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Brett's Zack Snyder Notes
🕑 Added 2021-11-09 20:21:43 +0000 UTCDeconstruction and reconstruction
Describes most if not all of his movies as genre deconstructions—or else reconstructions (e.g., Justice League). (Dawn of the Dead as reconstruction, though, Army of the Dead as deconstruction? Zombie genre had to be revived so it could be deconstructed and reconstructed.)
Wants to update superheroes for new generation (in keeping with studios’ agenda). Thus deconstruction of the superhero. Contrast with Marvel. Says in interviews that his DC work has been about cycles of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Blending myth and reality
300 and the fantasy sequences of Sucker Punch mythologize history, whereas his DC films historicize (comic book) mythology. Consider that he has expressed interest in making a 300-style adaptation of the life of George Washington.
The view that Snyder makes or tries to make “realistic” superhero films, a la Nolan’s Batman trilogy, must be greatly qualified: emerging from the advertising industry and veteran of many music videos, Snyder favors glossy aesthetics and magazine model physicality. But there is an attempt to unite the mythic-fantastic and the glamorous with the gritty and the historical: tearing down boundaries between myth and reality.
Using real TV talking heads (Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, Army of the Dead, Watchmen) in fantastic fiction, making it “real.”
To create a collective trance? Revelation of the method: history and culture as products of cultural manipulation?
From an Entertainment Weekly interview about Watchmen:
“The difference between Watchmen and a normal comic book is this: With Batman’s Gotham City, you are transported to another world where that superhero makes sense; Watchmen comes at it in a different way, it almost superimposes its heroes on your world, which then changes how you view your world through its prism. That’s the genius of this book. That’s what we try and do in the movie. The movie is a challenge — sort of like the book is a challenge — to your icons, your morality, how you perceive pop culture, how you perceive mythology, and for that matter, how you perceive God.”
…William Sims Bainbridge: religious engineering
In an interview, Snyder defends ending of Man of Steel by saying that “you can’t have superheroes knock around and there be no consequences.” Here’s one element of genuine “superhero realism”—over against, for example, the consequenceless violence of decades of action movies—mingled into Snyder’s glossy, mythic treatment of the genre. It’s true that Marvel, which is blending myth and reality in its own way, highlights the same problem, but in general Snyder goes to greater lengths in speculating on “what if superheroes were real.”
Precondition for tearing down boundaries between myth and reality and creating a collective trance state ripe for total reprogramming is destruction of collective memory. Consider Lawrence Fishburne-editor speech in Batman v. Superman that the American conscience is dead—the old standards don’t matter anymore because people abandoned them and have forgotten the past. If you forget the past, it won’t necessarily repeat itself, but it can be used against you.
Between Watchmen and his Superman and friends work, movement from the political toward the more overtly religious religious (but Snyder claims he viewed Watchmen comic as “biblical”)? Does this bespeak a growing awareness that the main lever of mass psychology is religion or spirituality? But, as the quote from the Entertainmentarticle shows, Snyder always recognized the religious component. That’s clear enough in 300 as well. Is this insight a product of Snyder’s increased access to the Method, either directly or indirectly, i.e., through exposure to “how Hollywood works” (“nothing is made without Joseph Campbell”)?
Or have the political messages in Snyder simply become more tame over the course of his career as he’s been increasingly domesticated by Hollywood? In any case, if he’s aware, as he seems to be, of the superior technique of engineering culture through religion or spirituality, then he must the superficiality and thus ineffectuality of his Objectivist political messaging, or else that very (apparently ineffectual) messaging is intentional and not subversive.
Costume designer on Batman v. Superman says Snyder a big fan of Campbell. Why would an atheist admire Campbell? Cynical atheists who recognize that people are fundamentally religious and that religion is the primary lever of consciousness even though it has no non-physical referent?
Political themes
Theme of how much truth is salutary comes up in Man of Steel (Costner) and Batman v. Superman(Fishburne suppressing Lois in Man of Steel and Clark in Batman v. Superman), as well as Watchmen. Cf. Nolan.
Overlap of post-apocalypticism with NWO-tinged superhero themes in Snyder’s work and even within some of his individual films (Watchmen, B v S, Justice League) reveals, inter alia, what the elite obsession with apocalyptic scenarios is all about: depop, Great Reset.
Snyder background: like David Fincher, got his start in music videos and commercials; he’s married to a woman who was an advertising producer.
Puer aeternus, persistently juvenile quality to his work (running alongside an often very mature perspective). Paralleling cultural infantilization of last two decades?
Glossy films with sculpted actors—influence of music videos and advertising and the shallow ideals of aesthetic and physical beauty that characterize them. Yet he is at times—like in Batman v. Superman—able to make physicality and enhanced physicality interesting. Interesting tech aesthetics as well, as in his DC films.
Excessive length of his later movies indicative of problems with his storytelling.
Dawn of the Dead
Religious conservatism demonized—and old guy declares himself an atheist and says he can’t understand how anyone can believe in God—but Ving Rhames evidently a Christian. Today, presumably, no such sop would be offered to Christians. (Consider Pacino wearing a cross in Insomnia.)
Reminds us:
Zombie movies as cultural nihilism, which is cultural deconstruction. As Fr. Seraphim Rose explains in his essay on nihilism, nihilism is but the means by which the Old Order is swept away so that a “new earth” and a “new man”—a “mechanized ‘new earth’” and a “dehumanized ‘new man’”—may emerge. Accompanying them will be a new religion, which is also the old religion, the “religion of the future,” which is about apotheosis, transforming man into god. So with zombies, the subhuman, or dehumanized humanity, paves the way toward the superhuman. But Army of the Dead reveals that the divinized new man is merely a super-beast.
Alchemical formula “dissolve and coagulate” found on Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet. The “zombie apocalypse” signifies the total crisis that would sweep away the Old Order and usher in the New. (See my notes on “apocalypse programming” in Army of the Dead, and see notes re: Joseph Campbell quote at end of Army of the Dead.)
Reemergence of the zombie movie right at this time. Shawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, etc.
Zombies, like other movie demons, as manifestations of collective trauma? Dehumanization.
Sacrifice of only positive, competent white male at end (cf. Army of the Dead and see note).
Greenish lighting scheme (lack of blue) typical of that era. Also jiggle cam, which was omnipresent in the 2000s.
Redneck character still believes in “America,” even though it’s a failed state.
Zombie disaster scenes, including people on rooftops, reminiscent of Katrina a year later.
Around 1:15 mark, lights forming a pattern resembling a Tree of Life.
Pioneered end credit story sequences?
300
General
Helped to destroy the medium with CGI aesthetic.
Narration badly violates the “show me, don’t tell me” rule—poor storytelling.
Infinite War politics
Obvious “clash of civilizations” theme resonating with the Infinite War, which was still relatively young at that point.
But if this is truly about the contemporary “clash of civilizations,” there’s a good deal of inversion going on.
Deep State religious engineering
Satanic Bacchanalia scene in Xerxes’s harem where he offers Ephialtes pleasures “your false gods denied you.” Xerxes then demands to be worshiped as God in exchange for them, clearly marking him as Satan.
Spartans free but we hear, in the mouth of Leonidas’s wicked political rival, that “All men are not created equal. That’s the Spartan code.” Spartans eugenicists, militarists. The Spartans were admired by many of the elites of other Greek cities because of their engineered culture.
Miller and Snyder atheists. In Herodotus, the Spartans repent of killing the Persian emissary (though the Athenians never do), but here they do not. The emphasis here is on physicality, military prowess, and eugenic perfection, not piety.
If Leonidas is a hero, the ephors are gods or false gods (illuminati). Contrasting the real ephors with the historical ephors reveals the contemporary angle: ephors as high priests of the superclass, “diseased old mystics.” At the end of the film, we are told that at Plataea the Spartan-led Greeks managed to “rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny.”
Ephors, “lecherous old men,” sexually abuse the oracles. Ritual abuse. Only the “most beautiful Spartan girls” chosen. Trauma-generated superpowers. Too-evil-to-fail model: indulging their base lusts and preying on powerless young girls, creating super-powered slaves, increases their power.
In the Herodotus story, Spartans engaging in a holding action that doubles as a form of psychological warfare. In the film, idiotic suicidal bravado is celebrated, not piety or real courage.
Xerxes says he would erase Sparta from history, undercutting the Spartan motive of glory. History as malleable.
Watchmen
Unrealistic realism in the superhero genre.
Superhero as allegory for political forces. Cf. Nolan, but Nolan pulls off the realism better. (Why did Nolan produce Batman v. Superman?)
Cultural Engineering
In a recent Vanity Fair interview, he says that directing Watchmen was kind of like adapting the Bible to him, so many people had a religious devotion to the comic.
From the opening credit sequence on, it’s clear how much Snyder is interested in culture creation (and historical contingency), how art forges culture. More verve and red-blooded American enthusiasm than Nolan.
Two nurses kissing (lesbian revision to famous image of sailor kissing woman in Time’s Square on V-J Day). This in an era when girl-on-girl, taboo-breaking sexuality was being pushed in the media. Or really, that was even somewhat tame at that point, and with the loss of collective memory, it could even seem “old-fashioned” compared with the levels of normalized degeneracy on display. Interesting to note that, a few years ago, a few days after the sailor in the pictured died at age 95, a statue of the moment was vandalized with “MeToo.”
Vintage TV interview, referring to Dr. Manhattan: “the Superman is real, and he is American.” If Superman is God (consider Batman v. Superman), this is again signaling the traditional red-blooded, pious “American way” that’s being deconstructed. Later the man who said this denies he said it (check).
Snyder criticized for “not getting” Alan Moore’s Rorschach character, which was a parody of a certain hidebound, hardboiled mentality. I don’t think Snyder misunderstood anything. He simply harbors a certain admiration for him. Is this a mark of his crypto-“conservatism”?
Predictive programming and conspiracy stuff
In background behind Veidt, a blimp “crashing” into the Twin Towers.
Manhattan’s origin story: trauma-based superpowers.
“US Military – Rockefeller…Research”
Evil Nixon as anti-East Coast establishment (Yankee vs. Cowboy themes).
Sucker Punch
Master key for interpreting the superhero/fantasy genre, i.e., as a dissociative power trip for the utterly powerless. Beyond the obvious trauma-based mind control themes, does the rise of this genre over the last few decades reflect a growing powerlessness—politically, culturally, personally—among masses of people who are drawn into these escapist fantasies?
Consider Horsley’s “Second Matrix,” which in our interview he equated with Gnosticism. Cinematic Gnostic themes on display in a piece of promotional merchandise for the film, a t-shirt with a pink teddy bear that looks rather like a rabbit that reads, “Reality Is a Prison.” The teddy bear has button eyes like the doubles in the mirror world from Coraline. Horsley in our interview: “We are puppets of the superculture.” It also has a stitched head, signaling traumatic abuse and, with the moony button eyes, consequent dissociation.
Inversion, false red pill: film purports to be about liberation, but it is ensnaring the viewer in disempowering escape/superhero fantasies that compensate for the underlying intuition of powerlessness just as the protagonist is deliberately ensnared in dissociative power/freedom fantasies by her handlers. Her name is “Baby Doll”; she’s a doll, a puppet—cf. Josh Whedon’s show Dollhouse, which is even more explicitly about trauma-based, MPD/DID mind control. “Freedom” or “Paradise”—like “Shell Beach” in Dark City—is a false hope; its only true referent is total dissociation, which could only be a victory if it so shatters the slave’s psyche that she is no longer useful to her programmers…but probably it leads to total subordination, total control by the handler, who has inserted himself in the fantasy as the “Wise Man” (David Carradine in his standard enlightened kung fu master role).
Here we have nested matrices, which reflect not only the layers of the protagonist’s battered psyche but of the conspiranaut’s fumbling attempts to understand the nature of these intersections between trauma, mind control, human trafficking, and elite criminality. It may be worth revisiting the thesis—which we more or less dismissed in the initial episode—that at least some of these films are made in part to troll conspiracy theorists, to use knowledge of the conspiratorial psyche to attack it and confound it. I think of movies like The Mandela Effect—and the Mandela Effect trope which inspired the movie—which touch on real paranormal phenomena, synchronicity, etc., and contain some limited hangouts concerning things like Satanic transhumanism and Big Tech, but shunt the conspiranaut mind down blind alleys. (Remember that conspiracy culture long ago became mainstream, so they are not just trolling the Jim Keiths of the world anymore but much of the public.) The Mandela Effect or the notion that CERN has warped the structure of time, revealing “glitches in the Matrix”—these are fake red pills, occult disinformation campaigns, and in one way or another almost all of them are related to Gnosticism (the British ran occult disinformation campaigns against the Nazis, usually Aleister Crowley, no less). I actually suspect that a lot of sites that peddle these sorts of occult conspiracies are deliberate disinfo conduits working for state and non-state actors. Take someone like Benjamin Fulford, for example.
Is this a free adaption of Fritz Springmeier’s (and Cisco Wheeler’s) Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave? Girl is abused by her stepfather, prone to dissociation, then effectively purchased by a mental hospital (where most MKUltra experiments took place) that absolves the stepfather of legal responsibility and drugs and experiments on her. The viewer is disoriented by the layers of dissociative fantasy and nightmare, but she finds herself as a sex slave sold out to elite clients as well. She is an all-star at dissociation, which occurs during her sex-driven “dances” (dancing being a cipher for sex): she becomes internally the most powerful as she is externally most powerless.
Several of the actors in the film, like Jena Malone, were child actors. Malone’s first role, in Bastard Out of Carolina, was a child sex abuse victim, and she went on to play other precociously sexual and evidently psychologically damaged characters, including a girl who is sexually abused by her brother in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. She’s practically typecast in these roles. It’s really sickening to think about these casting directors constantly resorting to her whenever there’s a sexually damaged girl in the script. Vanessa Hudgens was also a child actor and did work for Disney. She got a butterfly tattoo on her neck the same year (2011) Sucker Punch was released. Consider how in a movie like Zoolander, so many alleged “Monarch” models/actors appear, especially Milla Jovovich.
Butterfly “Easter eggs” throughout movie. How to explain?
Snyder claims that this movie is meant as “an indictment of popular culture.” We’re left to wonder exactly how—and to marvel at the hypocrisy of a man who directed scores of music videos and TV commercials, sucking at the tit of entertainment commercialism for decades while enthusiastically doing their bidding to craft that very decadent pop culture, and who insists that his actors visually embody the false ideals of that pop culture…we’re left to marvel at how in the world he is qualified to indict popular culture at all. The same could be said of Fincher with respect to Fight Club. And we’ll get to Fincher in due time, probably next.
Legend of the Guardians
Kabballah influence?
“Western kingdoms and the tree will be mine”—land of death and tree of life, i.e., power over life and death.
Darwinian/evolutionary themes
Deep State mind control stuff
Child trafficking run by wicked elites (the “Pure Ones”) as part of trauma-based training program, a la Monarch (cf. Sucker Punch). Traumatic evolution.
Falling off the tree as a metaphor for being cast out of ordinary society and into its underbelly, where one is vulnerable to criminals low and high.
“Moonblink”=brainwashing/hypnotic mind control. Captives afraid to fall asleep lest they be brainwashed (cf. Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
Dissociation fantasy for traumatized child—is it inconceivable that these movies are made for/tested on mass audience and then, depending on results, used in Monarch programming? I.e. macro to micro (as opposed to the reverse)?
Metal Beak trying to use a “slave army of moonblinks to conquer the world”—Guardian leader (et al.) question this story before finally believing it.
Dissociated good/bad elites, so that being made a slave is fantasized as training with the good elites to conquer the bad. Inversion as a reflex of dissociation. The “good elites” as product of Stockholm Syndrome where the immediate captors are too wicked and menacing to receive usual Stockholm Syndrome sympathy. One clue is that both Guardians and Pure Ones have advanced “training” program.
Owls picked for resemblance to aliens?
“As it was in the old days, so again in the new”: they “help the weak, mend the broken.”
Man of Steel
Elite/Globalist/Transhumanist ideology
Superman still has ties to the traditional religious/patriotic associations of previous treatments, but he’s being configured as a symbol of transhumanist transcendence and globalism.
Superman’s dad advocated space travel to save civilization (a la Elon Musk) from ecological collapse: Krypton as futuristic NWO colony collapsing. Certainly not a subversion of technocratic-globalist mentality, though: like Thucydides, they know that all things decline—trick is to fail forward. (Consider “archaic” historiography attributed to elites in Nolan Batman films.)
Baby Superman bears a strong resemblance to “Star Child” baby in 2001. Futuristic space travel linked with ubermensch trope.
Parents are heroic for sending the codex with their son and consigning Krypton to its fate. Transhumanist claptrap (here again, remember Bainbridge’s suggestion that total collapse, in the long run, might be more beneficial to transhumanism). BUT: Krypton fell because genetic engineering and population control measures stifled adventurous spirit that created all that technology in the first place. Elimination of chance/choice portrayed negatively. Again, Snyder sees space for Randian Objectivist ethos, for individualism and broadly libertarian values, in the New World Order. Did his corporate masters let him insert a few Objectivist/libertarian ideas into these films so long as they are couched in a pro-transhumanism, pro-globalist package? Randian futurism vaguely compatible with transhumanist futurism?
Space father has downloaded his personality into a computer simulation—transhumanist dream of uploading consciousness into technology that dates back at least to William Sims Bainbridge.
Both Zod and Superman (via instructions from space father) want to reengineer Earth to be Krypton; difference is Zod is an accelerationist willing to traumatically destroy and depop planet before rebuilding (a la any number of Marvel villains like Apocalypse and Thanos), whereas Superman is a gradualist. Zod also a racist.
In a way, this is the first movie to seamlessly, albeit subtly, combine the two major types of “alien” movie—(1) aliens as enlightened eco-saviors (Superman) and (2) aliens as ruthless predators (Zod)—while suggesting an equivalence between them in the similarities of their ultimate goal, namely, reengineering Earth to be Krypton—gradualism vs. accelerationism.
Plato’s Republic probably a reference to technocratic digital feudalism, as the globalists see themselves as the “guardian” class in an updated social blueprint based on the Republic. Consider the context: young Superman allows himself to be bullied by inferior ruffians while repressing his desire to assert his true superiority. Soon his time will come.
Superman as feeding into Q-myth of “white hats” among the elites?
Gnosticism and Religious Engineering
Opens with woman giving birth to Superman—celestial/heavenly mother archetype.
Shades of the Gnostic myth here: a fallen god defying a militaristic patriarch to save humanity.
Costner father as archetype of traditional Christian God, sacrificing himself for others…but deconstructed as rather manipulative and past his due date. “I let my father die,” i.e., the terrestrial demiurgic father? The false god (traditional religion, traditional American culture, pre-post-America America ) had to die so that his higher vision could succeed? Cf. Justin the Gnostic’s system: Elohim, the false demiurgic god, ascends to the right hand of the true, transcendent God once he becomes aware of his existence. Optimistic Gnosticism; gradualism.
The Costner father understands how the disclosure of Superman will undermine belief systems. He is the cultural engineer, representing the earlier phase of myth-making/cultural engineering (cf. mountain scene in sequel).
As in Salkinds’ Superman films, Superman as reworking of Jesus archetype, “repurposing” it.
Antarctic UFO—lots of what Bainbridge called “religious engineering” going on here.
Snyder has said that the lingam-yoni aspects of Krypton’s architecture were deliberate, fertility symbols reflecting the sublimation of the breeding instinct on a planet where natural childbirth is all but obsolete.
From a Hollywood Reporter article:
Snyder has spoken previously about the influence Joseph Campbell and his writings on the hero’s journey have had on his work. He revealed that there is a Campbell quote, written in the Kryptonian language created for the film, on the Kryptonian citadel. Snyder recited it, “and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” The quote is also on Superman’s suit in Batman v Superman. Snyder said that the quote defines the hero’s journey for him, but it’s also something he personally carries with him in his daily life.
Conspiracy stuff
Zod’s geoengineering cryptotech—reengineering the planet by spraying particulates into the atmosphere.
Fishburne editor knowingly suppresses truth here and in sequel for what he thinks is public good. Information control.
Is extraterrestrial birth a code for traumatic ritual abuse intended to unlock “superpowers”? Snyder gave us the key to interpreting superhero fantasy in Sucker Punch. Playing off the standard puberty allegory subtext only draws attention back to the trauma-based superhero/psi conditioning by government theme.
Method
Pulsing/humming sounds and flashing lights when aliens attack. Cf. mind control experiments using sounds and flickering lights (Men Who Stare at Goats). A bit of Revelation of the Method here, “aliens” as an artifact of mind-warping audio-visual stimulation (possibly coupled with chemicals)?
Lois: “I get writer’s block if I’m not wearing a flak jacket.” “…if we’re done measuring dicks….” Feminist overcompensation.
Batman v. Superman
Gnosticism (anti-Gnosticism?)
In our interview with him, Jasun Horsley explained that one reason gnostic themes have become so prevalent in Hollywood is that our civilization is increasingly defined by a power that is based on knowledge (technocracy). In the film, this gnostic-technocratic elite is represented by Lex Luthor, who is frustrated that knowledge isn’t absolutely synonymous with power.
Superman as “God” associated with apocalyptic destruction, darkening our view of God. Cf. Batman below: darkening our view of man then directly correlates with darkening our view of God. Anti-gnostic message? We are made in the image of God, both born of woman (Martha). Attacking God destroys the image of God in us, destroys our soul.
Luthor as the principle of evil (he calls himself “the Devil”) trying to sever fallen man’s relationship to God…invoking archaic evil (interdimensional?) forces.
There’s a duality of every single character. Revelation of the dialectic.
Batman characterization
Unlike Nolan’s Batman, who becomes and dies a hero and returns to humanity, Snyder’s Batman is a character whose reputation is darkened long-term and can’t give up the persona. Consider the common theme—in Batman films and comics—of rogues attempting to blacken Batman’s reputation as the ultimate victory. The “Ha ha ha, joke’s on you, Batman” graffiti on an old Robin points to such a (partial) victory on the part of the Joker. Or maybe Joker killed Robin (confirmed in Justice Leagueepilogue(? Batman does not seem to have a successor.
Metal suit reflects the emotionally/morally hardened state of the character. This is a nearly dehumanized Batman, who is protecting what’s left of his tattered psyche with heavy armor, and to bear that at all he must harden up a body that must be losing flexibility at his age.
He is “fallen” and represents the fallenness of man. Man vs. God, then, is fallen man vs. a false god, a dialectic orchestrated or skillfully manipulated by Lex Luthor.
Rebirth through trauma: the image of Bruce rising from the bat cave into the light. “It took me into the light—a beautiful lie.” Is this the Luciferian, trauma-based initiation that Snyder is calling a lie? The “lie” becomes associated with Superman, who represents, in one mode, the traditional God, but in its deconstructed-reconstructed mode—which he undergoes in the previous film, Man of Steel—the transhumanist übermensch.
Religious Engineering
Notice the references to Christ in the Batman intro sequence.
Day of the Dead scene: Superman as Jesus preaching to the (spiritually) dead. Why all the Day of the Dead imagery everywhere the last decade plus?
TV talking heads: the “alien” Superman as a challenge to religious beliefs and political/legal issues (Project Blue Beam, globalist psyop). Cf. Costner/father from Man of Steeldelaying disclosure of Superman because of culturally disruption that would ensue.
The conversation on the mountain with his “true” (i.e., human) father, the one who created the mythic Superman. God image as projection of ancestors. (Snyder’s atheism at work here?)
Snyder’s angle on cultural engineering possibly unsystematic and flaky, like his films.
Whereas most of the psyop films, including especially comic book films, being produced in recent years glorify the dark feminine (the destructive, chaotic, licentious aspects of femininity), this film submits the heavenly, higher feminine (the virgin, the mother, the Mother of God) as the great reconciler or intercessor who will heal the rift between the human and the divine. (Cf. treatment of heavenly mother archetype in Man of Steel.) Luthor as defiler of the soul, branding Martha as a witch and having “whore,” etc., scrawled all over her. Wonder Woman as a red herring here.
According to the costume designer, a Joseph Campbell quote “embedded” in Superman’s suit in the Kryptonian pseudo-language: “Where we had thought to stand alone, we will be with all the world.” But according to a Hollywood Reporter article, the quote, which is on the citadel in Krypton as well as Superman’s suit in Batman v. Superman, reads, in part, “where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.” The quote as the end of the film, “If you seek his monument, look around you” also echoes this.
Conspiracy Stuff
Why are rogue elites so often depicted as enemies? Elites perhaps believe that only other elites can be a threat to them? To make it appear that the problem is always “a few bad apples” and not the ruling class itself? Predictive programming? (Note that Luthor identifies with Zod, another rogue elite.) Does Bruce represent the Old Establishment? Superman clearly has a globalist bent.
Opening scenes deliberately evoke 9/11. Conspiracy stuff here. Add to that human trafficking, fake flags, crisis actors in Congress.
Re: the village destruction scene, obviously one faction in intelligence allied with Luthor (Specter?). Consider too that CIA guy likely sent by this same faction bent on the drone strike to bait Superman. Intelligence group on ground that opposed drone strike on the up and up.
Mentions of “tin foil hats” and “conspiracy theory” (by deep state general with reference to Lois Lane’s journalism)
Justice League
Religious/occult themes
In a sense, rehash of plot from Man of Steel. This time, Steppenwolf instead of Zod, wants to “terraform” the Earth, into Apokolips instead of Krypton. Cf. X-Men: Apocalypse.
“Alien” Superman’s arrival sparked evolution of meta-humans. His death set off Mother Boxes to accelerate the super-development of his replacements. Read: loss of traditional repository of religious impulses gives opportunity for dark forces to seize control of the religious psyche. Dark occult “religious engineering.”
Consider lyrics from Nick Cave song, “They told us our gods would outlive us, but they lied.” Mournful tone of film acknowledging that something has been lost in the death of what the “old Superman” represented. Reborn Superman as reconstructed Superman.
Gnosticism: evil from “the stars.”
3 “Mother boxes”—false trinity of the dark feminine? Triple goddess? We see the triangle symbol prominently featured in a lot of dark occult films, e.g., Neon Demon and The Green Knight.
UFO symbol on police car?
Crypto-tech and conspiracy
“Xenoscience”=alien technology…cryptotech invoking a particular deep politics speculative theory that much modern technology is retroengineered from alien tech recovered from crashed spacecraft.
Batman has six satellites. Is this pre-Musk satellites?
Batman as leader of League, and his only superpower is “I’m rich.” How is the tail waging the dog? The superclass (or government, etc.) controlling traumatized but superpowered operatives—a leitmotif in superhero movies and sometimes other genres (spy movies) as well.
Interesting that it’s a post-Chernobyl abandoned Russian city that is the site of Steppenwolf’s attempt to use a super-energy technology to transform/control the world. Cf. Tenet, where the Russian heavy launched his career by recovering nuclear materials from post-meltdown Chernobyl.
Dialogue between Cyborg and scientist father: the former essentially accuses the latter of creating monsters through experimentation—an apparent reference to trauma-based conditioning. Cyborg as an MKUltra supermonster.
Cyborg can manipulate monetary systems, but the challenge is using his power for good, not evil. This figures in with the political allegory interpretation (cf. Watchmen): superpowers are often
Terrorists at beginning want to inaugurate a “New Dark Age,” “turning back the clock 1,000 years in Europe,” whereas space demons apparently want to accelerate things. Either way, deconstruction of present order, but two different possible orders (right and left?) implied.
Esoteric meaning found in “Anti-life equation” for controlling all life in the universe (this is DC’s attempt at making Infinity War). The real game is destruction, not “deconstruction and reconstruction.”
Remember exchange between Flash and Cyborg. Flash: Mother Boxes are “psycho-murder machines.” Cyborg: “Change machines.”
Miscellaneous
Kent home lost to big finance in post-American (NWO) America. The small farmer is dead, no working class. Phony solution at end with Bruce buying bank (good billionaire now on board with globalism) and returning home to Mrs. Kent.
Bad attempt to boot up an Avengers-style franchise that ultimately trivializes whatever was worthwhile in his “deconstructive” films preceding this.
During time-travel sequence, Cyborg rejects opportunity to “go back” and “be whole”: “I’m not broken.” Embrace of trauma, of advantages of being “neuro-atypical” (superpowered).
Army of the Dead
Socio-Religious programming
Zombies as aliens with superpowers. Zombie hive mind. In opening sequence, zombie escapes from Area 51 convoy.
Higher order, organized zombies, “alphas” (aliens-evolving zombies-collectivism)—taken to a facility to be “evolved” (trauma-based conditioning). Evolving, super-powered zombies as a reflection of evolving forces of dehumanization? Slow in the 60s and 70s, fast in the 80s-2000s, now super-powered.
Alphas practice/demand human sacrifice (the “religion of the future is the religion of the past”).
Movie ends with a quote from Joseph Campbell about recovering treasure from the abyss. Could just as well have quoted something from Jung about gold being in the shadow. Alchemy: ultima materia contained in the prima materia.
Put this in the context of my thoughts on the zombie film as cultural nihilism in my Dawn of the Deadnotes. Zombie apocalypse as the Abyss of nihilism described by Fr. Seraphim Rose. Destructive crises are supposed to usher in the Luciferian millennium. In this sense, Army of the Dead is a “post-nihilistic,” pro-New World Order film…but the inhuman savagery of the “advanced” alien zombies can then be read (subversively?) to indicate that the religion of the future, which promises to make humans into gods, is a towering lie. The apotheosistic attempt to make man into a god yields only a super-beast.
(Ironic too that a worldview that, taking its cue from Nietzsche, rejects Christianity for its devaluing of the world through directing our energies and aspirations toward another, transcendent world would demand of its adherents that they endure tribulations—and simply that they wait—for a better world. But this hypocrisy cannot be avoided, not only because it’s paradise is either unattainable or undesirable in its realization but because this “religion of the future” is an inversion of Christianity.)
Relatedly, apocalypse programming, or apocalypse triggers, activating pre-established programming:
Seemingly every possible invocation of “the apocalypse” as it has come to be conceived in 20th-century Western culture: the “Four Horseman” transporting the zombie tech; apocalyptic classic rock (e.g., “Bad Moon Rising” and “The End”); nuclear blast; Gotterdamerung reference; etc. Consider safecracker’s speech. If he can’t open the safe, then total destruction, but if he can, then renewal in rebirth.
Predictive programming for coming collapse. (Remember transhumanist William Sims Bainbridge’s “admission,” in “Burglarizing Nietzsche’s Tomb,” that an all-out collapse might in the long run be more conductive toward a permanent victory for transhumanism, as the transhumanist model could better plan its seeds in a collapse and avert concerted opposition. It’s easy to understand how such a guy, for his own reasons, could support mass depop.)
Arthurian themes: Zombie tech as “Holy Grail.”
Consider Vanderohe’s speech about them being caught in and endless time loop with the Japanese businessman as the Devil. Why are these ideas of temporality being pushed? Cf. Nolan.
Politics, technocracy, conspiracy
Biological, life-extension (?) experiments gone awry. Overwhelmingly common sci-fi premise, including almost all zombie movies. Transhumanism, monkeying with genetics. At bottom a very Lovecraftian ontology and view of nature, which they embrace, along with the whole Dr. Frankenstein mentality that repulses the audience.
Donna Brazille on TV arguing against biosecurity with Sean Spicer. Democrats anti-biosecurity, Republicans pro? Inversion?
Temperature gun as a weapon. Notice the implied rape through biosecurity (threatens to use “my rectal thermometer”). Rape as a pervasive subtext in the movie: rape by zombies, rape of the zombie queen by the mercenary (Martin)…. Predictive programming, or just flat out trolling victims of the COOFID psyop?
Government in league with rogue billionaire to use highly dangerous bio-tech (Martin was running the real, secret mission to get the zombie head to create a zombie army for the government).
Last white male—and only good one—sacrificed at end, as in Dawn of the Dead. Sacrifice of the father and of “traditional masculinity” (cf. Logan). “Allies” must be sacrificed.
They’re led by a woman? So they’re also pussy-whipped and woke, like the humans? Any crypto-conservatism here?
Dave Bautista’s speech about how tofu can be used for anything. “Everyone’s going vegan now.” A bit of predictive programming? Meat, we know from the World Economic Forum’s “predictions,” will be scarce in the New World Order.
Zombie queen’s head as “ultimate WMD”=mind control or identity control as “ultimate WMD”?
Woke wish fulfillment fantasy? Contributing to this is the miscast female helicopter pilot who replaced, through green screens, Chris D’Elia, after the latter was accused of “sexual misconduct” with underage girls.
Dreamy, dissociative covers of apocalyptic classic rock songs, e.g., “Bad Moon Rising” and “The End.”
Pulsing soundtrack (cf. Tenet). Method?
Cf. elevator gag in casino with elevator gag in Dawn of the Dead.
