A Tale of Two Zombie (Movies)
This week I had a chance to sit down and watch two recent zombie
movies. Oddly enough, both movies were based on books. The first
movie, Warm Bodies, based on the book Warm Bodies, by Isaac Newton
and World War Z, loosely based on the graphic novel, World War Z, by
Max Brooks.
While I am a fan of the supernatural style books, movies and TV shows, I've never really been a fan of the zombie genre which, for some reason, seems to have been popular for the past couple of years with pop culture phenomena like The Walking Dead, Zombieland, the Resident Evil (movie) franchise and even the comedy, Shaun of the Dead.
For me, zombies are boring. Traditionally, these undead have been cast as slow brain-hungry bodies that mill about seeking fresh meat, also in the form of brains. More modern incantations of the zombie lore have taken these slow decaying bodies and put them in faster, athletic self-healing roles supposedly to add a heightened scare factor to a world that moves at the speed of planes, trains and automobiles instead of foot and horse of ages past.
Many people have their own theories about why zombies are (supposedly) scary and at least one university is offering a class onthe metaphor of zombies in modern culture. Over the years I've read that zombies are (supposedly scary) due to the inability to escape them, how they overrun homes, businesses, police and the military en masse, and how they are a contradiction to modern intellectualism: without reason, logic or intellect. In fact, most of the zombie genre pop-culture outlets eventually arrive at some scientist or philosopher trying to reason with the undead believing a spark of their humanity must still exist. It never does. (Zombie metaphors)
That doesn't stop Warm Bodies from being popular enough of a book that someone decided to make anecropheliac, um, er, romance movie
between a fairly attractive teenage girl and the monotonous life of a
teenaged zombie. The core story of the movie was simple: can a
zombie, once becoming a zombie, regain any of their humanity?
According to the movie (I haven't read the book), yes. Apparently, with the application of some make-up and the devotion of a pretty girl, a zombie can indeed become alive again.
In World War Z, Gerry (Brad Pitt) travels the globe seeking out the origin of the zombie disease so the very intellectualism to which zombies are the antithesis, can save humanity from a global annihilation.
In Gerry' universe, zombies are fast and they're over running mankind like army ants on the offensive, letting nothing stop them from achieving their goal of devouring any flesh in their path. While they're fast, they're mindless, responding only to external stimuli like hundreds of other predators out there that respond to shiny objects, colors or noise. In the case of WWZ, the zombies hunt by sound, which does make sense.
While the two movies take extremely different views on what zombies are and how to survive them, only WWZ was a good movie. At least in my opinion.
When I watched Warm Bodies, I expected some sort of off the cuff romcom where the moral of the story wasn't resurrecting the dead through love, but rather don't fall for the mindless drone. Instead, I watched some sort of feel good movie that seemed more like it was designed to appease younger women who were dragged along to yet another “scary movie” for their date night.
World War Z took another direction. Zombies were swarming the Earth and humanity was dying by the billions. Most zombie films are about the survivors trying to stay alive on the streets but WWZ takes us right into the search for a scientific solution in the form of an antivenom hopefully made from the source of the disease. It addressed the lack of resources when supply chains stop and the need to prioritize those dwindling resources by making unpopular decisions.
WWZ seemed rushed, but at least believable. We want to hope that, in the advent of global annihilation, someone somewhere is trying to discover a solution to the problem instead of just circling the wagons and trying to ride out the swarms of the zombie hordes. While it may seem romantic to be the girl that could cause the dead to come back to life, let's face it, a true zombie would eat the girl, her family and her dog, not play her records.
While I am a fan of the supernatural style books, movies and TV shows, I've never really been a fan of the zombie genre which, for some reason, seems to have been popular for the past couple of years with pop culture phenomena like The Walking Dead, Zombieland, the Resident Evil (movie) franchise and even the comedy, Shaun of the Dead.
For me, zombies are boring. Traditionally, these undead have been cast as slow brain-hungry bodies that mill about seeking fresh meat, also in the form of brains. More modern incantations of the zombie lore have taken these slow decaying bodies and put them in faster, athletic self-healing roles supposedly to add a heightened scare factor to a world that moves at the speed of planes, trains and automobiles instead of foot and horse of ages past.
Many people have their own theories about why zombies are (supposedly) scary and at least one university is offering a class onthe metaphor of zombies in modern culture. Over the years I've read that zombies are (supposedly scary) due to the inability to escape them, how they overrun homes, businesses, police and the military en masse, and how they are a contradiction to modern intellectualism: without reason, logic or intellect. In fact, most of the zombie genre pop-culture outlets eventually arrive at some scientist or philosopher trying to reason with the undead believing a spark of their humanity must still exist. It never does. (Zombie metaphors)
That doesn't stop Warm Bodies from being popular enough of a book that someone decided to make a
According to the movie (I haven't read the book), yes. Apparently, with the application of some make-up and the devotion of a pretty girl, a zombie can indeed become alive again.
In World War Z, Gerry (Brad Pitt) travels the globe seeking out the origin of the zombie disease so the very intellectualism to which zombies are the antithesis, can save humanity from a global annihilation.
In Gerry' universe, zombies are fast and they're over running mankind like army ants on the offensive, letting nothing stop them from achieving their goal of devouring any flesh in their path. While they're fast, they're mindless, responding only to external stimuli like hundreds of other predators out there that respond to shiny objects, colors or noise. In the case of WWZ, the zombies hunt by sound, which does make sense.
While the two movies take extremely different views on what zombies are and how to survive them, only WWZ was a good movie. At least in my opinion.
When I watched Warm Bodies, I expected some sort of off the cuff romcom where the moral of the story wasn't resurrecting the dead through love, but rather don't fall for the mindless drone. Instead, I watched some sort of feel good movie that seemed more like it was designed to appease younger women who were dragged along to yet another “scary movie” for their date night.
World War Z took another direction. Zombies were swarming the Earth and humanity was dying by the billions. Most zombie films are about the survivors trying to stay alive on the streets but WWZ takes us right into the search for a scientific solution in the form of an antivenom hopefully made from the source of the disease. It addressed the lack of resources when supply chains stop and the need to prioritize those dwindling resources by making unpopular decisions.
WWZ seemed rushed, but at least believable. We want to hope that, in the advent of global annihilation, someone somewhere is trying to discover a solution to the problem instead of just circling the wagons and trying to ride out the swarms of the zombie hordes. While it may seem romantic to be the girl that could cause the dead to come back to life, let's face it, a true zombie would eat the girl, her family and her dog, not play her records.
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