Zack Snyder: The hardest five years of my life

Every actor, every crew member, every passer-by on every one of Zack Snyder’s movies describes him the same way: the man is like a little boy on a film set. That was never more obvious than it was while filming Army of the Dead, his Netflix zombie heist film, for which he served as his own cinematographer, running around like a mad man with a Red digital camera in hand, grabbing new inspiration where it hit him and gleefully coming up with new ways for zombies to rip some of his characters to pieces.

You don’t have to be on the casino floor in Atlantic City, where they filmed some of the movie’s best zombie fights, to see the kid in the eyes of Zack Snyder, however. Even over Zoom, as Esquire Middle East speaks to Snyder ahead of the release of his latest film, all it takes is the right question to pique his interest and the years melt away from his weathered 55 year old face and he’s 15, all toothy smiles and wide eyes as he tells you all about the zombie tiger he came up with for the film.

Snyder’s heart isn’t just on his sleeve, it’s in his camera lens.

Here’s the thing though—boyish enthusiasm is often misunderstood. It’s often taken for a blithe immaturity, a sign that you’re not taking things very seriously, or thinking very deeply. In fact, the truth about 15 year olds, and the truth about Zack Snyder, is they actually take things extremely seriously, especially the kinds of things everyone else is too jaded and ironically detached to honestly consider. And he’s tired of trying to accommodate everyone else’s cynical version of what they think people want to see.

“The lesson I’ve learned over the last five years is you really have to just do what you love. You really have to make the movie you love,” Snyder says.

“It takes a lot out of you when you work for three years on a thing and then see it destroyed. That’s big, and that’s hard for anybody, as you can imagine.”

He’s alluding to what happened the last time his youthful self-seriousness came up against the world of market-testing corporations, when his epic saga that brought the world of DC Comics to life was cut short.

Back in 2017, Zack Snyder was nearing completion of Justice League, the third film in his Superman and Batman epic, following Man of Steel (2013) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). He has a cut of the film he was happy with, and thought he was sailing towards completion, when the studio started getting antsy.

The problem was this: Snyder took superheroes too seriously for them. Why couldn’t he be more like Marvel, they thought, why couldn’t he make light and breezy action comedies that played in other genres with a sprinkling of capes and superpowers here and there? Why was he so intent on grandiose statements of philosophy and mythology?

Without asking him first, the studio brought in Joss Whedon, the writer and director of Marvel’s The Avengers, and asked him to lighten Snyder’s film and add some humour. They wanted to give his film the Marvel polish. Snyder wasn’t having it. He quit.

While there may still be pain in his art, his art is the only way to use that pain for something greater

“Is my job to make some pop-culture piece of candy that you eat and forget about the next day? Nah. I would rather f*** you up in a movie than make it nice and pretty for everybody,” Snyder told the New York Times recently.

You know what? Snyder is right about Marvel films. They go down to easy but they don’t stick. They’re not there for big statements, there’s little interest in giving you something to chew on. Snyder’s films always provide a lot of food for thought. Perhaps that’s why people are still arguing about Batman v. Superman five years since it was released, but the world seems to have forgotten Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier just a month after it aired.

Even if you hate Snyder’s movies, there’s no denying he’s filmmaker of genuine vision, an artist with a perspective all his own, exploring ideas that interest him rather than what he thinks an audience might want to hear. And his fans go crazy for it.

In fact, his supporters were so loud for so long rallying under the hashtag #ReleasetheSnyderCut that something remarkable happened earlier this year—Zack Snyder’s version of Justice League was finally finished and released, four years after Joss Whedon’s re-written and re-shot version underperformed in cinemas. Snyder’s version became a huge hit across the Middle East, inspiring conversation in a way that the original cut never did.

“I really do owe a debt of gratitude to the fan community who rallied behind me and helped me in a really interesting way. They don’t ask for me to change what I do as an artist, they just asked me to do it all the way. They said, ‘we want it all. Don’t hold back’,” says Snyder.

“And I think that’s a really interesting message for consumers to send to an artist. I think the big fear in Hollywood is always that fans will tell studios what they want, but the message from the fans here was to let the artists do their thing.”

Perhaps there’s a deeper reason that fans connect with Snyder so easily, beyond just the fact that he’s the man who gives their favourite caped crusaders the gravitas they think they deserve. Snyder’s films are also intensely personal, imbued with the same emotional struggles that he’s going through in his own life.

There’s another boyish quality—Snyder’s heart isn’t just on his sleeve, it’s in his camera lens.

Something unthinkable happened while Snyder was finishing Justice League, something that watching his finished cut, and even watching Army of the Dead, you can’t help but think about. During production, Snyder’s teenage daughter, Autumn, died due to a mental health struggle, a tragedy that shakes Snyder to this day.

While the finished film is dedicated to Autumn, she’s also in so much of the film itself. The movie ends with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, which also played in the film’s trailer, covered by Allison Crowe.

Several years earlier, it was Crowe who sang that same song at Autumn’s funeral.

Also in the film is the song “Distant Sky” by Nick Cave, a song that many interpret as being about the death of Cave’s son Arthur.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Snyder was in awe of Cave’s ability to tackle a similar tragedy in his work, something he couldn’t bring himself to do for a long time.

“I was suffering through a grief he was able to use his art to speak to,” Snyder said.

Those themes carry on in Army of the Dead. While the film, which stars Dave Bautista as a former zombie hunter who is tasked with putting together a crew to get money out of the safe of a Zombie-infested Las Vegas casino before an atomic bomb is dropped on the city, is full of humour and silliness, it’s also packed with more emotion than you might expect, dealing with themes of grief and loss, as well as fractured families who struggle to stay together in the face of great tragedy.

“For me, whether you’re a filmmaker, sculptor, writer, carpenter, gardener, I believe if you look deep enough, your personal mythology is reflected in the things you do. And this was just a really public version of that. Listen, I make movies. It’s what I do. So if I had been, say, a potter or maker of pool cues, or axes, I would have expressed [my grief] through that. It is going to come out,” Snyder told The Times.

Snyder’s late daughter Autumn was an artist too, who wrote about being in a battle with things from another dimension that couldn’t be seen. There’s a chance that maybe one of Snyder’s future projects will be bringing his daughter’s work to life himself.

“Absolutely. Autumn’s work is amazing, and we plan for people to read it,” he said. “It’s still too hot for us, but we want to honour it. We do have a plan and, as a family, talk about it,” he says.

As much as he’s grown, there’s still things he’s building up the strength to be able to do. This is one of them. “It’s one of those things that will take a lot of courage.”

At his new Netflix home, Snyder also had a rare thing in his push-and-pull career—total creative control. Army of the Dead was his baby from its first conception to its launch, letting him do whatever he wanted with a budget no one else would give him. Snyder is not just incorporating his own mythology into existing playgrounds, he’s building his own sandbox, grain by grain.

“What’s been really rewarding and fun is that this is a universe that I created. I know what the zombies can and can’t do. I know the canon, I created the canon. It a much more liberating sort of world to be inside of,” says Snyder.

Snyder’s world is not just about himself though, nor his own ego. His collaborators are a key element, and allowing them the space to find their own vision for a character is a key part of his philosophy.

“Working with Zack was kind of a dream, actually,” says Nora Arnezeder, who plays Lilly “The Coyote” in the film. “What I love about him is that he gives us a lot of freedom. There’s barely any marks on the ground telling us where to stand. He operates the camera and follows the actor, which gives a lot of freedom to improvise. There’s no such thing as failure in Zach’s world. He’s all about ‘if it works, it works. If it doesn’t work, let’s try something else’.”

Ana de la Reguera, who plays Cruz in the film, can’t help but think of her experience with the legendary filmmaker David Lynch when thinking about Zack, who she worked with on Twin Peaks: The Return.

“They are completely different, of course, but people adore working with them. Being the leader comes with a lot of pressure. Even then, both David and Zack are always in the best mood, and are nice to everyone. You just want to be close to them, to learn from them.” says de la Reguera.

And while so much has been written in the past on Snyder’s lack of gender and racial diversity in his films, actor Omari Hardwick knew they were making a different kind of film when he saw not only how diverse a cast Snyder had assembled, but how he was portraying them on screen.

“For me, it was the moment where there’s a hero shot for everybody. You remember, right?” says Hardwick. “That slo-mo sort of flashback with the camera going around everybody, capturing their heroic space and moment. Shout out to Zack for equally allowing the world to see women in that space. That was a moment for me that I realized we’re doing some pretty special here. He’s making everybody look like a hero,”

Where Snyder goes next is still a card that he’s holding close to his chest. He’s got one project in the offing that he can’t quite talk about just yet.

“And going forward, I have a project I’m working on, we’ll see if it comes to fruition, but I’m really excited about just trying to be as passionate and as complete in the making of things as I can.”

Snyder hasn’t forgotten about the tragedy and the hardship that he’s faced over the last five years. If anything, the main lesson that he’s learned, besides to be true to himself and his vision, is to keep pushing himself onward, to never stop moving no matter how much his muscles may tell him to stay still. While there may still be pain in his art, his art is the only way to use that pain for something greater.

“Going forward, I just have to be really active,” he says.

As Snyder continues to reignite his love for filmmaking, he’s still in a period of adjustment. The new Snyder, the emboldened Snyder, will no longer play with other people’s toys he loved doing earlier in his career. There will likely be no superheroes, no Star Wars. Snyder will now have to craft his own mythologies, backed by the most powerful fandom in the world.

Now, what worlds can one conquer with an army like that?