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Zack Snyder Gives Deeper Insight Into His Career Trajectory, From Dawn Of The Dead To Man Of Steel-TGN

Summary

  • Snyder reflects on his filmography, noting the deconstructive nature of his movies like “Watchmen” and “Sucker Punch” and his love for Frank Miller’s work in “300”.

  • Snyder discusses the self-awareness and commentary present in his films, particularly “Dawn of the Dead” and “Sucker Punch”, which explore genre tropes and audience expectations.

  • While Snyder’s career has had ups and downs, his films showcase his ability to create visually stunning and stylistically unique movies that take risks.

Zack Snyder shares his thoughts about his career trajectory thus far, providing insight into how sees each of his own movies. First rising to prominence with 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, Snyder would go on to become known for a host of hit films, including 300, Watchmen, and Man of Steel. After a stint in the DCU, Snyder would join forces with Netflix, directing Army of the Dead and currently working on a space opera epic called Rebel Moon.

Now, in a recent interview with IFC Center on Letterboxd regarding his divisive film Sucker Punch, Snyder takes a look back at his career and the movies that preceded and succeeded the 2011 film. The director offers his thoughts on how the various entries in his filmography fit together and why each one interested him. Check out Snyder’s full comment below:

“(Sucker Punch was) a very self-reflexive film. It was a comment about where I felt like the state of movies were. It was right after Watchmen, which I felt was deconstructive. That’s the interesting thing to me. It’s like my track record. Like, look, I deconstructed this film.

“I feel like Dawn of the Dead is a deconstructionist film, that deconstructs the genre and is self-aware of the genre. I thought I couldn’t make Dawn of the Dead as a straight remake because the movie is social commentary and so I wanted to make a comment on the comment, you know what I mean?

“And then I made 300, which I’d been working on because I’m a big Frank Miller fan. I’m a Dark Knight Returns fan and 300 was the book I could get my hands on. I wanted to do Sin City, I wanted to do Dark Knight Returns and I love 300 so I made it as a love letter to Frank Miller.

“In concert with that was Watchmen. Watchmen to me is like the ultimate deconstructionist comic book. Superheroes have sexual anxiety. They’re all agoraphobic and incestuous and insane and addicted to violence.

I always said when I was making Man of Steel – you have to know the rules in order so you can break them. Well, I broke them first, and then I made a movie. It was the wrong order, but it’s fine. But when I went to make Sucker Punch, I was so genre self-aware. Sweetpea says, ‘What the fuck is this? This is meant to turn the people on?’ – which is a reference to the movie itself. She says, ‘I get the helpless mental patient, but lobotomized vegetable; that’s not sexy.’

“And then she says, ‘You’ve got to change the ending. Maybe a dance number at the end – a song – people wanna be tapping their toes and singing on the way out, you know? It’s better for the scores.’ I took out the thing about the dance number at the end, because we had taken the dance number out, but there was that whole exchange between her and Gorsky – this self-aware, self-reflexive ‘audience observing the movie,’ and yet it’s talking directly to them about what they wanna see.

“They wanna see the girls, they don’t wanna see the girls empowered. They wanna see them in sexy outfits. That was the whole thing to me; I always thought it was interesting when people would review the movie and say it’s exploitative. It’s like an anti-war movie that gets the war too good.”

Zack Snyder’s Filmography Explained

While not receiving the same enthusiastic response that George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead received in 1978, Snyder’s (first) take on the zombie genre was met with generally positive reviews, with praise levied at his kinetic directing style. Snyder followed the zombie flick with 300, which, despite slightly worse reviews overall from critics, was a big hit with audiences, earning over $456 million. The film also firmly announces Snyder as a director who knows how to create jaw-dropping, comic-book-like visuals.

After 300, Snyder directs Watchmen in 2009, which is still widely considering one of his most visually impressive movies. After Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Sucker Punch came and went with little fanfare, the director joined the DCU with 2013’s Man of Steel, which wasn’t huge with critics but earned over $668 million worldwide. From there, Snyder’s career takes some interesting turns, with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice not totally working but the infamous Zack Snyder’s Justice League ending his time with DC on a complicated albeit high note.

Army of the Dead was a big hit on Netflix in terms of viewership, but one would be hard-pressed to name it one of Snyder’s best movies. Rebel Moon is shaping up to be his most expansive and imaginative film yet, but the space opera isn’t releasing until later this year. Snyder’s career, then, has been something of a mixed bag. Even though not all of his movies have worked, the director undoubtedly likes to take risks and has a keen eye for style, which is worth applauding.

Source: Letterboxd