Zack Snyder Defends Non-Sci-Fi Passion Project After Near-Universal Poor Reviews

Published Sep 15, 2026, 1:16 PM EDT

Ryan Northrup is a Senior Staff Writer on ScreenRant's Movie & TV News team, where he has authored nearly 5,000 articles, including features and reviews. A graduate of McMaster University, Ryan began his career in public relations before attending Vancouver Film School. There, he built lasting industry connections and optioned a feature film screenplay.

Zack Snyder defends The Last Photograph.

After years spent making major blockbusters, often in the sci-fi and superhero genres, Snyder decided to go back to smaller scale filmmaking with his latest movie, The Last Photograph. The film, a major passion project for the filmmaker, recently premiered at TIFF and has been met with an overwhelmingly negative reception.

In a recent interview with Variety, Snyder addresses the poor reviews and online negativity surrounding The Last Photograph, revealing that he's very aware of the response. The director says he finds the intensity of the discussion to be "really incredible," before highlighting some of the sentiments he's seen:

Yeah. 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.”

When questioned on the bisexual comment, Snyder isn't totally sure what to make of it, saying "I guess! It’s 'homoerotic' and 'transphobic' and 'fascist' and all these things." The conversation then turns to The Last Photograph's treatment of women, with the extreme violence against female characters leading to accusations of misogyny, too. Snyder takes issue with that complaint. He explains:

I mean, I don’t know. First of all, I would argue that the violence toward women and men is equal and that nobody is spared — men, women, children, everybody. 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.

The response to The Last Photograph is only the latest online storm to hit Snyder, with poor reviews and controversy having been a part of his filmmaking career for years now. The director admits he's not immune to the negativity:

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!” “F**k him!” “You fascist!” What happens now is, “You guys are f***ing crazy. This is just a movie. Calm down.”

Starring Fra Fee, Stuart Martin, Jackie Kay, Costanza Andrade, Laura Sher, and Marlon Moreno, The Last Photograph follows an ex-DEA agent and a drug-addicted photographer as they journey through South American mountains in search of a murdered diplomat's children. Snyder spent the better part of two decades trying to get the Kurt Johnstad-penned movie off the ground.

Following its TIFF premiere, the film is sitting at a dismal 18% on Rotten Tomatoes from 11 reviews, as of writing. Common points of criticism include the gratuitous violence, overlong runtime, intense self-seriousness,a poor script, and lack of any real storytelling depth.

ScreenRant's own The Last Photograph review by Josh Bate is similarly negative at a score of only two out of 10. For Bate, almost none of the movie really works, with one of the biggest problems being a mismatch between Snyder's intensely serious presentation of a story that often doesn't feel that way. Bate writes:

There is an almost impressive disconnect between what Snyder appears to think he is making and what is actually unfolding onscreen. He reaches for a serious, festival-friendly prestige drama about damaged men confronting war, violence, guilt, and mortality. What he has made instead is a melodramatic revenge picture straining for profundity and repeatedly collapsing into camp.

For Snyder, the filmmaker behind movies like 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009), Man of Steel (2013), The Last Photograph seemingly fails to course correct after a rough few years. After the controversy surrounding Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), Snyder released two Rebel Moon movies for Netflix, both of which were also panned by critics and failed to kick start a new franchise.

The Last Photograph remains without a distributor, and the response out of its TIFF premiere is not a promising sign that it will land with one of the major players. The movie is sure to find its way to audiences eventually, and when it does, it could end up faring better than it did with critics.