The Best Zack Snyder Trailers Ranked
It's not a controversial statement to say that Zack Snyder can be a polarizing filmmaker. His fans will defend him until they're blue in the face, while his detractors will liken him to cinematic cancer. Me? I'm more of a Snyder agnostic. I like some of his movies, I dislike others. But there's one positive thing I can say for sure: the man knows how to craft an image. Like many filmmakers of his generation, Snyder got his start in music videos, and that taught him how to create memorable, evocative imagery that looks, for lack of a better word, cool.
"Cool" seems to be Snyder's approach to his visuals in general — and you know what? He frequently succeeds. Even if you don't like the Snyder film you're watching, there's a good chance it'll still be loaded with cool images. Because of Snyder's penchant for visual fireworks, his movies often lend themselves to great trailers. In some cases, the trailers will end up being better than the movies themselves.
This week sees the release of Snyder's latest Netflix effort, "Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver." With that in mind, I decided to go back and look at what I consider to be his best trailers. To be clear: this isn't a complete list of trailers for all of his movies. These are just the best of the bunch, ranked.
5. Sucker Punch
One of Snyder's most controversial films, "Sucker Punch," is also one of his most visually dense. The film is loaded with fantasy worlds, big explosions, and attractive female characters wielding weapons. A box office flop, "Sucker Punch" is a movie Snyder says he wants to go back and "fix" with additional scenes. Whether or not he gets to do that someday remains to be seen. For now, we can only judge what we have, and what we have is this lengthy trailer that attempts to relay a needlessly complex story about reality, fantasy, and freedom.
The end result is mighty silly, with Scott Glenn showing up to talk about fetch-quest items the lead character (Emily Browning) has to seek out. "You will need to find five items!" Glenn says in a voice-over that sounds completely removed from the visuals. "The first is a map! Then fire, then a knife, and a key! The fifth thing is a mystery!" Oh, is it? Whatever. The hokey dialogue is secondary to the visuals, which look massive and awe-inspiring. There are so many shots of giant robots, and people firing guns, and characters jumping through the air in slow motion (Snyder loves slow motion) that it becomes overwhelming (in a good way).
4. Dawn of the Dead
The very idea of a remake of George A. Romero's classic "Dawn of the Dead" caused a wave of outrage among horror fans. Why mess with perfection? With that in mind, Zack Snyder had an uphill battle when it came to his feature debut. He was going to have to win people over, and what better way to do that than with a snazzy trailer? The trailer for Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" hooks you from the jump, showcasing a peaceful suburban neighborhood at dusk. A woman (Sarah Polley) returns home to her husband (Louis Ferreira) as the night sets in. Everything seems normal and safe ... and then the morning (or dawn, if you will) comes and all hell breaks loose.
Interestingly, a huge chunk of this trailer is made up of scenes from the film's highly memorable intro, where Polley's character Ana gets a front-row seat to the end of the world. From there, the trailer is off to the races, eventually ending up at the main location: a shopping mall under siege. There's an emphasis on action here, although there's also room for horror — like when a pregnant belly bulges with what's implied to be a zombie baby. The best part of the trailer is the ending, though, where the footage is made to look like it's burning up/disintegrating, giving way to a horde of zombies pawing at the screen. If you saw this in a theater, it would look like the projector had malfunctioned and the undead were suddenly behind the screen, ready to burst forth and take a bite out of you. This is an effective trailer, and it probably helped make the movie a box-office hit.
3. 300
"Dawn of the Dead" may have been Snyder's feature debut, but it was 2007's "300" that helped land him the "visionary director" status that would get slapped onto his trailers going forward. Adapting Frank Miller's comic, Snyder's "300" used a "digital backlot," in that the actors stood around on bluescreen sets and the scenery was added in digitally. This enabled Snyder to recreate entire panels from Miller's comic. It also gave the entire movie a unique, almost surreal visual quality that looked great in trailers. Snyder wasn't a household name when "300" arrived, but this trailer (and film) helped put him on the map.
Before anyone had even seen the movie, Gerard Butler's shouting the line "THIS. IS. SPARTA!" became iconic and quotable. It also sold the hell out of the movie, turning into a box office smash (it hauled in $456 million against a $60 million budget). Everything here looks massive, and stylish, and stunning, and, yes, cool. It's the type of trailer that makes you immediately want to see the movie. "We're in for one wild night," Butler's Leonidas says at the end of the trailer. "Hell yeah," replies everyone watching this trailer.
2. Watchmen
"Watchmen" was considered unfilmable. Zack Snyder's solution? To adapt the comic nearly panel for panel, page for page. Sadly, that didn't exactly work out — the film ultimately feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the comic, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, so iconic. No matter: the trailer was cool as hell. The footage looks dazzling, accompanied by Smashing Pumpkins' "The End is the Beginning is the End," a song originally penned for another comic book movie: "Batman & Robin."
Dark and serious, unwinking and ominous (and clearly R-rated), the "Watchmen" trailer signals itself as "not your average superhero story" from the jump. This works twofold: those unfamiliar with the comic are treated to a barrage of finely-tuned visual elements that look enticing, while those who know the comic inside and out recognize moments from the book's pages almost fetishistically recreated in live-action. The trailer proved so popular that DC needed to print 900,000 more copies of "Watchmen" to supply the sudden surge in demand. Sadly, that didn't translate to the box office, as "Watchmen" underperformed financially.
1. Man of Steel
In my humble opinion, the best "Superman" movie isn't even a movie — its the third trailer for "Man of Steel." This trailer is so well put together, so goosebump-inducing, that I was convinced Snyder had somehow made a masterpiece when I first saw it online. Then I saw the movie, which was, to be blunt, a complete dud. No matter — we'll always have this jaw-dropping trailer, which is just as effective now as it was when it dropped years ago. The emotional beats hit (Kevin Costner's voice breaking as he says "You are my son" still gets me choked up, what can I say?), the action looks stunning, and the music (courtesy of Hans Zimmer) sounds incredible when matched with the imagery. This isn't just a good Superman trailer, it's one of the best trailers of all time. Does that sound like hyperbole? Screw it, I think it's true.
The trailer paints a portrait of a Superman story about Superman finding his place in the world, all while intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) tracks his movements and provides some voice-over narration. It makes the film feel truly epic in scope and scale, going down emotional paths we might not expect. Everything here clicks: the sense of Superman's loneliness in our world, the father-and-son dynamics with both Pa Kent and Superman's birth father Jor-El (Russell Crowe), Michael Shannon's unhinged General Zod (who seems kind of boring in the finished film), the shots of Superman taking flight. It's a mini-masterpiece and hints at a fantastic movie that we never actually got to see.