Zack Snyder is walking in the footsteps of Star Wars creator George Lucas, only in reverse, with the announcement of his new project Rebel Moon. Zack Snyder quickly became a massive name for geek cinema with his Dawn of the Dead remake, an adaptation of 300, and Watchmen, but his polarizing Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made him one of the more controversial directors in Hollywood. In 2021, with the release of both the fabled Zack Snyder's Justice League, AKA the Snyder Cut, and Army of the Dead, he's mounted an impressive comeback story and is arguably at the pinnacle of his career (and still going up).
While a lot of different directors have made popular sci-fi and fantasy fare, George Lucas' name is monolithic. As the creator of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, he's been a major force in shaping blockbuster movies. Additionally, the creation of Lucasfilm, Skywalker Sound, and Industrial Light and Magic means his impact is felt by a significant percentage of movies released every year in one way or another. Zack Snyder certainly hasn't reached that level of influence just yet, but his career is starting to resemble George Lucas' in a more roundabout way.
Snyder and Lucas are both incredibly similar and completely different depending on what you compare. While George Lucas is a soft-spoken, more traditional movie geek, Snyder is more of a showman who loves riling up big crowds at Comic-Con and had fun breaking the internet with Snyder Cut teases in the years before it was released. At the same time, Snyder is a bit of a jock who can be seen bearing his muscles as he grips the camera in many set photos for his movies. Despite these differences, both directors share similar creative inspirations, work magic with a low budget, and have a reputation for working with the same tight group of collaborators on almost every movie. While Zack Snyder's career is far from over, his newest franchise makes his own journey as a director look like a mirror image of George Lucas'.
Zack Snyder and George Lucas Both Hated Working With Hollywood Studios
The money Lucas made from Star Wars was invested into the creation of Lucasfilm, which he envisioned as a company that could enable filmmakers to tell stories unhindered by the creative restraints of the big studios. He'd been at odds with mainstream Hollywood a number of times, and even withdrew from the DGA, the WGA, and the Motion Picture Association over disputes with not having opening credits in The Empire Strikes Back, and Lucasfilm could give him the backing he needed to continue to make movies with as much creative independence as possible. It's ironic, then, that Lucas ended up selling Lucasfilm to Disney, where more than half the new movies have seen significant rewrites and reshoots, two have had their directors replaced, and many other creatives have exited projects (or had their projects go into an unofficial eternal limbo).
Meanwhile, Zack Snyder was far friendlier with studios earlier in his career (as they were with him) back in the days of 300 and Watchmen. He says the first film he really felt the influence of the studio was Sucker Punch. Christopher Nolan helped keep the studio off Snyder's back as a producer on Man of Steel, but with Batman v Superman and especially (famously) Justice League, things got more strained. Now, after the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, Snyder has been a lot more open, saying the studio "tortured" him over Justice League production, and even went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he took a few comedic jabs, including saying (after a prompt by Colbert) "suck it, Warner Bros."
George Lucas and Zack Snyder Both Outraged Fans With Their Creative Decisions
One of the things Snyder and Lucas have in common is their ability to draw the ire of fans. The discourse over the prequels may be never-ending, but the bottom line is George Lucas's Star Wars created a fandom so big and passionate that his unexpected creative decisions drew unforgiving criticism from a significant portion of fans. The only movies to gain anything even comparably as polarizing (although still not rising quite to that level) are Zack Snyder's DC movies, with both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice being a regular source of debate for everything from the tone to casting to character decisions, and, of course, the Martha moment. Then, of course, there's the Snyder Cut. Despite the insistence that WB and DC were distancing from Snyder, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were still such hot topics of discussion (for both fans and haters) that it was impossible to silence cries for the Snyder Cut, which eventually saw release on HBO Max.
Both directors were interested in charting new territory and telling new kinds of stories, but they were working with precious properties and audiences were invested in these worlds and characters. In Lucas' case, it was a world totally created by him, although with Snyder, he was playing in the DC sandbox, which is even older than Star Wars, with even more rigid interpretations of the characters rooted in audiences' minds. Public reception has come around on each director's respective controversial trilogy, although it seems doubtful there'll ever be consensus on either with both directors often serving as the poster child for "what went wrong" debates.
Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon Exists For the Same Reason Star Wars Does
The real irony in comparisons between Snyder and Lucas is the fact that Snyder's creative newest project is a major callback to the very creation of Star Wars. George Lucas originally set out to make a Flash Gordon movie, but when he couldn't get the rights, he instead created Star Wars, which was heavily inspired by Flash Gordon, but also taking notes from Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Akira Kurosawa, Arthurian myth, and more. As such, Star Wars is just as much a knock-off as it is something new, serving as a remixed amalgamation of all the stories that inspired Lucas into a grand space opera fantasy.
Fascinatingly, Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon has an incredibly similar origin to Lucas's first Star Wars. In early 2013, it was reported that Snyder was meeting with Lucasfilm to potentially develop a Star Wars movie taking heavy inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Like Lucas, Snyder is heavily influenced by Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, and Arthurian myth. The project died because of the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm, but now Snyder's Star Wars story is being repurposed into an original sci-fi story for Netflix instead of something taking place in the Star Wars universe, just like Lucas when he couldn't make Flash Gordon.
Given Snyder's career went from studio work to polarizing fans to making an original sci-fi/fantasy movie after he couldn't get the rights to a famous franchise, the same major arc as Lucas, only in reverse, it'll be curious to see where Snyder goes next. Lucas' pre-Star Wars career was THX-1138 and American Graffiti, which are both smaller, highly rated films, while Zack Snyder is looking to make Horse Latitudes, which could be his smallest film yet, although it's not Snyder's style to keep things small, so his inverted Lucas journey may come to an end with Rebel Moon, but it'll certainly be interesting to see what comes next (as long as he skips the Ewok Adventure and Holiday Special phase).