Posts Tagged ‘Zack Snyder’
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER is, in most traditional senses, a better movie than REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. It’s more straight forward, less tangents, a little build and then a bunch of action. And I think it looks better, maybe because it’s mostly taking place on one planet (the titular moon of Veldt), so they were able to focus most of their energy on the design and style of that one location. The downside to this is that it feels a little more normal, less unhinged, more restrained. But narratively it’s the big pay off, the exciting part, so it’s hard to be disappointed.
The first movie, you remember, was loosely structured as the first half of SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. This humble farming village is going to be forced by the evil Imperium to give up all their grain, so secret-former-bad-guy-and-adopted-daughter-of-their-tyrannical-leader Kora (Sofia Boutella, STREETDANCE 2, CLIMAX) flew around and recruited a team of warriors to train the farmers how to defend themselves. They thought they headed off the threat by killing the fascist admiral Atticus Noble (the wonderfully strange looking Ed Skrein, THE TRANSPORTER REFUELED, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK), but they quickly learn that he’s still alive (technologically resurrected in a cool, slimy opening sequence) so oh shit, it’s back on. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Charlotte Maggi, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ed Skrein, Fra Fee, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Kurt Johnstad, Michiel Huisman, Shay Hatten, Sky Yang, Sofia Boutella, Zack Snyder
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Thursday, April 18th, 2024
With part two releasing tomorrow, I have been spurned into action – I must complete my review of Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. To summarize my Snyder history, I’m a fan. In the eras of SUCKER PUNCH, OWL 300 and MAN OF STEEL I seemed to like him more than the next guy, then I fell off as the true Zack Zealots and ZAnons began their ascent. But I still enjoy all of his movies on some level, and love some of them.
REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE is, uh… the short version of the first half of his long-awaited take on the space opera genre. Squirted onto Netflix with extreme fanfare and modest response, it’s unclear when the promised director’s cut will ever be released. But even in this abbreviated form it manages to have plenty of the self indulgence that defines a Zack Snyder film – it’s what powers his rockets, and also what gets him too close to the sun. On first viewing I felt this leaned closer to the latter, that it was one of his worst, but that I still got a kick out of it. Then I watched it a second time yesterday and it was better than I remembered. I cannot tell a lie. I kinda dig it. Not every “new Star Wars” has to really be the new Star Wars. There’s room in my heart for a new CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. This is way more fun to watch than SPACE RAIDERS or KRULL or METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN or even SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE although that one’s kinda good.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Charlie Hunnam, Charlotte Maggi, Cleopatra Coleman, Corey Stoll, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ed Skrein, Elise Duffy, Fra Fee, Jena Malone, Junkie XL, Kurt Johnstad, Michiel Huisman, Ray Fisher, Shay Hatten, Sofia Boutella, Stuart Martin, Zack Snyder
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021
I’ve been waiting for Zack Snyder’s ARMY OF THE DEAD since it was first announced in 2007, at which point he’d only directed DAWN OF THE DEAD and 300. Snyder would’ve produced and they had commercial director Matthijs van Heijningen (who later did the THE THING premaquel) set to direct. My understanding of the premise was that Las Vegas was walled off to contain a zombie outbreak, a team of mercenaries were hired to go in for a heist, and the hero was really trying to rescue his daughter who was stuck in there.
14 years later it exists in what could only be an entirely different form, since it’s directed by Snyder himself, rewritten by a guy who was 13 years old when it was announced, starring a guy who was a WWE wrestler and hadn’t even been in a David DeFalco movie yet, made with technology that didn’t exist, distributed on a service that didn’t exist. As always, Snyder is unpredictable. I definitely wouldn’t have guessed that I’d be happier with his 4 hour redux of JUSTICE LEAGUE than the zombie movie I’d already been waiting several years for when he did MAN OF STEEL. But here we are.
ARMY OF THE DEAD did not live up to my hopes, so I will share many complaints about it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it – it’s an entertaining movie, especially for straight-to-Netflix. I recommend watching it if you’re into this sort of thing and won’t pull your hair out that it’s either surprisingly sloppy or prioritizes setting up anime spin-offs and fan theory speculation over telling a good story. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ana de la Reguera, Dave Bautista, Hiroyuki Sanada, Joby Harold, Matthias Schweighofer, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castilla, Richard Cetrone, Shay Hatten, Tig Notaro, Zack Snyder, zombies
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 118 Comments »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2021
PROLOGUE
Well, it really happened. When last we saw the movie JUSTICE LEAGUE, it was credited to director Zack Snyder – who had left the movie unfinished due to a family tragedy, and amid creative battles with the studio – but was known to have been heavily rewritten and reshot by SPEED script doctor Joss Whedon. Although I called it a “perfectly watchable, okay super hero romp” it was poorly reviewed and did not do the gangbusters business Warner Brothers had hoped for. The studio continued with related characters in AQUAMAN, BIRDS OF PREY and WONDER WOMAN 1984, but seemed to abandon hopes for their own AVENGERS.
Meanwhile, a group of Snyder Riders petitioned, hash-tagged, billboarded and sky-wrote for the company to “release the Snyder Cut,” the fabled vastly different pre-reshoots director’s cut of the film. As time went on, the movement seemed increasingly pestering and delusional, but it persisted until somebody at AT&T or somewhere got the notion that the corporation could promote their new streaming service HBOMax by releasing this Snyder Cut thing on it.
One small complication: it didn’t exist. Snyder had left before he was able to finish the movie, as had been reported all along. So they invested a reported $70 million (more than the entire budget of Marvel’s THE NEW MUTANTS) for Snyder to complete the FX and the edit, add a couple new things and a new score. And since who gives a fuck anymore they let him pretty much do what he wanted this time, and what he wanted was to make it 4 hours long (about 14 minutes longer than LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) and in a 4:3 aspect ratio as an homage to MID90S and MEEK’S CUTOFF. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amazons, Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Chris Terrio, Ciaran Hinds, Connie Nielsen, DC Comics, Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Harry Lennix, Henry Cavill, J.K. Simmons, Jack Kirby, Jared Leto, Jason Momoa, Joe Manganiello, Joss Whedon, Kiersey Clemons, Peter Guinness, Ray Porter, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 77 Comments »
Tuesday, November 21st, 2017
(SPOILERS)
Sometimes, you know, Superman dies, so a bad guy decides to conquer the world, so you have to put together a team of other super heroes to fill in for Superman, but then you decide to bring him back to life, but he seems evil at first and fights you, but then he chills out while you fight the CGI guy, then he shows up. JUSTICE LEAGUE is a perfectly watchable, okay super hero romp, with a hefty serving of the humor everyone thought was missing in the last two Superman pictures, but no more sense, and very little of the gravity or operatic style. Goodbye worshipful awe of Superman, hello green screened-in undercutting gags.
Oh, but don’t worry, when Aqua-Man smashes through a building it’s been painstakingly established that it’s in an abandoned town. That’s the most important thing, obviously.
The invasion foreshadowed at the end of BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF THE LIVING JUSTICE is at hand. Batman knows it because a Geonosian “Parademon” flies up while he’s hanging a thief off a rooftop. I think he was using the poor guy as bait (the things smell fear), but possibly it’s just a weird thing that happens while he’s on the job. I like that when the creature appears Batman and the criminal seem to completely drop their conflict and have a conversation about how fucked up things are since Superman’s death. A little bonding between fellow humans. A nice moment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Billy Crudup, Chris Terrio, Ciaran Hinds, Danny Elfman, DC Comics, Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, J.K. Simmons, Jason Momoa, Jeremy Irons, Joss Whedon, Ray Fisher, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 115 Comments »
Monday, March 28th, 2016
(HEAVY SPOILER REVIEW)
Here’s a weird thing about gigantic blockbuster movies based on popular licensed characters: you can end up making a sequel aimed less at the fans of the first movie than at the people who saw it once and have still not stopped complaining about it. At least that’s the fool’s errand that director Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer (this time rewritten by Academy Award winner Chris Terrio) chose for themselves on BATMAN von SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which selects as its primary theme the criticisms that people had of part 1.
To this day I don’t feel like I understand the widespread outrage at MAN OF STEEL for having a comic book style battle between super beings where buildings were destroyed in the process. I still haven’t noticed this standard applied to any other movie or comic book (including the cover of the very first issue of Superman!) and I stand by everything I said in this essay about how wild misinterpretations of MAN OF STEEL have become conventional wisdom. Still, I gotta thank all of you for doing that because I suspect it inspired the most intense and cinematic section of BATMAN vehemently opposed to SUPERMAN, in which we see the Superman v Zod battle from an even more human perspective than before. Specifically, from Bruce Wayne’s point-of-view as he runs fearlessly into the destruction and tries to help.
We only see the Kryptonians in tiny glimpses, far away, high in the sky. Mostly we see raining glass and brick and glowing energy beams in their wake. They truly are gods. And now we specifically see that rubble landed on one guy and are told that a woman is missing. And Bruce Wayne doesn’t like it.
(SPOILER: Bruce Wayne is Batman.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Chris Terrio, Davis S. Goyer, DC Comics, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 446 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE sounds like it would be the name of a DTV prequel to 300, from the producers of DEATH RACE 2. In fact it is a major, successful theatrical release and it is a sepremidquel. A sepremidquel is of course a followup that starts out after the first movie, then skips back to before it and goes into during it (with references to some of those events) and then continues a little bit after it too. You may be sick of sepremidquels, but I think it was a clever way to continue a movie where all the main characters were horribly killed.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eva Green, Frank Miller, Lena Headey, Noam Murro, Rodrigo Santoro, Sullivan Stapleton, Zack Snyder
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 53 Comments »
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013
(spoilers, of course)
Last week I decided I wanted to see MAN OF STEEL a second time. (Don’t worry, I saw FURIOUS 6 twice too, so this is not a sign of disrespect toward its reign as Best Summer Movie 2013.) I already liked MAN OF STEEL but the second viewing raised my opinion of it. Going in already knowing what it was, all my minor quibbles faded away and I was able to focus on what I loved about it. It wasn’t one of those movies where looking at it again brings out all kinds of flaws you never noticed before. I mean, a few odd things came to mind:
* I wonder if they ever had a meeting specifically about the decision to have chest hair poking out of the neck of the supersuit. That looked a little odd but I can see how they were trying to remind us how manly he is. Not just super.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Nolan, DC Comics, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 256 Comments »
Friday, June 14th, 2013
(contains THE SPOILERS)
I cannot tell a lie, I was really fuckin excited for the new Superman movie. I went to the midnight show and everything. I showed up way too early. I passed a guy dressed as Superman going into the john and might’ve given him a high five if I knew he’d washed his hands. I’m down for this. I wanted this to be great.
I’m not one of those people who shits on SUPERMAN RETURNS. I liked it, I just didn’t love it, mainly because I think it was shackled by nostalgia, held back by trying so hard to recapture the old Richard Donner movies. I know this is considered blasphemy in many circles (you’re gonna be hearing that a couple more times in this review) but I just don’t like those Superman pictures that much. They were great in the ’70s and early ’80s but to me they haven’t held up the way the Spielberg and Lucas joints of the era still do and will continue to. So as good of a job as Bryan Singer did of imitating that old version of Superman and goofball Lex Luthor and re-using the same font and music and all that, I feel like what I want to see now is start over and do a different take on Superman that’s made for the futuristic year of 2013. That’s what director Zack Snyder, writer David S. Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan have done with MAN OF STEEL and… well, I like not love this one also. But maybe like it a little more. Maybe a smidge closer to love on this one. I don’t feel high off it like I did off the Batman movies. But I am still thinking about it, and already want to see it again, see how it plays without all the baggage of expectations. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Adams, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Diane Lane, Harry Lennix, Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 262 Comments »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
warning: contains major spoilers and possible enigma killers
I know some of you would probly prefer that this movie just be forgotten, but considering all the discussion and confusion we had a few months ago about outlawvern.com-commenter-favorite Zack Snyder’s filmatistic intentions I was compelled to watch the extended cut and the “Maximum Movie Mode” commentary-ish thing on the new blu-ray. So this is a short post to share with you my findings and my current understanding of the answer to the question “what in fuck’s name was the ending supposed to mean?” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Zack Snyder
Posted in Blog Post (short for weblog) | 103 Comments »
