Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
March 29, 2011
David Mumpower: Reading the replies about Zack Snyder over the past two days, I'm starting to think that the failure of Sucker Punch has accidentally kick-started M. Night Shyamalan's career. He is now forcefully placed on the road to redemption as the entire internet races to scratch out Shyamalan's name and insert Snyder's whenever they want to make fun of a director. It's like a poorly organized outcry against blue dong and schoolgirl uniforms. But I digress.
We have this discussion from time to time in that Superman is one of those few licenses that matter. The character itself is one that doesn't interest me in that I have always found it to be a lazy take on the Achilles mythos. My opinion notwithstanding, there are people all the way across the world who would recognize the Superman logo. As such, Superman movies foster intense scrutiny in that even a movie as lousy as Superman Returns (sorry, Brett) can earn $200 million even if it does focus an ungodly amount upon real estate barony. A Superman project can and will make a dump truck worth of money independent of quality. Zack Snyder creating a Superman project is something that would tempt me.
A BOP writer has always described the failure of both Hulk movies in simple terms. "Hulk smash!!! How hard is that?" The point of this statement is that people want to be wowed by their heroes rather than talked to death. For all of our jokes about the failings of Michael Bay, this is something he understands. He is a whore, but a self-aware whore. Snyder seems to be following that path. For all of the incendiary vitriol directed at Sucker Punch, what gets lost is that he tried very hard to give the people what they want, sex and violence. It didn't work that time, but if he learns from that mistake, a Zack Synder Superman film has a chance to be a box office behemoth. Alternately, if he makes another Watchmen, a movie I love that almost everybody else hates, Superman as a movie franchise has to go on hiatus for another indefinite period. Cue the slo-mo...Kim Hollis: Which of Zack Snyder's films have you seen? What letter grades would you give them? What do you think of him as an artist?
Josh Spiegel: I have seen 300 and Watchmen, and at best, I would call Snyder and his films (or at least 300) overrated. Since he's clearly able to set up a shot and has a distinct visual eye, I wouldn't give either film an F or anything, but I don't think I could be very charitable to either film. The best thing about Watchmen is Jackie Earle Haley, and the only points I can give to Snyder is for casting the man. I think that Snyder isn't so much of a geek director as much as what Michael Bay wishes he was: the jock who directs movies he thinks geeks will like.
Bruce Hall: This might sound unnecessarily harsh, but I have a harder time thinking of him as an artist as I do an Amway salesman with a camera. There's a lot of big talk, wild claims and smoke and mirrors but beneath the presentation the reality is pretty threadbare. Dawn of the Dead is notable primarily because it shouldn't have been good at all and yet it was, for the most part. 300 and Watchmen benefited from strong source material and anything added to it by Snyder's treatment was incidental, as his style lends itself well to that kind of thing anyway. We've already talked about Sucker Punch but as far as Superman is concerned I think that there's reason for optimism.
Some say that David Goyer is just as overrated as Snyder. His work on the Batman franchise seems to disprove this, but there's still plenty of evidence to back up the prosecution's claims as well. Christopher Nolan seems content to let Snyder run the show for now, but if the project looks dodgy early on it's hard to believe Nolan would lack the sense to act on it. Time will tell, but at this point in his career I'd say that the jury is out on Nolan, but that the evidence so far puts to bed any talk of the man being a genius.
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