At first glance, Zack Snyder does not strike you as a geeky, comic book-loving kind of guy. Tanned, tattooed and undeniably handsome, it’s easy to imagine him on screen alongside his cast members.
Perhaps those good looks and the easy charm he exude were what first separated Snyder from the cliché of the awkward comic-book nerd.
But as his filmmaking career has soared, his subversive take on the genre has attracted the adoration of – and animosity from – fanboys and critics alike, in almost equal measure. Through films like 300, Watchmen and Sucker Punch, Snyder has presented his own challenging deconstruction of superheroes and comics. The response may have been mixed, but neither his unique vision nor his desire to buck conformity have ever wavered.
Which is why taking on Superman – that most traditional symbol of American heroism – seemed like an unusual and potentially risky move for Snyder. More jaded and cynical than when Superman was conceived, nowadays we like our heroes with deep, relatable flaws and a modicum of vulnerability. Batman and Iron Man make sense to modern audiences precisely because they don’t have super-powers. So can we be seduced into liking a Jesus-like Boy Scout alien, with seemingly unlimited powers and an earnest, unfailingly chivalrous personality to match? That was the challenge facing Snyder.
“We did want to get at his humanity,” the director explains. “It’s Man Of Steel, not Superman, so we’re literally putting the man first. But are we really of the mindset that doing the right thing is bad? Are we really that snarky, that being good just isn’t cool anymore? I feel, like, that’s not true – or I certainly hope it’s not.
“I feel like what we did was show that he was just a first-responder kind of person,” he adds, “that part of him, the desire to help people, was innate. But he’s still vulnerable to what we’re all vulnerable to – the ‘Am I loved?’, the ‘What is the ‘why’ of me’? questions.”
Enter Henry Cavill, the 30-year-old British actor who Snyder immediately felt embodied Superman’s heroic qualities.
“Henry comes from a military background – his family and all of his brothers are in the military – and he has this earnest quality that is hard to describe. So Superman’s heroism isn’t a stretch for him. It’s in his DNA.”
By way of contrast, Man of Steel producer Christopher Nolan has said that Snyder was chosen to direct because he has a history of dismantling the conventions of comic book narratives in films like Watchmen.
“It’s ironic,” Nolan observed, “but it’s a very productive irony. You’re dealing with a filmmaker who has deconstructed this mythology and now has to reconstruct it. That’s a fascinating challenge for him.”
Snyder testifies that, in practice, being forced to confront the superhero ideal head-on reignited his sense of youthful idealism.
“I kind of grappled with my own idea of this iconic hero,” he says. “Because when I went to college, I went through that phase of going, ‘I need to read superheroes are stupid, I have to take them apart and kill them – because I love them so much!’ It’s this horrible love-hate relationship because you’re an adult but you still like superheroes – so, you know, you move on to Watchmen, because that’s the ‘grown-up’ version! But this story made me love Superman again. And that’s kind of the idea – to make you fall for him again. He is special, and it’s okay to know why.”
As for Snyder, well, it’s okay to want your audience to understand your film at least this once! The director is well aware that his eye for satire, irony and subversion has often been misconstrued. So apart from the obvious measure of box-office takings, what does success mean for him? Critical admiration? Geek adoration? Or just having his films understood?
“It’s been a strange rollercoaster for me,” he reflects, “and so I don’t know how to quantify what success means really within the culture. Every one of my films has hit the culture in a completely different way, but I’ve meant them all in the same way, so it’s interesting to see what strikes a chord and what doesn’t. For instance with 300, given the style I made it in, I thought it was this ironic, fun, completely bizarre movie – very boutiquey and small. But some people take it so seriously. Apart from people putting political intentions on it, I get a lot of men reading very personally into that ‘man- action’ aspect and saying, ‘That movie really speaks to me about masculinity’. Which is hugely worrying (laughs)! Then I get people commenting on Watchmen saying, ‘That really didn’t speak to me at all as a superhero movie’ – when Watchmen really isn’t a superhero movie at all.
“That movie really had no business being made,” he adds. “It’s a hard-R, total deconstruction of the superhero genre, where the fun isn’t in seeing the superheroes kick the enemies’ ass. It’s in putting these superheroes in context and seeing them have totally self-destructive relationships and rape each other and struggle to cope with society or with themselves.”
Therein lies the problem with basing your career on a genre dominated by nit-picking comic- geek fanboys: they’re notoriously hard to please.
“Yeah, fanboys are snarky and horrible – and I’m the same way!” Snyder smiles.
“I could literally have made a perfectly straight adaptation of Watchmen, shot by shot from the graphic novel, and they’d still be like ‘Yeah, well, it’s not exactly what I wanted’. I mean, really? I will punch your face in! They are un- pleasable. But it’s funny – it’s freeing, in a way. Once you’re okay with not pleasing everyone, you just make movies for yourself, which is what you have to do.”
One film that raised the ire of critics and fanboys alike was Sucker Punch. A fantasy movie, it has a message, Snyder says, about exploitation, empowerment, feminism and sexuality, that also works as a critique of the fetishistic mentality of fanboy culture. For the most part, however, the subversion was lost on his audience: many saw it as just another fantasy flick featuring an extraordinary number of shots of young women in tiny, skin-tight costumes.
“That was incredibly frustrating,” he sighs. “I read one review on Slash Film explaining it, and I thought: ‘that was the film I made’. But, literally, one guy got it. Everyone else took it seriously – and to take that seriously as a piece of motion picture, instead of the genre critique that it is, is just bizarre to me. To have people believe it’s this sexualising, exploitative film, and to have that be the universal reading of it, is crazy. Maybe the action is too good– it’s too lovingly made, so people didn’t read past it. Even to this day I could talk to people about Sucker Punch and explain every scene, every meaning – and they still won’t believe me.”
It didn’t help either that the Sucker Punch which hit our screens was a hugely edited affair, as the studios had called for several long sequences – including the ending – to be cut and re-edited.
“It’s hard. If a movie’s going to fail, you’d prefer it to fail as your vision, on its own merits, not the second cut. Because at least then you know how people are reacting to your work. When it’s an edited version, you don’t know.”
Given that Man of Steel has already scored a record- breaking $125 million opening weekend in the States, it seems that failure isn’t something Snyder needs to be worried about on this occasion. Neither should he worry about his film seeming relevant. One of the most pertinent plot-points comes when Lois Lane writes an exposé about Superman’s alien origins. Her editor refuses to print it, and a leaked version of the article causes Lois to be hauled away by the American special forces.
It’s a cover-up that – in light of recent controversies surrounding whistleblowers in the US – feels hilariously apt. Really, would anyone be surprised if it emerged that some White House aide had jotted a memo saying ‘Monday: IRS scandal. Tuesday: Associated Press phone hacking. Wednesday: Prism. Thursday: Alien from Krypton’?
Snyder laughs uproariously.
“I know, right!,” he nods. “That scene where they handcuff her and bring her to the desert – it could have happened. Who knows? This might be my most realistic film yet.”
Man of Steel is in cinemas now.