I am finally able to find a moment to finish the post I started about the earlier film catalogue of Zack Snyder. In the last post, I had intended to start with a quick note about Zack’s name, and this ended up becoming a post of its own. I want to avoid that problem this time, so I’ll skip any well-formulated and provocative introductions on this one, and just want to dig into the films in a kind of a list form.
Keep in mind, though, these are the movies that I DON’T want to devote a lot of attention to, although one of them, Sucker Punch, deserves a book of its own. Here, though, I’ll just point to a few things in some movies that kind of put Zack’s career into some perspective for me. Finally, I am only going to talk about Zack’s movies where he was a director. The Stone Quarry, his production company with his wife Deborah, had a significant hand in Wonder Woman, 300: Rise of an Empire, Army of Thieves, and other films. I’m going to limit the corpus that I discuss to where he was actually spending all of his time, doing things as much of his way that the studios would let him.
I’d also like to point out that although we are talking about some movies here, you can’s separate the man from that. So while I want to point out that Zack has done more movies than these major directorial projects, I also want to make known that he did commercials for ten years before getting his film break. He has also done some interesting shorts, most notably Snow Steam Iron, made in his home studio and shot with an iPhone.
That short I will actually include here. While I will include it at the beginning to give a sense of his directorial inclinations before taking a look at the other movies, I want to point out that he made it at home while grieving the death of Autumn Snyder while Warner Brothers sent Joss Whedon to turn his Justice League film into something that wasn’t his.
Dawn of the Dead: I’ve never been a fan of zombie movies, and this first movie of Zack’s theater film career came out before I became a Zack Snyder fan. I didn’t see it when it came out. I saw it later, before I really got invested in Zack’s work, and I wasn’t really impressed with it. I haven’t seen it again since. Knowing me, if I were to look at it today, I would probably find legions of valkyries on pegasi in the hidden tropes of the film that nobody else sees, so I figure I will just leave this one to be what I remember it as being, and I’ll only concentrate on it if that’s where life leads me at some point. What I will say about it as of today, though, is that it had a pretty powerful effect on the film industry as a whole, being a primary catalyst for the big zombie genre awakening that included movies such as World War Z and countless others. Dawn of the Dead was really a loud bang with which to start one’s career in theater releases. Finally, though, I want to point out that this movie is about an apocalypse. The zombie apocalypse is a full-fledged genre in cinema. I’ve come to see Zack’s movies in terms of their spiritual value. Now we are at an apocalyptic time in history. There are wars across the globe, including in Israel, the central battlefield of the apocalypse, called Armageddon in Christian terminology. In my own life I have been on quite a journey, and one that I have likened to the journey of an apocalyptic prophet at many points. I find it rather artful that Zack’s entrance to theater cinema productions began with a crazy scenario about the dead coming back to life in a kind of apocalypse of its own. This guy may just be something of a prophet of the apocalypse in his own way.
300: I already wrote a post about this movie, so I won’t say much more about it. There I linked certain elements of that movie to the bible, intending to show that the various myths of the world contain truth in them. I’ll only add here that we begin to see Zack’s interest in myth, something that he inherited from Joseph Campbell and others interested in that vein of thought, and his efforts to bring these ancient stories to public attention through interfacing with the new and popular medium of the comic book genre.
Watchmen: I’ll skip any comment about this film here, as I am planning on writing a blog post about this movie.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Houle: This was a very interesting choice for a film after 300. I learned from Joseph Campbell that the owl is the symbol of Athena, protectress of Athens. Owls symbolize wisdom. I’ve also written a post about a certain Athenian protectress. I’d love to know what all went into making this movie, but I see in this film a certain foretaste of ideas that would become meaningful to me on my own personal path.
Sucker Punch: This was the movie that made me a committed Zack Snyder fan. In my own journey I have experienced things that even I myself cannot rationally accept as possible. Throughout all of them, the dynamic of the relationship between the enlightenment that comes from these voyages on the astral plane, if I may describe them as such, and rank clinical madness has always been on my mind. This movie explores at phenomenal depth the great lessons we learn and the great personal growth that we obtain through experiences that may just be in our own mind, yet even if that’s all they are, they may have more meaning than a number of our more mundane experiences of life on earth. We are left with the tragedy that those around the protagonist may never be aware of her journey, and what the protagonist went through will likely never been seen, much less believed, by those around her. Finally, though, it struck me that Zack’s most avante garde production to date was the story about the loss (at least to us…at least for now…) of a young woman on a personal quest. Some years later, Zack would lose Autumn Snyder (at least to us…at least for now…). It struck me that in making a movie about the adventures of Babydoll, there is a hint of prophecy about a future tragedy in his own life. This tragedy would rally the fans like no other, however, and great things would eventually come out of that pain.
The Justice League Trilogy: I won’t mention these movies here, as I am planning on writing about them elsewhere.
Army of the Dead: There were many striking features of this movie. Notable was Tig Notaro’s participation in the film solely through technological merging of her scenes with the rest of the film. That’s just a detail, though. I was most impressed by the premise here, which is essentially aa story of a bunch of criminals trying to accomplish a mission in a fallen world of the zombie apocalypse. The interaction between Dave Bautista and Ella Purnell was the most powerful aspect of the movie for me, and I see the film as an incredible daddy/daughter film against the backdrop of Judeo-Christian storytelling, with sinners saved by grace trying to wrest forbidden treasures locked away in a fallen world, again depicted by ravenous zombies behind every door.
Rebel Moon: I’ll also skip comment about these movies, as I hope to write about them.
So these are some observations about Zack’s film career. It seems the guy is something of a prophet (not in a literal way – please don’t ask him to read your tea leaves), seeking to marry his unique cinematic sense and talent for camera work and brilliant action shots with stories that carry deeper, lasting meaning. He has made movies about literal apocalypses in the zombie genre, about the madness and enlightenment of the journey of the mind, about the death, burial, and resurrection of Superman, and many other timeless themes.