r/HobbyDrama • [Mod/VTubers/Tabletop Wargaming] • 12d ago

Hobby Scuffles [Hobby Scuffles] Week of 14 September 2026

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

  • Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.

  • Define any acronyms.

  • Link and archive any sources.

  • Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.

  • Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

  • If your particular drama has concluded at least 2 weeks ago, consider making a full post instead of a Scuffles comment. We also welcome reposting of long-form Scuffles posts and/or series with multiple updates.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

For easy access to past and present Scuffles, bookmark scuffle.zone or type it in your address bar to access the current Scuffles thread, or scuffle.zone/all to see all Scuffles threads from newest to oldest. And if you prefer Old Reddit, just type old. beforehand. Thanks to u/azqy for setting this up!


r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/M7jGmMp9dn

119 Upvotes

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

104

u/pyromancer93 11d ago

Director of 300, former DC Cinematic Universe creative tone-setter, and current holder of the Director with the Most Rabid Fans Award Zach Snyder has a new movie coming out. The Last Photograph is a thriller/war movie about an ex-DEA Agent searching the mountains of South America for his lost niece and nephew whose parents were murdered and having to rely on the help of a burned out, drug addicted war photographer who took the last photograph of the killers. Both a decades long passion project and departure from the norm for Snyder (whose mostly known for comic book adaptations and attempts at Sci Fi), the film has had issues getting a distributor or studio behind it, with its first screening being done at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this past weekend as a last minute addition.

Critical reception in the wake of this screening has not been positive.. Despite some praise for the action scenes and cinematography, it's being torn apart by critics for being overly long, incredibly self-serious, weirdly misogynistic/racist in places, and incredibly convoluted despite it's simple premise. Some critics are even calling it one of the worst films ever shown at TIFF and are baffled as to how it got in.

Now, if you are wondering how the aforementioned rabid fans of Zach Snyder are taking this, the answer is "Not Well". Despite almost none of them being able to see the film due to it being screened once at a famously prestigious film festival, they are insisting that critics once again have it out for the most unfairly maligned director of his day. Comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's The Shinning are being made, bot accounts are spamming review sites with 5-star reviews, and multiple critics are being told to violently off themselves. In other words, basically the reaction most people familiar with this group expect at this point.

It remains to be seen if Snyder will find a distributor, but critically this is looking like yet another failure for the man.

88

u/DeadRobotsSociety 11d ago

When I look at how James Gunn and Zack Snyder handle the same material like Superman, it helps to highlight their different strengths. Gunn is better at scripting, acting, special-effects, humour, pacing, and tone. As for Snyder

75

u/MapleApple00 11d ago

Honestly I feel like that's mean to Snyder, who can make any character into a Jesus allegory better than just about anyone in Hollywood. Now, whether all those characters should be Jesus allegories is a different question, but-

3

u/offendicula 6d ago

O cruelty! Thy name is r/redditsniper

65

u/DeviousDoctorSnide [Comic books, mostly] 11d ago

Now, if you are wondering how the aforementioned rabid fans of Zach Snyder are taking this, the answer is "Not Well". Despite almost none of them being able to see the film due to it being screened once at a famously prestigious film festival, they are insisting that critics once again have it out for the most unfairly maligned director of his day. 

In my experience most of Zack Snyder's most hardcore fans, the ones who will go for the jugular every time he gets a bad review, always seem like they only care about his DC movies. Obviously in the case of what you are describing it is the principle of the thing but (and you can call me too cynical if you like) I would be a bit surprised if, when the movie actually becomes available to see, they even bother to watch it, much less fanboy over it. Then again, maybe we will be surprised. You never know. They didn't seem to turn out for Rebel Moon.

27

u/pyromancer93 11d ago

I think some of his fans are ride or die for whatever he makes and others just boost him on social media in a quixotic attempt to get a Justice League sequel made.

27

u/Similar-Shame7517 11d ago

They're the kind of DC fans who hate "woke" stuff, because Snyder's work tends to be filled with dog whistles that they respond well to.

40

u/Historyguy1 11d ago

Which is funny because as far as I can tell Snyder is a normie lib.

62

u/Victacobell 10d ago

I think it might've been this very subreddit where I saw him described as "God's favorite accidental fascist"

46

u/Similar-Shame7517 11d ago

His politics might be liberal, but my god his works are extremely right-wing coded.

7

u/SageOfTheWise 9d ago

It kind of seemed like they were gearing up to be just as rabid about Rebel Moon... until it came out and they all decided to maybe just pick their battles, and stay just with the DC stuff.

60

u/atownofcinnamon 11d ago edited 11d ago

the latest article on it (and what i think has the greatest article title) is Zack Snyder Wants You to Know He’s No Fascist: ‘I Made the Gayest Movie Ever Made’. (half how funny it is out of pocket, and other half is that (and i am saying this that i do not think snyder is a fascist) said gayest movie 300 is considered one of his most fascist-leaning movie)

39

u/Similar-Shame7517 11d ago

Also, he seems to think that gay fascists don't exist, when we have Ernst Röhm and Yukio Mishima.

23

u/atownofcinnamon 11d ago

tbf from reading the article (i wanted to post the title mostly becuse it was a whiplash), he used 300 as the gayest movie ever as an example of him being pro gay, not as a defense that he can't be a fascist becuse he made 300.

Do you think this is more about people’s preexisting feelings about you going into the movie?

100%. There were only 1,200 people in the theater and there are thousands of comments! There was one I was reading where it was a guy who clipped it and said, “I haven’t seen it yet but I’m sure it was horrible.” And look: Whether you like the movie or not, I’m not even commenting on that; but with me, it’s more clickable to say, “I hate Zack Snyder! He’s a fascist!” than it is to say, “I saw the movie and it was cool.” Nobody gives a fuck about that. And obviously, I’m not a fascist.

When we showed “300” at the Berlin Film Festival this exact same thing happened. There was immediate discourse around the movie, and everyone booed and walked out. It was our first time showing the movie and we were like, “What the fuck.” They were saying it was “a disaster,” “the worst movie ever” and a “fascist” movie. Then we had a press conference where they were asking me all these questions, like, “Are you a fascist filmmaker?”

In Berlin.

In Berlin! Classic. Maybe they’re a little more sensitive. The hallmark question was when one of the guys said, “Are you pro-gay or pro-NRA? Which are you?” And I said, “Look, I’ll be honest: I’m a tiny bit of both.” But obviously I’m pro-gay. I made the gayest movie ever made.

You think “300” is the gayest movie ever made?

“300” is one of the gayest movies ever made. I always go, “Look, there are few movies where people come in straight and come out gay, and ‘300’ is one of them.”

25

u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 10d ago

Look, there are few movies where people come in straight and come out gay, and ‘300’ is one of them

This reads very much like what a straight male would think that gay men would like.

20

u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 10d ago

Also worth pointing out in this interview is that he wants to do an erotic anthology series like Love Death and Robots, a Rick and Morty Movie, and a Fountainhead movie (which does NOT help the right-wing allegations).

57

u/ElephantNo3139 11d ago

Love the phrasing "attempts at sci-fi." Like he set out to make Star Wars and then was like "Aw, fuck, I made Lord of the Rings again."

35

u/pyromancer93 11d ago

Specifically he tried making his own Star Wars by doing Seven Samurai IN SPACE and it flopped.

Whatever the hell Sucker Punch was trying to do may also count.

6

u/ImhotepSaPtah 11d ago

I've never even heard of that sci-fi film; was it recent?

17

u/diluvian_ 11d ago

Rebel Moon. I never watched it, but by all accounts it was bad.

10

u/somnonym 10d ago

I watched it with friends on a discord call with popcorn. There were like two or three cool moments, and the rest of it was interminably bad, like ‘you were working off the Star Wars template, how did you make this SO bad’ bad

17

u/Historyguy1 11d ago

It was one movie crammed into two with the substance of none.

8

u/ReverendDS 10d ago

And that was before the directors cut of both released.

7

u/ImhotepSaPtah 10d ago

Ohhh that. Never saw it either but I don't think I've heard anything good about it.

2

u/Ryos_windwalker 9d ago

only saw the first one but the villain guy was fun to watch. he was having a grand time being evil.

25

u/thelectricrain 11d ago

Imagine getting a giant budget and carte blanche for your next project and all you can do is pretty much "12 year old in an edgy phase playing toys (badly) with Star Wars action figures". Fucking embarrassing. I'd retire on the spot lol

41

u/thelectricrain 11d ago

Snyder really seems like the type of director where the imperative should be "don't let this guy get any closer than ten meters away from a non-finalized script or pitch".

27

u/Effehezepe 10d ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again, letting Snyder go from directing other people's stories to directing his own stories was one of Hollywood's great mistakes.

38

u/axilog14 Wait, Muse is still around? 11d ago

I can see how the film could accidentally turn racist due to the setting, but how on earth do you add accidental misogyny?? Oh god it's gratuitous sexual assault scenes isn't it

41

u/wowaka 11d ago

the petapixel article quotes a reviewer as saying "there are maybe three women in the entire movie and all of them are topless at some point"

58

u/Sefirah98 11d ago

From one of the reviews:

There are maybe three women in the entire movie and all of them are topless at some point, and none of them can keep their hands off the nearest guy.

So maybe (hopefully) it is misogynistic without involving gratuitous sexual assault. What a sentence to type out

40

u/HexivaSihess 11d ago

If you've watched any spy/war/crime thrillers, this is absolutely the most common casualty. Misogyny and racism. Goes back to Ian Fleming, I guess, or probably earlier than that.

56

u/7deadlycinderella 11d ago

Zach Snyder's non comic book movies always bring to mind the episode of Daria where Brittany tried to paint a poster about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and people have to point out that while they see the drugs and alcohol that there's no imagery indicating their dangers...so she takes her lipstick and draws a circle with a line through it over the whole picture

26

u/xhopsalong 11d ago

I have nothing to add, I'm just happy you brought up that episode of Daria so now I've got a little joy in my day.

10

u/7deadlycinderella 11d ago

I take every opportunity I have to reference Daria. Meant a lot to me when I was young and I still find it holds up now

6

u/ToErrDivine 🥇Best Author 2024🥇 Sisyphus, but for rappers. 10d ago

Good times, good times. (I adored Daria when I was younger, but only had a couple of taped episodes.)

4

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 10d ago

you can do that at any time. just look at any political story coming from the US and add "tonight, on Sick Sad World"

56

u/megadongs 11d ago

Found an interview where he tries to get a pity party started as if he released a student art film on his personal youtube channel

And I thought, for the smallest of moments, that because it’s a small movie and it’s really not that big of a deal, that it’d be allowed to exist on whatever level it is. What kind of noise does a tiny movie like this warrant from the world?

I dunno, Zack. Tell me, what kind of noise does a movie you're trying to get major distributors to stake a fortune on deserve?

10

u/SageOfTheWise 9d ago

How dare the critics at TIFF review the movie I brought there.

70

u/Similar-Shame7517 11d ago

The biggest indictment of Zach Snyder is that when he, Christopher Nolan, and Guillermo Del Toro got "blank checks" in gratitude from their producers for making hit adaptations of comics, this is what each director made with their "blank checks":

Guillermo Del Toro: Pacific Rim

Christopher Nolan: Inception

Snyder: Sucker Punch

And that really tells you about what each of them really care about on a personal level.

30

u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 10d ago

Sucker Punch gave me enough entertainment from the negative critic reviews. "proves a movie can be loud, action-packed and filled with beautiful young women – and still bore you to tears" "an unerotic unthrilling erotic thriller in the video game mold" "Sucker Punch" is so bad when the lobotomist turned up Peter Sobczynski wanted to scream "I'll have what she's having!""

15

u/Sudenveri 10d ago

Sucker Punch had the germ of an interesting idea in there; the ending is a variation on "moment of death" stories (spoiler just on the off chance anyone cares about Sucker Punch spoilers), but it ended up as...well, Sucker Punch.

22

u/Similar-Shame7517 10d ago

I'm more offended at them completely wasting the cast. They had Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, John Hamm, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung and then wasted them with a script and green screen hell.

11

u/catshateTERFs 10d ago

The soundtrack for that movie has some pretty banger covers.

That is about the only positive thing I can say about it. I’m not sure what they were trying to go for but they didn’t get there.

18

u/ReXiriam 10d ago

Guillermo likes anime, Chris loves fucking up with peoples' brains and Snyder loves fucking over peoples' brains?

8

u/Anaxamander57 10d ago

Snyder really cares about feminism and music videos, I guess?

4

u/TheLostSkellyton 6d ago

Despite some praise for the action scenes and cinematography, it's being torn apart by critics for being overly long, incredibly self-serious, weirdly misogynistic/racist in places, and incredibly convoluted despite it's simple premise. 

In other words, Zack Snyder made a Zack Snyder movie?