My favourite film directors, in no particular order, are Terry Gilliam, James Cameron, Michael Bay, Danny Boyle, John Woo, Tony Scott, and Ridley Scott.
Zack Snyder is one of those directors I should love, he creates big, bold movies that are audacious, and which others have said are unfilmable. He has a style which is undeniable, and the trailers for his films are second to none.
Yet there is only one Zack Snyder movie I actually like. The 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.
He is incredible at capturing scenes from comics and graphic novels and reinventing them for film. Unfortunately his biggest strength is also his biggest weakness. Snyder doesn’t have the ability to tie all of the scenes together into a cohesive narrative. He creates characters that are two dimensional, and stories that don’t stand up to much scrutiny. Worst of all he has a fascination with violence, and has fetishized it to such a degree that it quickly loses its impact.
This amazing YouTube analysis of Watchmen does a great job of pointing out exactly the flaws that I find in all of Zack Snyder’s work.