Snyder without Superheroes
Snyder without Superheroes
Does the director have a following if he's not doing anything with DC?
Last Friday, Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Part II - The Scargiver debuted on Netflix. This was with considerably less fanfare than Part I - A Child of Fire, which debuted last December, but failed to generate much heat in the holiday movie season. Snyder claimed that the film had more viewers than Barbie, although if true, that means the viewership was less meaningful as Barbie took up space in the cultural conversation, spurred Mattel to turn more of its toys into movies, and got nominated for a bunch of Oscars. Four months after Rebel Moon: Part I, we now have the sequel, and the most attention it seems to have is a collection of interviews with Snyder where he name drops movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Cruise as people who could have starred in Batman v Superman and Watchmen, respectively, if “I had a lunch with a movie star,” qualifies as a possibility that they would be in those movies.
But given the fierce devotion Snyder received from DC fans, they would follow him to Rebel Moon, right? These are the people who demanded Warner Bros. to “Release the Snyder Cut!” of Justice League, and then once the studio capitulated and put the four-hour version on HBO Max under the heading, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” those fans wanted even more! They took to demanding “Restore the Snyderverse!” meaning that the studio should hand control of the DC universe back to Snyder despite his previous DC movies—Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—failing to make the kind of splash at the box office the studio expected from superhero fare.
And yet, in his post-DC life of filmmaking, Snyder’s movies don’t seem to make much of a sound. His last three movies have all been with Netflix with the Rebel Moon duology preceded by 2021’s Army of the Dead. These are not obtuse little movies meant for a niche audience. Army of the Dead is about a heist in the middle of a zombie-ravaged Las Vegas. Rebel Moon started life as a Star Wars-meets-Seven Samurai pitch and is still largely “Seven Samurai but sci-fi.” Visually and tonally, Snyder seems largely the same director, and certainly not all that different from the guy who rose to fame with his remake of Dawn of the Dead followed by faithful adaptations of 300 and Watchmen.
So why isn’t there more conversation about Rebel Moon? To be fair, it could just be a symptom of Netflix where people watch the movies, but the low bar to entry doesn’t carry much enthusiasm unless it’s a real sensation like Squid Game or Stranger Things. Saying, “Hey, I popped on Rebel Moon this weekend while I did laundry,” doesn’t capture the imagination like, “My pals and I are doing a Barbenheimer double-feature.” Still, this is Zack Snyder we’re talking about, so shouldn’t the same kind of fervent loyalty follow him if he’s still the same kind of director and storyteller?
Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but the lack of cultural ripples from Army of the Dead or Rebel Moon signals to me that Snyder only cultivated such devotion when he was in the superhero sphere. Furthermore, because his darker, deconstructionist take on superheroes was completely different than what Marvel was doing with its movie, it allowed fans to do the “my team vs. your team” thing where you “supported” DC because Marvel movies weren’t your cup of tea even though everyone is allowed to like different kinds of superhero movies.
However, take the superheroes out of the equation, and remove adaptation from the picture entirely, and you have Snyder on his lonesome with arguably no audience to follow. There are directors who can inspire a fervent following regardless of whether they’re doing a popular property or not. The one that easily comes to mind is Christopher Nolan, who had no trouble taking his success from the Batman movies over to original features like Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. But Netflix invested in Snyder not because they owned a property they thought he would be right to direct, but because they thought his name alone could get audiences excited. When you watch the trailer for Rebel Moon: Part II, it doesn’t list the actors; it simply says “From Director Zack Snyder.”
And yet I’m not sure that’s good enough for any kind of following, or at least the kind of following that Netflix would want for what it costs to make Rebel Moon movies. Of course, perhaps these movies are absolutely massive on streaming, and when Netflix releases its next biannual engagement report, we’ll see that Rebel Moon received so many viewing hours that it easily merits the Rebel Moon: Part III that Part II clearly craves with its massive, dangling plot threads. But even if you ignore the critical drubbing (and it’s not like Snyder’s DC movies were widely beloved among critics), there simply doesn’t seem to be much interest in a big, two-part feature from Snyder.
I think this ultimately speaks to Snyder’s weakness as a storyteller outside of IP that people already know. Regardless of how you feel about Man of Steel, if you like superheroes, you probably have an opinion about Superman, so Snyder’s interpretation warrants engagement. But Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon, while commendably non-IP material, haven’t pulled in people’s attention like other original features of the past decade such as John Wick or Nope or Knives Out.
Snyder’s production company, Stone Quarry, inked a first-look deal with Netflix in July 2021, but Netflix is about to look different. Scott Stuber, the studio’s former head of film production, is out, and producer Dan Lin is in. Whether that means Snyder will still be valued at Netflix likely depends on the Rebel Moon’s performance relative to the streamer’s expectations. If the numbers are as good as Snyder said they were back in March, then he should be fine. If not, then we’ll likely have a firm answer on whether Snyder’s fans will follow him anywhere, or if they’ll only follow him to the nearest superhero movie.