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Zack Snyder's next project: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

PraiseVectron said:
EDIT: So Warner Brothers told Zack Snyder to make a superhero movie. But Snyder made a hyper-political myth about how traumatized conservatives (Batman) and nihilistic tech giants (Zuckerberg Lex Luthor) will bring Doomsday to America. And the only way to stop Doomsday is for immigrant Jesus (Superman) to change the hearts of traumatized conservatives (Batman) to feel more empathy. Only then can they team up with serious investigative journalism (Lois Lane) and feminism (Wonder Women) to stop America's Doomsday. And he had the audacity to release the movie in 2016, six months before the election.
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I don't think BvS was this thought out.
 
VolantRedX said:
I don't think BvS was this thought out.
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That's not that thought out, that's pretty blatant. Bruce is clearly parroting Dick Cheney and the War on Terror rationale, Superman is always an immigrant stand in, and the only reason to cast Lex as they did would be to draw the comparison @PraiseVectron pointed out.

Like, it's not that deep and pretty blatant that that was what Snyder was going for.
 
The Imperator said:
That's not that thought out, that's pretty blatant. Bruce is clearly parroting Dick Cheney and the War on Terror rationale, Superman is always an immigrant stand in, and the only reason to cast Lex as they did would be to draw the comparison @PraiseVectron pointed out.

Like, it's not that deep and pretty blatant that that was what Snyder was going for.
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Nah fam, it still feels like reaching.

Aping the War on Terror, especially after a Kryptonian 9/11? Yeah, that seems intentional. Superman as a Jesus metaphor as well (they don't really lean in on the immigrant thing though).

It's stringing all the rest together that doesn't seem supported by the movie itself: Wonder Woman is a feminist icon, but nothing she does in the film really has to do with feminism. Neither does investigative journalism play into it that much besides moving the plot along and give Lois something to do. Lex just seems to be an attempt to reimagine what type of billionaire Luthor would be in modern times, not really a message on rich techbro or anything. Doomsday is just a mook.

There is obvious symbolism, but that doesn't mean it makes for a coherent and cohesive whole thematic narrative.
 
PraiseVectron said:
It doesn't help that Batman VS Superman is rediculously biased toward Superman. Batman is portrayed as a traumatized neoconservative billionaire. Kryptonian 9/11 broke him.



And now Batman's convinced they need to have preemptive strikes to defend American from the Kryptonian menace. Just compare his quote about Superman against Dick Cheney's 1% Doctrine.





Meanwhile, the Kryptonian immigrant is a shown to be an investigative journalists concerned with police brutality, vigilante justice, journalistic integrity, and the urban lower classes.



And is willing to save the guy who kidnapped his mother and devoted the last year to ruining him in the media from Doomsday's fists.

And in the final battle, his Lady of the Lake goes to retrieve Rhongomyniad the Kryptonite spear so he can impale Doomsday, the last alchemical creation of Krypton, upon it. Doomsday manages to survive long enough to kill Superman with his bone sword, just like how Mordred killed Arthur with his sword after being impaled upon a lance.

Not only that, after Superman dies, Snyder puts three crosses behind him to represent his sacrifice.



So according to Zack Snyder, Batman VS Superman is about neoconservative billionaire fighting an Kryptonian immigrant who is the merger of King Arthur and Jesus. Talk about biased.

EDIT: So Warner Brothers told Zack Snyder to make a superhero movie. But Snyder made a hyper-political myth about how traumatized conservatives (Batman) and nihilistic tech giants (Zuckerberg Lex Luthor) will bring Doomsday to America. And the only way to stop Doomsday is for immigrant Jesus (Superman) to change the hearts of traumatized conservatives (Batman) to feel more empathy. Only then can they team up with serious investigative journalism (Lois Lane) and feminism (Wonder Women) to stop America's Doomsday. And he had the audacity to release the movie in 2016, six months before the election.
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Not exactly what you'd expect in terms of interpretive creative vision from someone chomping at the bit to do The Fountainhead.

On the other hand, I think a lot of Marvel movies are incomprehensible train-wrecks, much less the above. I'm not missing the forest for the trees, I'm seeing trees and saying, "Hey, who put all these tall, greenish old-timey telephone booths out here?"
 
all fictions said:
Doomsday is just a mook.
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Doomsday was created from the corpse of Zod by Luthor using Kryptonian technology. There are many ways to portray such an event. But the one used in BvS was that Luthor brought Zod's corpse into the Genesis chamber to be baptized in its waters while Luthor sprinkled his blood upon Zod's corpse. As a result, Doomsday is born from an artificial womb. The visual imagery in that scene is suffocatingly Christian.




Since the entire previous movie focused upon how Zod was the pinnacle of Kryptonian ultra-nationalism. The only way I can interpret this is that Zod, the failed ultra-nationalists, was born again due to the actions of a multi-billionaire.
 
PraiseVectron said:
Since the entire previous movie focused upon how Zod was the pinnacle of Kryptonian ultra-nationalism. The only way I can interpret this is that Zod, the failed ultra-nationalists, was born again due to the actions of a multi-billionaire.
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I interpret this as "Snyder likes shoving Christian imagery into Superman stories and thought this would look cool". Sometimes the simple explanation is the correct one.
 
Even shallow movie directors know how to utilize symbolism. Take this dialogue from the Expendables for example. Look at how their faces are framed and the massive color contrast between the two characters.

 
PraiseVectron said:
Doomsday was created from the corpse of Zod by Luthor using Kryptonian technology. There are many ways to portray such an event. But the one used in BvS was that Luthor brought Zod's corpse into the Genesis chamber to be baptized in its waters while Luthor sprinkled his blood upon Zod's corpse. As a result, Doomsday is born from an artificial womb. The visual imagery in that scene is suffocatingly Christian.




Since the entire previous movie focused upon how Zod was the pinnacle of Kryptonian ultra-nationalism. The only way I can interpret this is that Zod, the failed ultra-nationalists, was born again due to the actions of a multi-billionaire.
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all fictions said:
There is obvious symbolism, but that doesn't mean it makes for a coherent and cohesive whole thematic narrative.
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But I'm repeating myself.

There's a reason I didn't mention the other Christian symbolism outside Supes, because it is mainly haphazard and plain bad besides being in your face about it. Zod is resurrected in something painfully named Genesis and then renamed Doomsday...okay, and? It doesn't really play that much into the movie and, in fact, clash horribly with the War on Terror symbolism. Lex raves about God and man, and his father and God or whatever, but it isn't so much a theme as the manner in which Lex's madness took form. Maybe Steppenwolf represents Satan, maybe not, and maybe the knowledge he gives Lex represents the Forbidden Fruit, but if so, it makes the reference to Genesis and resurrection of Zod all the more confusing unless you want to argue Doomsday is the Beast and Luthor the Antichrist and at this point I would stop you right there.

I'm Christian, and you know what this all says to me? Nothing. It's like a rando just opened the Bible, took the stuff he found cool, and crammed it all in without care for coherency. It's all just sounds and colors, just random references, not actual themes reinforcing the story.

It's just there as a pretense of meaning.

The religious symbolism in Snyder's DC movies makes as much sense as it did in Neon Genesis Evangelion, that is, not very.
 
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Don't read the Fountainhead as about capitalism but instead about creativity and this makes a billion times more sense.
 
Isn't The Fountainhead mainly Ayn Rand combining her terrible philosophy with her disturbing crush on Frank Lloyd Wright?
 
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