Author: Doctor Zeus

I pounded out a new article today in which I reflect upon the project of deconstruction in BvS. It’s honestly kind of a stream of consciousness joint. A meditation, basically. But it was more or less flowing so I ran with it. I’m fairly content with it: BvS’s Genre Deconstruction… Deconstructed!

I wrote it mainly as an adjunct to a review for BvS I’m working on for my Substack “rogbngp’s movie and 4K Blu-ray reviews.” For the review itself I don’t want to get too bogged down with detail about the deconstruction but it’s really important in my humble opinion to fully appreciating BvS to understand that it’s a deconstruction. And what it’s doing as a deconstruction, etc.

The substack is fun. I started it about a month ago. I’m having a grand time reflecting on the movies that I watch. I post the reviews also on Letterboxd, and I’m gradually making some new friends there that also love cinema. It’s been great to get back to my roots with enjoyment of film in general.

Edit (12/14/24): Er, well… no we don’t! Sadly, the forum just wasn’t getting any activity. I guess message board style forums have become an anachronism? Although Reddit is still popular. But anyway, I went ahead and pulled the plug on the proboards forum somewhere around spring or summer of 2024. I tried. RIP forum!

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Here’s the original post which I’ll leave as a kind of curiosity:

I’m the head moderator for the subreddit r/Snyderverse—although to be completely honest I actually dislike the reddit experience overall for this pastime of appreciating Zack Snyder’s films. It requires constant filtering of Zack Snyder haters, or at least haters of his films.

So about half a year ago I created a Proboards forum in the hope that a relatively small community could grow, well off the beaten path, within which we could celebrate and appreciate Zack’s films in peace.

I had done it once before in 2017 when a group of regulars at the Superhero Hype forums that liked MoS and BvS set up our own forum on Proboards. That forum was actually quite successful. We had a thriving and active community for about 2 years. I pulled the plug on it when it seemed (to me) that all hope was basically lost for the Snyder Cut to ever get released. Of course as we know that turned out to be wrong. We did in fact get ZSJL in 2021 when AT&T acquired WB and green-lighted the project.

Anyway, this is the URL for the forum: https://zacksnyderfilms.proboards.com/

If you find this blog’s content interesting and it stimulates your brain a bit, please take a look at the forum. Join and start posting! Currently it’s just a curation of topics for discussion about Zack’s films. But maybe at some point we’ll get some folks actively participating? Here’s hoping!

Edit (12/14/24): Welp, I never got around to this and don’t feel motivated to do it, now lol. I’m just going to leave it at the four DC comics films, and let that be that.

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Sadly, it seems that the opportunity for Zack to complete his five film saga for DC via live action has been permanently shut down by James Gunn and Peter Safran, the co-CEOs of WBD. My guess is that they don’t want anything as grand, operatic, and epic as Zack’s JL 2 and 3 competing with their fledgling rebooted DCU scheduled to launch in 2025. And by grand I mean that ZSJL 2 and 3 would use the marquee A list DC characters including the trinity and the ultimate Big Bad, Darkseid. Furthermore, Snyder is an auteur filmmaker who took a giant swing artistically by commenting on superhero mythology itself via what amounts to a cinematic version of Zack’s own elseworld graphic novel. Gunn will feature Superman and Batman but it looks like he wants to try more intimate character studies that cleave to comic book sources.

But that being said, I think Gunn’s plan is also to provide fan service to Snyder “antis,” i.e., hardcore DC fans that are contemptuous toward what Zack was doing by first deconstructing then reconstructing superheroes because they perceive it as “not getting the essence of the characters.”

In doing this Gunn I believe will try to mimic what has worked from the MCU. But the MCU and Star Wars are both suffering from 1) general superhero film genre fatigue in pop culture, and 2) having become overly formulaic and dumbed down to the the common denominator fandom. The MCU and and Star Wars are owned by Disney after all! And if I am correct in these assertions then this will be a massive miscalculation by James Gunn and Peter Safran. Or whoever is calling the shots at WBD regarding the tone of the rebooted DCU.

In contrast, I think the DC fandom wants more bold, mature, serious, visionary artistry. That is the true fan base for DC films I believe. There are a lot more Zack Snyder fans out there than the superhero film genre normies want to admit. That’s why the DC films that have followed Zack Snyder have failed so miserably at the box office.

It should be noted that in terms of ticket sales there was one DC film that successfully aped the MCU, which was 2018 Aquaman. But in that case studio interference is obvious in a movement away from auteurism. James Wan’s original vision for that film was to make it a horror film similar to movies by John Carpenter and James Cameron.

In any case, I think the most realistic chance for Zack’s story to see a completion with JL 2 and 3 will take place some years down the road via animated films. That will require either 1) new leadership at WBD, or whoever ends up owning WBD when it is eventually acquired by another studio, or 2) the rebooted DCU succeeds well enough financially by “putting some points on the board” to paraphrase a recent comment by director David Ayer regarding possible release of his director’s cut of Suicide Squad. Regardless, by then the actors Zack hired will have moved on in their careers. Zack will be building out his Rebel Moon franchise. So I think JL 2 and 3 would be animated. Hopefully using the actors from Zack’s DC trilogy to voice their parts.

Animated films for JL 2 and 3 might be surprisingly satisfying. The possibility exists for state of the art animation technology to deliver a truly amazing film experience. It could serve as a way for Zack to be an innovative trendsetter in animation.

So… therefore this blog’s focus on featuring just Zack’s four DC films has become too limited imo. Over time I’m going to include essays on all of his films. And the CRPG Zack is designing for the Rebel Moon franchise as well.

Probably the first film I’ll analyze outside of the DC films will be Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. A few months ago I bought the blu ray because I’ve only watched it once. I definitely enjoyed Owls. And I’d like to explore what sorts of meta themes the film possibly comments on with regarding heroism, specifically as it relates to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.

After watching this really fun and thought provoking video by Chris Lehto https://youtu.be/4gZ2WOV_O4o?si=_hiRwJ6uWzEg23kh… And first let me say that I absolutely love this sort of creative and outside-the-box sort of thinking—Kurt Jaimungal should have Chris on his Theories of Everything YT channel to discuss this Fractal Scalar Theory…

But anyway, after listening to how Chris worked with ChatGPT to help craft his ideas for that theory, I’ve decided to do something similar with my draft of the Watchmen article. I’m going to hand my draft of the article over to ChatGPT and ask it to edit the article to be more concise, make it flow better, and overall to try to keep the reader engaged. Of course I’ll still edit whatever it spits out for my final draft.

I’ve never used ChatGPT so this should actually be kind of fun.

The problem I’m having with the article is that I’ve gathered a mountain of interview material from both Alan Moore and Zack Snyder that supports various aspects of my main thesis. In these interviews Moore and Snyder both respectively provide long expositions that make clear their thinking about the core ideas underlying Watchmen. The problem is that I want to include all of that quote material because it fleshes the ideas out so well. And all the quotes are very relevant imho. However I suspect that very few readers will want to wade through an article that is so chockfull of so many long quotes. It’s a long trek through that material to get to the core of the thesis. The article feels ponderous and sort of bogged down by long walls of quoted exposition by both of them.

I hope to give the article some attention again in September, so hopefully I’ll actually get this f-ing thing completed soon!

December 23, 2023 Addendum: Well, haha, evidently something is keeping me from even cheating on this by resorting to ChatGPT! 🤣 But on further reflection, it just doesn’t feel right for what I’m doing here, lol. I reckon I’ll get to this eventually, but I’ll just roll up my sleeves and do it the old fashioned way. Usually at some point I get a burst of motivation and get into a flow experience when I write. It’ll come eventually.

Besides, defending Rebel Moon is commanding my full attention at the moment.

A few weeks ago I rolled up my sleeves and got the ball rolling again with the Watchmen article. A new version of it is underway. Some good progress has been made. The problem I’m having is feeling like I’m losing focus and the flow of the narrative as I assemble the information that supports my thesis. Rather than restating what Alan Moore and Zack Snyder have said about the comic run and the movie, respectively, I have chosen to feature large quotes by them. The problem is that it makes for some fairly ponderous reading. In any event, once all that information has been processed it’s really worth the trouble, I feel. Anyway, I’ll keep chipping away at it. And at some point I’ll just put it out there in a probably rough but passable form.

I’m in a phase right now of re-reading the Watchmen graphic novel. I’m giving a more careful read of the prose at the end of each chapter… watching analysis videos… watching the motion comic…

And after completing all this immersion I’ll soon again give a watch to Snyder’s Ultimate Cut, jotting down notes as I go.

Watchmen is easily the most daunting task for my analysis project of Zack Syder’s DC films. It’s such a dense book. So much layered meta-contextual content. The film does it’s own unique thing, and it’s also packed with deeper meanings in it’s own way as well.

But I’ll spoil a bit for now with the following tidbit: one of the things I’ll definitely be focusing on is what Zack Snyder might be getting at by making Watchmen’s superheroes cool and sexy. Zack is saying something quite different than Alan Moore did in this regard.

ZSJL: A Mesmerizing Unification of Reconstruction and Elegy

I’m still going to tweak it over time. I’m basically putting up the rough draft. But overall I’m happy with what I observe about the film.

I think of this blog as a sort of monument built out in the wilderness of the Internet, in the hinterlands, for fans of the Snyderverse to stumble onto. Sadly, it seems pretty clear by now that we’re not going to get completion of Zack’s five film saga. Anyway, I do still intend to write articles for both Watchmen and ZSJL. For Watchmen I’ve toyed with the idea of looking for Jungian symbolism that most likely arises innocently, i.e., per the theory it would from the collective unconscious to begin with. But whenever I sit down to write it I’m not really feeling it. So I’ll have to watch it yet again at some point to see what else floats up for me to say about it. With ZSJL I’ll probably write about it being an elegy, or a least that’s how I experience it. And maybe I’ll write a piece as well about the interesting (to me) concept that symbolic themes can arise unconsciously in a film that presumably were never consciously intended by the director or writers. And that’ll be it, most likely. The monument will then be complete.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League