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I've been catching up on some of the press stuff in anticipation of the second half of the Snyder renaissance, and it's interesting to see that his work on this film may have converted him into a believer of digital cameras (At least for some purposes). And also the kind of extreme FOV effects shown in the trailers so far are a function of his experimental usage of unusual lenses. All signs seem to point to this being possibly the lightest film he's ever made, which I'm not sure how I feel about, but we'll see what that means relative to his filmography.
KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 23:15 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 23:11
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For sure, this will cinematically be very different from what we've seen before. It's funny because he said that he hasn't functioned as his own D.P. before because he didn't know he was allowed to do that; and combined with this film being his exploration of the horizon after the claustrophobic environment of superhero film-making, I think we're in for some formally strange stuff and I'm all in.
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May 11, 2021 23:36
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Fully vaxxed with tickets reserved today for one of them fancy premium theatres. Sensory overload incoming. Here are my quick thoughts, without too much spoilers: Army of the Dead –the title & the opening montage notes the atmosphere of the film as the U.S. military losing a war with the nation-state of ‘Occupy Las Vegas'. Of course, Las Vegas is famous for its reproduction of various famous iconography of U.S. cities, so the setting functions as a fractal of extravagant American civilization being overrun by this dirty, brutish, and incomprehensible horde. Multiplying at a frightening rate at the direct cost of civilized lives, the zombie epidemic almost embodies the argument of ‘White genocide’, which is frequently used by the hard right-wing to induce moral panic and bring fearful people to their cause. War is very efficient at creating refugee crises - it’s only the coyote character that seems able to empathize with the zombies & takes the time to learn their culture. Of course, she learns all of this stuff to better do her job, but also recognizes how their brutally honest culture contrasts with the duplicitousness of humanity; so she functions as the medium between humanity & the zombies, both individually and structurally. In that way, the film is a kind of inversion of 300. My main complaint is the unusual amount of scenes featuring characters expositing to others their feelings, content of which are ultimately crucial to the emotional substance of the film. But on the other hand, the film is also about the inability of alienated people to communicate contrasted with the united zombies, so maybe I will change my mind about this on a re-watch. Even though I'm not a fan of zombie/gore-heavy films, and would subsequently place AOTD quite low on Snyder's filmography due to (What I presume is) its unrelenting commitment to and subversion of those genres, I nevertheless recognize the gorgeous visual/audio design of this film. What a way to return to theatres. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 15:24 on May 20, 2021 |
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May 18, 2021 14:18
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Snyder gave us sexy male stripper zombies, and they said this man doesn't know what the people want.
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May 20, 2021 13:19
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It is honestly an extremely goofy movie most of the time. I think it was a pretty good joke to have the black character almost be the only mercenary to survive the horror (The same person who earlier pontificates about the endless cycle of things).
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May 21, 2021 17:41
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Darko posted:That's zombie movie tradition.
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May 21, 2021 18:09
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admataY posted:And maybe snyder needs a strong studio to boss him around and force him to tight things up, because if Army Of was 40 minutes shorter it might have been decent . As it is its a long boring road to get to the somewhate entertaining but all too brief last 30 minutes . We don't have to keep it theoretical - there's a ton of theatrical vs director's cut of Zack Snyder films to wade through and assess.
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May 21, 2021 22:08
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Necrothatcher posted:pfft, just cast someone that looks like him Because it depicts the pieces on the board where they actually lay. I could care less whether Spicer got paid for his cameo; the fact that his actual identity is parlayed in this film into a broader indictment of U.S. policy is what's actually important. Like if you watch this film, and agree with what he's saying, than what more is there to say? This isn't too far removed from the various Batman V Superman news media cameos ostensibly just playing to their regular shtick.
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May 21, 2021 22:48
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Lemon posted:... I thought the shots of the pilot wiping away her own blood off of the windshield to see the missile flying by was pretty neat. Lemon posted:I noticed the aliens and robot zombie stuff and, whilst I don't need every single detail to be explained, this was a case of something arousing my interest without providing enough to really satisfy it. Just a little bit more would've been enough, only a handful more shots that perhaps showed things like the robot zombies exhibiting some different behaviour from the others, or the aliens interacting with the events of the movie in some way. It would've made them feel like they were elements that were actually grounded in the movie instead of being things that were just dropped in. Like I said, I'm happy for things to be mysteries, but you need something to sink your teeth into. Seing two lights zip across the sky once doesn't inspire me to start theorycrafting, because I've got nothing to work with. The alien intrigue express a kind of nihilistic twist on Watchmen's premise, where the existence of powerful extraterrestrials, instead of uniting the world, results in the U.S. government trying to leverage it into a super-weapon against other nation-states. The most horrifying aspect of this film isn't the zombies, but the way capital is able to subsume the dire situation and not only continue to smoothly function, but even utilize the situation to strengthen its stranglehold on political dissidents, and accrue political capital among the general constituents by solving the same disaster they created. This is emphasized here with the mercenaries engaging in battle with the alpha zombies in the middle of a money rain-storm. Another theme of the film is how the various indelible traumas that the characters suffer, and the particularity of it relative to them, prevents them from seeing the broader picture. One of the best gags in the film is the mercenaries exponential lowering of the treasure split, which by extension places an explicit value on the people and their desires in play. The predatory security guard is offed immediately and to no protest by the rest of the group, and Chambers is left to die, as helping her would be too risky with the only one protesting being her partner. Then, Scott Ward's daughter went rogue, and suddenly the whole mission's parameters have changed. The film repeatedly telegraphs that Tanaka's henchmen is going to screw them over, so the only question left is, why? And the reveal is the privatization of zombie technology. The coyote feels intense empathy with the refugees, to the point where she makes a deal with the devil to secure their freedom; but she doesn't take the next step and consider refugees of the future who will continue to suffer around the world after Tanaka's henchmen reveals their ultimate plan.
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May 23, 2021 02:11
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:In addition, apparently the container in the opening sequence was labelled for shipping to Iran, so it's not that we were working on a potential bioweapon with alien help, but that we were done and already launching it off To that end: the terrifying aspect emphasized is the complete disregard for the long term implications, which is highlighted with the code-names for the transport team being the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. "Then I saw a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death, and Death’s Kingdom followed behind. They were given power over one fourth of the earth, and they could kill its people with swords, famines, diseases, and wild animals." Another gag I appreciated that was inserted for Snyder nerds was the reborn Jimmy Olsen being reused to represent the U.S. armed forces not only being uninformed of what they were getting into, but in response forcefully burying their heads in the sand to be sufficiently compliant to the highest authority of capital, what is later described by Vanderohe as the prime mover: God. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 02:53 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 02:45
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Edit ugh sorry quote not edit
KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 15:03 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 14:26
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Shageletic posted:That Snyner Snippet just seemed like he was just using a lot of words critics use without rhyme or reason. He said the movie is deconstructive and the song is very seriously straightforward and wanted to juxtapose that in the ending with the song taking center stage over his movie. Violator posted:Kind of wishing there were Predator-like smiling team member portraits during the end credits. Goofy example, but Wonder Woman doing a 100 foot drop in high heels in the temple scene was no small feat, but apparently the Zombie Queen's actress legit did the 6 foot drop with high heels repeatedly for the multiple takes. On another note, the extensive use of extreme FOV gets a bit wacky, but it's used to great effect with the Queen's introduction, which might be my favorite scene.
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May 23, 2021 15:02
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Judakel posted:Snyder continues to be unabashedly pro-life and I sort of respect him for it. Zombie fetus is a much more direct visual than zombie baby. Don't be such a tease - I imagine that you understand that dropping a take like this without elaborating at all is just cruel.
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May 24, 2021 00:30
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SlimGoodbody posted:Yeah a lot of Snyderinos are dropping it in the C+/B- range from what I've seen, I've just also seen a bit of the reflex pop up here (and tbf it's mostly from posters who I shall not explicitly name, who I have muted prior to this because of their undeniable impulse to appear in thread and say everything the man makes is flawless and if there's something you didn't like it's because there's a problem with your ability to understand or enjoy intelligent, challenging work) It's probably healthier to just talk about the film and explain why those particular "dubious justifications" are faulty, rather than getting really upset about some dastardly cadre of posters who like a film too much or whatever.
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May 24, 2021 03:52
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Comrade Fakename posted:"Edgy" was probably a sillier term than I should have used, but you're the one who was claiming that Disney wouldn't allow Snyder to include elements in his films, and I ask what these too-hot controversial inclusions are? JL doesn't have anything like that, as I mentioned it's extremely straightforward, heroes unite to fight evil, with a vague theme of regaining hope after loss. What about that is too much for the MCU? My point was that if anything, JL is too simplistic for Marvel, as most of the films have something more going on, like the afro-futurism and anti-colonialism of Black Panther or the feminist themes of Captain Marvel. You want to say that those elements are pathetically weak or compromised in those films? I won't really argue but the issue is that they're going for stuff that at least approaches controversy, unlike JL which is pretty boilerplate (though generally entertaining) until the last five minutes. The infinite bullet-train known as the production cycle of the MCU alone does not allow for a film like ZSJL to be made, speaking strictly in terms of a movie that looks like a movie. W.B. gets the press coverage for interfering with their filmmakers’ process, but the MCU skirts this by quashing them from the very beginning. Like even the O.G. of ‘TV directors hired so execs could push him around’ Joss Whedon buckled under their system. But in terms of challenging storytelling, you're correct that, in a vacuum, ZSJL is by far Snyder’s most straightforwardly triumphalist film, (Except for, as you’ve already noted, the hallucinatory visions had by the prophets) which is why it is the most well received and non-controversial of Snyder’s filmography on the aggregate. Coincidentally, most complaints almost all say that what prevents it from being a solid movie, aside from the length, are those ‘extraneous’ prophetic visions being a stain on the elegant whole. To get to the point: Snyder’s reputation as an edgy idiot superhero film maker comes from Man of Steel & Batman v Superman, so I don’t think ZSJL’s triumphalism is properly read divorced from the tripartite as Snyder’s exploration of myth through a superhero lens. In addition, Army of the Dead seems to exist as a caution against ZSJL as its nihilistic inversion. The hyper un-real shooting style of ZSJL’s nightmare visions also used in AoTD are not just restricted to the limbo area of Las Vegas, but also outside of it, as well as before things go horribly wrong. Darkseid & his crew function as the metaphor-turned-literal evil empire, as a non-controversial enemy for our heroic billionaire playboy to assemble a team against that is not to be humanized like Thanos was. As well, the narrative is driven by the hero’s inspiring personal stories that contribute to the world’s salvation. AoTD also starts with a rich dude compiling a team towards a common goal, but with ostensibly nothing at stake but their own lives. Even their heist is not really stealing from anyone, with the cash assuming the limbo state of the area, as an unregistered excess in the symbolic order. Zombies are the metaphor par excellence for the otherization manifested in the most horrible acts against humanity, and the horror twist in this film is that those zombies just might have feelings and desires of their own. It's the Alpha Alpha zombie that uses the Zeus imagery to build a myth for their people to follow and establish a ritual for turning people to their cause. He is the only figure, aside from the opening dream sequence with the circular firing mercenary team, to be shot like a superhero with the pre-requisite costume. AoTD’s narrative has the team’s personal stories repeatedly interrupt the urgent situation by rendering time itself into a kind of stasis. At the same time, those entanglements contribute to disaster, best embodied by the coyote’s intense empathy for the refugees she personally knows leading her to support the privatization of a super bio-weapon which will be utilized against some other & foreign land, out of sight and out of mind. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 18:45
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Goatstein posted:I could easily tell if the zombies I killed were monsters or people by observing if they were impossible undead killing machines but I'm different Vanderohe indicated that he was already somewhat familiar with the higher-consciousness Alpha zombies when the Coyote was explaining the concept to the team. John Wick of Dogs posted:I would have liked to see one of the alphas pick up a gun Somewhat relatedly, Vanderohe's recurrent relationship with the circular saw culminates with Zeus agreeing to a hand-to-hand fight. Intercut with this is the mercenary team using the circular saw to escape from the trap laid by Tanaka's crony where he reveals the ultimate plan. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 14:18 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 14:05
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SlimGoodbody posted:I think we have some pretty fundamental differences of opinion on whether a movie is wasting its viewers time by just making GBS threads out a bunch of random nonsense that it wants you to think is maybe tied to the plot but also "uhh ehhh maybe not idk it's not like I'm the director or anything" Why does everything need to be so plot centric? Is David Lynch the laziest director?
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May 25, 2021 21:40
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The second half of Van's statement is regarding who lies particularly outside the time loop, constructing it. The mercenaries take on this once-in-lifetime heist to escape the grinding repetition of their everyday lives, and eerily find themselves caught in another. Dieter vibes with him and offers his own thought about how the vault's entrance offers a way out of this loop - through either death or rebirth.
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May 25, 2021 22:51
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SlimGoodbody posted:ANYWAY fukken come on this is not a David Lynch project and it's silly imo to equate the carefully intentional and ubiquitous surreality of, say, Twin Peaks, with a pretty boring, average zombie movie with a couple throwaway lines/background gags that only seem to exist as a directorial shrug at best or, as mentioned above, an angle by which to snag repeat views for the algorithn. If it's the second it's smart, but it implies unfortunate things about future media if it catches on. What you specifically protested against earlier was the idea of a filmmaker throwing out things that don't directly relate to or pay off in the plot. SlimGoodbody posted:I don't know if you guys keep lolno-ing people's valid and well explained critiques, which have been frequently raised by numerous people, out of bad faith trolling or if you literally don't understand that you're constantly doing it every time anything about this director's projects come up, it's moved beyond frustrating and into the realm of anthropological fascination. Like it's literally the firmament of the thing that happens in every thread where the director comes up and then you feel slighted because everyone is accusing you of saying "if you didn't like Snyder's masterpiece it's because you weren't smart enough to understand the huge brain geniusness of it all and actually anything you think could be lacking in it is actually there and good or if it's not there it's also good and that's why it's good." But you're doing it. This is the thing, happening, currently. This notion that 'everyone is trying to declare AoTD a flawless masterpiece that detractors are too dumb to understand' is a fantasy you've constructed to prevent engagement. What you're getting so exasperated about is the basic premise of formal analysis - to try to cohere a unified vision of what the work is trying to tell you. If you want to throw your hands up and say it's all incomprehensible garbage, you're certainly free to, but it's not interesting. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 00:02
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I love this claim that Lynch's abstractness is loaded with authorial intent. What does that even mean?
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May 26, 2021 00:13
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don’t mean technologically, I mean it’s a movie where nothing matters and you can easily put a new actor with new lines in a scene they weren’t filmed in and it doesn’t matter much or affect anything. This is obscene - you're using the effectiveness of what the film-makers were able to achieve in replacing a non-protagonist character against the very film itself. On another note, Netflix is releasing a four episode series on Snyder's process behind AoTD. Here's the first, which is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_BYvI1GuXw KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 00:43 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 00:34
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:Well, is it clear that there's a reason? He turns that dipshit ICE agent immediately. Is he just waiting for, like, "physically worthy" people to get the bite? If so, then why did he bite the Queen, since she's pretty scrawny? Just to breed? But then he did go after her head, so maybe he loved her after all. He seems to be getting some kind of sadistic pleasure out of toying with the women he's got captured. Maybe it's sexual? But we already know of at least one person who escaped from there, and it was a guy--maybe Zeus is bisexual. Or on a fasted interval diet. First off, I don't get the sense that Zeus gets pleasure out of scaring those women, but that he immediately chose the rapist border security guard to turn specifically because of their ability to sense how completely repellent he was. Secondly, the actress who plays the Queen (Who built her career in stunt-work) is in exceptional shape.  Wolfsheim posted:I mean I don't think Zack Snyder is specifically doing the thing from Twin Peaks The Return where to fully get it you have to remember everything that happened in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me and the lore surrounding the show so you can get which stuff Lynch included fully, left out deliberately, left out because the actor died or wouldn't return or whatever, and left out because who cares what happened to Leo. Sure, but AoTD isn't a T.V. show, which leaves out the entirety of Lynch's filmography, KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 01:27 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 00:57
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John Wick of Dogs posted:I get the sense he is evaluating their character and worthiness cause they're going to be part of his society forever. ICE man is such a poo poo he is immediately seen to only be shambler material. I mean, he got the honor of being turned by Zeus.
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May 26, 2021 01:42
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John Wick of Dogs posted:Hmm... My reading here is that being turned into an alpha zombie is perceived by the entire group as a re-birthing process; a baptism where what you did before is purposefully wiped out. josh04 posted:oh poo poo, a zombie joke from the year 2007 Jesus - were AIDS jokes really acceptable in the 2000's? KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 02:29
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On another note: I think it's cool that a death cry kicks off the events of both the Snyder Cut & AoTD.
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May 26, 2021 22:40
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I see a lot of sadism in Zeus, but to me that's a product of the fact that he's clearly intelligent. He pulls the jaw off that soldier in the beginning, which is pretty brutal and at that point unnecessary; he seems to adopt the Zeus "persona" because he's impressed at the power of the statue, which is tied to violence and domination (the exploding helicopter in the background while he's staring at it); Coyote says that sacrificing a team member is a matter of demonstrating "subservience", which means that the psychological impact on the survivors is of some degree of importance to him too ("it's their kingdom", he's territorial); the rationale for going the rest of the way indoors, even if budgetary on a filmmaking level, is explained as not wanting to test the zombies' forbearance (and somebody pointed out earlier that Zeus is perfectly content to allow the heist on his "turf", despite knowing there's fresh meat there, so long as the crew treads carefully); there's an obvious element of intimidation with the ritual he enacts over the rapist ICE dude, admittedly perhaps also for the benefit of the other zombies in his little fiefdom (also note that he likes to ride a horse); I did read his lingering over the dismay of the captured women as somewhat pleasurable to him, though that's obviously subjective; and his duel with Van, and the way he takes his time with Kate and Greta in the hallway, perhaps have some elements of "honorable combat", but they also read as vengeful coming in the wake of the queen's death. What demarcates the difference in Zeus's behavior in those particular situations are precisely the circumstances of those situations, i.e. his relative coordinate in the position of control as well as his cultural development in building a new society. He's of course, incredibly aggressive and violent in the opening sequence, but that's as an escaped captor all alone in the world. The Alphas interaction with the mercenaries show that they desire more than pure wanton destruction. I'm not saying they don't get any enjoyment at all from violence; Zeus clearly does get something from flexing on Vanderohe, but that the intimidation factor and the need to instill fear in those captured women is separate from the primacy of enjoyment as what would define a sadist, as what is necessary for marking their territory. I'm not sure quite what you mean by him taking his sweet time with Kate and Geeta? POWELL CURES KIDS posted:The queen is physically impressive, yes, but also he's invested in her with some degree of sentiment even after she's just a severed head, and can no longer either hunt or bear him a child. It's an explanation, anyhow, and while this movie isn't explanation-focused (which I don't necessarily have a problem with) there's something to be seen there. It's possible the zombies do have some innate "sense" of people being lovely--but the only other place I really see that is with Martin getting played with by the tiger, and, well, Valentine is a cat, they do often just do that. But those are two distinct points: how they choose to turn people vs who they become as Alphas. I agree that the evidence is sparse as to their psychic ability to sense the contemptible, but that was my feeling from what is presented, considering for example, the honorable combat situation with Vanderohe. POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I just didn't find it novel enough, or compelling enough, to keep me engaged, though you can probably tell, based on all the I think you're right that those parts aren't substantial, but not so as defect. Like the soldiers discussing various conspiracy theories as to the black box they're hauling, those bits are meant to induce a level of continual conspiratorial thinking by the audience. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:However we have no idea what it's like to be an Alpha, whether it's some kind of hive-mind situation or some liberation of the id that leaves the subject so eternally grateful to Zeus that they serve his will. Again the movie simply doesn't tell us enough about the mindset of these kooks to really determine with certainty their motivations beyond "hangin' at the pool with my buds" They're also really into working out, which includes passe training disciplines like Parkour.
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May 28, 2021 00:27
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, that I like picking through movies this way. That's only my two cents on it, though. The elements are all there, and cartoonishly so, and I actually kinda like the "why the gently caress not" of the aliens, robots, and timeloops. It just didn't land enough for me.
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I'll go point by point here to keep the quotes clean. I do wanna emphasize that, despite our differing opinions on the film and our disagreements about its content, I am enjoying this conversation. We're just going off our subjective readings of Zeus' behavior, so there's obviously a lot of interpretive wiggle room. Certainly - if the tone of my writing comes off as defensive or dismissive, that isn't my intent. POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I feel like he pauses to smirk at the captive women (around an hour and 24 minutes in), but the light is dim, so taster's choice there. The significant point with both them and his showdown with Van is that there's no practical reason to intimidate them; none of these people are getting out alive, as far he's concerned. We can read his treatment both those first two soldiers and Van as vengeful, but there's no immediately obvious purpose to lingering over Geeta and the other captives. He doesn't know the queen is dead yet. He could just bite all three and bounce. There's no "need" to intimidate them. The power display of demanding a sacrifice serves a function: The survivors can warn the other humans outside of Vegas that this place is scary to gently caress with, and you might wanna stay out. But he clearly doesn't care if there are even other zombies around to witness him brutalizing the humans that aren't going anywhere. Why? Does he bite Dieter once he's got him alone, or just pull his jaw off or some poo poo? And if the moral character of the human victims has some significance in whether they become alphas, why does Valentine chomp Martin's brains out? If "being a cocksucker" determines what kind of zombie you become, why kill Noted Fuckbag Martin? He doesn't even have the queen's head on him, and Valentine seems like a good soldier. And a bit of a sadist themselves, frankly. If I remember the scene correctly, Zeus turns up the intimidation as the women are resisting his effort to take one of them. If cruelty is the point, why not break a couple of their bones? Yes, he could conceivably turn all three of them to end their misery, but there is an importance to their ritual, whether physically or culturally. Presumably Geeta and the other two women did not pay proper tribute, and so they are perceived as not recognizing their rule. For Martin’s gruesome end, this occurs after the group perceivably broke their truce. It’s not that I think they get no enjoyment out of violence, but that it’s not what is driving their actions first and foremost. I did not perceive the hallway fight with Kate as him throwing away his people’s lives, as he could just tell them to stand down if all he wanted was to torture those women, but I admit I don’t remember the scene that well. POWELL CURES KIDS posted:The violence Zeus uses in his initial escape isn't necessarily unreasonable--he's getting out of captivity, and he's understandably pissed about being locked up--but there's a notable contrast in how he handles the soldiers shooting at him on the road and the way he handles the two up in the bushes. Under direct fire, he goes for quick kills; he basically uses zombie kung-fu to neutralize those guys as fast as possible, because he recognizes that he's in danger. But he's got time to deal with the final two bozos that got away, and how he uses that time is significant. One effectively renders himself defenseless, and Zeus puts the other on his back easily. He's not in immediate peril...so he decides to pull off the second guy's jaw, which seems painful and unnecessary, given that we already know he can instagib these dudes. He has some instinctive understanding of the significance of biting people, specifically, so he's intentionally reduced the effectiveness of one his "troops" here. Why? What's he gain, other than the pleasure of hurting someone? The hyper-violence is important in reconciling the film’s blurring of the ‘zombie as reification of the monstrous Other’ line with the reveal of them as intelligent beings with desires and a culture of their own. And with that intelligence, comes responsibility for their actions. That the zombies are depicted committing ‘unnecessary’ acts of violence is pointedly contrasted with humanity ‘Just doing what’s necessary’. Of course the scene with Zeus tearing apart that soldier’s jaw is over-the-top gore typical of the genre, but this is contrasted with those innocent soldiers just doing their job - that is assisting in the utilization of a super bio-weapon against the U.S.’s enemy nation-state. The decision to drop a nuclear bomb on Las Vegas is a cold and calculated necessity, Martin had to cut the Queen’s head off, it’s just his job, but Valentine’s brutality is going too far because there’s too much enjoyment being had. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 16:10 on May 28, 2021 |
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May 28, 2021 16:05
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Kill Zach & marry Zachary - Zack is the man you wanna gently caress.
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May 28, 2021 23:42
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Piell posted:What about Zak That's not a real person, idiot.
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May 28, 2021 23:50
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Mooseontheloose posted:I just watched in and had a couple thoughts. To preface I like some Zack Synder movies, like Dawn and Man of Steel (which is...interesting if not great?), this is to say I am pretty neutral on him as a director: Could you elaborate on the "Extreme nihilism" in Snyder's filmography? For my money, the only two films that I perceive as nihilistic are Dawn & Army of the Dead, which are more due to the genre conventions being dealt with than anything extreme he's added to the mix. Even in that space, Dawn of the Dead is relatively uplifting - there's not much of the human characters screwing each other over typical of post-apocalyptic media for the audience to perversely enjoy, embodied by the general consternation over the primacy of the 'Save the dog' narrative. The notable exceptions are the black father grieving over losing his partner & child (Which isn't all that enjoyable), and the rich bourgeois rear end in a top hat getting his comeuppance (Which, as a common thread throughout Snyder's filmography, is pretty enjoyable). Army of the Dead's presentation of the sympathetic zombies is contrasted with the U.S. government's attempt to eradicate the 'exogenous corruption' of their own city resulting in the flow of capital to propagate the zombie plague to the global south; specifically a critical center of global financialization. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 22:10 on May 30, 2021 |
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May 30, 2021 21:53
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2house2fly posted:If the genre conventions are nihilistic then wanting to make a movie in that genre suggests an inclination towards nihilism in itself. There's also Suckerpunch, whose downer ending as I recall is a studio-enforced happier alternative to what Snyder wanted I disagree, because if your intent is to 'redeem' that genre, than that work should be taken on its own terms. As far as Sucker Punch, from what I understand, the studio mandated stuff was to eliminate the high-roller fantasy sequence, which was more to do with removing uncomfortable material than producing a happy ending, as well as the extensive voice-overs by Sweet Pea explaining the movie to the audience. If I missed something from the production rumors, I'd be interested to know.
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May 30, 2021 22:20
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ozmunkeh posted:All the parts you loved, whatever they may have been. I'm so sorry for your poor memory ability that prevents basic engagement. Regardless, I hope you remember that I love you.
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May 31, 2021 01:49
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Why do you even have to perpetuate genre conventions? And how do you define them? "Zombie movies are nihilistic" seems to based on just one specific type of zombie movie. What I mean is that because the genre is almost entirely deconstruction, via the exploration of the collapse of civilization from within, I can see how the films as such can be read as nihilistic. To be clear, I don't think they inherently are. I brought it up because I was trying to understand this notion of Snyder as an extremely nihilistic film-maker.
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May 31, 2021 15:14
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CelticPredator posted:Both Zombieland movies are pretty upbeat A Buttery Pastry posted:The Resident Evil movies are also somewhat hopeful I feel*, despite the whole apocalypse thing, and Korean movies/series seem to treat zombies more as a trial for the characters to overcome as opposed to a physical manifestation of the final breakdown of society. Which despite being potentially very sad, doesn't end on the note of "And things are only gonna get worse from here". But nihilism isn't just something being dour or depressing - it's about a collapse of meaning with nothing to replace it. Although I haven't seen those films you've listed so you can tell me if I'm way off, but take Nolan's Batman trilogy for example: ostensibly it has a happy ending with Batman sacrificing himself to save Gotham as well as Bruce Wayne being able to live in peace. But the films started with the problem of rampant economic inequality which generated a black market of corruption that permeated through nearly every institutional level of a major city in the richest empire in history. At the end, Gotham's elite erect a Batman statue and we're shown benevolent acts of philanthropy, but all those put in prison by Two-Face are back on the street with nowhere to go and it's decidedly unclear that anything at all is going to be done to address the social stratification, or if the ruling class will double down on austerity as punishment for the underclass's uprising. But no one really calls these films even mildly nihilistic. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 12:46
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:'Edgily depressing' is nihilism. That why the word is used, and we can accurately describe characters like The Punisher as nihilistic. However, there are two varieties of nihilism. The 'edgily depressing' version is what Nietzche would refer to as passive nihilism, whereas deconstruction - as Snyder is engaged with in this film - is actively nihilistic. Its goal is to interrogate master-signifiers like 'human' and 'american', and so-forth. Like, what do you mean by that? Isn't this distinction one of content v form? Like the passive nihilism example of The Punisher is identified directly by a subgroup of police officers/military soldiers which would constitute, for them, active nihilism?
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Jun 2, 2021 02:23
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I don’t believe either of those would be active nihilism, though I’m not sure what you mean with the latter example. (That the police using the logo aren’t necessarily depressed?) I was trying to work out the concepts for myself with respect to the subjective/objective distinction, which is likely why my question was confusing. Kind of moot now, but I wasn't referring to depression as such, but more of an existential resignation that I thought would be more constitutive of passive than active nihilism. So the police officer who identifies with the idea that the 'pervasive soft-hearted liberal spirit', is causing society's downfall, which the individual must take into their own hands with extreme prejudice. But this doesn't properly account for the subject's relation to the status quo.
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Jun 2, 2021 13:48
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Guy A. Person posted:There's still a potentially compelling question of why they left Geeta and the others alive, but the fact is that if the above was part of Zeus's plan/methods there would probably be evidence of it elsewhere: it's not like Geeta and her friends are the first living women the zombies have come across this entire time. The alpha 'turning' ritual is an individual affair which with a group can take multiple days to complete. The insinuation of sexual violence is decidedly kept within human territory - the border security guard, and Martin harassing Chambers and provocatively mounting the alpha queen.
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Jun 7, 2021 17:37
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Again, it’s good not to get caught up in franchise thinking. You don’t need to show the dried zombies getting rehydrated, when it’s just a lead-up to the hibernating zombies that appear shortly afterwards. Additionally, our heroes unexpectedly find in their once fearsome combatants an unsettling reflection of their own post-war stasis hinted at earlier in the seamless transition from a bombed out Las Vegas to the establishing shot of the diner. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 11, 2021 |
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Jun 11, 2021 13:41
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It feels weirdly retro since we're all stuck in a time loop.
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Jun 22, 2021 20:19
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McCloud posted:Just a reminder, Army of Thieves, a film set during the outbreak of the zombie-virus in New Vegas, is going to be released on Netflix on October 29th. Directed by Mathias Schweighöfer and produced by the Snyders, it focuses on the safe-cracker (lol) Deiter being recruited into a heist team to try and crack the siblings to the Gotdammarung safe we see in Army of the dead. Looks neat. Doing a prequel spinoff propelled by the financial instability rooted in the prior film's outbreak event is some pretty inspired franchise thinking.
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Oct 25, 2021 17:45
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