i havent heard anyone talk about this yet but listen not only was Justice League stylistically beautiful, but it had a great, diverse cast. Two Jewish people (one of which openly calls himself Jewish in the film), a native Hawaiian, a black teenager, and two white men.
what im saying is, marvel’s all-white cast of the avengers 1&2 can suck it
i am dying pls buy my art (<— link for commissions prices)
seriously, me dudes, i really need the money now like always but oh well
GIANT MONSTER HUSBAND
but srsly tho, who doesnt want huge 4 eyed monster husband???. personally i do
SUCH POSSIBILITIES
as you may noticed i changed my coloring style…do you like it more or was it better before???
just a quick sketch
drew that for vk art page to greet new followers
commission for one lovely girl named Juliet
I watched Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead last night, which means that the latter half of 300 is now the only part of his filmography I haven’t seen (what a strange world this is), and I have some thoughts.
Mainly, how the
actual fuck did Zack Snyder end up with the reputation that he has?
Dawn of the Dead is the first movie he ever made, so I wasn’t expecting greatness. And I’m not going to lie - I didn’t love it. But mostly because I fucking hate zombies. As a zombie flick, it’s effective. There’s a lot of violence, but that comes with the territory, and for me it only served to highlight how capable Zack Snyder is of going there with the level of gore (this is really noticeable in Watchmen too), and how much he holds back in his Superman films, which are actually incredibly bloodless and restrained. There are certain choices that I wouldn’t necessarily have made, like how quickly we go right into the zombie apocalypse, or the inclusion of a zombie baby, but in both cases I get it. This movie doesn’t hold back. We all know it’s a zombie movie, so why waste time, and why not take that premise to its logical, appalling conclusion? It’s equally interested in both diving right into the action, and exploring the emotional fallout of your loved ones turning into zombies. The female lead’s boyfriend is one of the first people to die, and it’s suitably horrifying, but then she gets the fuck on with the business of surviving. The new guy she forms a tentative bond with over the course of the film also dies, leaving her alive to mourn him.
As a directorial debut, it’s startlingly competent. The tension is well-done, the gore is obviously present but mostly happens in short intense bursts, the action is gripping and satisfying, the pacing is surprising but not frenetic, there’s lots of humour, the characters feel like real people, and the cast is relatively diverse. The main character is a young white woman named Ana, a nurse with no combat training, who nevertheless holds her own during the apocalypse, and is one of the few survivors in the end. She’s a nice person, but takes absolutely no shit, even with a gun pointed at her face. For example:
“What are you, a fucking doctor?”
“I’m a fucking nurse.”
It features two black men, both fully realized characters, one of whom is an ex-con and one of whom is a police officer. The two of them have a conversation about fatherhood, in which Andre, who used to be a petty thief, talks about how much he wants to give his child all the opportunities he never had. The police officer, Kenneth, is one of the only other survivors of the movie.
Having seen this
film, I can now say with total assurance that literally 100% of
Zack Snyder’s movies feature at least one female lead whose agency,
psyche, and emotional ties are driving forces in the narrative.
Every single one of his films.
He gets compared to Michael Bay - presumably because they both like explosions and went to the same film school? - but it’s an utterly facile comparison. Michael Bay’s films are generic, sexist, whitebread, empty-headed, jingoistic, barely-concealed military propaganda pieces, and Zack Snyder’s films… are not.
He should be compared to Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, the Wachowskis, James Cameron, Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, Lars von Trier, Terrence Malick… etc. I’m not saying any of those people are perfect. Just that their movies are much more relevant points of comparison than something like Transformers. This is a guy who has been reading comics since childhood, whose mother was an artist, who studied art history before he became a director, who had a team of linguists create an entire Themysciran language just so they could inscribe a quote from Joseph Campbell onto Wonder Woman’s sword, a detail we never even see in the movie. Please tell me when Michael Bay has ever done anything comparable.
Zack Snyder makes genre films full of women and people of colour (occasionally even people who are both, if you can believe that). His movies are packed with action, emotion, and beauty. They depict violence without treating it lightly. His visuals – the one thing people generally agree are impressive – only improve with every movie he makes. His wife, Deborah Snyder, is his producing partner, and obviously has a huge impact on his artistic endeavors. He’s not without flaws, and he’s made films I don’t care for. But it’s obvious when you look at his body of work that he is constantly seeking to improve and try new techniques and delve just that little bit deeper into every layer of storytelling and symbolism. Dawn of the Dead is his first movie, and it’s good. His latest work, Batman v Superman, is a triumph. I can’t fathom where his reputation as this self-fellating, macho, ultra-violent director, who is somehow both ‘too gritty/dark/grim/edgy’ but also ‘exactly as frothy and shallow as Michael Bay’ came from, but it’s both self-contradictory, and straight-up false.
As a quick sidebar: I really, truly, honestly wish my guy Zack would do me a solid and hold back a little less with the sex and the swearing in his Superman films. He clearly knows how to do it well. Also, this movie made me a bit sad Michael Kelly didn’t show up again as Steve Lombard in Batman v Superman, which is not an emotion I ever expected to feel.
I feel I have to note, since it’s not mentioned above,Snyders Dawn of the Dead is a remake, and a few of the things mentioned come from the source (Zombie apocalypse starts fast cause it’s a sequel, strong black and women characters are in the source)
But yeah, overall I agree.
I think a problem with a lot of film criticism (and this goes so much beyond superhero flicks or DC) is critics and some film fans are only willing to look for deeper themes when it’s either
A-A bunch of garbled vague nonsense trying to sound deep and meaningful. (Which is honestly some of the easiest shit to write)
or
B-The themes are spelled out so freaking obviously that it takes no effort to read into them.
Snyder, IMO, actually has defined themes that aren’t super vague, but take more than a surface reading to get.
So people don’t bother.
A good example of this would be the famous MAYBE scene Which somehow haters of the film interpret as Pa Kent going YES THEY DESERVED TO DIE AND HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL! The
problem is Pa Kent doesn’t couch his reply in tons of mumbo jumbo
vagueness that people realize they have to try to figure out He phrases it with a phrase you hear and instantly understand isn’t a NO It takes a bit of effort to go Well it’s a hard question because you CHILD is asking should they RISK BEING MURDERED for other people which no parent should be able to easily go ABSOLUTELY CHILD BE A MARTYR but realizing that’s what is going on requires paying attention and thinking of the characters as PEOPLE not just archetypes and people flat out refuse to do that with these movies and many others
#the pa kent commentary omg yes #honestly jonathan’s fears are the same as lara’s #that if the world sees clark as an alien freak they’ll try to destroy him#and both of them have conflicting feelings about it #lara bc she knows her son will die if she doesn’t send him away #jonathan bc he knows that clark can save lives if he takes that risk #but it’s not an easy thing for either of them#also note what happens when superman does go public #lex luthor and bruce wayne both decide try to kill him #LUTHOR SUCCEEDS IN CASE WE’VE FORGOTTEN #clark dies a hero’s death and that’s a tremendous honor #but it’s not wrong for his parents not to want him dead (via @catie-does-things)
someone who lives in post-communist or communist country: communist authorities committed genocide/purges/deportations/mass executions in my country against those who they considered to be “enemies of the state”
tumblr: are you sure it happened?
