Zack Snyder is the ultimate fanboy director, and Rebel Moon is his ultimate fanboy test
Snyder is finally playing in his own sandbox after a career of making super badass movies about existing characters
Film Features Zack Snyder
When Zack Snyder first announced his Netflix sci-fi epic Rebel Moon, he admitted that the concept was originally made for a “mature” Star Wars movie that he pitched to Lucasfilm—which Lucasfilm was not interested in. So he sanded off the serial numbers, replaced the lightsabers with different kinds of laser swords, and swapped out the Empire for The Imperium. Rebel Moon is no longer a Star Wars, then, but it is the story of a guy who really wanted to make a Star Wars, couldn’t, and is now creating his own new thing, making it the ultimate extension of Snyder’s fan-forward filmography.
Snyder, after all, burst onto the scene with the surprisingly good Dawn Of The Dead remake, a movie that jacked up the action of George Romero’s original without really bothering to deepen (or even engage with) its social commentary. But it was cool! Same with 300 and same with Watchmen, two movies that undeniably have some striking visuals, even if they are both pretty shallow (it’s probably good that 300 is shallow, because otherwise it would come across as worryingly pro-fascism).
The movies are crowdpleasers, made by a guy who wants to please crowds and whose whole angle on these projects is doing what he did on Dawn Of The Dead and jacking up the action—or the violence, or the stakes, or whatever—within the boundaries of an established property. 2011’s Sucker Punch breaks the trend, but it was also a critical and commercial flop, so it’s telling that Snyder went back to his old formula and let it define the next decade of his life.
Warner Bros. hired him to make a Superman movie, so he made the kind of Superman movie he wanted to see—one where he’s a cape-wearing, heat vision-blasting messiah figure. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe was making movies about superheroes who were chatty and relatable, Snyder chose to make a superhero movie about a god amongst humans and how existentially shocking that must be (though it’s up for debate how successful that was). His Batman, similarly, is all brutality and rage, a rejection of Christopher Nolan’s elevated take on the character in favor something like what Frank Miller (who Snyder is an obvious fan of) wrote in The Dark Knight Returns.
Those versions of the characters carried through to his Justice League, adding Snydery versions of other DC superheroes and more of the “let’s take this thing and make it really cool” attitude he enjoys so much. Then, after leaving the DC universe and starting his current Netflix deal, Snyder made Army Of The Dead—technically an original concept, though it’s also a spiritual sequel to his Dawn Of The Dead and retains the “make it cool above all else” thing.
And that brings us to Rebel Moon, which, again, was born from the fact that he wanted to do his Snyder thing to Star Wars—make it “cool,” though “mature” is the word he used—but the Star Wars people said no. So now he’s taking the thought he put into his version of Star Wars, not to mention all of his experience working on franchises that belonged to other people, and making his own thing out of it.
Snyder has proven that he knows what he likes to see in a genre movie, and he apparently knows what other people want to see as well (Superman snapping necks, Batman shooting people, etc.), but now it’s all on him to put the pieces together for an original work without the crutch of an established property.
But Snyder’s not really making that “original work” thing easy on himself, because despite not being a Star Wars, Rebel Moon just looks so damn much like a Star Wars. This is probably true for any space opera made after 1977, but it’s going to be hard not to compare Rebel Moon to Star Wars—to the point where it was surprising how much one of its trailers insisted that it was more Dune than anything, not that that’s going to be a more favorable comparison point. Snyder has built a large and loyal fanbase on giving people what they want, but that’s harder to do with a (technically) brand new universe.
How do you cater to fans of something that doesn’t have fans yet? The answer might be to do something that you’d never see in a Star Wars, but then that would draw more Star Wars comparisons. That’s why this is the ultimate test of Snyder’s sensibilities. If he made a bad Superman or Batman movie (if he were to do such a thing), then it’s just his take that’s bad, not Superman or Batman as a whole. But if Rebel Moon is bad, then it’s an indictment of Snyder’s whole thing. It’s a test to see if he really knows what fans like and can structure a whole two-part movie saga around that, or if his ideas begin and end with “what if this existing character/story/concept was bad ass?”
Then again, given Snyder and his fans, people might just decide they like it no matter what, rendering all thoughtful discussion about his oeuvre irrelevant.
103 Comments
This reads like you paid your little brother to do your homework.
so funny that he’s immediately like ‘well he did already do this ages ago with sucker punch, but that overrides my thesis so let’s forget about it’
Plus “well he did already do this recently with Army of the Dead, but that overrides my thesis, so let’s pretend it was some kind of sequel to his Dawn of the Dead remake”.And I guess we’re also ignoring that the “original” Rebel Moon is supposed to be Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven as a Star Wars film, only now with the Star Wars parts filed off and replaced with generic scifi trappings (as filtered through Snyder’s grimdark aesthetic).
“And Army of the Dead is an original concept but it doesn’t count since he did a zombie movie before.”
ChatGPT Jr?
What is really weird is that ChatGPT Jr is actual the nephew of ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the doctor. You’re thinking of ChatGPT’s Monster.
If it’s not created in the ChatGPT region of France it’s just “sparkling AI.”
That’s how all generative-ai content reads to me: like someone trying to meet the word count for a report on a book they never read. I don’t like Barsanti’s work but at least there’s some sort of perspective at play when he’s doing the writing.
“Snyder chose to make a superhero movie about a god amongst humans and how existentially shocking that must be that was just so, so bad”Then he made another one, and another one!
Whatever the hell keeps him away from superheroes.
If in your second appearance of superman, you end up killing him…and that’s only the 3rd most interesting thing in the film, step away, forever.
Good point: He can make Star Wars ripoffs that I won’t watch until the heat death of the universe, that’s fine.
and he killed him, like, 3 times before it finally took (until that didn’t either).
I can imagine how difficult it is to write for Superman.
….but that’s not the issue here, Snyder just used the Crayola red colors and said “tHiS sUPAmAn!”
Actually I think it was mostly Crayola Extremely Desaturated Grey.
Yeah, it’s a real talent to find coloration that takes away all the vibrancy and life associated with a character.
A Superman that allows killing on the first day on the job…WTF?
Homer Simpson “it’s my first day on the job”.gif
The nerd outrage over creating a “lonely god” / “grimdark” version of Superman never fails to make me chuckle.
When Zack Snyder first announced his Netflix sci-fi epic Rebel Moon, he admitted that the concept was originally made for a “mature” that he pitched to Lucasfilm—which Lucasfilm was not interested in. I fucken called it! It was Snyder getting turned down to do a Star War by the House of Mouse, and him flouncing out going “Fine! I’ll make my own Star Wars! With blackjack! And hookers!”
The movies of Snyder are numerous in amount. One thing he made was Rebel Moon, or as morons call it, “Mature Star Wars”. Another famous moron was Neville Chamberlain. In conclusion, Snyder is a director of contrast. Thank you.
He has used corn in many of his films, or as the Native Americans call it – ‘Maze.’
This reads like Peter Nguyen.
The dictionary defines ‘film’ as “become or appear to become covered with a thin layer of something.” Zack Snyder’s movies all have film…
You jerks are just going to prejudge everything he puts out, aren’t you. You’re just like Sam Barsanti.
A bunch of conceited blowhards that hate him with such a passion I can hear the feel the venom in your words.
Not sure why “Mature Star Wars” is moronic.Star Wars has, traditionally, avoided mature themes such as sexuality, harsh language, ultra violence, etc.It’s an “all ages” franchise.
The tone of this piece being all over points to AI infused garbage.
Is it possible Barsanti has been an AI all along? An AI powered by whiskey, that is.
Chat BarsanTP
“TP” is the right term.
S.A.M. BarsantAI
“We trained our AI on Sam Barsanti.”“Why?”
“We decided training it on an actual writer would be unethical.”
No way an AI infused by whisky would churn out the beta cuck pap that Barsanti always dishes out.
Barsanti was the friends we made along the way.
Grok really illustrated to me the way a falsely conversational tone and an emphasis on “you could say” hedging of opinions belies the shortcomings of generative content like this.
I’ve also noticed this in different AI outputs, but to be perfectly realistic, plenty of so called “real people” also sound just like this when they’re talking or writing. Sam usually sounds like Grok’s kid brother anyway, but there’s something about this article that is especially unreadable to me.
There a lot of things that annoy me about AI, but that’s one of the little-talked about ones: it’s a shitty voice, because it’s made by the sorts of people who…well, who code AIs and who thinks this sort of crap is good writing – a bullet list without the bullets.
Well, of course. It’s Elon’s AI, and Elon is the lord god-emperor of idiot guys rapidly googling shit in order to impress other idiot guys and passing it off as their own knowledge.
Probably also explains it being comma infused garbage.
This piece is weirdly bitter and petulant for an article with no real voice or ideas.
I’ve never understood the dire loathing so many people heap upon Snyder, probably as much as I don’t understand those who clamored for years to get a revision of a lousy film which turned out to be a just-okay-on-its-own-merits film (though considerable compared to that awful original). Michael Bay has always been beat up for his kind of films, but Snyder gets a really deep hatred stirred up in people. And as much fun as two-thirds of his filmography is, regardless of artistic style choices, that’s always struck me as kind of weird.
I can’t speak for others, but to me Bay comes off as someone who makes blockbuster films where things blow up and people tune out for a few hours and that’s it. He doesn’t aspire to any higher art, none of his fans expect anything more than machines punching each other (and maybe some regressive humor) and everyone accepts that arrangement. And Bay still gets a lot of shit for that. Snyder on the other hand (and his fans) comes off as someone who thinks they are making important artistic works that also look cool AF. And they are not. I think that disconnect is what drives people nuts, like a coworker insisting that the convoluted spreadsheet they maintain that provides no value and is impossible to follow and takes 2.5 weeks to put together every month is somehow integral to the functioning of the company.I almost feel guilty for feeling this way about Snyder, who by all counts is a great person to work with and treats his crew well. Especially in Hollywood, that seems hard to come by. I feel for his personal tragedy and do think he genuinely likes what he does and is passionate about the films he makes. But at the end of the day, I don’t think his films are very good, either because they are problematic on levels (300, Sucker Punch), or fundamentally misunderstand the source material (DCEU, Watchmen).
Generally agreed. Another angle, I think, is that his fans are so rabid that non-fans feel obligated to take a stronger stand against his fundamentally authoritarian worldview. While Bay stands for nothing except typical distracting capitalist excess, Snyder seems like he’d be perfectly okay with having a dictator in charge of everything, without really thinking through the implications.
There is very much a strong mall ninja-fascist, Dark Enlightenment vibe running through his work.
This is a good point. A lot of creatives have bleak or uncomfortable outlooks, but Snyder does have a weird view on power dynamics that come off as especially cringey and problematic.
I get what you’re saying, but personally I’ve never viewed his films as seeming Important. Bombastic, sure. But hell, when you’re making films about superheroes and gladiators, bombast seems like a viable option.(And maybe it’s my own ignorance that I don’t connect 300 with some fascist ideal. I just saw the surface-level take on underdogs fighting an overwhelming, evil empire.)I have heard this statement before about Snyder being a good guy to work with/for, and that does seem to be a rarity in the business. Or at least, we hear more about filmmakers’ bad behavior than good.
300 was problematic because of how it treated the invading Persian army. Many of the soldiers of the Middle Eastern nation were literally not human and Xerces considered himself a god who was entitled to enslave the world. Standing up against them were an outnumbered bunch of white guys who had all trained since childhood to be elite warriors and were all literally willing to die for democracy. The fact that this was in the thick of the war in Iraq and the graphic novel was written by a guy who has some hard right leaning views (it seems like he has softened those views a bit recently, but I could be wrong) made the whole thing seem pretty racist/jingoistic.And FWIW, I agree – I do not think his films are Important. But I think a lot of his fanbase believes they are and he is not inclined to disagree.
Agree in general, but remember that the “good guys” were Spartans. They didn’t have democracy (even in the limited sense that Athenians could be said to have had democracy) but had a military government more similar to fascism. So another layer of ickyness to the movie.
Good point.
As good a place as any to point folks to this:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/22/sparta-popular-culture-united-states-military-bad-history/
Also, the REAL Spartans? They raped children. Fuck them.
(And maybe it’s my own ignorance that I don’t connect 300 with some fascist ideal. I just saw the surface-level take on underdogs fighting an overwhelming, evil empire.)The issue isn’t that 300 is depicting fascism; it’s that 300 depicts an idea that supports fascism: specifically that strong, fair-skinned übermenschen will save us from the dirty invading foreigners. And also that being tough and macho and manly are the most prized virtues.It’s even less palatable once you learn that Spartan society was about 90% slaves, and that every year the Spartan ruling class (the spartiates) ritually declared war on their slaves and spent a couple of weeks hunting and killing them for sport.
let’s not forget Spartans like them some young boys to diddle too…
Totally agree on the Bay-Snyder contrast. I will add that what is so frustrating about Snyder’s films is he gets so much right that it gets overshadowed by how much he gets completely wrong. The teaser to Man of Steel felt like a Terrence Malik Superman. Ben Affleck’s Batman warehouse fight was one of the all-time great Batman on film moments. But at the same time he decided to deconstruct both characters to the point they were the antithesis of themselves (Batman murders, Superman is nearly apathetic towards humanity, his parents are dicks, Krypton is a fascist state). Even Watchmen looked spot on, but missed the story’s most basic moral ambiguities. Even in the mostly entertaining Army of the Dead, the film glosses over the fate of the character they entered the hotel to save in the first place (see also Dr Emil Hamilton in MoS). He is such a talented visualist but the human element gets lost amongst the slow-mo shots.
similar thing with bay, though. he crafts incredible shots and has so much technical skill but has maybe the worst sense of humor an adult man is capable of having.
Your problem is right here:“ Snyder comes off as someone who thinks they are making important artistic works that also look cool AF. And they are not. I think that disconnect is what drives people nuts, like a coworker insisting that the convoluted spreadsheet they maintain that provides no value and is impossible to follow and takes 2.5 weeks to put together every month is somehow integral to the functioning of the company.”If you stopped treating your opinion of Snyder as fact, you would have even more respect and sympathy for him. But you insist that his ideas are objectively not important or artistic, have no artistic value, and are impossible to follow. None of this is true. None of this is necessarily false either. Art is subjective. And you should realize that.“I don’t think his films are very good, either because they are problematic on levels (300, Sucker Punch), or fundamentally misunderstand the source material (DCEU, Watchmen).”Your perceived problems are his choices. Any actual problems are usually the result of the studio interfering. Army of the Dead was definitely one of his weaker projects but it was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be. And to say he misunderstood Watchmen is to misunderstand the film itself. It was not trying to emulate the exact same themes as the graphic novel. It was not a straight 1 to 1 like 300. The film was exploring CBM culture whereas the graphic novel was exploring comic book culture. Also, thirty years had passed so certain elements from the novel would not be as relevant as they were back then.
Very well said. I don’t really like the guy’s movies and he seems like the ultimate dude bro, but maybe a harmless one? (Notwithstanding the problematic elements in his films, which appeal to a very shitty class of people.).
Bay is a dude cranking out simple cheeseburgers and fries and going “Hey, this is just a simple cheeseburger and fries, and that’s ok.”Snyder is a guy cranking out shittier cheeseburgers and fries and going “EXCUSE ME, MY WORK MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED AS BEING AT THE SAME LEVEL OF GENIUS AS THE FRENCH LAUNDRY AND NOMA.”
it’s not the band i hate, it’s their fans
I actually really liked Watchmen and there are things I’m intrigued by in Sucker Punch. I suspect the biggest issue with Rebel Moon is it was literally pitched as a Star Wars movie which means it likely is going to seem like off-brand Star Wars and in doing so, you’re going to seem like a style over substance hack.
It’s hard to answer to a lot of what you’re projecting, but speaking for myself, I don’t find his movies fun or cool but rather self-important and cringe. I’m not very vehement in my dislike, but it can be jarring to see how charged up his fanbase can get for something that, to me, is not just an empty shell but an unattractive, tacky shell.
It’s “Grimdark”, apparently. Although I can’t be 100% sure, I think it’s a stylistic choice wherein the creator chooses to be serious and not make ironic or meta references for the sake of humor.I personally love several of his movies, and am utterly unimpressed with others. But the white hot disdain is an absolute head scratcher.
Appreciate everyone’s feedback, which was 95% reasonable, kind of a rarity around here…
more like Rabble Moon!
Rabble Rabble
Help! I’ve been hamburgled!
Another Star Wars rerun…how “original”….Meanwhile, The Forever War with its story being a good fit to a two-hour running time and its totally cool twist ending still has no adaptation after decades of being on every SF fan’s shelf. Seriously, WTF?
Star Wars itself is a pastiche of Western and Samurai tropes.
I will hate-watch the hell out of this! Can’t wait.
I expect one night in a few weeks, between Christmas and New Years. The kids and wife will be tired and just want to head to bed and it will just be me and dog, next to the fire, chasing a handful of edible with a glass of very spiked eggnog and watching this crap.
God, that trailer looks too ugly and stupid, even for a Snyder film. His transition to Uwe Bay is complete.Somebody please give Sofia Boutella some decent work.
Let’s hope 2024 brings about the Snyder vs. Lowtax fight we’ve been waiting for ever since Bol vs. Lowtax.
I have some bad news for you about the chances of Lowtax being involved in anything.
Holy shit I just googled, did not realize that happened at all.
Don’t worry.Seanbaby’s still around. And he can throw a punch.
And ~20 years after the Halloween stories started, Dave Wong is still writing JDatE books!
Seanbaby despite the name is a literal giant.
Curious how Uwe didn’t want to get in the ring with him…
I’m going to watch the movie and I’m going to hate the movie.
Well, she’s in the new Matthew Vaughn movie, which also looks terrible, so there’s that…..
It looks great.
“The answer might be to do something that you’d never see in a Star Wars, but then that would draw more Star Wars comparisons.”da fuq?
I’m sure if you put it in context, maybe add the sentence before that, it’ll make sense: “How do you cater to fans of something that doesn’t have fans yet? The answer might be to do something that you’d never see in a Star Wars, but then that would draw more Star Wars comparisons.”Well nope, looks like I’m wrong.
wow yeah it like…changes to be about star wars instead of fans mid-thought.
It’s like poetry. It rhymes or something.
Snyder is one of the only mainstream directors with a distinct visual style, and whatever else his films are, they at least meet the minimum requirement to be considered competent. He’s a decent-to-good filmmaker, and you hater edgelords can choke on a choad.
Uh, the pot said what now? His fans are the giant edgelords, you fascist goon!
“Zack Synder might make a bad film, or he might make a good one that no one likes.”
He should have just remade “Battle Beyond the Stars”. That is basically what this movie is about anyway.
Lazu-leeeeeeeee!
ah, 300, a movie that is almost but definitely not pro-fascism
It was a battle of imperialists versus imperialists. Much like Alien vs Predator: whoever wins, we lose.
Dumb. lazy take.
That’s no Rebel Moon.
… it’s just ill-tempered?
the concept was originally made for a “mature” that he pitched to Lucasfilm—which Lucasfilm was not interested in.Having seen the scripts they were interested in, this is really all you need to know about the movie.
I’m not a Snyder fan at all, but I don’t get how a single movie, on Netflix, could be an “indictment of Snyder’s whole thing.” Bad movies are made all of the time, even by good directors. Good movies go unwatched all the time, and I imagine being released straight to Netflix doesn’t help.I can’t believe I’m defending Snyder here, and I’m not entirely sure what his “whole thing” is anyway, other than his fans are idiots. He got a whole other movie budget to finish a superhero movie that he had leave for tragic reasons and his fans use that as some sort of proof of something. If Rebel Moon is a good movie that no one watches, does it further prove the idiocy of fans? Is that the takeaway from this article?
Making your own professional fan fic because they wouldn’t let you play with the toys you wanted to is super lame.Then again, it’s exactly what George Lucas did and that seemed to work out okay.And the author of “50 Shades of Gray” similarly laughed all the way to the bank.So basically, it’s not a bad idea….? Even though it totally sounds like one.
I expect this to be about as well-received as the movie Max Landis was referring to when he breathlessly tweeted out how he was working on “His Star Wars!” (which turned out to be that fucking orc movie or whatever.).
I hope that in whatever reality she now inhabits, Jessica Walter can be happy that she has forever changed the way we say “Star Wars”.(I know she didn’t write the line, but it’s definitely her delivery that made it immortal.)
Here’s how I feel about Synder: I don’t want to see his Justice League/Darkseid movie where Superman takes over the planet, but I do want to read a detailed synopsis of it. There, glad I worked it out.
“otherwise it would come across as worryingly pro-fascism”
Isn’t this the defining characteristic of his entire oeuvre? I assume the Imperium will be the good guys?
“…he apparently knows what other people want to see as well (Superman snapping necks, Batman shooting people, etc.)“Fans of these characters do NOT want to see their entire history misunderstood and bastardized by a guy who thinks violence for violence is cool. To even insinuate so is to misunderstand both the characters and their fans. This statement is equivalent to the social media influencer thinking all attention is good attention; in other words, Zach Snyder is the Logan Paul of directors.
The trailer looks generic, pseudo-cool, garbage. It really feels like some fan fiction of Star Wars made by a 12 years old guy who thinks he is smarter than the others. Of course it can’t be worse than the actual Star Wars sequels and D+ TV series (except Andor, this show is fantastic).