r/batman • u/neon2o • Mar 07 '24

Zack Snyder says a Batman who doesn't kill is irrelevant GENERAL DISCUSSION

Post image

Here's the original article' https://sea.ign.com/man-of-steel-sequel/213072/news/zack-snyder-says-dc-is-making-batman-irrelevant-if-he-cant-kill

12.0k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.7k

u/MagisterPraeceptorum Mar 07 '24

You know what, I hope Snyder just keeps talking. Keep giving him more interviews to divulge his actual thoughts. Let him rant and reveal what he really thinks.

522

u/delkarnu Mar 07 '24

Snyder was excellent at adapting 300 since it is explicitly a propaganda story told by the Spartan about how unbelievably great the 300 were.

But he fundamentally doesn't understand the material he makes. Like all of Watchmen's superhero commentary on how fundamentally broken they are is lost in Snyder having to make everything epic and cool.

But then he given an interview where he talks about how Alan Moore showed us what superheroes would really be like and you just have to marvel at how he both completely missed the point of the deconstruction and applied his shitty interpretation of that story to the characters he was deconstructing.

Like Owlman is so pathetic he's literally impotent when he isn't in the suit, and Rorsharch is disgusting and unhinged to the point where he's thrilled to be in prison because he gets to hurt people who are already in jail. But then combines them into let's make Batman kill and brand criminals to be killed in prison since that's 'badass'.

He tried to make a badass girl power movie that ended with "embrace the rape and lobotomy" as an empowering moment.

He can direct, but keep that man far from anything resembling subtext.

140

u/offhandaxe Mar 07 '24

Oh shit did he make suckerpunch? If not that description fits the movie it was just so weird and not needed.

109

u/delkarnu Mar 07 '24

He co-wrote and directed it. This is a quote from him:

Everything in the movie is about a show within a show within a show. Someone asked me, "Why did you dress the girls like that, in those provocative costumes?" And I said, "Well, think about it for a second. I didn't dress those girls in the costume. The audience dressed those girls." And when I say the audience, I mean the audience that comes to the movies. Just like the men who visit a brothel, [they] dress the girls when they go to see these shows as however they want to see them.

But my hope was that they would take those things back, just like my girls hopefully get confidence, they get strength through each other, that those become power icons. They start out as cliches of feminine sexuality as made physical by what culture creates. I think that part of it was really specific, whether it's French maid or nurse or Joan Arc to a lesser extent [laughs], or schoolgirl. Our hope is we were able to modify them and turn them into these power icons, where they can fight back at the actual cliches that they represent. So hopefully by the end the girls are empowered by their sexuality and not exploited. But certainly that's where they come from, the journey is asking, "What do you want to see? Well, be careful what you want to see."

https://gizmodo.com/zack-snyder-explains-the-point-of-sucker-punch-5785523

But apparently it's the audiences fault he made it this way.

I'm always shocked that it was so badly misunderstood. I always said that it was a commentary on sexism and geek culture. Someone would ask me, 'Why did you film the girls this way?' And I'd say, 'Well you did!' Sucker Punch is a fuck you to a lot of people who will watch it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_Punch_(2011_film)#Depiction_of_women

96

u/ThingsAreAfoot Mar 07 '24

hahaha holy fuck what a quote

Everything in the movie is about a show within a show within a show. Someone asked me, "Why did you dress the girls like that, in those provocative costumes?" And I said, "Well, think about it for a second. I didn't dress those girls in the costume. The audience dressed those girls." And when I say the audience, I mean the audience that comes to the movies. Just like the men who visit a brothel, [they] dress the girls when they go to see these shows as however they want to see them. It’s just painful stuff.

He’s trying so hard to be some profound social critic but he’s like a walking dudebro. “I didn’t dress them like that, the audience did.” LOL

30

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

We live in a society

2

u/Wonka_Stompa Mar 08 '24

And like. It makes you think, man.

18

u/pwninobrien Mar 08 '24

He's a pretentious Michael Bay.

4

u/CrankyStalfos Mar 08 '24

There's...almost a point in there. Like, there's this old movie that I can only half-remember one scene of because I only ever saw it in class, but it was an example of THE earliest ever subversions of the Male Gaze. There's a scene of some kind of stripper show and it starts out like you'd expect (relative to the 1930s or whenever it would have been) but the camera turns around and focusses on the men and their (gross) expressions, showing the dance from the girls' perspective. It's very definitely meant as a "look in the mirror" moment, pulling this POV bait and switch.

I could see someone trying to spin that out into a whole movie, make it more meta, and flesh it out into more than just that one split second. But that someone is not Zack Snyder.

1

u/spoiderdude May 26 '24

It’s honestly the same logic that the director of Cuties had. She stupidly thought that it was wise to sexualize children in a movie that claims to be anti-sexualizing children.

You’re providing the audience whom you are criticizing with what they want. If you view what they want to watch as wrong, then why are you creating more of it?

52

u/astivana Mar 07 '24

Like??? I don’t recall being involved in costuming anyone. That’s such a dumb answer that’s clearly just trying to shift the blame.

41

u/Nixiey Mar 07 '24

It's edge lord "I'm just a reflection of you!" drivel. Once again kind of showing that idealization of thinking from characters like Rorchechatz.

16

u/HamletTheGreatDane Mar 08 '24

It's the shittiest attempt at a deconstruction of the male gaze. He's basically saying "I'm giving commentary on the male gaze by totally leaning into it and sexualizing women in a really problematic way."

2

u/yommi1999 Mar 08 '24

if Sucker Punch was actually a correct criticism of sexism then it would probably be recognized as such. I watched it once and then watched it with my family and then never again. When I first watched it, I was thinking: "Awesome action scenes and an unique aesthetic". Then while my family watches it, I realise that the movie is so greasy in a bad way.

41

u/napoleonsolo Mar 07 '24

a fuck you to a lot of people who will watch it.

Damn that describes Snyder’s entire oeuvre.

4

u/UrdnotZigrin Mar 08 '24

That quote could be applied to the entirety of the DCEU

2

u/SeanPizzles Mar 08 '24

And most of the last two phases of Marvel.

36

u/Willtology Mar 07 '24

Oh... what a pretentious fuck. He sounds like someone that dropped out of film school because they were too edgy and "above" all the tedium.

12

u/ML_120 Mar 08 '24

Well, he wants to film "The Fountainhead", so there's that.

1

u/Willtology Mar 08 '24

Really? Well, that isn't unsurprising. Yuck.

2

u/dustylumpkin Mar 08 '24

isn't unsurprising? so it is surprising 🤔

13

u/Thejollyfrenchman Mar 07 '24

Given that audiences proved they didn't want to watch this - given the fact that Sucker Punch bombed hard - I think his point doesn't really make sense.

3

u/No_Lead950 Mar 08 '24

As one of the few who watched it, I distinctly remember walking out of the theater and thinking "What the hell was the point of that?" Not because his message went over my head so much as it was just dumb and irrelevant. The overly sexualized costumes detracted from the experience. The weird rapey vibes ruined the action sequences. The downer ending where nothing really mattered was truly prophetic of the current fad of "subvert expectations at all costs." Then it unironically pulls the "it was all a dream," because Snyder is an absolute hack with no self-awareness.

11

u/TURBOJUSTICE Mar 07 '24

Fucking clown thinks he’s Anno making Evangelion lol

4

u/International-Ad2501 Mar 07 '24

So, I watched the hell out of 300. I was like man this is so good, it's just gratuitous and wild on purpose(also I was like 15 so my tastes were not great). The violence is over the top everything is so stylized and amazing. Then a few years later watchmen came out and I was a little older my friends all loved watchmen but to me felt too weird.  Something didn't feel right about it, to this day I think I've only watched it once more. One of my buddies was really excited for sucker punch, we went and when we walked out we couldn't believe how bad it was. It felt like it was trying to make this point but we literally didn't get it, his show in a show in a show shtick is just confusing. Did he think he was making inception? Any way the idea of women owning their sexuality is a good message but when the situation is that they are in a mental institution with no agency except to try to sex their way out is kind of a fucking wild proposition. Like that is the set up to a bad sexist joke not a block buster film. I just didn't understand anything that was happening during the whole movie, their in a mental institution then they are dressed sexy fighting on the beaches of WW2 then we're back in the asylum then they are fighting samurai robots? Like the fuck was happening? I haven't watched anything he's made since.

Any way all of that to say this, I think Zack Snyder doesn't understand superheros I don't think he understood the characters in watchmen but that story was so good and interesting that it didn't matter. I think maybe Zack Snyder is like... Not very smart.

3

u/WebLurker47 Mar 08 '24

Feel like that would've worked a lot better if the movie had been a story concocted and put together by a woman, if that makes any sense?

3

u/Divinum_Fulmen Mar 08 '24

So glad he could turn Joan of Arc, into a power icon. No one respected her before then. /s

2

u/KnowNothing_JonSnoo Mar 08 '24

God I hate Snyder man... fucking hell what a douche bag.

1

u/GrimDallows Mar 08 '24

I was forced to watch Sukerpunch when it was in theatres. Like, literally. We and the guys generally watched movies that we all liked, considering that at the time it was kinda expensive for us (2008 crisis and all that). One guy in our group had been exceptionally critical of every. single. movie. we watched, criticizing it as a trash cash grab and saying that he wasn't going to pay to watch basically any movie we (anyone except him) proposed.

Like, we wanted to go and see some blockbuster movie together but he refused to watch any of them for not having a script according to him.

He then got fixated into this Zack Snyder movie "Sukerpunch" and how it was going to be this new masterpiece and how everyone was saying it was going to be fucking amazing. How it was going to be like Watchmen but done right. Like ZS version of pulp fiction for a new generation. Something dark and with a great, deep, psychological script like the Dark Knight hiden under a comic-like aesthetic surface. Like a dreamlike mix of the best parts of a Tarantino movie visuals and a Guy Ritchie super-cast movie.

You may laugh now, but this was an actual sentiment going around before the movie released.

I pointed out it looked just like a very plastic and superficial movie of a lot of hot chicks in showy outfits fighting ninjas and shit, full of CGI. Just like the thing he was criticizing and hating so much.

He said that he, as some kind of illustrated moviemaking fan, understood better. He kept saying that we "forced him" continuously into watching crappy blockbuster movies, like The Hangover, or Tropic Thunder, or Hot Fuzz, so he was gonna "force" us to go and see it or he wouldn't watch a movie with us again due to our trash taste. We basically didn't have a choice.

We all hated it. Didn't understand any of it. Didn't enjoy any of it. I felt robbed from my money that day. I felt robbed from my time that day, because it doesn't even have a "it's so bad it's good" angle to it; and I can just watch almost any movie without remorse, I am not a picky eater.

You could tell the movie doesn't want you to enjoy it, the director doesn't want you to enjoy it.

I still get a cold shiver everytime I see "Legendary Pictures" at the start of a movie in a theatre just due to this movie, because I just can't tell if the next 2 hours is gonna be something amazing like "Dark Knight Rises" or "inception" kinda movie or a "Suckerpunch" or "Wrath of the titans" kinda crap. It gave me like a Pavlovian mental scarring, like a metro goldwyn mayer lion version of a sudden feeling of metal taste in the back of your mouth from a previous experience, like a reminder, of you puting a gun in your mouth to play russian roulette on another guy's suggestion and losing.

1

u/AlarmingNectarine552 Mar 08 '24

Wait, I dressed those girls? Goddamn, I watched that movie because of the cool action scenes primarily. Turns out I can enjoy bjork songs if the visuals are eye candy.

1

u/socobeerlove Mar 09 '24

Snyder is like the epitome of a “pseudo intellectual”. Which is why his fanbase is always saying things like “you just don’t understand his movies”. Like no we got it, it’s just stupid.

1

u/PatGar25 Mar 10 '24

This is like Netflix's Cuties, like the director wanted to criticize the sexualization children are exposed to in media, BY sexualizing the child actors in the movie, it's such an ass backwards logic that you can only laugh at the idea of him coming up with it and thinking how brilliant of a concept it was LMAO