Zack Snyder

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Look, if you have a problem with distilling the Battle of Thermopylae down to freedom versus tyranny, you need to read Herodotus because he's the one. It's his fault, not modern culture's fault. He did it.' [Victor Davis Hanson] references a lot of things like that because he feels like the spirit of the book and of the movie ["300"] are very close to the Spartan aesthetic. That's really kind of what he feels."
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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You can't have a Superman that is battling cultural morality. You need a Superman that has built in sort of values.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Needs
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The cool thing about Watchmen is it has this really complicated question that it asks, which is: who polices the police or who governs the government? Who does God pray to? Those are pretty deep questions but also pretty fun questions. Kind of exciting. It tries to subvert the superhero genre by giving you these big questions, moral questions. Why do you think you're on a fun ride? Suddenly you're like how am I supposed to feel about that?
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Fun
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My aesthetic is probably closer to a 15-year-old's than my dad's, but I get his conviction.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Dad
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We can't just go, like, oh that'd be cool then not do it. So it's one of those weird things. You gain all these things on your journey. You get smarter. It's interesting how you are who you are in high school in a lot of ways. When I look at my friends, I feel no different about them than I did when I was in high school. I mean that in a great way. They've taken on a micro scale what they were doing and making it bigger.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Taken
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I used to be a huge fan of Heavy Metal magazine growing up, and I was exposed to Cobalt there and fell in love with the character and the world. I've tried to track it down and pursue it myself to make a movie out of it. Also I felt like the thing that's cool about Cobalt is it does have a culty kind of underground quality to it that I really like.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Growing Up
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You know it has all the kind of fun stuff. It has the countermeasures - we always talk about the countermeasures because people are like, "What the heck is countermeasures?" You know if I shot a missile at it, flares would pop out of those holes and stop the missile from hitting it.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Fun
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We can deny angels exist, convince ourselves they can't be real. But they show up anyway, at strange places and at strange times. They can speak through any character we can imagine. They'll shout through demons if they have to. Daring us, challenging us to fight.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Real
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I think up to this point, it's been difficult to suggest a world where Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman and others could exist in the same universe. That was one of the things I really wanted to try and get at. Not to mention, the amazing opportunity to bring those characters and have those characters tell an important story, their own story, within the confines of a film.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Character
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In the Making Of book ["300"] there's a guy named Victor Davis Hanson who is a a frickin genius. He's a Greek historian and we showed him the movie because I wanted him to write a forward to the Making Of book. I was a little nervous to be honest, because I wasn't sure how he'd react.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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Probably the hardest thing to do was the beginning of the movie ["300"], I think, when we were in Sparta and all that - just getting in the groove.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Thinking
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My personal success would be that people understand what I was trying to do. It was the most palatable when I watchmen_7_mdid Dawn. With Watchmen, too, I feel the same way. The movie's ironic and satirical and it's funny and serious and that's kind of the same way I felt about Dawn. Like I really was making a movie that knows it's a zombie movie and enjoys that and wants the audience to say, yeah, that's okay.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: People
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I think that when you see the trailer [on movie "300"] - my feeling is anyway and maybe I'm not objective because I live it - but I think when you see it you immediately go, 'Okay, this is another sort of way of doing this.'
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Thinking
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There's that weird and cool line that music can cross where it still gives you the goosebumps and you think it's cool but on the other hand it's sort of like also letting you off the hook a little bit with the ironic aspects of the thing. I think that's the inexplicable, the smell of a movie. That's the taste of the movie.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Thinking
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don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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[Writing something original from scratch], the initial process is way different. But once it exists and you start to actually work on making it real, then the approach is kind of the same, for me anyways.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Real
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We've tried as hard as we can into keep the ideas intact in the hail storm that is Hollywood, so, whether he is or not, I'm personally proud of what I've been able to jam down their throats.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Ideas
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I felt like, in the recent past, people have been apologizing for Superman, a little bit, for his costume, for his origins, and for the way he fits into society.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Past
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I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Real
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In the sense that Watchmen references movies, comic books, pop culture in general. It knows it's a movie. I really do like movies that ride that fine line, the razor's edge between parody and supporting the fake movie part of the movie.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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I always say 300 is a sci-fi movie as much as anything. It's like that could be another planet. It doesn't have to be earth necessarily. That's like when people get so wrapped up in the politics of 300 I always go, "By the way, that's a sci-fi movie. It's not really a historical film."
- Zack Snyder
Collection: People
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I guess for me - in the TV commercial world I was known for shooting locations, beautiful landscapes and things like that - so, it's interesting.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Beautiful
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I always say, thank god I have this job or I don't know what I'd be doing. It'd be sad. I've always felt like I have been trying to brand a world for a quite a long time. You know what though, I feel no different. I feel like I'm doing the exact same thing I did in high school. Only I have more people helping me out now. And we have to take it all the way.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Jobs
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You can't will something into being. If you follow that philosophy all the way, to will something into being, that's animal style. That's what man does. But if you're looking at the philosophy correctly, and I never did - I like to think I did sometimes - you have to do it without ego, without the I. You have to separate yourself.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Philosophy
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I imagine the film ["300"] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Rhinos
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The truth is the music is really an incredible personal part of the movie. When I was drawing the storyboards for Watchmen, I had just gone to my iPod and was grabbing music. It took me about two weeks to really put my playlist together. But once I had it, I kinda just put my headsets on and drew for five months. But that music's the music that's in the movie.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Two
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Anytime I've ever been involved in a non-linear story, you see it in a linear manner first, just to make sure it makes sense, and then you chop it up and move it around.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Moving
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Also I've got to say in the movie ["300"] Gorgo, who is the Queen, she has also a part that is - I think - I don't want to say, 'Oh look, it's multi-quadrant,' and all this. I believe that it is because I think my dad can see this movie and go, 'F**k yeah!
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Queens
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I love comic books - maybe to a fault sometimes.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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I aim my movies, as much as I can, at myself. I think that those movies have an interesting quality. They're very movieish. They are movie movies. Like I think Watchmen is a very self-aware movie. 300. Dawn of the Dead definitely. That's really where I've ended up.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Thinking
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The truth is these characters [of Batman story] evolve, and there's a lot of hands in the supporting of these characters. It's great when everybody can know where everything came from. It's important for the legacy of them.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Character
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I want to - we're working toward Justice League, and I really want to create the - part of the thing I really want to create is the possibility of a world where they could exist together.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: League
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With Dawn I was afraid people would just think it's a B-movie and I didn't know what I was doing. That's really what I was afraid of. Like the subtlety of the movie they would miss. If the movie succeeds, it's that people understand the subtlety. That they're able to see past the conventions of what they think a movie is and go a teeny bit deeper and let it be both.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Past
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For whatever reason I was always obsessed with the potential of humanity's physicality. Especially since we grew up with such a non-physical philosophy.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Philosophy
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Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Book
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People have a very proprietary relationship with Superman. It's important to respect the iconography and the canon, but at the same time, you have to tell a story.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: People
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I’m so excited to begin working again with Henry Cavill in the world we created, and I can’t wait to expand the DC Universe in this next chapter. Let’s face it, it’s beyond mythological to have Superman and our new Batman facing off, since they are the greatest Super Heroes in the world.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Hero
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I do like Superman as a character, and I have followed him throughout the years.
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Character
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I mean, it's weird because people lately have been coming up to me and going, 'Oh, my God. '300' is huge.' I'm like, 'Really? It's not done yet!
- Zack Snyder
Collection: Mean