Film director Zack Snyder visits GQ to break down his most iconic films, including '300,' 'Watchmen,' 'Man of Steel,' 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,' 'Zack Snyder's Justice League,' 'Dawn of the Dead, 'Rebel Moon' and 'Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver.'REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER releases on Netflix April 19, 2024https://www.netflix.com/RebelMoonPart2Director: Jeremy ClowneyDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Jason MaliziaTalent: Zack SnyderProducer: Kristen DeVoreLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James Pipitone; Peter BrunetteProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Meredith JudkinsCamera Operator: Oliver LukacsSound Mixer: Paul CornettProduction Assistant: Mike KritzellPost Production Supervisor: Rachael KnightPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Oh geez.
00:03 Kick out Relight.
00:04 If you can make a whole movie that looks like this.
00:07 That might be pretty cool.
00:08 That's them actually right now.
00:09 Yeah, no, I'm talking about it.
00:12 It's amazing.
00:13 It's actually my wife and I'm gonna tell her I'm getting,
00:15 I'm being interviewed right now, baby.
00:17 (upbeat music)
00:19 300.
00:22 - Give them nothing, but take from them everything.
00:29 (crowd cheering)
00:32 - The quick backstory on 300 is that
00:37 when I was pitching it around Hollywood
00:39 and finally got it to Warner Brothers,
00:43 their only sort of hesitation was that they had just made
00:46 a Sword and Sandals movie called Troy.
00:48 They were like, look, we have Brad Pitt.
00:51 So that was pretty cool.
00:52 What do you have?
00:53 And I was like, well, I have a comic book.
00:57 And I think that's cool.
00:58 It's weird.
00:59 It's not, we're not gonna shoot any of it outside.
01:02 And they were like, what?
01:04 It's a Sword and Sandals movie that takes place in Greece.
01:07 And I was like, yeah, I know.
01:07 We're gonna make it look like it's outside,
01:09 sort of, in a weird way.
01:11 It's gonna look like this comic book.
01:12 And I held it up and they were like,
01:14 I don't know if that's cool.
01:15 And I go, what if we do a little,
01:16 like let me shoot a small sequence
01:20 so I can show you what I'm talking about.
01:22 And they, semi reluctantly, but pretty,
01:27 with small enthusiasm for the artwork that we had created,
01:30 said, okay, let's see it.
01:31 I thought in my mind that if we had cuts in it
01:33 or that if it was an edited sequence,
01:36 they would assume that that would be the editing style
01:39 of the film.
01:40 And I didn't wanna sort of paint myself into a corner yet.
01:43 And so I designed it as one take,
01:45 like one continuous camera move.
01:48 The cool thing about it was that when the studio saw it,
01:51 of course, Alan Horn and Jeff Robinoff were like,
01:53 okay, this is actually nothing like we imagined.
01:57 So they were like, if we could do that,
01:58 if we could make that shot two hours,
02:02 that would be something no one's ever seen.
02:04 And I said, okay, well, yeah, that's my,
02:06 yes, we're on the same page.
02:07 And so that was really the thing
02:09 that actually made the movie get greenlit and happen.
02:12 I'm pretty straightforward when it comes to like
02:14 what I'm looking for from the sort of body image.
02:17 And that was pretty much what Frank had drawn.
02:20 I had coffee just here in Burbank with Mr. Butler.
02:25 And while I was telling him what, like, you know,
02:28 I get all animated.
02:30 So I was standing up and I was like,
02:31 and then you're like this, and then you're like,
02:33 you know, whatever.
02:33 And then he was like, that's awesome.
02:34 Like, that would be so cool.
02:36 Meeting him, I felt like, you know,
02:37 he has kind of the size and he's got the kind of like
02:42 confidence I thought is what Leonidas needed.
02:45 And he had it.
02:46 I did say like, look, you know,
02:48 the truth is the costume,
02:50 pretty much a leather bikini bottom.
02:52 And that's kind of it.
02:54 You're gonna have a cape, but you know,
02:58 other than that, that's, and some sandals and a shield,
03:02 but that's not really gonna cover you.
03:04 [soft music]
03:07 - Madness.
03:11 This is Sparta!
03:16 [explosion]
03:18 - That sequence, it's iconographic because of his delivery.
03:23 I think that was the thing that he was referring to, right?
03:25 When he's like, this is Sparta.
03:27 Like he just, he did it a couple of ways.
03:29 Then he goes, I'm just gonna try something.
03:31 And he just went completely over the top.
03:35 And I came out and I'm like, that's it.
03:36 You know, and he, I think that kind of gave him an idea
03:40 about what he was in for, for the rest of the movie.
03:42 You know, 'cause I said, look, you know,
03:44 the whole thing is larger than life.
03:45 You know, it requires a larger than life response.
03:49 And so he did rise to it pretty awesomely.
03:52 The one thing about also the kick, the actual kick itself,
03:57 the thing about it is the guy that we got
03:59 was a local guy from Montreal, the guy who gets kicked.
04:03 And he was like, I take kicks like this
04:05 in the dojo all the time.
04:07 And I was like, oh, that's awesome, okay.
04:08 'Cause it would be like one, two, three, kick, right?
04:10 I go, okay, kick him on two instead of three.
04:14 You know, so he, 'cause like on the first take,
04:16 he kinda, he knew it was coming, so he went with it.
04:19 But if you watch the take that's in the movie,
04:21 he definitely gets, definitely was not.
04:24 Watchmen.
04:27 - It's a joke.
04:31 It's all a joke.
04:32 Oh, forgive me.
04:35 - I was in post on 300.
04:41 I was working on like really the finishing touches on 300.
04:44 The studio said, your movie 300 is based on a comic book.
04:48 Have you ever heard of this comic book called Watchmen?
04:50 And I was like, have I ever heard of Watchmen?
04:52 Like, are you serious?
04:53 What kind of a crazy question is that?
04:54 And they said, oh, 'cause we own the rights to it.
04:58 Or we own part of the rights.
04:59 That was all a crazy nightmare.
05:00 But I said, yeah, I love it.
05:04 Can I, and they're like, well, we have a script.
05:06 Would you like to see it?
05:07 And I go, yeah.
05:08 So I read the script and it was very much at that time,
05:11 it was completely different from the comic book.
05:14 It was like the War on Terror.
05:16 And it was like all updated.
05:17 And like, I think Rorschach had like a dog as a sidekick
05:21 and it was all sorts of bizarro,
05:24 just stuff I was like, wait, what?
05:25 No, I go, you guys, if I do this,
05:29 I have to do as best I can to put it back to the original.
05:33 You know, set it in the 80s, you know,
05:36 Nixon's president and all that.
05:38 And they were like, what?
05:39 You know, so there was a bit of a battle there,
05:41 but I think that they kind of trusted me off 300
05:45 and they kind of understood that I sort of
05:47 maybe had an understanding of this genre and or comic book
05:52 that was unique to the group that was doing it.
05:56 The thing that sort of solidified it for me was that,
05:58 and I was kind of on the fence about doing it
06:00 'cause I really loved the graphic novel so much
06:02 that I didn't wanna fuck it up.
06:04 By the way, "Watchmen" is one of my favorite
06:06 motion picture experiences.
06:09 "Titus Sequence" itself is a lot of the stuff
06:13 that's in the graphic novel,
06:14 but in the sort of prose sections
06:16 that I pulled all that little pieces out
06:19 as well as just all this pop culture iconography
06:21 that I really thought kind of spoke to and, you know,
06:25 deconstructed what at that time
06:29 was pretty much a fledgling superhero movie genre.
06:33 The genre was doing well,
06:35 but it by no means had reached the insanity
06:38 that it would reach over the last 10 years.
06:41 When Chris Nolan and I were talking about it,
06:44 when I was gonna do "Man of Steel,"
06:46 and when we were talking about me doing "Man of Steel"
06:48 and he was saying that like, "Watchmen," you know,
06:50 in the way that it exists,
06:51 it actually is commenting on a sort of superhero
06:56 motion picture genre that hasn't evolved to the point
06:59 where it should be commented on this way,
07:01 but we thought that by the time the movies
07:04 were at that point, you know,
07:06 that "Watchmen" had been released a little too early.
07:09 I always just assumed that they were just
07:11 the toughest possible humans,
07:14 but I didn't think, I personally don't think
07:16 he has necessarily like supernatural power, you know?
07:20 But like, even when he's fighting,
07:21 like, Ozymandias is like the best humanity can get, right?
07:25 Like, Ozy's not, he catches the bullet,
07:28 and even in the graphic novel, he catches the bullet,
07:29 only because he's just like over trained himself
07:32 to this extreme.
07:34 That's my philosophy about it.
07:35 - This wasn't caused by nuclear warheads.
07:38 It was me.
07:44 - The reason I switched the squid to "Manhattan"
07:48 was for a couple reasons.
07:50 One, at the time, and I think if I had more time,
07:53 I would have included the squid,
07:55 but I didn't think I could tell the story
07:58 in the confines of three hours
08:00 and give the squid his like enough backstory
08:03 where it made sense to the audience
08:06 and didn't appear out of nowhere.
08:07 And also, I felt that there was symmetry
08:12 to pinning it on "Manhattan."
08:14 I mean, I love Jeffrey.
08:15 I made him Bruce's father in "Batman v Superman."
08:18 You know, he's just like, got this kind of
08:21 incredibly handsome, kind of rugged, good looks
08:24 that make him very masculine, you know?
08:28 And I think that, you know, for the comedian,
08:29 I really wanted that kind of, that vibe.
08:34 And I think that he really pulls it off,
08:37 but he's super nice, you know, in real life.
08:39 Super kind and not like that at all.
08:42 - The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder
08:44 will foam up around their waists,
08:47 and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout,
08:50 "Save us."
08:51 And I'll whisper, "No."
08:56 - I was a fan of the graphic novel,
08:57 and so Rorschach is, I mean, if you love "Watchmen,"
09:02 Rorschach has always been fan favorite, you know?
09:04 And Jackie Earle is like literally such a good Rorschach,
09:08 you know, and he's just,
09:09 he sent me this audition for that part.
09:13 He shot like a whole little sequence in his kitchen,
09:16 and it looked amazing.
09:17 And he was just like, "Give me back my vase!"
09:19 You know, and it was like, so, it was just so good.
09:22 I was like, okay, this guy is amazing.
09:24 And then, you know, and he had been in "Little Children"
09:26 that year, you know, that we were casting.
09:29 Patrick Wilson also.
09:30 I saw those two in that movie, and I was like,
09:32 "I want those two in my crazy,"
09:34 I know that doesn't, seems like an unlikely source
09:38 for "Watchmen," "Little Children," to, you know,
09:40 it's like a bizarro jump, but it was a cool,
09:44 they're both amazing, and they're both so good,
09:46 and they're like, I just love that casting.
09:49 Man of Steel.
09:51 - You've grown stronger here
09:54 than I ever could have imagined.
09:56 The only way to know how strong
09:58 is to keep testing your limits.
10:02 [dramatic music]
10:05 [explosion]
10:11 - We were finishing "Sucker Punch."
10:20 I got this call from Chris to say,
10:23 "Hey, what do you think of Superman as a character?"
10:25 I'm like, "What about him?"
10:28 You know, he's cool, but what about him?
10:31 He goes, "Well, I've been working with David
10:33 "on the 'Superman' movie,
10:35 "and I don't think I'm gonna do it,
10:37 "but I was gonna look for someone to do it,
10:41 "and was wondering if you'd be interested."
10:43 And I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely."
10:44 So they sent the script over, I read it in one sitting.
10:46 I said, "Yeah, it's cool.
10:49 "I'm happy to talk about it."
10:51 So then we went over to the house,
10:52 and we sat and talked, talked about,
10:54 you know, Superman through the years,
10:59 and kind of what this Man of Steel movie
11:01 could be to make him the nostalgia,
11:08 the importance of what he represented to generations,
11:13 and that that importance cannot be diminished.
11:17 He's an immigrant, you know?
11:18 It's an immigrant story in a lot of ways.
11:21 And that was the thing I really felt strongly about,
11:23 you know, that he was an outsider,
11:25 that he was looking to be accepted,
11:27 all that stuff that is really at the core of who he is.
11:31 - I let my father die because I trusted him,
11:34 because he was convinced that I had to wait,
11:38 that the world was not ready.
11:41 What do you think?
11:45 - The conversation is exactly what he says to Lois.
11:47 He says, "I let my father die to protect the idea
11:51 "that my father was trying to protect,
11:52 "the idea that I wasn't ready to be outed to the world,
11:57 "because I wasn't Superman.
11:59 "I was like a teenager that kind of like,
12:01 "I could have made a mess of it.
12:02 "I had the power to do it,
12:04 "but had I ever used my powers in those way?
12:07 "Did I know exactly how to do it?
12:09 "No, I want to save my dad, but I also trusted him,
12:12 "that his vision for what I could be
12:14 "was bigger than him or I,
12:17 "or this little incident in Kansas
12:21 "was not the thing that was going to
12:24 "sort of expose me to the world.
12:26 "And 'cause on the moment I'm exposed to the world,
12:29 "I have to be at the peaks of my powers
12:31 "because the world is not gonna sit around
12:34 "and rejoice my existence.
12:37 "That's probably not what's gonna happen."
12:38 And I think that's what Jonathan's point of view was.
12:41 The world is gonna be afraid of you,
12:43 and the world is gonna like,
12:45 there's a really good chance
12:46 you're gonna become the enemy
12:47 because you make us feel too insignificant.
12:50 And when we feel that way, we get afraid.
12:52 - If you love these people so much,
12:56 you can mourn for them.
12:59 [man grunts]
13:00 [glass shatters]
13:03 - Don't do this!
13:05 [man grunts]
13:07 Stop!
13:10 - Zod's not wrong from his point of view.
13:13 But also, there's no really room for humans
13:17 in this scenario that Zod's presenting.
13:19 And he's not gonna stop.
13:21 He wasn't gonna negotiate an outcome.
13:24 So it was either Zod or us,
13:27 and that was pretty much the game.
13:29 There was no middle ground.
13:30 Zod said he would fight until either you kill me
13:35 or I kill you.
13:36 That's the game.
13:39 But why would you put Superman in that position?
13:42 I'm like, well, if Superman can't handle that position,
13:44 then he's fake.
13:45 He's got to address the scenarios that come to him.
13:50 He can't pick and choose as you can't pick and choose.
13:54 When something is outside of your morality,
13:56 your normal morality that you can deal with,
13:58 it's like the Kobayashi Maru, right, from "Star Trek."
14:02 It's like the idea that you're presented a scenario,
14:05 a no-win scenario, and in the no-win scenario,
14:08 how do you respond?
14:10 And I think that if you can respond,
14:12 if the character can respond in a way
14:14 that solidifies his humanity, then he's stronger.
14:18 - What would "Man of Steel II" have looked like?
14:21 - Here's what happened, in my opinion.
14:24 Like, once you talk about the fact that Bruce Wayne exists
14:29 in the same world as Superman, right,
14:32 then you are into a Batman concept.
14:37 You have to finish that thought.
14:40 Now, "Man of Steel II," if you were to make it,
14:43 you know, with Brainiac or whatever you were gonna do,
14:45 which it certainly could have been, you're just,
14:49 and maybe that's it, you hold it off for a movie,
14:52 and that's possible.
14:53 I just felt like I needed to know
14:56 what Bruce's take on this was,
14:58 like Bruce's take on the near destruction of the world.
15:01 And it really depends on how important
15:03 you think Batman is in the Trinity.
15:06 'Cause the truth is, Batman can't do anything
15:08 necessarily immediately to stop Superman.
15:12 Superman was the most realistic movie I've made,
15:16 which I thought is a cool thing to think about.
15:19 Like, for me, the most grounded,
15:21 sort of naturalistic film that I've made,
15:24 and I did that on purpose,
15:26 was a movie about a guy who could fly.
15:28 Batman versus Superman.
15:31 I know the reaction was pretty like,
15:34 everyone thought it was insanity.
15:36 - Well, here I am.
15:39 - Bruce, please.
15:42 I was wrong.
15:45 You have to listen to me.
15:47 Lex wants a-
15:48 (gunshot)
15:49 (electricity crackling)
15:50 (grunting)
15:53 - 'Cause like, you know, look,
15:54 I'm a huge "Dark Knight Returns" fan, you know that.
15:57 And I needed a big Batman.
15:59 I wasn't gonna cast an actor who wasn't like, scale.
16:03 You know, like, Ben 6'4".
16:05 With the boots, he's two inches.
16:06 You know, he's like 6'6" in the boots.
16:08 You know, with the muscle suit and everything,
16:10 he looks like he weighs like, 285.
16:13 You know, he's like a gigantic presence.
16:16 And I just felt like, for me, that idea,
16:19 and I had gotten photos of him
16:22 and like, doodled the cowl on his face,
16:24 and was like, that chin is just,
16:26 you know, he's just, iconographically,
16:28 he's like, so Batman.
16:30 He's like, his most,
16:31 to me, he's the most iconographic Batman
16:34 of all the movie Batmans.
16:36 And that's what I was going for.
16:37 That's what I wanted.
16:38 I wanted the most Batman-y Batman I could find.
16:41 Because I feel like Henry is the most Superman-y Superman.
16:44 And so like, the two of those guys together,
16:47 you know, you really have like a real, in my opinion,
16:51 a very much like, comic book, come to life meeting.
16:55 When those guys go head to head,
16:57 you could rip it right out of the pages of the comic books.
16:59 - More likely than not,
17:01 these exceptional beings live among us.
17:03 The basis of our myths.
17:04 Gods among men upon our little blue planet here.
17:07 You don't have to use a silver bullet,
17:11 but if you forge one, well then,
17:14 we don't have to depend upon the kindness of monsters.
17:18 - Other than Jesse, I talked to DiCaprio.
17:20 I had lunch with him about it.
17:23 I had talked to Jesse briefly before that about it.
17:27 I had gone after him,
17:28 'cause I really thought, in my mind,
17:31 he was the most modern Lex that I could think of.
17:34 Because he's all about just outsmarting everybody.
17:37 You know, he's just,
17:39 he seems like he could be a billionaire.
17:41 You know what I mean?
17:42 'Cause he's so particular.
17:44 And I just like him.
17:45 I think he's a great actor, and I think he's incredible.
17:47 I think he's a funny guy, and he's also like,
17:51 gets the irony, he gets all the iconographic subtleties.
17:56 What I'm always trying to do,
17:58 symbolically with the performance,
18:00 or whether it be through images,
18:03 make a relationship to something else.
18:05 He gets it, and he's always doing it himself,
18:07 so it really, really works out.
18:09 [dramatic music]
18:12 [guns firing]
18:14 Even in just the first conversations I had with everybody,
18:31 it was like, we're gonna do
18:33 a quintessential Batman fight scene in this movie
18:35 that's really gonna kind of establish, in my mind,
18:39 what I wanna see from Batman when he fights.
18:41 I just really wanted to just have the most brutal,
18:46 sort of, like you really see why Batman is Batman.
18:52 And that's what the sequence was all about.
18:55 And we shot, it took like a week and a half to shoot it,
18:58 and it was the first thing we shot when we shot the movie.
19:01 We hadn't shot anything, we shot that fight.
19:04 You get to make some awesome shots,
19:05 like right out of the box, and you're just like,
19:06 okay, this is gonna be good, this is gonna be fun.
19:08 - Stop!
19:09 - Why did you say that name?
19:10 - It's his mother's name!
19:11 It's his mother's name.
19:14 - When Chris Heria and I were talking about it,
19:20 he said, "Do you know that their mothers have the same name?"
19:25 And I was like, "Oh, that's crazy,
19:26 I never thought about that."
19:28 And he goes, "Yeah, imagine that Batman sees Superman
19:32 as an alien, as a monster,
19:35 but realizes that his dead mother has the same name
19:39 as this thing that he considers non-human,
19:43 like that's gonna get him."
19:44 And I'm like, "That is gonna get him, that's amazing."
19:46 What else could he say to Batman
19:48 holding the kryptonite spear,
19:50 he's about to plunge it into his heart,
19:52 like what is he gonna say?
19:54 Like what is he gonna say to convince him
19:55 that his love of humanity is as high as Batman's?
19:59 I mean, really, Superman, kill him in a second,
20:01 like literally in a second.
20:02 So that was why, you know, I was like,
20:04 "Okay, well, he's gotta play every possible trick."
20:07 - Would you ever revisit that?
20:09 - Of course, I think Ben's an amazing Batman.
20:12 I mean, look, there's a version where,
20:14 you know, I always talk about this,
20:15 but like, you know, could we do "Dark Knight Returns,"
20:17 but with my original cast,
20:20 that's a thing that could be cool, you know,
20:21 things like that.
20:22 It's always fun to talk about.
20:24 You love your myths and you love your mythic characters.
20:26 So you have a character like Batman, right,
20:28 who is all of his things, he's his backstory,
20:31 he's his costume, he's his canon,
20:33 he's his code of ethics, you know,
20:36 all of that together make Batman.
20:37 I think in the fandom,
20:39 there's this need to enshrine those characters
20:44 and not fuck with them, you know,
20:47 which I totally get on one level.
20:49 But on the other level, for me,
20:52 I think that like, in order to understand them
20:55 and also to test them and to make them worthy
20:58 of the worship that we give them,
21:00 sometimes you have to stretch the edges of the character
21:03 to see if it can hold up to it.
21:05 And that's a thing that I've found really fascinating
21:08 and interesting and keeps me into it.
21:10 And it causes me to sometimes take the characters
21:13 to places that are a little darker than you would like,
21:17 what you would consider out of canon.
21:19 I understand canon of those characters, I promise you.
21:23 I'm not like delusional about like
21:25 what Superman and Batman can do,
21:27 but I also, I think testing them is important.
21:30 Justice League.
21:34 She begged me with her last breath
21:37 that when I killed you,
21:39 and make no mistake, I will fucking kill you.
21:43 That I do it slow.
21:45 I'm in line with that promise.
21:49 I was endeavoring to meet the studio mandate
22:02 of getting the movie down to two hours,
22:04 but I always had my director's cut
22:07 as like the thing that I knew was the actual movie.
22:09 I lost my daughter to suicide during that time,
22:12 and I really did try and stick it out as best I could,
22:16 but in the end, my family and everything that was going on
22:21 was too much, and we stepped away from the movie.
22:26 When we stepped away from the movie,
22:27 it was my impression that the movie
22:29 was close to being finished.
22:31 Famously, I've never seen the version of Justice League
22:36 that was created in my absence.
22:37 Only suffice it to say that when my wife
22:41 and Chris saw the movie, they told me never to watch it,
22:45 and that it kind of is what it is.
22:49 Once the movie came out, there was a bit of a drumbeat
22:52 among my fans that this is not the movie, right?
22:55 There's something's funky.
22:58 Once I left the movie, I really had no contact with them,
23:03 to say good or bad.
23:04 I just said nothing.
23:05 So the fans were like, "Well, there has to be a Snyder cut.
23:08 "There has to be a version of the movie
23:09 "that we're not seeing."
23:11 And look, the truth is that the fans themselves
23:15 are the ones that were responsible
23:17 with the intense groundswell that caused the studio.
23:21 Now, there was a few things, factors that happened
23:24 that made the movie real, and those were that
23:27 I'd gotten a call from the studio
23:29 when I think the pressure from the fans
23:31 was at its highest point, was like,
23:33 "What would it take to do a director's cut of Justice League?"
23:37 At the time, I think they had said,
23:38 "Look, we'll release the movie as is, in its raw form,
23:42 "in its rough cut form," the form that I kind of had it.
23:46 And I was like, "Yeah, I don't really have interest in that.
23:48 "Like, that's like what?
23:49 "Like, what's good about that?
23:51 "Like, no one wants to see that."
23:52 I said, "Would you mind if I came to Warner Brothers
23:55 "and told you what it would really take
23:58 "and what the potential of it could be?"
24:00 [dramatic music]
24:03 [gunshots]
24:07 - He's back.
24:20 - I mean, it's birth, death, and resurrection
24:23 really is what the first three movies are, you know?
24:26 In the end, they're Superman stories.
24:28 You know, I think the people get sidetracked
24:30 by Batman a little bit.
24:31 The idea that we killed Superman
24:35 was because I needed to resurrect him.
24:39 I needed him to sacrifice one more thing for humanity,
24:44 and that was himself, you know?
24:47 It wasn't just killing Zod this time, right?
24:49 It was like the stakes got higher.
24:51 And I think that in his death and resurrection,
24:56 he goes almost full circle to being kind of
25:00 what I would consider is the purest form of Superman.
25:03 He's on his way to that, right?
25:05 Because his battle with Darkseid was gonna be the battle,
25:09 the quintessential DC battle of all time,
25:13 because Superman v. Darkseid is kind of the, that's it.
25:18 You know, I don't know what else you're gonna do
25:21 after that, and we're gonna be like, "I'll quit."
25:22 You know, we talked about briefly the whiteboards
25:26 that we had put up in Dallas at the gallery
25:29 at the release of "Justice League."
25:31 You can look 'em up online.
25:33 I think they exist somewhere.
25:34 But anyway, those whiteboards, they kind of map the story
25:39 of where we were gonna go with the other two movies
25:43 that were gonna come after "Justice League."
25:45 At his peak, he was going to have to
25:49 succumb to the anti-life, be destroyed,
25:54 turn the clock back, and then get his chance
25:57 for this battle against Darkseid that would, if you will,
26:01 sort of finish his trilogy of becoming this guardian
26:06 of the planet and sort of return him to his humanity.
26:09 That was our hope.
26:10 - Ready the Armada.
26:14 We will use the old ways.
26:18 [dramatic music]
26:20 - For me, what "Justice League" would have been
26:34 very much sort of inspired by the way that "Watchmen"
26:42 in the end is a piece of popular entertainment
26:47 that depicts giant world-ending events,
26:52 but also sort of deconstructs those events
26:56 and superimposes over those events our own politics
27:01 and our own biases and everything that makes us
27:06 what we are.
27:06 In "Watchmen," anyway, it allows the superhero genre
27:09 to encapsulate the human experience
27:13 and sort of give it back to us,
27:15 and I would hope that our "Justice League" movies
27:17 would have done the same thing.
27:18 I feel like the "Justice League" movie that I got to make
27:20 was like the opening chapter in what would have been
27:24 a very much a life-affirming,
27:26 but also life-deconstructing event
27:29 where we really sort of took superheroes
27:32 and understood why.
27:33 I constantly am doing that anyway,
27:35 but I want to know the why of these superheroes
27:39 as much as anything.
27:40 - Do you feel like if you got to get off
27:41 what you wanted to get off without interference
27:44 that the superhero genre would be in a different place?
27:46 - My thing is always what can I do to tell the stories
27:51 that I want to tell, you know?
27:53 And so I don't know what my finishing sort of DC saga
27:58 would have done to the genre itself,
28:02 but I do think that on one level,
28:06 it would have delivered to DC and to those characters
28:11 the scale and the sort of operatic status that they deserve.
28:17 You know, in my opinion, the Trinity is the, that's it.
28:23 Like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, that's it.
28:26 There's a lot of other superheroes out in the world, right?
28:29 You go to anywhere in the world,
28:31 you have a shirt that says Superman, or just with the S.
28:34 Say to any kid, like, what's this?
28:36 Superman, right?
28:37 You know what I mean?
28:38 Like any kid, it doesn't matter where you are.
28:40 But, and I would say that like, you know, if you have,
28:43 I can't even think of another symbol other than Batman
28:46 that you just go like, what's this?
28:47 Even superheroes that I think are like
28:50 the most iconic superheroes in the world,
28:52 you still like go, what's this?
28:53 And they're like, ah, it's like McDonald's, you know?
28:57 It's like the, you just know it, you know?
28:59 And so I just think that I would have loved
29:02 to have let them take their place sort of in the,
29:07 you know, in pop culture where they belong.
29:11 That's what I think.
29:12 [upbeat music]
29:13 - "Dawn of the Dead."
29:14 [upbeat music]
29:16 - Honey, listen to me, you need to find a place to hide.
29:18 Can you do that?
29:19 - What do you mean?
29:19 What's going on?
29:20 - Nicole?
29:21 - Oh, here's Andy.
29:23 Oh my!
29:24 - No, tell her to get out!
29:25 - Nicole, listen to me.
29:26 - "Dawn of the Dead," which is a movie I made
29:30 with Universal and Scott Stuber.
29:32 I think they had had another director
29:33 that was gonna do the movie.
29:34 I was, by the, at that time I was a commercial director.
29:37 I turned down SWAT.
29:39 I was on SWAT and I said, no,
29:40 I wanna make an R-rated SWAT.
29:42 I want it to be hardcore.
29:44 I want it to be like 300 with machine guns.
29:46 And they were like, no, we don't want that.
29:48 So I said, okay, that's fine.
29:49 And I went back to making commercials
29:53 and I got this call from Eric Newman.
29:55 He said, hey, what do you think of "Dawn of the Dead?"
29:58 Is that zombies?
30:00 I was like, zombies are cool.
30:01 I like zombies.
30:02 And he goes, I'm gonna send you the script.
30:03 So I got this James Gunn script,
30:05 a remake of "Dawn of the Dead."
30:07 Read the script.
30:07 I was like, this has a lot of, this could be awesome.
30:10 I know exactly how to do this.
30:11 And so, you know, they said, come on in
30:14 and tell us what you wanna do.
30:17 And I went in and I did the whole thing
30:18 about running zombies and it's gonna be crazy
30:21 and they're gonna be so intense.
30:22 And before I knew it, they were like, okay, cool, go do it.
30:24 We shot it in, I think, 60 days
30:29 for 20 something million dollars.
30:31 And it was like crazy.
30:34 And it was super hard to do, but really I loved it.
30:38 And I really was like, okay, this is,
30:39 like I'd always wanted to make movies, you know?
30:41 That's why I got in the business.
30:42 And I'd been making TV commercials
30:44 for 11 years out of college.
30:46 And I just was, this was my chance.
30:49 And it was an amazing opportunity.
30:50 And I think, you know, Scott,
30:52 for seeing that I could do it, it's a fun movie.
30:54 [upbeat music]
30:56 "Rebel Moon," "Rebel Moon 2."
30:59 [dramatic music]
31:01 [gunshot]
31:05 - We're gonna have to fight.
31:11 - Part one.
31:12 The only thing I'm gonna say about that
31:14 is that the story so far, if you don't know,
31:19 the short story is it's about like a group of farmers.
31:22 They get visited by this evil empire.
31:25 They want the farmers' crops to feed their soldiers.
31:28 So the farmers decide to hire some soldiers to help them.
31:31 Bad guys find out that they're looking for some soldiers
31:34 and they ambush the heroes before they return.
31:37 And there's a big fight.
31:38 And what we think is that the good guys have won.
31:41 Now, in movie two, we come to find out
31:44 that the bad guys are coming to the village,
31:46 that the good guys, even though they're there to get paid,
31:49 they have to figure out how to mount a defense.
31:52 So the second movie is really a war movie.
31:54 It's in contrast to "Gathering the Team,"
31:58 it's really what the mission is about.
32:00 Movie two is the mission.
32:02 Why are we together?
32:04 Why do we fight?
32:05 The bad guys are coming.
32:06 We have to stand and defend this land with our lives.
32:11 And that's kind of what happens.
32:14 It's an epic conclusion.
32:16 It's really the why of movie one.
32:19 Movie one exists for movie two.
32:21 You can watch them together in a single run.
32:24 It's an incredible culmination of this insane world.
32:28 I promise it doesn't disappoint with action and insanity
32:32 at the very end.
32:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]