FANBOYS, REDDIT TROLLS, GRETA GERWIG—THEY ALL SEEM TO HAVE AN OPINION OF ZACK SNYDER AND HIS WORK, WHICH MOST PEOPLE HAVE DECIDED ARE THE SAME THING. “LOVE HIM OR HATE HIM,” SNYDER SAYS OF HIS OUT-SIZED REPUTATION. “A LOT OF INTELLECTUALS—I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WOULD CALL IT, THE CINEPHILE-ELITE-GENRE-PRESS PEOPLE—ARE KIND OF ANTI-ME FOR WHATEVER REASON.” HE PROCEEDS TO QUOTE AN ARTICLE THAT SAID: “ZACK SNYDER PROBABLY MASTURBATES EVERY TIME HE SAYS CUT.”
Here the person responsible for more than $4 billion in box-office receipts screws his face up. “I was just like, Really? You think that’s a cool thing to say? Because you have this perception of me as some sort of supermacho—I don’t think I’m a macho dude. I’m interested in masculine tropes. But as tropes.”
Man, those tropes will trip you up. Perhaps it was the hypermasculine tone of his breakout film, 300, a sword-and-sandal epic from 2007 that introduced audiences to both Snyder’s graphic, slo-mo violence and Gerard Butler’s cobblestone abs. But the worst you can say about that movie (which spawned a popular Spartan workout) is that it was a perfectly mindless thrill—like Gladiator for people who can’t read good. Which is precisely the kind of snarky commentary Snyder would hate.
Nothing crystallized his divisive public image more than the relentless socialmedia campaign run by fans demanding: “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut.” For about a decade, Snyder had been the architect of the DC cinematic universe. He directed two stand-alone Superman films, handpicked Gal Gadot to play Wonder Woman, and was generally charged with maintaining a singular vision for this beloved IP. But his 2017 cut of Justice League left Warner Bros. executives wanting, and after weathering a devastating personal tragedy, Snyder left the project entirely.
went through extensive reshoots by another filmmaker. And when that Frankensteined film disappointed critics and accountants, Snyder’s took on mythic proportions. Fanboys rented
