Kyman102 said:
That's kind of my read on Zack's movies, actually. He can shoot well, but... Well, it's a mild version of something I heard about an interview with M. Night Shyamalan. I think it was in Newsweek, where they called him the Next Spielberg...
Wasn't Abrams also another The Next Spielberg for a little while? I've enjoyed a few of his films well enough, and he's more conventionally competent than Snyder, but he's not exactly an auteur unless you count a proclivity for lens spares as a sign of identity.
I think Snyder's the same way. He's got some talent in some areas, but he doesn't have NEARLY the talent he thinks he does. I'm sure he fully intended Sucker Punch to be a critique on the Male Gaze culture in movies or whatever bullshit Moviebob tried to claim that it was, but it doesn't really come through because he's not clever enough to make it work.
Heh, I spent years defending Sucker Punch pretty much on those grounds, but honestly it's been so long since I first saw it that I can't productively have any opinion on it anymore. I remember admiring just how daringly bleak it was, and some of the performances being good.
This kind of plays into one of my bigger problems with BvS and its defenders. The ones who claim that the people who don't like BvS just don't get it.
No, we get it. We get the Jesus imagery, the dichonomy of God vs Man, and we get that you were TRYING to build Superman as representing hope despite the movie itself hammering in that people were distrusting Superman so it's honestly not the shock it should have been.
Given how shallow and threadbare BvS is, it's kindof impossible to
not 'get' (the worst instance is always the 'Jeese, you just don't GET the Martha line!'). It has all the subtlety and nuance of a sledgehammer. Pretentious text, as opposed to subtext. It's a con job; dropping words and phrases, winking and nodding to the audience throughout all its overbearing bombast, trying to project grandeur and worthiness.
The whole concept is just baffling, as in why on earth anyone could think all of those plot threads could work at the same time whilst introducing all of those new characters. And that's why I still find it morbidly fascinating...
If nobody gives a shit about this Batman or this Superman, nobody will give a shit about the ideological implications. If the story is badly told through sloppy editing, nobody will care if you tell them afterwards about the themes.
To be fair to Zack, and to maybe reel back
some of my ire, he didn't write it... and no director could really have transformed the garbage script, story, and overall
extended-universe-on-fast-forwardskip lunacy from lead to gold.
(Aside: I admit before I found out Eisenberg was playing LUTHOR, I thought he was going to turn into the new Joker or say, play Mad Hatter, or the Riddler, and honestly those would have worked SO much better)
I don't particularly like him in any role. Adventureland, maybe?
But jeese, talk about a bizarre tonal fit for the rest of the film, to have him go up against a violently idiotic non-detecting Batman and a miserable Superman.
Justice League... It hadn't set itself up correctly. DC was asking us to get onboard with these visions of characters, some of whom we'd never seen before and weren't established, and with others... Well to quote a friend of mine "You killed your Superman in his second movie. Most of us weren't even sure if we LIKED the guy, you can't expect us to care when he dies."
Not only that, but he ostensibly comes back in the same frikkin' film he's supposedly killed.
Reading Zack's defences of these kinds of decisions is what largely supports my less than stellar opinion of the man himself, at least in terms of his highly questionable approach to critical thinking. He likes to adapt things, but I'm not sure he really ever understands the source material. He just seems to just be attracted to visuals and nebulous
ideas behind the material. Neither MoS or BvS feel at all like works made by people who actually have any real affection or connection to the characters.
I've had JL thoroughly spoilered, as there's no way I'm adding to its box office, and it seems like Warner already did some soft retconning (which potentially directly contradict some of the pretentious 'themes' of BvS). I'm tentatively, sorta-maybe looking forward to the next Superman film? So long as Snyder won't be directing, and it has new/different writers.
And I'm definitely curious about Matt Reeves' solo Batman film, as whilst I wasn't keen on where the Apes trilogy ended up (quite literally in terms of location, but also its characters and plot focus), Dawn was superb, and even the - in my view - misguided War had some genuinely great moments. I admire and enjoy those films more than anything Snyder's put out, so as long as Warner get their shit together, hopefully Reeves can knock one out the park.
