Zack Snyder’s favourite movies of all time: “It feels uncompromising”
For many film lovers, and especially for fans of certain comic book/superhero movies, Mr Zack Snyder is pretty much untouchable. The online demand that led to the ‘Snyder cut’ release of the much-maligned Justice League that he originally directed back in 2017 was proof of that. He has a legion of fans who get very, very excited about anything he sits at the helm of.
He kicked things off in 2004 with his remake of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, before he really arrived with his assault-on-the-senses, blood covering the screen, Gerard Butler screaming and using a spear a lot, epic action flick 300. And it was that movie that seemed to designate Snyder as Hollywood’s pick when it came to comic book adaptations, with the Green Bay-born director then stepping up to take on 2009’s Watchmen—the sprawling, near three-hour long movie based on Alan Moore’s screenplay penned back in the 1980s that was initially thought unfilmable.
It was very much not a film for kids, thematically, with Snyder’s now trademark violence littering the movie, and although many praised the ambition of making it, the mixed reviews and long runtime meant it only just broke even at the box office.
However, his superhero obsession was far from over, and he was handed the ropes for Man of Steel, which was the Superman reboot that launched the DC Extended Universe and signalled a much moodier feel for the previously fairly camp cape-clad Clark Kent. He then helmed a follow-up a few years later before the aforementioned Justice League opened to poor initial reviews.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, given the fervour of the fandom, Snyder has since moved away from comic books, although he has said he would return if James Gunn asked him to faithfully adapt Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, and instead will shortly be producing a movie about the UFC with input from founder Dana White.
The filmmaker himself, of course, is a renowned film buff (for one thing, he was an old classmate of Michael Bay), and when grilled on his favourite slices of celluloid, he came up with a very varied selection that spans space operas, musicals and the outright surreal.
Kicking off with the medieval fantasy romp Excalibur from 1981, Snyder says the Helen Mirren King Arthur adventure sums up how to do Knights of the Round Table right, explaining, “To this day, I think John Boorman’s film is the perfect meeting of movies and mythology”. Meanwhile, inspiration for his trademark cutthroat style may well be found in the 1981 Mad Max sequel, The Road Warrior, directed by George Miller and featuring Mel Gibson, about which he notes, “The first Mad Max sequel is violent and sophisticated. It feels uncompromising”.
Another movie that is certainly uncompromising is the notorious Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange, from a decade earlier. Banned in the UK for many years, it was an unhinged exposé of young sociopathic men’s behaviour in a dystopian Britain. Snyder is a fan, though, calling it “shockingly unapologetic”. Controversial it certainly was, and that label can also be applied to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, an ’80s surrealist drama that was explicit for the time and shot with the director’s usual strangeness. Snyder considers, “Lynch’s classic is one of those movies that never goes where you expect and conjures a perfectly unique world”.
The brilliant RoboCop from 1987 is an evident influence for its gratuitously violent, gory and uncompromising presentation, while being shot through with humour and social commentary, Snyder describes it as “both funny and violent, and [director] Paul Verhoeven balanced it with just the right amount of satire”.
As an illustration of his depth of taste, he also selected The Searchers as one of his top choices, a 1956 western epic directed by John Ford and starring the cowboy above all others, John Wayne. He says, “It’s a film to which you always return. It has remarkable moral ambiguity for the time in which it was made. And I love the film’s rambling narrative”. Battle is a theme found in another John Boorman film beloved by Snyder in the shape of 1987’s Hope and Glory, a World War II feature about the director’s experiences in London during the conflict. Snyder notes, “A film you hope parents will show their kids. I’ve always thought this was an inspiring story about how families can persevere through war and the loss of innocence”.
The 1979 Academy Award-winning musical All That Jazz is perhaps somewhat a curveball selection that has been a big influence on Snyder, especially for his 2013 film Sucker Punch.
And finally, more fittingly at face value, the filmmaker selected the all-concuring 1977 Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope, George Lucas’ gamble that paid off spectacularly and influenced thousands of movie-makers in the process. As Snyder explains, he picks it “because I have to. You don’t include that, and you’re my age; I’d take a small issue. Really, you’re saying [Andrei] Tarkovsky, but what are you really saying? Come on”.
Zack Snyder’s favourite films
- Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981)
- The Road Warrior (George Miller, 1981)
- A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
- RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
- The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
- Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987)
- All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
- Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)
