Some thoughts on Zack Snyder.

To me, he's always been a version of Michael Bay who wants to be taken more seriously than Michael Bay. Sometimes he's deserved it. Still, he's a tough nut to crack for me. My comparison to Michael Bay stands; but, the Michael Bay film that I regard as his worse was the film that Bay clearly wanted to be taken seriously, which is Pearl Harbor. My favorite Snyder movie is still Watchmen, and I've been defending that film from the beginning, and that's a pretty serious film for a super hero movie. Snyder has definitely taken more risks than Bay has, and I respect him for that.

One thing that Bay and Synder have always had in common is stunning visuals. Given their track records of often having thin or nonsensical stories, I've often thought that they may be more influential as cinematographers than directors.

The big difference between them over the last several years is that Snyder has started writing and serving as his own cinematographer.

I'm reminded of a Family Guy joke about James Earl Jones auditioning for the role of Darth Vader. They have him in the costume and he's pouring out of it. One of the producers says, "James, we just want you to do... the voice. "

I feel like somebody needs to say that to Zack Snyder.

His first foray into this was Army of the Dead. It wasn't a terrible movie. It's just that he was making what was essentially just a heist set in a zombie apocalypse, and he tried to turn it into Lord of the Rings. The movie is three hours long. There are all kinds of extra, odd, kinda out of place elements when it comes to zombies. Really, the zombie rules in the movie resembled the white walkers in GoT. Also, in terms of cinematography, it gave me a headache. He shot the whole thing on a fast lens and wide open. On the closeups, the actors' eyes would be in focus and their noses would be a blur.

Now, he's clearly trying to do his own Star Wars-esque saga. Once again, he's his own writer, director, and cinematographer. Once again, it doesn't even seem like he has a base of rabid fans, or even Ben Shapiro to come out and defend the movies (Ben Shapiro is the only person of whom I'm aware to defend the, "You're letting him kill Martha." line in Batman vs. Superman -- that's an indefensable decision).

His career seems to have been pulling a Shyamalan for a while. He swung for the fence early, and hit some home runs with Sucker Punch beyond a ground-rule double for me. He was the wrong choice for Man of Steel. Ya know how I feel about Batman vs. Superman. Justice League is difficult because, due to personal tragedy, he had to leave the film to an inferior director.

Still, his dip in success is easier to fix than Shymalan's or Michael Mann's. Just delegate more. Realize what and who you are as a filmmaker. First of all, go back to shooting on film. Bring back Larry Fong. Bring some better writers into the room to punch up your scripts.

Snyder is clearly a talented dude. I like most of his films better than I've liked anything from Michael Bay -- other than The Rock. He's a much better traffic cop of a director than Jar Jar Abrams. He makes a lot of good decisions and some really bad decisions.

I hope that this isn't coming off as me dissing Snyder. I've enjoyed several of his films.

What's more, I have great respect for what he's trying to do. If you've never made a movie, you have no clue how hard it is. It's not just that almost everybody who has made a movie has a story about working twenty hours days for copy , meal, and credit -- with the meals all being Domino's Pizza and having a less than fifty percent chance of getting a copy.

Even if the movie gets made, and tossed into the world, it's like a tear in the rain. It's a miracle if we get people to watch it. Once they do watch it, we can all expect people to shit on it.

In an industry flooded with movies based on other IP, a lot of movie makers are shielded from the harsh criticism. If 300 had flopped, Snyder could have passed some of the blame off to Frank Miller.

What Snyder is doing now is throwing himself into the creative meat grinder. That's hard to do.