Zack Snyder's Visuals, Amazing or Trash?

[Skrilla31]

Gold.

And Snyder is much like Lucas: too in love with imagery, not enough in love with story. They both crave gigantic digital set-pieces, while forgetting that movies - whatever the genre - need real, breathing human beings with a story to tell at the centre of everything for it to work.

Both of them can create wonderful, breath-taking visuals, and have no idea how to make anything with any true emotional and dramatic impact.

Lucas was an actual visionary though before he became a lazy billionaire.

Star Wars is a beautiful looking movie and has more memorable shots than Snyder's whole filmography.

 

[ernesth100]

Regardless some of the imagery in the JL trailer did catch your eye. None of you can lie about that.

 

[The_Manhunter]

20/10. The only visuals better in a CBM were Doctor Strange IMO

 

[Mandon Knight]

Gold.

And Snyder is much like Lucas: too in love with imagery, not enough in love with story. They both crave gigantic digital set-pieces, while forgetting that movies - whatever the genre - need real, breathing human beings with a story to tell at the centre of everything for it to work.

Both of them can create wonderful, breath-taking visuals, and have no idea how to make anything with any true emotional and dramatic impact.

Lucas was an excellent producer, a brilliant producer but a storyteller not so much, as you say like Snyder, writing is an art form sadly 'de-valued' in film making terms, it is THE most important aspect, but often, because of the 'vision' of the director or producer, it's sometimes considered in a 'ah well, we'll deal with that on set', you can't simply. Snyder, like Lucas has shown he works better with a pair of eyes & ears alongside him. Not every director has every working skill required for the full armoury required, the skills he has are superb, he just needs a writer and story co-ordinator with him.

 

[Rowsdower!]

His visuals were good in 300, Watchmen and MOS. Everything else he's done has looked painfully fake. Well, to be fair, Watchmen and 300 also looked fake but I think it suited the surrealist nature of the films.

 

[BestGirl]

I said that he has his moments, but overall I'm not too impressed with him. I wish he'd get over his obsession with darkness in particular.

 

[Victarion]

50/50

Amazing - Krypton, Zod's ship, Bats vs Supes fight night, the warehouse fight, what i've seen of Bats in the Justice League trailer, Steppenwolf.

Trash - Big shout out to his parademons; they look like hot mess in the JL trailer. I'm ambivalent on Doomsday.

Whoever designed Enchantress, Incubus, and the parademons from the Suicide Squad concept art should be in charge of the CU's art direction.

 

[The Guard]

I don't understand why the quality of the CGI enters into this.

Is Zack Snyder himself completing the CGI rendering?

 

[OutOfBoose]

I don't understand why the quality of the CGI enters into this.

Is Zack Snyder himself completing the CGI rendering?

So when CGI shots look great - Snyder is a visionary and really great at visuals. When they suck - Snyder isn't responsible for the result, because he doesn't create CGI.

 

[Zen Machine]

So when CGI shots look great - Snyder is a visionary and really great at visuals. When they suck - Snyder isn't responsible for the result, because he doesn't create CGI.

Lol. Exactly. He gets praised by the visuals of his movies, and those visuals are heavily CGI enhanced.

He isn't responsible for the CGI, but he is responsible for overseeing everything and making sure things reflect his vision. If he looks at crap and says "well, that's cool", then it's on him. Nobody forces him to have bad CGI in his movies. Especially with 300 M dollar budgets.

 

[TheComicbookKid]

Snyder's only as good as the source material he's pulling from.

He can stitch together a bunch of random cool moments from various comics but since those moments require actual plot and characterization to make those images resonant, he fails as anything more than nostalgia of "oh, that looks just like that panel from...."

 

[Flint Marko]

They were trash in 300. They were trash in Watchmen. They were trash in Sucker Punch. They were trash in BvS.

Man of Steel was pretty good.

Disagreed about Watchmen, but yeah. His visuals aren't going to age well.

 

[The Guard]

So when CGI shots look great - Snyder is a visionary and really great at visuals. When they suck - Snyder isn't responsible for the result, because he doesn't create CGI.

Keywords: the shots. The composition of said. People praise the approach he takes and the actual composition (which is also not entirely his solo effort). It would be silly to praise him for the quality of the CGI, that's not his work.

Not the actual rendering. I don't think people understand what a director actually does. It's absurd to suggest that he can possibly control the quality of every little visual element. Movies are not made by one person.

This idea of praising or blaming one person for the quality of all elements...I find it kind of silly.

 

[Flint Marko]

Keywords: the shots. The composition of said. People praise the approach he takes and the actual composition (which is also not entirely his solo effort). It would be silly to praise him for the quality of the CGI, that's not his work.

Not the actual rendering. I don't think people understand what a director actually does. It's absurd to suggest that he can possibly control the quality of every little visual element. Movies are not made by one person.

This idea of praising or blaming one person for the quality of all elements...I find it kind of silly.

By your logic, no coach should be criticized because they're not the ones out there running the plays.

 

[Zen Machine]

By your logic, no coach should be criticized because they're not the ones out there running the plays.

Basically this. And i would say a director has even more control over the quality of the picture than a coach of the quality of the performance of his team.

 

[titansupes]

I went with he has his moments. The big speed ramping shot in 300 was cool as hell, but I find that movie hard to watch/look at overall. The same can be said of most of his stuff. MoS has Superman exiting the Scout Ship, the Smallville battle... But it also has the blurry mess of a Zod fight at the end.

Overall, I'm not impressed and-- sadly-- think most of what we've seen from JL so far looks downright ugly, and with a lot more awkward compositions than normal, too.

He's just too grainy, murky and lifeless. There are a lot of directors who have better visuals thank him-- Nolan, Spielberg, Abrams, Villeneuve... Honestly, if we're talking big name directors, I'd put him somewhere toward the bottom. Not because I'm an over the top "hater", just genuinely because I don't find it appealing.

 

[jmc]

Not to put to fine a point on it but saying Snyder has no responsibility for the entire production is shifting the blame. That's the exact kind of mindset you hear from Donald Trump. I'm sorry, you take responsibility for the film, unless the studio is directly making you do something you don't want to do.

 

[BestGirl]

When the same problems manifest themselves in movie after movie of Snyder's then you can't blame the crew. He's the common denominator.

 

[OutOfBoose]

When a director stages a scene, he should be aware of technological limitations and advantages. If you decide to stage a fight at night in entirely digital environment, and complicate things be setting it all on fire, you get what you get. Unrealistically looking stuff. CGI people aren't miracle workers. They work with what they have. Russos were smart enough to put the airport battle in the middle of the day - it's the most simple condition from light perspective. Easier to make it look realistic. In addition to constructing part of the set, at least the ground. So it's entirely on Snyder. Another example - Cyborg. Instead of making him half-partical, they went for 100% digital body and the result is quite arresting in not a good way... And so on.

 

[Grommers]

Not to put to fine a point on it but saying Snyder has no responsibility for the entire production is shifting the blame. That's the exact kind of mindset you hear from Donald Trump. I'm sorry, you take responsibility for the film, unless the studio is directly making you do something you don't want to do.

No need to bring politics into this. There is a thread for that.

It's about Snyder.


And, it looks like most people are okay with it, and it has its good moments, i'd say thats between the 6-8 range.

Now, if he can just get a story that really resonates, I imagine people will put him higher.

It's odd that I feel differently, I feel like movies like 300, watchmen etc, will stand a much better test of time than people think. Everytime I've gone back and watched Watchmen and 300 I've thought it looked solid.

 

[2kt09]

I honestly don't know what shaky cam you're talking about, guys. Snyder doesn't use shaky cam. Shaky cam - Russos. Just check their brawls. But they use it smartly, because bright and clear picture compensates for that, as well as well-staged action sequences. Shaky cam in their case adds immersion and realism.

MoS. I recall people threw around it had a found footage feel to it because of how unsteady the average camera work was.
Not just the kind of shaky cam that they use to make the action more tense.

I love a good chunk of the Russos' down and dirty fights,
but even I realize the shaky cam and jump cuts get a bit difficult to appreciate how well those are staged.
Slow-mo, real-time, sped up = Snyder definitely understands how to shoot action and has quite the variety of it.

 

[JackWhite]

Snyder's visuals are getting more and more videogame-ish as his filmography increases. BvS and from what JL is shaping up to look like have nothing on Watchmen and 300. Hell, I'd take MOS visuals too.

 

[jmc]

No need to bring politics into this. There is a thread for that.

It's about Snyder.


And, it looks like most people are okay with it, and it has its good moments, i'd say thats between the 6-8 range.

Now, if he can just get a story that really resonates, I imagine people will put him higher.

It's odd that I feel differently, I feel like movies like 300, watchmen etc, will stand a much better test of time than people think. Everytime I've gone back and watched Watchmen and 300 I've thought it looked solid.

No one cares about Watchmen. 300 is probably the only film of his that will have any lasting impact, but everything since he not made anything that's come close to being universally liked.

 

[Visualiza]

Not trash, but certainly not amazing, either. I'd say he's average/below average. Snyder's shtick is that he assaults the audience with his visual style, and to the point of sensory overload. The guy just never understands when to rein it in. It reminds me of the HDR craze that was sweeping through the photography community years ago. Lesser photographers (and even several good ones who just got sucked into the fad) would bracket a stack of shots, tone map the crap out of the composite, and end up producing bizarrely garish photos that hardly ever resembled real life (Snyder's trademark). Images like these would not look entirely out of place in a Snyder film.

He can compose a nice shot when he wants (but who can't at this level?), but even when the composition is just right, the filters and effects he goes for in post usually ruin that. He's a very average filmmaker from a visual standpoint, and he strikes me as having the sensibilities of a novice who hasn't outgrown the impulse to make everything look "kewl & rad". It's not for nothing that people frequently invoke Instagram filters and video games when they describe his visual style.

 

[Batmannerism]

I think his visuals can be pretty stunning - really peaked in Man of Steel, take some time to watch Jor El's flight and check out the amazing detail of Krypton.(yes, a lot of credit goes to Weta digital, I know a guy who helped create Krypton). The establishing shots of Kansas in MoS are beautiful too.

There were some pretty amazing parts of Watchmen too.....except for the big blue penis.

Not sure how JL will turn out, but I think that as an audience we need a break from Snyder's colour pallette, or lack thereof.

And of course he can bring comic book panels to life better than anyone I've seen so far - but the sad thing is that when he brings those panels to life he's done such a poor job of telling the story that we don't often care.

Kind of wish the poll had one more option, somewhere between him having
his moments and making the best looking cbms.

To be honest, visually speaking the guy is an artist but as a storyteller he's pretty average.