Who is the better director? My opinion Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" vs.Matthew Vaughan's "Kick A!@" and "X-Men: First Class." Bonus points- Matthew Vaughan for early Guy Ricthie movies. Victory for me goes to Matthew Vaughan. Gladiators, defend the honor of your champion. (FYI, 300 to me was a lame CGI "Braveheart").
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I'd have to go with Vaughn. Snyder is more prolific and pursues (overreaches) bigger movies, but Vaughn picks better projects and imo has better execution. For me, Layer Cake was a fantastic opening movie for Vaughn and while it was firmly rooted in his origins as Ritchies producer, it was distinctive enough in style and story to stand on its own. I think Stardust was probably the weakest of his movies and it was still better than the best of Snyder's by a fair margin.
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Hate Zack Snyder's movies. Victory to Vaughan!
This. I'm mostly unfamiliar with Vaughan, though I have seen X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass.
But I detest Zack Snyder. His movies are the epitome of style over substance. It represents everything I dislike about modern (or post-modern or whatever the hell it is supposed to be) film making.
Compounding this is Snyder's movies always seem to be jingoistic, pro-war, chest-thumping, hyper-masculine propaganda pieces. 300, Legend of the Guardians, even the otherwise incomprehensible Sucker Punch all seemed to be rely heavily on the theme of violence being the solution to EVERYTHING. When you're desensitized enough to place cartoonish "WOOSH!" sound-effects over a brutal rape scene, you've lost all humanity.
I liked WATCHMEN and I thought what Snyder was trying to do with 300 (tell a propaganda story about how badass the Spartans were) was interesting but ultimately flawed: for the final scene with Faramir, they should have switched to an ultra-realistic aesthetic and shown these guys wearing proper armour being roused into a battle fervour with this somewhat ludicrous account of the Battle of Thermopylae being won by buff guys in their crimson warpants. But that level of subtlety appears to be beyond Snyder.
Everything else I've seen of his sucks arse monumentally, so the winner has to be Vaughan. LAYER CAKE is excellent, STARDUST is brilliant and KICK-ASS is superb. Haven't seen FIRST CLASS yet, but it seems to be very well-regarded.
I liked WATCHMEN and I thought what Snyder was trying to do with 300 (tell a propaganda story about how badass the Spartans were) was interesting but ultimately flawed: for the final scene with Faramir, they should have switched to an ultra-realistic aesthetic and shown these guys wearing proper armour being roused into a battle fervour with this somewhat ludicrous account of the Battle of Thermopylae being won by buff guys in their crimson warpants. But that level of subtlety appears to be beyond Snyder.
Everything else I've seen of his sucks arse monumentally, so the winner has to be Vaughan. LAYER CAKE is excellent, STARDUST is brilliant and KICK-ASS is superb. Haven't seen FIRST CLASS yet, but it seems to be very well-regarded.
I forgot about "Stardust." Another point for Vaughan. I haven't seen Synder's "Sucker Punch" yet (it's in the Netflix queue) but a friend of mine said he couldn't even finish it. I didn't hate 300, but I had seen a better movie very similiar already called Braveheart. I think Synder has a great visual aesthetic but he needs a script that actually has some story to it.
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I would, somewhat reluctant, say Snyder. While I liked many Vaughans movies better, I can't his style as director is standing out in any way. He is a very good craftsmen, but seems to lack vision. Still I am not sure if Snyder can deliver anything but the 300/Watchmen style, but at least I would recognize it - so it really depends.
Need amazing visual directions and could deal with somewhat over the top hyper-realistic effects - take Snyder. Need a craftsman who delivers a movie where the style of direction doesn't overshadow the actors and the story take Vaughan - so it really depends on the movie you want to make.