have), but who is not chained by it.
Example, Harvey Dent. He didn't try to kill Harvey, he tried to save the boy and was unable to save Harvey in the process.

Example Talias driver and Talia: I mean, come on. He has only a few minutes left to save the entire city from a nuclear explosion and you expect him to throw pillows at them? I LOVE that he threw everything that he got, because saving 6 million people is more important than his "one rule" and saving two people who try to murder millions. If he had more time, he would've found a way to stop them another way. Also he didn't kill them directly, because he didn't shot at them. He shot in front of the truck, to make them turn around, or at the engine block to make it stop. That accidently kills them and its completely fine with me.

Again, I like that pragmatic Nolan version of the rule a lot more than a Batman who doesn't even have a human emotion after his whole family and friends got tortured and almost killed. I don't want Batman to be a murderer, but I want him to question and bend that rule if it is to save lifes that are otherwise lost. Like he did in the comics in Final Crisis, when he shot Darkseid with a gun, to save the world. He broke his no killing rule to save millions and thats cool. He also kills Joker in Killing joke (at least in how i read that story) and that was great too. Just sad that noone really followed up on that.

Where you see it as lazy and childish there are people who genuinely see it as right.I've grown up in rough areas and lost and watched others lose people to murders but I've always been against the death penalty. I personally think its hypocritical to say any life is to precious to take so your punishment is we are taking your life.

 

[Lencho01]

Most people are not aware of the scene where the Arctic Police take away Zod, hell .. I haven't see that scene.


The version that many have seen is where Superman throws Zod (who is not super-powered) into an arctic ice pit, chances of his survival are not good.

Also, Lois punches (and pushes ?) Ursa into ice pit. And what happened to Non ? he was mercilessly thrown against a ice-crystal pillar in the fortress, his neck must have snapped.

And you can view MOS as a sorta remake of Superman I & II.

 

[I Am The Knight]

If I recall correctly, Non tries to fly and fails, falling into the chasm/ice pit/Superman fog. Or is that only in the Richard Donner cut?

 

[Micromind]

If I recall correctly, Non tries to fly and fails, falling into the chasm/ice pit/Superman fog. Or is that only in the Richard Donner cut?

Just re-watched the whole scene again (in Donner Cut), you are right..Non ties to fly and falls into the pit, but here, Superman throws Zod against the fortress pillar before Zod falls to ice pit (I assume that his neck must have snapped as per the Donner Cut presented.)

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

Exactly. It's all in the presentation. I think that's why a lot of people (wrongly, in my humble opinion) see Clark as this dark and brooding type in MoS as well. Even though Goyer's take on the character is that of a man who exhibits great tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds, never once sulking or moping around, the movie itself tells a different story.

Audiences are somewhat blinded to all the good Superman actually does in MoS partly because they're focused on other things: the bleak color palette used, the strong themes of fear, rejection and alienation, Cavill's serious demeanor, and so forth.

Getting back to Superman II, I've got to hand it to the writers, producers, et al: they really knew how to sell a potentially controversial scene. Reeve's toothy all-American grin, the incredibly upbeat John Williams score -- everything played a role. It's almost genius in a way, how they were able to successfully manipulate moviegoers of all ages into seeing exactly what they wanted them to see. When observing something even the slightest bit questionable, a healthy mind will, of course, immediately try to discern right from wrong. So, with a film like Superman II, the production team's task was merely to send just the right signals to influence that process.

What's being shown: Superman crushing a now-vulnerable Zod's hand (negative)
What's being heard: dun da da dunnnnn (positive)

Exactly, all Superman's negative decisions are tied with some feeling of positivity or sympathy.

1. Superman gives up his powers to bang Lois-it's presented as sacrificial. rather than selfish (though it is deconstructed later on)
2. Superman killing a DEFENSELESS Zod, the music, the wink, and the cheesiness of it all upset any sort of horror.

I think people blend the tone of the movie with the tone of the character. The webcomic that shows Superman callously snapping Zod's neck makes the assumption that there was a third option that Superman could have taken.

And I would have prefer the writer write a third option in, but within the limitations of the film, what could he had done. Burn Zod's arms and legs off and gauge his out eyes? Break his SPINE, then gouge out his eyes? (Because, you know, heat vision)

I don't know, that sounds more brutal to me. Flying up and covering Zod's eyes (except with vulnerable hands) are temporary solutions to a longterm problem. He was written into a corner. I don't think the character should be judged for doing what he did in an impossible situation. I think the storytellers should be judged for forcing him to make those decisions. And yes, there's a difference

To me, it's all about where Superman goes from here. If he realizes many people he hypothetically could have saved and didn't, will he be more careful next time? If he has a third option, will he take it? If someone else doesn't have a no-kill code, would Supes call him out on it? Would he be prepared for the argument that results?

I actually think there's a lot of strong storytelling opportunity as a result of this action. How the sequel handles it will affect how I view the final fight scene.

 

[EssayM]

To get things semi-back on topic...

Did you watch MoS and read the reviews?

Zack Snyder presented a Superman who couldn't save everybody, whereas for a lot of people the whole point of Superman is that he can save everybody.

All of Snyder's endings that I can recall are imperfect not completely happy endings.

DA_Champion has a point. Zack isn't the type of director to "follow the grain," so to speak. His preference is more towards upsetting the status quo.

I still don't get it. His two most famous films were shot-for-shot remakes of incredibly popular GNs, and, well...I'd be lying if I said he didn't have a bit of a problem with fan-service (Sucker Punch in particular). I just don't see how having his main characters die at the end makes him some big dispenser of hard truths.

 

[Black Narcissus]

Someone get a goddamn ninja to break inside Snyder's office!

 

[DA_Champion]

To get things semi-back on topic...

I still don't get it. His two most famous films were shot-for-shot remakes of incredibly popular GNs, and, well...I'd be lying if I said he didn't have a bit of a problem with fan-service (Sucker Punch in particular). I just don't see how having his main characters die at the end makes him some big dispenser of hard truths.

How is Watchmen more famous than Man of Steel?

He deliberately changed the ending to MoS to make it less picture-perfect. He put a black spot in in Clark's soul at the end, such that he can defeat Zod but it comes with a cost. He has severed all of his ties to Krypton, including the loss of his baby carriage and access to his father, he has had to deal with death. Superman's "victory" comes at a cost, whereas victories in superhero movies are usually absolute and comprehensive.

The imagery in MoS also makes clear that if a fight like that ever happened a whole lot of people would die. In contrast, similar battles at the end of TA and CA:TWS mask that that people would die, because those directors wanted happy endings. In CA:TWS, Rogers is more concerned about Bucky than about helping the people under the Helicarrier debris. In the Avengers, the heroes go out for shawarma instead of helping people under the rubble, and in both cases audiences were not bothered, for the simple fact that the directors chose not to emphasize the casualties.

The other main example if Sucker Punch. It ends with a very incomplete victory, what can be argued to be a defeat. Depending on how you understand the film, either Baby Doll sacrificed herself so that Sweet Pea could go free, or Sweet Pea retreated into the comforts of her mind after a lobotomy, where nobody could hurt her anymore as it was her zone of control.

Dawn of the Dead ends in failure, but so do the majority of zombie movies.