Only 4 Zack Snyder Movies Are Actually Good

11 hours ago 3

Published Apr 13, 2026, 8:09 PM EDT

Jeremy has more than 2400 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.

There exist strong opinions of all sorts on Zack Snyder and his filmography, and this isn't intended to be a history of Snyder and his movies – and the way people have responded to them – but it does have to be acknowledged. You will find people talking about Zack Snyder like he’s one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and then you'll find others who talk about him like he’s one of the worst. The truth is naturally somewhere in the middle, because his movies are flawed, but sometimes good. See also Michael Bay, who feels a little more aggressive with his doubling down and persistent flashings of whatever the cinematic equivalent of a middle finger is toward his detractors. Snyder seems more chill, though, and is a prominent director without a history of controversy (at the time of writing), so the passionate negative responses you sometimes get regarding his movies can be a bit strange.

That being said, some aren’t very good. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had their moments, and could be admired for how they ambitiously reworked and re-imagined iconic pop culture characters, but you had to take the good with the bad in those films (there was a decent amount of both). Justice League (2017) was more of a disaster, but Snyder didn’t finish that film, owing to stepping away from it late in production due to a family tragedy. The blame there can be laid at the feet of executives who seemed adamant on cramming an epic superhero team-up movie into just two hours, and Joss Whedon, who was hastily brought in to finish the movie and did not have the time – or skill – to do for the Justice League what he’d done for The Avengers. More recently, Snyder’s also had a pair of misfires with the two Rebel Moon movies, but if you go back further, and look at his whole track record, he’s done some good stuff. These four movies are unambiguously good, and have fairly minor problems, in the overall scheme of things. There are some other Snyder movies that can be defended, or perhaps operate in a zone between good and bad (see the sometimes fun Army of the Dead and the almost thought-provoking Sucker Punch), but if you want movies of his that are clearly good, then it’s best to stick to these four.

4 '300' (2006)

Gerard Butler as King Leonidas holding a spear in front of his army in 300

With 300, you get a lot of style and not too much substance, but that’s okay when it all looks this good and feels so distinct. People do talk about how some comic book movies, or films based on graphic novels, shy away from really feeling like comic books or graphic novels come to life, though 300 certainly doesn’t have that problem. It expands upon the very straightforward source material to the extent that the movie takes longer to watch than the comic book limited series would probably take to read. Narratively, you’ve got a very loose retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, which was fought about 2500 years ago, which is far back enough that you're probably able to get a little weird with things. 300 gets extra weird, and is almost like a fantastical/mythological movie at certain points, but it works when the style is the way it is.

There's also something to be said about how a fair few lines throughout 300 have proved memorable/iconic.

The most important thing is that 300 feels like an epic, even if it’s got a shorter runtime than most genuine epics, and that it delivers when it comes to over-the-top and visually spectacular action. There’s some great imagery throughout, and even if the characters and the story they're wrapped up in might not be high art or anything, some of those characters still leave an impression, and there’s also something to be said about how a fair few lines throughout 300 have proved memorable/iconic. You take a movie like this for what it is, acknowledge that it might not be much, but also keep making sure to enjoy what is offered. Turns out, that’s enough, and so there are a fair few reasons why 300 is ultimately considered one of Snyder’s better and more enduring films.

3 'Dawn of the Dead' (2004)

The cast of Dawn of the Dead 2004 (Zack Snyder) stand in the mall

In 1978, Dawn of the Dead ran after Night of the Living Dead walked. The latter, released in 1968, kind of defined what a zombie movie could and should be going forward, while Dawn of the Dead (both were directed by George A. Romero) elevated things considerably, and proved more entertaining, varied, bloody, and creative. It was about people surviving a zombie outbreak in a shopping mall. Then, in 2004, amid a resurgence in zombie movies (Shaun of the Dead also came out that year, and 28 Days Later, if it counts, was a 2002 release), Dawn of the Dead got a remake of sorts. It’s a remake that shakes up quite a bit, which was the right approach to take, as it means you can enjoy two movies, now, about survivors battling – and hiding from – zombies in a shopping mall.

The setting is what binds the two movies, mostly. The sets of characters who appear in both versions are fairly different, and there are also a lot more survivors in 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. The 1978 version, on the other hand, was really just focused on four people, at least after the chaotic opening. Speaking of openings, that’s arguably where Dawn of the Dead (2004) peaks, because it’s ferocious and just throws you into the early stages of the outbreak that reshapes all the lives it doesn’t (almost instantaneously) end. It’s probably not as good as any of the original three zombie movies George A. Romero made, but Dawn of the Dead (2004) trumps some of his subsequent ones, and it’s also a pretty easy film to recommend if you're a fan of good old-fashioned zombie films in general.

2 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' (2021)

So, when Zack Snyder stepped away from Justice League, there were concerns that the whole thing might fall apart without him, and the film not being good, once released, justified such concerns, in hindsight. Further, when the film was reworked and re-released as Zack Snyder’s Justice League, you got a genuinely good movie, and so this sense of Snyder’s vision finally being realized does provide evidence, in effect, should you want to argue he knew what he was doing all along. His vision was very much captured in the appropriately named Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a title which also pretty much establishes that the 2017 Justice League was not really Snyder’s. The main difference here is the runtime, which is pretty much doubled. You go from two hours to about four hours, so that really does make this a superhero epic in just about every way.

But then again, this film has to be about the formation of the titular team, the resurrection of Superman, and center on a sufficiently large and menacing enough threat to necessitate all those heroes coming together. Four hours end up being enough, and you get the right amount of screen time for all the important characters here… plus some screen time for characters who aren’t really important. Most of them show up near the end, after the film’s climax, and it’s that final 20 to 30 minutes of Zack Snyder’s Justice League that’s honestly a bit weak. It seems to be setting up a bunch of new stories that'll never happen, given the DC cinematic universe has moved on from the one that Snyder helped kick off, in 2013, with Man of Steel. It’s James Gunn’s now, which is interesting after Gunn wrote the screenplay for Snyder’s first feature film: Dawn of the Dead (2004). But ignoring the empty tease scenes, Zack Snyder’s Justice League works as a fittingly grand send-off for Snyder’s DCU. It’s bittersweet, because there were things about his superhero movies that really worked (and some especially good stuff in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which was a big improvement on both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), but good that Snyder’s last DC movie was a winner, for the most part.

1 'Watchmen' (2009)

The movie adaptations of Alan Moore’s works have been fairly divisive, and lots of that comes from Moore himself not really being a fan of his work being reworked, but Watchmen (2009) honestly does the source material justice. There are things that weren’t adapted, sure, but as an adaptation, it gets a lot more right than some like to give it credit for. There’s a dystopian world with an alternate history translated quite effectively from the page to the screen, and also, Watchmen is similarly skilled to 300 in feeling like it captures the look and style of what it’s based on. More narrative is carried over, too, than you might’ve been led to believe. Watchmen (2009) streamlines things a bit, and takes a few side characters out, but there’s still an effective deconstruction of superheroes and superhero stories here, in film form.

There’s also an argument to be made that Watchmen is the most ambitious Zack Snyder film yet, perhaps even more so than the (admittedly longer) Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Here was a comic book series sometimes thought to be unfilmable, and Snyder filmed it. And it was good. It was even very good, bordering on great at times. There’s not really a consensus on Watchmen, but time has, so far, been kind to it (it’s easier to appreciate how it looks and feels in the present, now that superhero stories are kind of over-saturated in cinema and on TV), and will hopefully continue to be so going forward, because Watchmen does feel like it could one day be one of those classics people agree wasn’t really understood/appreciated in its time.