6. Zack Snyder Slows Everything Down... Just Before He Speeds It Up
For a guy who makes action movies, Zack Snyder sure is remembered more for his slow motion than his speed and economy of screentime. From his feature film debut - the first in a long line of derivative products - Dawn Of The Dead introduced Snyder's signature slo-mo ramping shots that were perfected in his macho-but-definitely-not-gay-even-though-we're-all-basically-naked-and-yelling "historical" fiction 300 and became more and more prominent with every subsequent film, from the agonisingly stilted and overly stylised leathery superhero action and boning of Watchmen to the uncomfortably unironic adolescent imaginings of Sucker Punch and the slightly more wholesome owl-on-owl warfare of Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole. Snyder has valued style over substance in every film he's made, crafting inarguably pretty images that unfortunately remain hollow and devoid of any discernible emotion other than "holy shit, look how cool Superman punching this guy through a highly-populated building looks!" There are approximations of innocence and at the very least nostalgia in Man Of Steel's flashback sequences, but Snyder's attempts to remind us of Clark Kent's mostly grounded, human upbringing ultimately serve to undercut the callous destruction and murder Supes is a party to in the remainder of that film. Though it could have been worse; Snyder could have written the film and we might have ended up with a teenage Lois Lane with a penchant for schoolgirl clothes, katanas and an unhealthy fixation with strange, older men...