How much is Zack Snyder to blame for Batman v Superman?

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I've seen many, many people shit on him for Batman v Superman. While I enjoyed it, I'm the first one to call it dumb, bloated, messy, pretentious, overly grim, poorly written and told, convoluted, illogical and nonsensical. Thing is, IMO most of the film's big problems can be traced back to the script, which Snyder had no part in (not anywhere that I've found, anyway). And I don't think it's entirely fair to lay the blame primarily on him. We don't know how much say he had in the matter, or how much the studio was forcing his hand. If there's anyone to blame for the film's clunkiness, it's IMO the writers (David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio respectively) for trying to cram too much into the movie, doing a shit job of it, and thereby causing s trickle down effect where every other element suffers from the script.

Thoughts on the matter?

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, that all depends. Can I blame Superman instead?

 

[DefunctTheory]

A movie production is a colossal effort, and it takes hundreds of people to put it together. More so for something like a super hero movie. So it would be entirely unfair to rest the blame entirely on one person.

In the case of Dawn of Justice, it's hard to tell. Because it's a franchise, with continued employments and even contracts outside of the production hanging in the balance, it will be a decade, at least, before someone has a few too many drinks and starts pointing fingers at the troublemakers. So we're reduced to speculation.

As much as it may surprise people, I have no wish to turn this into another '***** About DCCU' thread, so I wont go into detail on anything. I'll just say that I think it's safe to say, until someone spills some beans, that all the bosses are to blame. The producers and WB higher ups can probably be blamed for forcing a 'Justice League First, Heroes Second' universe structure; Goyer can be blamed for taking an already difficult task given to him by the suits and mangling the script, in tone, dialogue, and structure; and Snyder can be blamed for taking all that and hamfisting the hell out of the delivery.

 

[Zontar]

Something to remember is that Zack's wife Deborah was one of the two producers, so if Zack wanted something changed it would have been changed. While the writer/director relationship can be a complex one, the producer/writer relationship is not. While David Goyer is a terrible writer and he is at fault for creating the abomination of a script that is the story's "plot", Zack at the end of the day was the one responsible for putting it together, and effectively had veto on parts he didn't like or making the call to change things given his position as the man effectively at the helm of the DCEU at the time.

It's like Marvel's bankrupcy during the 90s, while some question why one person gets all the blame when multiple people are responsible, the weight of that responsibility is what makes that lone individual get all the flak.

It also didn't help that Goyer stayed quiet about the movie while Zack called Marvel fans morons and their movies simply (despite Winter Soldier being everything Man of Steel failed to be, and Civil War likely to be Marvel literally one uping Batman v. Superman in every single way).

 

[Parasondox]

The director isn't the only one who makes decisions on the movie. As a person who has researched a lot of the behind the scenes of film making and film production, the director may be in charge but they aren't the one making the final decision. You have producers, studio heads, executives, investors, etc. The amount of influence they may have can vary but when a movie is bad and outright bad, it's not just the directors who are at fault. Too much chefs in the kitchen can ruin a perfectly good soup.

M. Night could be blamed for The Last Airbender and Joss Whedon may get stick from many die hard Marvel fans for Avengers 2 for being lackluster but you need to look at the team around them and the people they get their orders from. Spider-man 3, Raimi didn't want Venom. The Studios wanted Venom and so he had to fold and give them what they wanted. You, yourself, can judge whether that was a good move or not.

Batman V. Superman just seemed like a mess with too many people and factors getting involved. Look at last year's Fantastic 4. A major mess. Too much going on behind the scenes that ruined the movie.

If you get the right team in for a movie, then things can work. It's when an outside factor comes in and unsettles the team, that is where things get messy.

Added Note: It's like sports. In Football (soccer), if the team is doing bad, the manager gets the boot. If the team is still doing bad after the 10th manager in the past 10 years, you may need to look at the players and those in charge of the club on how they are spending money in the players they are scouting and signing.

LOOKING AT YOU NEWCASTLE UNITED!!!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Everyone needs a scapegoat to pin failure to huh?

Personally I blame the massive push to build an Avenger's like framework out of thin air, something which comes down to executive producers and the bill folders wanting similar audience retention numbers to those Marvel films.

Lay it on the writers on this one mixed in with corporate meddling. This implicates Synder but he doesn't have sole responsibility. I'm sure their deadlines were not very forgiving.

Auteur theory doesn't really apply to these superhero movies...

 

[DudeistBelieve]

The WB. They set the mandate that the next movie had to be the one that set up the DC Universe. That is an IMPOSSIBLY tall order to do, because it has to set the table for the movies to come AND tell a story all it's own.

For what it's worth, I think Snyder did a good as anyone would have in this attempt. BvS accomplished all that, also setting a tone thats completely different than Marvel. Great? no it was acceptable, but it made me look forward to Suicide Squad.

 

[Hawki]

I dunno. Thing is, B v S is a movie mandated to set up a cinematic universe. I don't think its faults can be put on any one person.

For instance, Iron Man 2 is easily the weakest MCU films I've seen. Based on scuttlebutt, that wasn't Favereau's fault. And with Favereau having directed IM 1 and The Jungle Book, I don't think he's lacking as a director. B v S was lacklustre, but I'll still give Snyder thanks for Man of Steel (yes, I enjoy the film) and Dawn of the Dead (haven't seen all of it, but I found it to be decent overall).

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

They are generally called Directors for a reason. WB was banking on him being the creative force behind their cinematic enterprise. Now while WB did dictate that certain content be included to help establish upcoming movies, it was Snyder's call as to the movies' direction. I don't think he is entirely to blame, though he does shoulder the majority, he could have told Goyer "No, that idea sucks, get rid of it." If WB were looking for a simple Yes Man to make the movie, they wouldn't have hired Snyder.

 

[JCAll]

While I was perfectly happy to lay the crapstorm of MoS at Snyder's feet, now I'm not so sure. It's clear now that something has gone very very wrong at the conceptual level, and I think everyone deserves some of the blame. No, everyone deserves ALL of the blame. Everyone, all of it.

 

[jklinders]

Zack Snyder was re-hired after Man of Steel. He was doing something that "someone" wanted if they kept handing him the keys. Find out who keeps re-hiring him and you will likely see who is really behind these decisions. I'm guessing based on the weirdly out of place cameos, the studio is working harder at building a franchise than they are at making a half decent movie. Marvel as i recall did it the other way around...at first

 

[Zhukov]

Given how happy directors are to claim a lion's share of the credit when a movie turns out well, I'm inclined to hit them with a comparable share of the blame when a movie turns out crummy.

 

[Deathlyphil]

The DCU has taken too long to get to the cinemas. Now WB are standing looking at what Marvel have built (and the mountain of money) and wondering how to copy it. So instead of taking five films (two of which are not great) to get the Avengers team-up level, they have tried to do it in two films. That's a huge order.

Combine that with trying to instil Nolan's dark, gritty, super-serious, no jokes, no colour, no fun (no decent female characters) storytelling, the film had a mountain to climb to prevent it from drowning in the swirling sea of effluence.

Snyder can make excellent films if he is given the right script and the backing to go an do it. Watchmen is an outstanding example of not just a great superhero film, but a great film.

 

[Bobular]

I blame them trying to put an entire universe worth of continuity into one movie. Who's fault that is can be up for debate, but who ever it is, your to blame. You can't just take a short cut to the success that marvel have, they earned it by putting out good movie after good movie THEN tying it all together.

Hopefully after seeing what happened with BvS and the last Spiderman movie, which tried the same universe building in one movie thing, companys will realise that this is a bad idea.

 

[Parasondox]

I blame them trying to put an entire universe worth of continuity into one movie. Who's fault that is can be up for debate, but who ever it is, your to blame. You can't just take a short cut to the success that marvel have, they earned it by putting out good movie after good movie THEN tying it all together.

Hopefully after seeing what happened with BvS and the last Spiderman movie, which tried the same universe building in one movie thing, companys will realise that this is a bad idea.

I don't think companies/Studios understand that. Well not all of them. There were even reports where someone at WB said if BvS didn't make a billion, it's not good enough. They want that large pot of gold by doing something with little to less thought on the outcome of the product. They are not Apple. Apple has a queue of people sleeping outside of their store for days as soon as they announce a HDMI adapter. Movie studios just don't have that.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Zack Snyder was re-hired after Man of Steel. He was doing something that "someone" wanted if they kept handing him the keys. Find out who keeps re-hiring him and you will likely see who is really behind these decisions. I'm guessing based on the weirdly out of place cameos, the studio is working harder at building a franchise than they are at making a half decent movie. Marvel as i recall did it the other way around...at first

It almost sounds like Tom Rothman levels of incompetency. I will admit I haven't seen the BvS movie, mainly because the trailers told me far more than I needed to know. It was going to be a grim, psudeo-realistic, superhero movie, that wears it's 'media relatability' hat with the "Superman is an illegal alien" scenes. I admit to not watching MoS, because while I thought the direction they were taking the character was unique, it didn't grab my interest. To me, Superman (while I may hate the character) has always been a beacon of Hope. You could take Aunt May's speech from Spider-Man 2 and apply it to classic Superman.

But from what I have been able to tell, Superman himself does very little heroic work in his own movie, other than saving the entire planet single-handedly. The 'sequel', judging by the trailers, makes little sense. I know the whole "Epic Superhero clash between a guy who thinks that the guy that stopped his own race from conquering the planet might turn on us, so as a guy with no powers is the obvious choice to stop him" is the big draw, it just seems so incredibly stupid.

To me the writers of this movie should shoulder some of the blame. Warner Bros should come clean with trying to hard to catch up to the MCU, and Zack should have used his influence to back up the writers when they pushed back. Let Superman be the character of light and hope we have come to respect him as. This is not Transformers.

 

[Saltyk]

The person at the top is always the one that gets the blame or the credit. And, to an extent, they should. In democratic and capitalist societies, it's not like the leaders can really affect the economy too much, but they often get the credit for strong or weak economies.

As director, Zack Snyder has a ton of power. He sets up the scenes, he tells the actors how to behave, he can make alterations on the fly. It's not uncommon for directors to seriously alter a script. I certainly blame him for the incredibly pretentious opening scene. But I also think he put together a few scenes really well. Bruce racing through Metroplois and the Batman Warehouse fight were well put together.

Obviously, Goyer wrote the terrible plot, and the suits at the WB forced a bunch of "World Building" into the movie to establish the DCCU. However, Zack is 100% responsible for the look, tone, and feel of the movie, and not vetoing and altering what he could.

So let's say the percentage of blame is as follows.
Goyer: 20%
Snyder: 40%
WB/DC: 40%

 

[Mikeybb]

As director, Zack Snyder has a ton of power. He sets up the scenes, he tells the actors how to behave, he can make alterations on the fly. It's not uncommon for directors to seriously alter a script. I certainly blame him for the incredibly pretentious opening scene. But I also think he put together a few scenes really well. Bruce racing through Metroplois and the Batman Warehouse fight were well put together.

This is true.

Even though the division of blame you lay out is probably accurate as well, but ultimately the director is the person who gets left holding the can.
I guess that's why so much adulation for a good movie is ascribed to them too.
I know it's a lot more complicated than that given the amount of outside interference that can happen in the weird, weird ecosystem that is hollywood blockbusters production and my oversimplification doesn't accurately encompass this, but to the standard cinema goer the director is responsible for all as anything that does reach the screen has had to have passed by them to get there.

All this said, I think Snyders issue is that he understand Batman and the mood of those kind of movies well enough to make a good Bat-movie.
A very good Bat-movie.
He just doesn't seem to 'get' Superman.

 

[Objectable]

At the very least, he made it look ugly as sin.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

it's IMO the writers (David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio respectively)

Goyer, definitely. Terrio, maybe? When you look at their writing credits on Rotten Tomatoes, in the movie department, Goyer only has 5 "fresh" rated movies out of numerous "rotten" movies. 4 of the fresh movies are the Nolan Batman movies, which he was likely a lot less involved with than in BvS.

On the other hand, Terrio has 2 fresh ratings, of the 3 movies he has written for. Obviously, the single rotten one was BvS. It should be noted though that both Terrio and Goyer have had successful TV series.

Goyer:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/david_s_goyer
Terrio: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/chris_terrio

Anyway, I do think that Zack Snyder goes get a bit too much of the shaft. Goyer, and perhaps Terrio, deserve part of the blame. Though TBH, I'm not even sure if we can really chalk it up to WB being incompetent fucks again. They obviously know little about what should be done with their DC properties, which is why they always just give the reins to one man, i.e. Nolan or Snyder.

But when you read or watch interviews with Zack Snyder, you get the feeling that a big part of BvS was his vision. Let's not forget, he is also credited as a writer.

So if I had to put it into percentages, I would go:

50% Snyder
30% Goyer/Terrio
20% WB
10% Frank Miller