The post Zack Snyder reveals playlist of his favorite movies on HBO Max appeared first on Game News.
]]>The director – who recently released his version of Justice League – put together a video discussing some of the films, as well as outlining the whole list of pictures. In it, he breaks down things like what makes Seven Samurai special, and how Mad Max: Fury Road shines for its action-packed narrative. You can check out both the full video and broken out list below – and see if you can spot the sneaky TV show that made the cut.
HBO Max has labeled the creation a “watchlist of Snyder’s favorite titles”. Titles span from the ’50s and into the last decade and feature everything from Hollywood classics to modern masterpieces. You can check out the director’s full list below, and you can view all the content in full from your HBO Max account. (Check out the best HBO Max prices if you don’t have one.)
For more from Snyder, be sure to read our pieces on what the filmmaker wanted to do with Justice League 2, and our deep dive into every Justice League Easter egg.
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]]>The post Justice League set picture has Zack Snyder working on Deathstroke storyboards appeared first on Game News.
]]>Now Zack Snyder is getting in on the act, taking to Twitter to share a photo of himself working on storyboards for a Deathstroke sequence…while wearing Batfleck’s gauntlet.
Check it out below…
#JusticeLeague #Cosplay pic.twitter.com/JwzoevN2HISeptember 29, 2016
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.@ZackSnyder posts new behind-the-scenes pic. And with a li’l bit of photoshop and enhancements, appear to be Deathstroke on the storyboard. pic.twitter.com/XsG1kzYZ6dSeptember 29, 2016
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Exactly who Deathstroke is conversing with in that storyboard isn’t made clear – although smart money says it’s Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor – and while it would be fun to see Slade Wilson confront the Justice League it’s more likely that his appearance will sow the seeds for Affleck’s solo Batman movie. In any case, it’ll be good to get an early look at Manganiello’s character in action.
Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Mamoa, J.K. Simmons, Amber Heard, Ezra Miller, and Ray Fisher, Justice League is currently scheduled for a November 17, 2017 release.
Images: Zack Snyder
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]]>The post 300: Rise Of An Empire review appeared first on Game News.
]]>The moviemakers clearly hope so, pitching Rise Of An Empire as the putative second chapter in an ongoing saga with more than one field of adjacent activity. Turns out, you see, that the Battle of Thermopylae was not the only skirmish in Greece around 480 BC.
There was also a little dust-up in the Aegean between the Athenian fleet and the Persian navy, an episode that Empire paints as the watery equivalent of King Leonidas’ ill-fated last stand. The challenge for Noam Murro’s film, then, is to engage us in side-quel shenanigans in which the stars from the first movie barely feature, if at all. Hey, it worked for The Bourne Legacy (opens in new tab) … until people saw it.
Interestingly, though, Empire strives to make a virtue of its second-banana status by making its entire story one of inadequacy and belittlement. From the off, Greek general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) is presented as Leonidas’ inferior, a blue-cloaked upstart next to his red-mantled overlord. (“You’ve come a long way to stroke your cock while real men train!” sneers Lena Headey’s Queen Gorgo when he comes to Sparta in the hope of brokering a pan-Grecian alliance against the invading Persian forces.)
Sparta, we’re told, is the “birthplace of the world’s greatest warriors”, as opposed to Athens, the home of namby-pamby democracy and senators bickering over the correct course of action. Not only that, but Themistocles also faces being soundly whipped by his Persian opposite number: Eva Green’s vengeance-crazed Artemisia, a woman with more balls than a dozen Athenian codpieces and an armada large enough to make even the hardest soldier shrivel.
“Your barge and you are quite impressive!” says Stapleton during a pre-battle pow-wow with Green that predictably results in some hanky-panky. Even here, alas, he comes up short, further pressing home Rise ’s sneaky subtext of impotent frustration.
What’s a Greek to do? Why, slice and dice his enemies of course, something Murro strikingly facilitates via a wealth of epic fight scenes that see computer-enhanced plasma spurt from every yawning wound and noggins separate from torsos in operatic slo-mo. Here, at last, is something Themistocles does know how to do. Even Artemisia is impressed: “You fight much harder than you fuck!”
In this context it sort of makes sense that Australian hunk Stapleton is a charisma-free blank whom Green upstages with consummate ease. Even with her involved, though, it is hard not to feel we’ve been saddled with the B-team, for all Headey’s reams of voiceover and a backstory flashback explaining the genesis of Rodrigo Santoro’s god-king Xerxes.
OK, so there are cameos from David Wenham’s one-eyed warrior Dilios and Andrew Tiernan’s two-faced hunchback Ephialtes. But there’s a huge Butler-shaped hole where a leading man should be, something a few inserts of the bearded lug can’t hope to make up for.
It’s a shortfall that Murro can’t quite overcome. But he has a good go anyway, taking the first pic’s testoster-toned aesthetic and giving it a new home on CGI seas that, if nothing else, will help pave the way for Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Indeed, the maritime melees are by far Empire ’s strongest suit.
The crunching collisions between Stapleton’s nimble wooden vessels and Green’s hulking behemoths are both the best justification for the movie’s 3D conversion and the most fitting accompaniment to Junkie XL’s thunderous, bombastic score. There’s even a nod to From Russia With Love (opens in new tab) , former Bond girl Green cleverly using oil at one point to turn the ocean around Stapleton’s ships into a combustible death-trap.
Throw in an impressive tableau of Athens in flames and some wholly gratuitous nudity (male and female) and there’s more than enough to keep you entertained and diverted. At no point, though, do we get the outlandish, game-changing barminess of Snyder’s original, something you’d have thought he’d try to instill as the film’s co-writer and co-producer. Empire does what you expect but little more, exploiting 300 (opens in new tab) ’s strengths without ever minting new ones. All in all, you’re left with a sneaking suspicion that this ship has already sailed.
Just as bloody yet much more conventional, 300 #2 offers splashy thrills aplenty but fails to make a watertight case for its own existence. Green, however, ensures it stays afloat.
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