Zack Snyder Says 300 Is the ‘Gayest Movie Ever Made'

Zack Snyder is going viral off the heels of his latest movie, The Last Photograph, as well as his subsequent interview with Variety where he responded to the backlash against the film and made a few fascinating remarks about his previous work.

Reviews for Snyder’s The Last Photograph have been brutal. A swath of scathing opinions hit the net after its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend, where Snyder joked that the audience in attendance might be the only ones to ever see it on the silver screen — and based on critical reception to the project, that might be a legitimate possibility.

For example, IGN gave the bloody action flick a 4 out of 10, calling it a “trudging revenge saga that points to self-critique” that’s “filled with big ideas that go nowhere.” Discourse online, however, has been far more vitriolic. According to Snyder himself, users on social media have been labeling him a “fascist” and a “homophobe” in the wake of these scalding reviews.

“Look, I’m famously surrounded by a particular discourse that happens around my movies. It’s incredibly charged. 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?” he said in a September 15 interview with Variety.

“This morning, I woke up to my X feed, and the discourse is incredibly energized by this battle. It’s like there’s a war going on — instantly — and on one hand, I don’t want to say it’s cool, but it has to exist in some ways. I don’t know why. The amount of energy and the amount of vitriol I find really incredible. ‘I want to kill Zack Snyder.’ ‘Zack Snyder is a fascist.’ ‘Zack Snyder is a homophobe.’ ‘Zack Snyder is a bisexual.’ …It’s ‘homoerotic’ and ‘transphobic’ and ‘fascist’ and all these things.”

To summarize the movie without spoiling things, The Last Photograph follows Ethan Black (Stuart Martin), a former DEA agent who searches the wilds of South America for his kidnapped niece and nephew after their parents are violently killed. He’s helped by a war photographer (Fra Fee) who witnessed the killings, and what follows is a violent tale of revenge that clearly left a sour taste in some viewers’ mouths, with some arguing that the brutality toward women and children displayed in the film borders on problematic.

“First of all, I would argue that the violence toward women and men is equal and that nobody is spared — men, women, children, everybody,” Snyder said of this criticism. “The justice that’s doled out in the movie is in the same way that a hurricane doles out justice. To try and superimpose morality over it and want the violence to mean something — the meaning is that violence doesn’t work and doesn’t get anything done.

“We’re all human. I guess in my feed, and this is just what my algorithm shows me, it’s a conversation. Even though I think it started out, ‘Zack Snyder sucks!’ ‘Fuck him!’ ‘You fascist!’ What happens now is, ‘You guys are f**king crazy. This is just a movie. Calm down.’ 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.”

Snyder then recalled a similarly strong reaction he received from attendees at the Berlin Film Festival after screening his action-packed historical hit 300, where the director claimed audiences literally booed the film and walked out. This particular anecdote resulted in a quote that’s since spread across social media like wildfire, and it’s not hard to see why.

“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?’ …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,” Snyder said.

“…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.’”

It remains to be seen whether or not The Last Photograph will find a distributor for an eventual theatrical release. For now, critical reception to the film has sparked curiosity from the general public, as well as a renewed interest in rewatching 300, which some fans are lovingly dubbing the “apex” of his filmography in retrospect. In stark contrast to his latest offering, IGN scored 300 a 9.9 out of 10 at the time, calling it a “one-of-a-kind masterpiece.”