stip wrote:LoathedVermin72 wrote:durdencommatyler wrote:LoathedVermin72 wrote:Orpheus wrote:Why do you love Zack Snyder, LV? I don't really recall you posting about any of his movies before.
Not only is he a visionary stylist, but I think he's a visionary
artist. He's one of the very few current filmmakers who has used modern visual effects technology expressively and profoundly, to create a whole new aesthetic that explores where we are in pop culture and history.
Unlike the majority of his mainstream contemporaries (especially when it comes to superhero movies), he is not making formulaic product built around meaningless iconography or juvenile pseudo-"seriousness;" he is making genuine pop art. He is doing what the best artists do: trying to understand and illuminate humanity. Just look at how he transformed ancient history into something excitingly contemporary in
300 - he used a defiantly modern aesthetic to vivify the past, to express its meaning and relevance. He
mythologizes history in that movie. I think that's amazing.
Um... I'd argue that's exactly what he did with Man of Steel. To the letter.
And I'm not a Snyder basher. I fucking adore Watchmen. And I haven't seen 300.
Well, we would disagree on that, sir. I think it's easy for it to come off that way, but Snyder's human and historical probing is very much at the core of that movie. That said, it took a second viewing for me to appreciate it.
Okay, I'll bite. What larger point is Snyder making?
I wouldn't say it's so much a central "larger point" as it is, like I said, probing. But I do think it is about the American experience, specifically in the wake of 9/11 (that whole action finale is jam-packed with unmistakably evocative imagery). It's about processing and understanding tragedy, loss, death, and how important that is to life. It's about growing up and finding your morality, both as an individual and as a society. Similar to how he did in
300, Snyder tries to understand and clarify history (and much more recent history this time, which makes it all the more powerful) by mythologizing it through the immediate and digestible power of pop art. It's beautiful. I find it quite moving.
A great quote from Snyder on the mass death in the climax:
Zack Snyder wrote:I wanted the movie to have a mythological feeling. In ancient mythology, mass deaths are used to symbolize disasters. In other countries like Greece and Japan, myths were recounted through the generations, partly to answer unanswerable questions about death and violence. In America, we don't have that legacy of ancient mythology. Superman... is probably the closest we get. It's a way of recounting the myth.
