Poll: Is Zack Snyder the Right Director for the ‘Justice League’ Movie?

Earlier this week, Warner Bros. announced that, despite speculation involving several other potential names (including new Batman star Ben Affleck), the upcoming ‘Justice League’ team-up movie will be directed by Zack Snyder. Is this a good decision? Tell us your opinion.

In a lot of ways, this only makes sense. Snyder of course directed the Superman reboot ‘Man of Steel‘, which was pretty successful at the box office, and is currently working on the sequel to that, the tentatively-titled ‘Superman vs. Batman’. In fact, the latter is confirmed to feature cameos from so many other famous DC Comics superhero characters that it sounds like it’s practically a Justice League movie already. Letting Snyder helm the official ‘Justice League’ film would allow him to complete a trilogy, and franchises like this love trilogies.

On the other hand, a lot of viewers disliked Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’. It was one of the most divisive superhero movies in years.

I finally caught up with ‘Man of Steel’ on Blu-ray a few months ago. Perhaps because I’d lowered my expectations to practically nil, I didn’t find it as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, it has some serious scripting problems and features far too much pointless action spectacle just for the sake of having pointless action spectacle, but at least it’s not as deadly dull as Bryan Singer’s dud ‘Superman Returns‘ and doesn’t turn Clark Kent into a creepy emo stalker. So, at least on that level, it was an improvement. I didn’t love it, but I also didn’t hate it.

Still, Snyder isn’t the first director who’d be at the top of my wish list for ‘Justice League’. I think this project needs a filmmaker with a better storytelling sense, and the ability to wrangle multiple storylines from a large cast of characters. Honestly, Affleck might have been an interesting choice. (In the wake of his casting as Batman, many industry watchers speculated that he’d only accepted the role as a bargaining chip toward a future directing gig.)

If you aren’t happy about Zack Snyder directing ‘Justice League’, who do you think should have gotten the job?

Is Zack Snyder the Right Director for 'Justice League'?

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11 comments

  1. William Henley

    Haven’t seen Man of Steel yet – its setting shrink-wrapped on my shelf. I liked Legend of the Guardians, and thought Sucker Punch and 300 were decent. He wouldn’t be my first choice, but I don’t have any issues with him, so I chose the “I’ll reserve judgement” option

    • You should really watch Man of Steel before voting in this poll, I think that your answer is going to be quite different afterwards. While I liked the movie, there are things that Snyder did with it that really can not be ignored. And overall it was just not as Fun as it should have been.

  2. Opinionhaver

    Here’s the thing about Zack Snyder: storytelling is not his strong suit. As a director, he struggles to get the most out of the script he’s working from, even if he wrote it. He just does not get what works and what doesn’t. He filmed an extremely faithful adaptation of Watchmen, and I get the feeling he completely missed the point of it all. Then look at Sucker Punch; what a mess that was.

    My point is, for a Justice League movie to not come off as extremely corny and/or ridiculous (and I mean ridiculous in the literal sense, as in people will ridicule it), the story has to be handled very delicately. Delicate isn’t in Snyder’s vocabulary. As a DP, Zack Snyder would be awesome (and I mean awesome in the literal sense, as in the photography in his films is awe-inspiring) because no one can deny that his flair for visuals is among the greatest of all time, and what’s more important than that for comic books? But unfortunately, he’s a top director in Hollywood and will likely remain as such for the rest of his career. My advice to him is, if Affleck gives him any tips, he should probably listen.

  3. NJScorpio

    I dug ‘Man of Steel’. The wall of sound the entire time, decent story and solid action. It felt a bit long, and the ‘Pacific Rim’ level of destruction at the end shows Superman had little concern for public safety (and totally contradicts his character).

    I feel Snyder would create a movie not as dark in tone as Nolan (which would be a good change for the Batman character), but not as comical as Joss Whedon (though his injection of humor is what makes The Avengers rewatchable).

    I think that Snyder would need to take some cues from Whedon’s team dynamics (Avengers and GOG) to avoid it being super serious and bleak. The benefit of having an ensemble cast is that you can have dark and brooding characters, as well as someone in a lighter hearted role to balance the mood (Aquaman?).

  4. Chris B

    I liked Man of Steel but the shaky-cam and fast zooms got pretty annoying towards the end. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the action-overkill factor in the last act of MOS, I’m hoping Snyder will look to strike more of a balance this time around. When Affleck was announced to play Batman I kind of figured they were going to steer the movies into more light-hearted territory a la The Avengers. It’s gonna be super tricky though, comic fans are insanely hard to please, I think anyone who would rate MOS or TDKR 1/10 has decided the movie will suck before even seeing it and just wants to hate.

    As much as people bash Snyder (second only to maybe Michael Bay or Uwe Boll in the amount of hate he gets online) he is very talented visually. I still think the opening credits sequence in Watchmen is maybe the best one of all time.

    • If Affleck is any factor it only shows that Snyder is not going to lighten the mood with this film. There was almost NO humor in MoS and that was it’s greatest failing. If Snyder is doing the story that has been suggested Affleck is going to play an older more reckless batman who is darker than any other version we have seen on screen. I would never compare Snyder to Uwe Boll because his movies are far better than anything that man could produce. As for Bay, their careers are on a similar trajectory if he does not course correct. MoS could be his Transformer moment and if he does not take greater care with the property moving forward then Marvel will continue to dominate film for another 10 years or more.

      • Chris B

        I don’t know if they’d wanna try and make Batman any darker, I mean geez TDKR was prettin effin bleak….

        • It may be more colorful and better lit, but the humor that is needed in these films (see Stark conversations with anybody in the Marvel studios productions) may be non existent. Snyder takes this stuff seriously but apparently does not believe in the release of comic (pun very intended) elements. Which is sad, because if Snyder had dropped the shaky cam and added that much needed element than MoS could have been better.

  5. Dave M

    That’s a tough one. Man of Steel was a lot better than I thought it would be coming right off the suckfest that was Sucker Punch. He handled the relationships with more finesse that I would have thought (especially the father-son aspect). But seeing Man of Steel for the second time recently, the last forty minutes reeeaaally dragged. Those drawn out battle sequences that were pretty cool the first time had me looking at my watch the second time (okay, my phone-but you know what I mean).

    (Quick aside: it just occurred to me that maybe its because the action doesn’t build…? Like, these sequences are just a wall of visual confetti thrown at you, and the action is furious…but like it stays furious for a long time-and then we have the final furious end battle after what we thought was the final furious end battle. Just a thought…)

    But I think the bigger issue of the Justice League movie is: should they be making it? Marvel has had great success because they laid out a foundation for how they were going to roll these stories out and build to climactic moments at the end of each phase. And it worked spectacularly.

    I don’t know if DC can just look at what Marvel did, but think they can skip steps 3 through 9 and expect to have the same success. It kinda speaks to their whole overall mindset.

    • I absolutely agree. I don’t think the director is the main issue with this movie. The biggest problem is that WB is panicking. They want to copy Marvel’s success with Avengers, but they haven’t got the patience to do the very thing that made the movie so successful.

      It’s quite possible that the Justice League movie won’t be a colossal failure. It might even, with a little bit of luck, break even. But, I don’t think there’s any chance it’ll get anywhere near Avengers’ numbers. I think they should be happy if they do half (i.e. about $300M)

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