Budget: $70-90 million
Directed By: Zack Snyder
I'm confused as to where this stands in timelines, is it in the Snyder of the dead universe?
Is it the Romero universe?
Ah, suppose it's not too important really.
So yes this had been languishing in developement hell for some time. Two most prominent were Snyders losses, no one should go through that. Second of course is money/studio.
So the big old N stepped in and helped out for showing rights, as usual, oh and maybe a new Snyder of the Dead universe thrown in too.
It stars everyone's favourite cuddly ex-wrestler Dave Batista as angsty dad and troubled ex-army vet turned burger flipper Scott Ward.
Since the outbreak in las vegas he's been estranged from his daughter Kate, who works as a care worker on the front lines with refugees from the area. Tig Notaro also stars as a plucky helicopter pilot they pick up later on. Tig is cgi cleverly inserted or new scenes put in due to the OG actor being a naughty boy.
Now the plot is pretty standard zombie movie affair, infected area has tons of cash in a safe. A shady owner of one of the casinos wants to, quote, 'send them in to retrieve it' He knows of Ward goes to him to assemble a team to retrieve $250 million, they get to keep $50 themselves to divvy up.
Sounds straight forward right, they assemble friends, the pilot, a safe cracker and an influencer to keep the film current, who specialised in killing zombies for views. Oh and shady guy throws in the most obvious mole/betrayer/asshole ever too. They've got a time limit as the areas going to be nuked too.
Now this film has brilliant ideas and goes with the evolving zombie theme again fast strong, intelligent alphas and your usual run of the mill shamblers. Kinda confusing as the initial zombie is an alpha, so maybe his bites don't turn everyone alpha right?
(i wrote a book it's on amazon undead in the valleys the welsh aftermath, it featured both kinds of zombie before anyone else thought of it, go check it out, it's amateur but good).
It's a logical yet flawed idea as later you see the first one bitten by him turns alpha. This is the problem with this film (and a lot of Snyders works) he tries to jam all this cool stuff in yet it's under developed or goes no where. There's talk of talk of these dehydrated zombies coming to life in the rain again, doesn't go nowhere. One of the friends has an amazing rotary saw he seems to care for a lot, we see in a dreamesque sequence that he uses it too.
In the real life of the movie though? Nah it's relegated to cutting a wall open when they're trapped later and never used again. there's some zombies with blue eyes, blue viscera or both. I've seen other sources saying these are robo-zombies, now this toys with the alien idea they mention at the beginning but again goes no where AND I KNOW it might be explained later on in this 'universe' but then it might not because so many other things aren't, also i shouldn't have to wait for any kind of explanation from something that might not happen.
So Ward gets his daughter to get them in, his estranged daughter has reasons to get in too, basically being a plot device to get people killed or put in danger, though they do 'make up, sort of' later, asshole guy is an asshole he's there to get an alpha zombie head that apparently worth 5x more than $250 million and also puts them in more danger as they killed an alpha when they had an 'agreement' with them, yeah watch the movie.
My last gripe is nearly everyone in this movie is unlikable, apart from maybe the safe cracker guy, but then he's fucking annoying 90% of the time. Ward and woman interest decide to split the money mostly for themselves not share it equally, rotary blade guy has a permanent chip on his shoulder. Daughter Ward makes baaaaad decisions and is a brat basically, the rest have reasons too which will become clear.
In the end I tried ti like this and it has brilliant visuals and ideas which might be enough for some shallower viewers, but i've sat and analysed this now. It's case of sea sized ambition, but shallower than an inch in execution. THN awards Army of the Dead (2021) 2 out of 5 stars, watch if there's nothing else and you want shallow entertainment, but don't go down the rabbit hole with it's ideas that go nowhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment