Zack Snyde: Parody video shows adaptations of Catcher in the Rye, Giving Tree

Zack Snyder has taken on DC comic book adaptations, but what would a Salinger or Austen work look like through his lens?

The YouTube channel Patrick Willems and his Amazing Friends has offered a possible view of what classic literature would look like brought to the big screen by the Man of Steel director. Using the action-heavy style, the video delivers gritty versions of Catcher in the Rye, Sense and Sensibility, and The Giving Tree.

The imagined Snyder version of J.D. Salinger’s classic is replete with slow-motion action, voice-over, and brutal violence. “This jerk had one of those very phony Ivy-league voices, but drunk as hell,” says Holden Caulfield in the video. “I wanted to puke just listening to him.” Holden punches the source of his rage in the face, with a hard rock score providing a soundtrack to the fight.

The Jane Austen relationship drama remix sees Elinor and Marianne Dashwood gearing up for war. They stand in an open field, discussing the trauma that their sister-in-law has placed on the family. “It is our right and our destiny to take back what is ours,” Elinor sais. “And we will take it back — by force.” A training montage ensues, with both Dashwoods throwing weights at over-sized tires to build up their strength.

And Shel Silverstein’s children’s story takes an ominious turn with the boy grown up into a man, ready for a fight in the rain with his giving tree. “No, no more handouts,” the man says as an apple falls from the trees branch. “Just a question: Do you fall? You will.”

At the end of the video, Willems says the video was inspired by an interview in The Hollywood Reporter in which Snyder said he wants to adapt Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. The channel previously released video parodies of a Spider-Man film directed by Noah Baumbach, a Ken Burns take on Marvel’s Civil War comic, and Ant-Man directed by Werner Herzog.