10 Biggest Mistakes Zack Snyder Has Made In His Movies (So Far)
4. Hallelujah - Watchmen
This one has been discussed quite a few times, in both positive and negative lights. On one hand, one must admire Snyder for staying true to Dan Dreiberg's impotency storyline from the comic, something many directors would shy away from in a superhero film (alongside the dozen or so other touchy subjects they'd shy away from in the source material). On the other hand, the scene itself is stiflingly awkward when actually executed in the film. What more is there to say about the scene itself? The flame thrower bit is amusing on the page, but on the screen it jumps up to downright ridiculous. Using Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (a song mentioned in the original text) only makes this scene so much more silly. According to interviews with the director, he had originally intended to use a different cover of the song by Allison Crowe, but deemed it "too sexy," wanting the on-screen version to actually be a little ridiculous - a goal he quite clearly accomplished. But whatever the merits of Snyder achieving his goal are with this scene, it doesn't make the scene itself any less confusing when viewed alongside the other moments in this dark superhero drama. You know something went wrong when a scene feels like a director's cut addition in the theatrical version of the movie.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.