Why Zack Snyder Was Fired From Justice League
3. He Never Wanted To Make Conventional Superhero Movies Anyway
Back in 2008, Zack Snyder gave an interview with Entertainment Weekly that proved precisely why he should never have been given the reins to the DCEU. He admitted back then that he wasn't actually a mainstream comic book fan; he had grown up falling in love with Heavy Metal's sex and violence and when invited to explore others, he simply wasn't interested:
"Heavy Metal magazine, so she got me a subscription. You could call it high-brow comics, but to me, that comic book was just pretty sexy! I had a buddy who tried getting me into normal comic books, but I was all like, No one is having sex or killing each other. This isnt really doing it for me. I was a little broken, that way. So when Watchmen came along, I was, This is more my scene.
That should have set off alarm bells for Warner Bros. But instead, they looked at his take on Watchmen - a post-comic book movie designed to deconstruct the genre - and decided that was the best to try and emulate Marvel's successes. Despite that being like adding salt to a meal to make it sweet.
Snyder was about difference, and he didn't want to make a conventional - and FAR more marketable - comic book movie. It wasn't his fault that Warner Bros were upset when he achieved precisely that - he'd talked about it in public, suggesting he wasn't even a fan of the genre:
The average movie audience has seen well, I cant even count the amount of superhero movies. Fantastic Four, X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man. The Marvel universe has gone nuts; were going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we're not careful. Thor, too! Were on our second Hulk movie. And Iron Man $300 million domestic box office on a second tier superhero! And not to demean Iron Man my point is that we all know about superheroes now.
Simply put, he was always the wrong man for the job.