Entertainment
James Gunn Reveals The Biggest Failure Of Zack Snyder’s Superman Movies
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Since James Gunn took the reins as the co-CEO of DC Studios, he has generally been very graceful regarding the failures of Zack Snyder and the DCEU. However, in the book Superman: The Art and Making of the Film, he admits one thing he saw as a failure of previous Superman films: the lack of color. While he didn’t mention the other man by name, it seems clear in the following excerpt that Gunn is calling out Zack Snyder, whose films like Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman were infamous for their dull and desaturated look.
A Place For Color
In the book, Gunn said, “I felt like there was a place for color, and the old-school look of fiction that had been missing from movies.” Later, he said that, “there’s just things you know we’re doing with the DCU that I think are different than what other people have done before in terms of creating an overall universe.” This was connected to his desire to make his own Superman movie feel more like Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, which had “fun and…color” as well as a “sort of Silver Age science fiction feel.”
Again, James Gunn doesn’t call out Zack Snyder by name or anything. But when he says that his colorful approach is “different than what other people” (emphasis mine) “have done before,” it’s impossible not to think about the distinctly desaturated look that the Watchmen director brought to the DCEU with movies like Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman. Incidentally, if you have any doubt that Snyder hated making colorful superhero films, look no further than the color-correcting debacle that happened after he left production of Justice League.
The Dark(er) Knight
When Joss Whedon took over directorial duties for Justice League, one of the first things he did was to lighten the very dark scenes that Snyder had already filmed. This wasn’t a wise decision, of course, as the artificially brightened scenes looked God awful (as evidenced by the Snyder Cut, which the color-hating director released a special black-and-white version of). But Whedon only brightened the colors at the urging of Warner Bros., which wanted a Justice League film much lighter (literally and metaphorically) than Snyder’s critically reviled Batman v. Superman.
In producing Superman, James Gunn basically took the opposite color approach: whereas Snyder wanted his films to look dark and gritty, Gunn wanted Superman to look bright and shiny in a way that evoked the whiz-bang futurism of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It was a generally successful approach, giving this DCU premiere film a quirky comics aesthetic unlike any other comic book movie ever made. Audiences responded in a big way, too, transforming Superman into the most successful solo Supes film to date.
Gunn is generally a class act, and he’s unlikely to ever call fellow director Zack Snyder out by name. But tucked into the humble pages of Superman: The Art and Making of the Film, Gunn indirectly acknowledged something many of us have been screaming for years: that Snyder’s dreary filmmaking is an especially bad fit for Superman, one of the most colorful and lighthearted heroes ever created. With Gunn at the helm, the DCU can hopefully keep doing something that the DCEU failed to consistently do: go up, up, and away at the box office.
