Drew Turney
Just like his ”Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice” producer Chris Nolan, Zack Snyder came from humble beginnings and spent the decade after his breakout feature climbing to the top of Hollywood. His 2004 remake of ”Dawn of the Dead” heralded the arrival of a filmmaker who knew how to take an existing and beloved name and make something special out of it.
Of course, we not only have rabid fanbases for the characters, even casual movie goers have pictures in their heads of what the DC Comics’ flagship icons are like. Giving Snyder and his team an even more uphill battle is the fact that many of us have examples of the characters fresh in our minds, whether it’s Christian Bale under Nolan, ”Smallville” on TV or even Christopher Reeve and director Richard Donner.
As the 50-year-old director tells Moviehole.net in LA, careful preparation to make the best story possible is the only protection against self doubt and haters.
Was it intimidating to take on such big names in pop culture?
Weirdly I think if we had not evolved the project the way we did it would have been a lot more intimidating. If someone had just come up to me and just said ‘hey, do you want to do a movie where Batman fights Superman I would have gone ‘okay, ease back a little bit’.
But because it evolved over time, when we did the camera test and I was looking at Batman in costume I said ‘oh shit, it’s going to happen’. But it was amazing and fun and an honour to deal with these icons.
How important is the story to the expanded franchise?
The thing that’s interesting about the process and the way it’s evolved is that having Batman fight Superman is not only ridiculous but once we’d committed to that idea it was then only that we realised that universe exists where Batman and Superman exist together.
It seems obvious in the comic book but it hadn’t existed in a movie so though it seems like an obvious notion if you’re just casually saying ‘Batman and Superman, they’re down the street from each other.
But once that idea had taken root and existed as reality it was only then that I became really obsessed. I’ve always been obsessed with the trinity being Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman in a single moment and that was what I was interested in getting into this movie. I thought it’d be a cool thing to see.
So did you have to plan for way down the track when preparing the movie?
The early conversations are what led to this Dawn of Justice subheading for the film, that we could now talk about the Justice League and where the DC Universe could now evolve from. I feel like it’s a difficult notion – especially at a studio like this that’s really filmmaker driven, project to project – it’s difficult to say ‘you’re making a movie but it’s actually connected to that guy’s movie and they’re all going to be in a great big, fun sandbox and we’re all going to play nice in it.
Which is a great thing but it’s a difficult thing to just make appear. It’s the luck and serendipitous nature of this film that’s allowed the worlds to kind of coalesce. It’s becoming a plan but it was only in that infancy that we realised ‘my gosh, this can be a thing’.
Non comic book geeks probably never realised Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne’s mothers had the same name but it’s kind of pivotal to the story.
It’s from the comics. When we were talking about that aspect of the movie and what the thing is that humanises Superman for Batman it seemed interesting to think about it in those terms, he’s basically looking at someone with a mother and it becomes different in that moment.
It’s the idea that what he’d consider an alien or this creature who couldn’t care less about humanity, that he could bring himself to a certain emotional place that would be difficult even for Batman to get to.
