Every Zack Snyder Movie, Ranked

Originally pitched to Lucasfilm as a Star Wars project and rejected, Rebel Moon was eventually sold to Netflix, which clearly had plans to capitalize off the "Snyder Cut" internet hype by initially releasing shorter cuts, to be followed by longer versions of the films down the line. That $166 million (or more) plan may have immediately backfired with the release of the critically panned Part One: A Child of Fire, which saw Snyder write, direct, and take on the role of cinematographer.

The story of besieged young farmer Kora (Sofia Boutella) taking on over-the-top savage Admiral Atticus Noble of the Empire-esque Imperium with the help of a ragtag group of rebels failed to connect. Critics complained that Snyder was spread too thin and very little of this familiar story connected. 

"Rebel Moon is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time." —Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

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After his adaptation of Watchmen both fascinated and infuriated comic-book fans, Snyder moved on to his first non-IP based film, Sucker Punch. Written by Snyder and Steve Shibuya, the film is about a group of imprisoned young women who voyage into fantasy worlds to escape the prison that is their real life. The film was widely criticized for its misogynistic depictions of women, including having the characters frequently, almost fetishistically threatened and/or abused, then exacting violent, CGI-heavy comic-book/video game-inspired revenge while wearing short skirts.

But the debate over empowerment or embarrassment hardly registered as the film barely made its budget back at the box office. Familiarly, Snyder has recently been discussing the possibility of creating an alternate cut of Sucker Punch while doing press for The Scargiver.

"Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch is what happens when a studio gives carte blanche to a filmmaker who has absolutely nothing original or even coherent to say." —Lou Lumenick, New York Post

We hardly got to know the characters in Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire and they're already back before we get a longer cut of Part One that would help us care more about their return. That said, an hour-shorter pre-Snyder Cut version of the Rebel Moon finale* has arrived on Netflix, and it looks like the first film's villain, Atticus Noble, is back from the dead and wants to destroy Kora and the rebels. Anthony Hopkins' standout sentient droid machine Jimmy (or JC-1435) also gets in on the action after being absent for long stretches of the first film.

* Or maybe not: Several new interviews (including here) reveal that Snyder hopes to make four (!) additional Rebel Moon films (in addition to the two extended cuts of Parts 1 and 2 due later this year on Netflix) … should anyone give him the money to do so.

"Marginally better than Part One, but still a weird, messy and humourless sci-fi that gives you little reason to cheer the potential continuation of this Snyderverse." -Dan Jolin, Empire

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With that title, viewers might have guessed that rather than relational superhero nuance, they were getting a punch fest. And they did. After Snyder had Superman kill brutally and indiscriminately in Man of Steel to save the day, the director really defined what the cinematic DC Comics universe would be with the joyless violence that is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film introduces Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne/Batman and Gal Gadot's Diana Prince/Wonder Woman as well as Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor (by way of Mark Zuckerberg), who orchestrates a standoff between the two title characters by kidnapping Martha Kent (Diane Lane). And there's even a plot point that involves a jar of urine!

A longer home-video version attempts to illuminate a lot of murky plot points and (spoiler) kills off beloved Daily Planet journalist Jimmy Olsen before the movie really gets going. 

"It is about as diverting as having a porcelain sink broken over your head." —A.O. Scott, The New York Times

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After Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made close to $900 million worldwide and Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman was also a more celebrated DC Comics success, it was inevitable that audiences would be served the first cinematic Justice League film. Academy Award winning screenwriter Chris Terrio (Argo) worked with Snyder to bring the anticipated team-up to life. However, the troubled production had frequent on-set rewrites, and once principal photography was done, a real-life tragedy took Snyder off of the project. Controversial writer/director Joss Whedon was brought in for a massive reshoot to complete the film for theatrical release.

Snyder's muscles and slow-mo clashed with Whedon's quippy goofiness, and the very expensive film (that added Jason Momoa's Aquaman, Ezra Miller's The Flash, and Ray Fisher's Cyborg to the DCEU) struggled with critics and underperformed at the box office compared to its predecessors. 

"Justice League's most significant shortcoming is how forgettable it all is. There's barely a moment that sticks, not a single sequence to rival the standout superhero set-pieces of recent years." —Jordan Farley, Total Film

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Zack Snyder's first comic-book adaptation was of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's acclaimed swords-and-sandals epic 300, the fictionalized telling of King Leonidas (Gerald Butler) leading 300 Spartan soldiers into battle against Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). The massively popular film was notable for several reasons: It was a pioneer in CGI set extensions and established Snyder's love of muscles and slow-motion action scenes. Though modestly acclaimed, 300 was a massive financial success, leading to a sequel 300: Rise of an Empire, which Snyder co-wrote and produced (but did not direct) seven years later. The frequent critical complaint of Snyder's emphasis of style over substance starts here. 

"Visually stunning, thoroughly belligerent and as shallow as a pygmy's paddling pool, this is a whole heap of style tinged with just a smidgen of substance." —Will Lawrence, Empire

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The owls of Ga'Hoole are not what they seem. The only fully animated movie in Snyder's filmography, Legend of the Guardians, is an adaptation of the fantasy book series by Kathryn Lasky (which today comprises around 30 books). The story of young Soren (an owl) on a search to find the Guardians of Ga'Hoole while battling the evil Pure Ones only to find that he might be a Guardian himself was a respectable family animated adventure that wasn't particularly loved or hated and was a middling success at the global box office.

"Though visually stunning and blessed with immaculate 3D work, film is fatally bogged down by tackling an essentially ridiculous premise (gladiator-attired owls fight genocide) with stony solemnity, and by subsisting on a note of sustained menace and terror in what is ostensibly a children's film." —Andrew Barker, Variety

The online outcry about the amount of material that was cut from the theatrical cut of Justice League reached a fever pitch during the pandemic. That "Snyder Cut" buzz led to the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery shelling out a reported $70 million to allow Snyder to take existing and newly shot material and realize his original vision for WBD's streaming service, HBO Max.

That vision perhaps confusingly included the film being re-cropped into a 4x3 aspect ratio, making the Justice League appear like a box on your Smart TV. Perhaps your television has become another Mother Box, the plot MacGuffin the villain, Steppenwolf, needs to collect to rule the universe. There's even a Zack Snyder's Justice League: Justice is Gray version if you prefer an even darker comic-book movie.

"Zack Snyder superhero movies are the black licorice of cinema: Those who like the taste can't understand why everyone doesn't, and those who don't like the taste grimace at the thought. And now the streaming wars and online clamor have brought us Zack Snyder's Justice League. It's four hours of black licorice." —Alonso Duralde, TheWrap

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The first film in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) is Snyder's grim take on the son of Krypton, Kal-El—a.k.a. Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent. British beefcake thespian Henry Cavill (then known for his role on Showtime's The Tudors) was cast as the titular Man of Steel. Following 2006's reboot/sequel Superman Returns, which was a sequel to Superman I and II and ignored Superman III and IV, this newer reboot was a clean slate origin story starting on planet Krypton, with Russell Crowe playing bio-dad Jor-El, Ayelet Zurer playing mother Lara, and Kevin Costner as Smallville USA's tornado bait dad Pa Kent with Diane Lane playing Martha. It then moves to the Daily Planet newspaper in NYC with Amy Adams as reporter Lois Lane and Lawrence Fishburne as boss Perry White.

Snyder, who admitted he was not a Superman fan, turned the experience into a desaturated battle of angsty good vs. shouty evil in the form of General Zod, played by Michael Shannon. 

"If every generation gets the Superman it deserves, Man of Steel suggests we've earned one utterly without wit or charm." —Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune News Service

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After the success of adapting 300, Snyder ambitiously moved on to one of the most beloved comic-book series of all time, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Snyder's adaptation, written by David Hayter (voice of Solid Snake in Metal Gear!) and Alex Tse, was viewed by many critics as a faithful recreation and some as a surface-level take on the story of aging superhero angst in an alternate 1980's. The standout was Jackie Earle Haley's portrayal of lone wolf vigilante Rorschach, a performance that was so impressive that it led to him playing Freddy Krueger in a failed A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot a year later.

Snyder's take on the seminal comic series was eventually eclipsed critically by Damon Lindelof's vastly superior 2019 HBO series sequel. 

"Director Zack Snyder races through the story, faithfully reproducing this bit of dialogue from Moore and that bit of imagery from Gibbons but never pausing to develop a vision of his own. The result is oddly hollow and disjointed; the actors moving stiffly from one overdetermined tableau to another." —Noah Berlatsky, Chicago Reader

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While Snyder was working on fulfilling his vision of Justice League with Zack Snyder's Justice League, he also entered into a relationship with the streamer of the people, Netflix, where Snyder would return to the genre that put him on the map, zombie horror. The film, which had been in development hell at Snyder's former home Warner Bros. since 2007, was finally cleared for takeoff. After an inspired opening credit sequence in which Las Vegas is shown being overrun by zombies, Army of the Dead becomes a heist movie featuring a colorful group of mercenaries led by Dave Bautista trying to steal $200 million from a besieged casino. Pivoting to a non-DC Comics narrative, Snyder lightens up a bit and even adds cinematographer to his many duties.

Later in 2021, Army of Thieves, a prequel film directed by and starring Army of the Dead's Matthias Schweighöfer showed what his character Ludwig Dieter was doing in the early days of the zombie outbreak. The Army of the Dead-verse fittingly won't die, though there is still no release date for the next project, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, an animated series that somehow connects to the Rebel Moon universe! 

"For better or worse, it's very much a Zack Snyder production: unwieldy but absorbing, awash in stilted dialogue, flimsy characters, bone-crunching violence, ridiculous-verging-on-sublime needle drops . . and have-it-both-ways political subtext." —Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

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Snyder's bold feature film debut was an ace remake of George A. Romero's 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead.Penned by James Gunn (before he too became a comic-book feature director), the remake picks up the pace and thrills with a taut and grisly movie that takes the original premise of zombies in a mall and builds upon it with the help of a fantastic cast that includes pre-auteur-era Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer, and a pre-Modern Family Ty Burrell.

Cult movie maniacs may have thought Romero's original was untouchable, but Snyder upped the chills and blood spills and announced his Hollywood arrival like a shotgun blast to a zombie-infected head. It remains his best film to date.

"Good zombie fun, the remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead is the best proof in ages that cannibalizing old material sometimes works fiendishly well." —Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times

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