I mean, this is the guy who directed Sucker Punch. He’s not exactly in the business of crafting universal crowd-pleasers. His bold style, which really caught people’s attention upon the release of 300, looks cool. Surely people can agree on this point at least. The use of color and motion in his movies is a compellingly novel way of visual storytelling. I guess where the disagreement lies is whether its coolness is effective enough to sustain over the course of an entire film, or filmography. Whether something that looks cool is interesting on its own or whether people become bored with the look and feel of his action and want to move on to something else to pique their interest (even though he’s the one accused of having ADD!).
Zack Snyder has thus accumulated something of a reputation, an identity that has become pronounced in a way that makes his name inseparable from the movies that bear it. And that’s unfortunate, because Man of Steel is a rather remarkable departure from, or progression of, the style he has come to be known for. Yes, the movie is big—it’s probably the biggest spectacle of a movie we’ll get for some time—but strikes a completely different visual chord than his previous collaborations with cinematographer Larry Fong. And there are some real delicate moments that the movie makes a special effort (much like our hero) to focus in on even though there’s chaos and information flying all around. Its stylistic decision-making will be far more heavily scrutinized than if it were by a director considered to adhere to that false dichotomy of function over form.
Continue reading on the next page…
