HoNoToGroABeMo Day Thirty-One: It Is Done
5 years ago
4:37 PM
I saw the much-awaited (by me, anyway) LAND OF THE DEAD last night. First reactions are mixed, and that's from a zombie fan. Okay, it's a cool flick, and it's a Romero movie, so it's going to rise to a certain level.
Someone was telling me that there is another zombie flick in the pipeline, somewhere. After seeing LAND OF THE DEAD, I'm thinking that Romero really needs to make an abrupt departure with his plot lines if the next one is going to be any kind of success, critically or financially.
The basic notion of "Mankind sucks, look how they squabble with one another.. zombies look great by comparison" has been done to death (or undeath, if you will). This theme has worked well for the Living Dead and Aliens franchises, but after you've been to that well four times, the time comes when nostalgia won't be a huge audience motivator for number five.
In Land of the Dead, there is a classic Romero conflict, with the classic "almost every human and a lot of zombies get killed" resolution, but with one key difference... at the very end, the lead good guy has a long distance 'moment' with the lead zombie bad guy. And he shows mercy. Now that the zombies are learning to think (if somewhat dimly) there is just a *hint* of some form of rapproachment between mankind and zombiekind.
What kind of plot could come out of a society with some vestigial form of zombie-human coexistence? One where the existence of both groups is threatened, perhaps? I'm interested in where the story goes from here.
Someone was telling me that there is another zombie flick in the pipeline, somewhere. After seeing LAND OF THE DEAD, I'm thinking that Romero really needs to make an abrupt departure with his plot lines if the next one is going to be any kind of success, critically or financially.
The basic notion of "Mankind sucks, look how they squabble with one another.. zombies look great by comparison" has been done to death (or undeath, if you will). This theme has worked well for the Living Dead and Aliens franchises, but after you've been to that well four times, the time comes when nostalgia won't be a huge audience motivator for number five.
In Land of the Dead, there is a classic Romero conflict, with the classic "almost every human and a lot of zombies get killed" resolution, but with one key difference... at the very end, the lead good guy has a long distance 'moment' with the lead zombie bad guy. And he shows mercy. Now that the zombies are learning to think (if somewhat dimly) there is just a *hint* of some form of rapproachment between mankind and zombiekind.
What kind of plot could come out of a society with some vestigial form of zombie-human coexistence? One where the existence of both groups is threatened, perhaps? I'm interested in where the story goes from here.
