Foreign media recently released a blockbuster film called "Moon Rebels".
It is said that it is vigorous because the director of the film is Zack Snyder, who is the first in the world, unparalleled in the universe, and known as the "DC Savior". Handled by the fierce man himself, it is conceivable that this film is bound to be magnificent, imposing like a rainbow, and angry bullfighting.
"Moon Rebels" has indeed made a "good start", so much so that even Director Zha can't help but sigh, his film is "the first in the world".
The number of broadcasts is violent, and the evaluation of fans is even more violent-it's just that most of them are scolding, and the whipping of movies on the Internet is simply flesh and blood, blood flows, and blood rain.
In the eyes of many people, Schneider is a director who is enough to become a god. But after all, he has as many fans as opponents, and with the word-of-mouth of "Moon Rebels" hitting the streets, many people gloat, how to show his stuffing, he is a "pretending to be a criminal" and an "Internet celebrity director", which is "Chen Kaige of the United States".
Some people continue to mend the knife, Schneider is not as good as Chen Kaige, Chen Kaige has won the Palm Award.
Blameless and unhonored called "mediocre", mixed reputation called "extraordinary person", how did Zack Snyder, an "extraordinary person", come to be?
01
Zack Schneider was born into a family of artists, and his family fell into the "very good" category.
Under the influence of his painter mother, Zach showed outstanding talent in the visual arts from an early age. He attended the art school where his mother taught before junior high school, went to the United Kingdom to study Xi art in high school, and returned to the United States to further his film knowledge after graduation.
In the 80s of the last century, when Xiao Zha had just graduated, the "American-Vietnamese War" had ended, and the film market at that time presented a very different style and a hundred flowers. There are people who lament the chaos of the world, there are people who express pain and sorrow, and of course, there are some optimists who pursue beauty and happiness. But things in the film industry have nothing to do with Xiaozha, he can't climb high.
In order to revive the morale of the population, the government began to promote the so-called traditional American values, and the whole society also showed a "liberal" tendency. At that time, the social environment was full of an atmosphere of freedom, competition and survival of the fittest.
In other words, even if Schneider comes from an artistic family, if he doesn't fight for it, it is very likely that he will not be able to eat the bowl of "art", which is the "law of the jungle in the workplace".
In order to gain a foothold in the art circle, Xiao Zha had no choice but to temporarily give up his film ideals and began to work in commercials, MVs, short films, etc.
There is really nothing sad about this, many of Zack Snyder's peers, and those awesome directors in the future, such as Michael Bay, who made "Transformers", have also come through step by step.
Zack Schneider has been in the advertising industry for more than ten years, and it was not until the turn of the millennium, when he was nearly forty years old, that he finally had the opportunity to direct a movie. At that time, Michael Bay had already become famous all over the world through films such as "Pearl Harbor", and because of his good box office performance, Michael Bay was also affectionately called "selling copies".
On the other hand, Xiaozha is still an "immature" primary school student in the industry. To be on the safe side, he decided to remake a classic: Dawn of the Living Dead.
Domestic audiences may not be familiar with it, but this is a classic zombie film that is enough to go down in history. It can also be said that the original "Dawn of the Living Dead", which was born in 1978, announced the arrival of the dawn of Hollywood zombie films.
The birth of zombie culture in the United States stems, in the words of their own historians, from Americans' "ignorance and fascination with foreign cultures." Uneducated Americans, out of their fascination with the British novel "Dracula", made many gothic-style "vampire movies", and the oldest horror films had nothing to do with zombies.
Fast forward to 1968, a man named George W. A. Romero's filmmaker, at a cost of less than 120,000 yuan, filmed the movie "Night of the Living Dead". This low-budget production swept the film market that year, and in the end, it grossed $30 million worldwide.
Night of the Living Dead ushered in a new era of horror, marking the dawn of the "modern horror film era". 10 years later, it was the same director who presented his second horror film, "Dawn of the Living Dead". As you can imagine, this is a work that has been tempered for thousands of years.
Zack Schneider adapted the work, but said, "I don't want to do a so-called remake, I don't think that makes sense." We're going to rebuild our version, we're going to rebuild our bones, we're rebuilding our muscles, our movies are our own thing, with our personalities, our voices, our experiences. ”
In addition to retaining a few key scenes from the original work, he almost completely reinvented the wheel.
Schneider was hands-on and even drew detailed storyboards himself. Eventually, the zombies in his lens came back to life on the screen as an "upgraded", in short, the zombies became more bloody and brutal, and they were infinitely powerful, fast-moving, and able to attack with their own weapons.
According to the setting of the film, zombies must be headshot to die. In order to present the visual impact, the blood under the guide lens is not only endless, but also gushing upwards and upwards, which is obviously against the laws of physics.
Xiao Zha's adaptation can be called tense and exciting, which makes the audience feel bloody. The film won 100 million yuan at a cost of less than $26 million. Finally, this "newcomer to the industry" has gained a firm foothold in Hollywood.
02
Three years after the release of "Dawn of the Living Dead", Schneider got the opportunity to direct "Spartan 300".
The original work of "300" is a comic book that tells the tragic story of 300 sturdy Spartan men who bravely fought against the 500,000 Persian army.
In the narrow corridor of hot springs, 300 people VS 500,000, this picture makes people's blood boil just thinking about it. But when Zack Schneider went to negotiate with the comic book author, it was a hot face and a cold ass. The original author of the comic believes that "300" is the peak of his creative career, and any irresponsible adaptation is bound to ruin his hard work.
In order to gain the "heart" of the original author, Schneider decided not to bother with Barra to tell his own version, but to try to be as faithful to the original as possible.
How faithful is it? It can be described as frenzy, and for some of the scenes in the comics, Zha Dao even did a frame-by-frame reproduction.
If "Dawn of the Living Dead" allowed Schneider to "gain a foothold" in Hollywood, "300" made him completely "prestigious".
Schneider used this film as a position to make many bold and avant-garde attempts, and what is even more rare is that most of these innovations succeeded, and he himself gained countless fans.
It's hard to imagine that this epic masterpiece comparable to "Gladiator" took only 60 days for the preliminary filming work, and only one day for the filming of the exterior work.
For comparison, Zack Schneider spent up to a year in post-production.
In order to create a tragic atmosphere, he made extensive use of light and images that are unique to oil paintings, rather than those that can be easily captured in real life, such as the sunset under the clouds, the golden waves of wheat surging in the breeze, the bronzed skin of the Spartan warriors, and the neat phalanx of figures...... In short, the movie characters don't even need to speak, and that thrilling sense of shock is already coming out.
And in order to show the fierceness of the Spartan warriors, Zach used other careful thoughts. For example, he makes extensive use of upscaling (slow motion), and almost all of his fight scenes are treated in slow motion. This slows down the moment of violence, but magnifies the details of the violence.
Unlike "Dawn of the Living Dead", in terms of the presentation of blood, to some extent, Schneider actually became a little restrained. Unlike the Persian enemies, who were slaughtered to the point of flesh and blood, when the Spartan warriors died, they were almost bloodless, which undoubtedly defied the laws of physics again.
There is also a detail that the male protagonist in the movie as a teenager is played by Zach's youngest son. In order to make everyone look good, Schneider has long forgotten what it means to be "not suitable for children", and he personally equipped his son with a bloodshot and swollen left gel eye.
Zack Snyder's titles of "special effects control" and "visual control" began with this film.
The director's pursuit of details can be described as meticulous, but the theme of the film is concise to the extreme, summed up in one sentence: do it if you are not satisfied, and look down on life and death.
There is no "political correctness", there is no "XXISM", this is a cool film full of hormones. The global box office of 450 million also shows that this simple and direct greeting is like a heavy punch to the audience's chest, and then, it makes them climax.
03
In September 2008, Nolan's "Batman: The Dark Knight" was released. Nolan relied on this film to become a god, but his owner Warner Studios was a little embarrassed, Nolan raised the threshold of the superhero theme so high, who did he let take over his class?
Pick and choose, Warner decided to send Zack Schneider to play.
The final work that Zadao handed over was "The Watcher". In terms of word-of-mouth and height, I personally think that "Watchmen" surpasses "The Dark Knight", in the words of some film critics, superhero movies can be filmed in "Watchmen", which is basically the end;
The box office of "The Dark Knight" made Warner easily earn $1 billion - before Nolan, Warner had no superhero movie box office of more than $500 million;
The American writer Vera Cather once said, "There are only two or three stories that are repeated over and over again, as if they were never repeated." "Marvel knows this very well, so their superhero movie is like a mold carved out, and when the audience is tired of watching it, it is only a matter of time before Marvel collapses.
Schneider's "The Watchmen", on the other hand, has an unreasonable number of elements, even in the opening part of the film, which is mixed with many much more profound elements: religious stories, political events, realistic metaphors, war and peace......
Zadao reflects when he should reflect, is serious when he should be serious, and does not forget to be humorous when he should be gag. For example, Dr. Manhattan, the invincible "little blue man" in the film, flashes a faint blue light, and while working hard with his girlfriend, he changes into a doppelganger and leisurely engages in scientific research......
And, in order to better interpret this movie, he also drummed up an animated film called "Legend of the Black Ship".
Cinematic films are different from video productions, and for the convenience of scheduling films—in the final analysis, or to maximize the interests of theaters, movies tend to have limited lengths. Zadao's unrestrained care, and in the blink of an eye, all of them became disadvantages.
There are too many things he wants to show the audience, and when the audience is overstuffed, it is inevitable that they will not be able to bear it.
So, the detailed "Watchmen" was bound to fail in theaters, but when the four-and-a-half-hour "director's cut" was released - the audience could finally chew and enjoy it slowly, Zack Schneider was once again canonized.
Since then, no matter which of his films, fans have always been looking forward to the so-called "director's cut".
Personally, I think that the style and personal label of Zadao have been basically finalized by the time of "Watchmen". Later, the well-known films such as "Justice League" were like "amplifiers", and those movies magnified his fame and infinitely magnified the controversy against him in the world.
Some of the crazy fans who watched his movies began to divide into two camps: the extreme "Zaslin" and the extreme "Zahei".
In 2011, Zack Schneider made a peerless bad movie "Beauty Raider", but some people seriously analyzed, we are really awesome, do you find that the proportion of the heroine's short skirt and stockings is just in line with the "absolute golden ratio" defined by ACG.
Some people joke that if you want to analyze the film directed by Za, you must pay attention to the following keywords: profound, gradual, slow-motion, ritual, oil painting texture, humanistic care, theological popularization, religious metaphor, persecution, ceiling, Netflix release, just back to the basics, 10,000 words analysis, ordinary people can't understand it...... Just string these words together.
It is conceivable that Zack Schneider will make a lot of movies in the future, and the controversy related to him may also increase.
Director Zao's fans who love him, a movie that is both acclaimed and acclaimed.
The bad news is that at the moment, his way to save his reputation is still to come to a "director's cut". According to reports, the "cut-out version" of "Moon Rebels" will be released, and this version will be "more hardcore, more profound, more vulgar, and more violent".