Okay, so is it only the recently deceased that are still "alive" + whoever they kill & turn into a zombie? The promos had mentioned that Hell "filled up" when the movie first came out... How many people die each day across the Earth? It would seem that unless the Dead start turning the living people into zombies at some amazing pace, that it wouldn't be that hard for the living to sort of manage the problem... Just rambling since I just watched the movie again...
I'm sure that hell filled up line is just a tag line that somebody came up with after the fact. I've never seen the remake though, so I don't know.
I found this in my searches acros the "internets:" "Since the beginning of humanity, an estimated 75 billion people have been born and died, and 6 billion born and still alive. This amounts to 81 billion people ever born on planet Earth." Hell filling up is as good a reason as any. I mean, not ALL the Dead came back - just the recently Dead. If all the dead came back we'd clearly be f'd, but according to Romero Zombie rules, only the recently dead can really come back - not piles of bones. So let's just start with the very recently Dead. So then, roughly 200,000 peeps die globally each day. Well, if the Dead came back today & you didn't kill the Dead fast enough, and they keep infecting more & more living peeps AND each new day there's another 200k Dead added on, fighting the living - well I can see how we'd be ****ed.
Many factors contribute to zombie outbreaks. Just shooting them in the head sounds easy, but factor in how unlikely people would be to do this to what merely appear to be sick relatives. Also, one's aim tends to get worse in a firefight, especially when facing hordes of walking corpses. I highly recommend you read The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.
I don't put any stock into the "Hell being filled" line. If you notice, it was said by a preacher. It's just a religious attempt at rationalization. A scientist would have said it was a virus, which seems a little more likely. The best evidence that it's a virus, instead of it being something religious, is the little girl at the beginning of the movie. She was a zombie, yet she wasn't recently dead, so obviously she was bitten by a zombie. Well if you're made a zombie because you're dead, but there's no room for you in hell, why would a zombie bite make someone else a zombie? Someone might answer that by saying that the bite kills you, and then there's no more room in hell for you, so you come back to life, but why would a little girl be going to hell? And if you kill yourself, and you haven't been bitten, you don't come back. But killing yourself is supposedly a sin, and would send you to hell, but it doesn't work like that apparently. And even if the zombies do come back, why does shooting them in the head matter? What happens to their souls if you shoot them in the head? Does hell expand a bit and let them in, or do the souls just disappear? If it's possible for souls to just disappear, then why dont' they just do that in the first place once hell fills up instead of coming back as zombies? It has nothing to do with hell, obviously.
NOTE: SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW FOR NEW VERSION OF DOTD. Because the brain is still controlling their motor abilities. If the brain is no longer intact, then they obviously won't be moving around any longer. I agree...the line in question debated in this thread means nothing. It just sounds good. I watched the newest Dawn of the Dead twice in the last week. It's more of an action flick than a horror flick but the action doesn't detract from the horror aspect. I heard or read the director would probably make a sequel to this new one after he does a few other non-horror films. While this movie wasn't bad, I stilled enjoyed the original more. I didn't really enjoy the premise of this movie and what they were trying to do at the end. They were all talking about how great an idea it was. When I heard that, I was thinking you people are f*cking stupid. Stay put...you've got everything you need to last for a long time. All they had to do was make sure the place is secure which it pretty much was unless you do something stupid like that chick did for that stupid dog of all things that pretty much opened up the can of worms. And, screw Andy! Tough sh*t, buddy. We're staying put! The film was pretty well done overall and the effects/make-up was really good. The ending was weird how they played that out but it was cool. You just knew that was going to happen. I just don't get why they wanted to leave. Wait for the rescue or wait for the zombies to decompose which obviously happened later at some point from what I could gather. I wonder where they go with the sequel?
I wasn't arguing why it would kill them, I was arguing why shooting them in the head would be enough to send them to hell if there's no room in hell for them. And you're right, I heard about the sequel as well. It's supposed to be called City of the Dead or something. Apparently, some people get together and lock down an entire city to keep zombies from getting in. SLIGHT SPOILER: And if you're referring to that zombie head at the end during the credits when you talk about them decomposing, I don't think that's what they were trying to say. The zombie head was supposed to show you that the zombies didn't need food or air, and that as long as the brain remained intact, they would be alive. The zombie was missing his entire body, had his head locked in a cooler, and was still alive and ready to kill when they opened it. So it kind of serves as a justification for leaving instead of waiting for them to die, like they did in 28 Days Later. I do agree with you basically, though. There's no reason to leave just yet, and I liked the original a lot more.
HEAVY SPOILERS - cont. I don't think they needed to show the head in the cooler to prove that point so late in the movie. We already knew from earlier in the film that you could destroy the other body parts and the heads would stay alive unless shot or destroyed so it stands to reason the body is expendable. While it does show what your saying, I felt the head in the cooler was done more as a foreshadowing of what's to come and just another chance to show off some gore. I mean...their trying to get to an island and they come upon this boat with the head in the cooler. The boat could have very well come from the island. It seemed to imply that is their fate. So, I find quite the opposite of what your saying about being justified to leave. I think it proved they were not justified because the virus was everywhere...even in an adrift boat. The fact that they just happily pulled up to the boat dock later ready to come ashore and then being overrun is just another incident of stupidity that does not compute. Plus, the irony of them having saved the dog and then the dog runs off barking to alert the zombies. Whose side is the dog on? But, surely, they would have kept a reasonable distance and checked it out first. Plus, back when they were planning to leave the mall, their only plan was to go to the island because it may be free of zombies. PUH-LEASE! What...no fall back plan? The clear choice was to stay at the comforts of the mall for as long as possible and don't do anything to jeopardize it. You've got a f-ing food court full of food. Your set! Just chill! As far as the zombies decomposing, it's pretty clear in the film that there are stages to the zombies' decomposition that were occurring as the film progressed. I know they talk about this in the special features on the DVD. They started off relatively clean and became more decomposed toward the end. I don't see why the brain would be immune to the same decomposition the body is going through unless their saying the brain is still alive to some capacity so it won't decompose. Eventually, the zombies are going to decompose. They could have waited a few months and the zombies should have just dried up. Or, else, their disregarding the rules of nature then. There was plenty of food and stuff to live on in the mall to last at least that long. The fact that they were going to try to go to the island with no food(indicated as it ran out on the boat and/or became foul) was dumb. They weren't leaving because they had to although it just so happened that the situation was forced over the dumb dog incident. I dunno...just a bunch of bs really. You can always knock this stuff full of holes. You just have to suspend disbelief. There's always some angle that you cannot explain away by occurences in the film. Why am I saying all this? Because the freaking film could have been a lot smarter than it was. It almost seemed like it was made up as they went along. Just because it's a zombie movie doesn't mean it has to be a stupid movie. "28 Days Later" was the smartest one of them all to date even though I didn't find the film to be all that great, either.
In the Dawn of the Dead...the humans beat the zombies eventually...didnt they? If you look at the extra features on the DVD there is a feature of Andy's lost tape and it says that someone recovered it after going through all of the disaster places... So in the end the humans won...yay
Yea...Osama Bin Laden and cohorts escaped the virus(because their invisible as we know), came to take over America after the zombies decomposed, and found the tape. They then mixed in some propaganda about how the world deserved this and, because their alive, it is proof that Allah is on their side. We didn't see that part, though.
Actually, that's going to be another installment to George Romero's original Living Dead series. None of these athletic zombies in that one.
Well that's even better. I'm not sure how to feel about the slow zombie vs. fast zombie debate. I understand that slow zombies are traditional and being slow is one of the defining characteristics of zombies and blah blah blah. But you have to admit that fast zombies are infinitely more exciting. With fast zombies, one mistake will kill you. In the original Dawn of the Dead, the biker gang put pearl necklaces on the slow zombies. The slow ones are only a threat in large numbers. Otherwise, they're ridiculous figures. So I don't know what to think.
I loved the remake. Did they leave too early? Yeah, they probly should have at least alluded to running out of necessities or the place not being to secure or something, because the way it was presented, they could have holed up there for a long ass time and they never presented that great of an argument and plan for escaping. I don't see the obsession with the original, other than perhaps nostalgia. It just isn't scary, I didn't like the slow zombies so much(hated how they were slow and lethargic, but could rip people apart if they got to close), didn't buy the motivations for the actions of the characters(or their awful acting for that matter). I thought night of the living dead was much better.
SPOILERS - cont. I think the main argument for why they were itching to leave is they couldn't stand each other...with a few obvious exceptions. They would rather be dead and/or a zombie than to continue on in a huge mall with conversation that is lame at best. For Heaven's sake...the black cop was playing chess with Andy by holding up signs to show their moves. He must have been pretty turned off his own company to resort to that. Also, their best chance for escape was the sewer system before they blew that all to hell by letting the zombies in after the gun shop fiasco. They could have walked underneath all the zombies to safety. The zombies would have been none the wiser and kept hanging out at the mall waiting on some live human food action inside. Instead, they rig those buses and bring the zombies with them. Nice! The story was just dumb in so many ways. I think it could have been much better if the focus wasn't so much on the gore aspect. You still want that but you don't want to see dumbed down characters making dumb choices for no good reason. The fact that the one stupid chick decided to take the moving van on her own over to the gun shop to rescue the dog. What is she...in freaking PETA? It's the end of the world possibly and your worried about the life of a single dog that's not even yours to begin with.
Them hating each other would be a good reason I guess ... but the movie didn't portray that to me all that much. Other than the guy who was a complete dick, all of them seemed to get along with each other. I thought the chess thing was just because they became friends and they wanted a way to pass the time. I mean, they were bored, yeah, but that's not a good enough reason to leave. I originally thought they wanted to go to an island that was more desserted just to get away from the gloom that was the ever present zombies, but obviously they wanted to go to island that had people on it. I dunno about them escaping from the sewer system. There were so many of the zombies around, and the whole group would be stuck on foot. All it would take would be one to spot them whenever they decide to head topside and then they'd be overwhelmed with them fast freaks in an instant. I could buy how freaked out the girl and the black dude was, but I can't really rationalize away her going after the dog either, esp when the guy was in just as much danger! Still, best zombie movie I've seen, I liked it better than 28 days later. The story was better in 28, but there was just too much dead space in the movie. I do want a plausible story(such as it is), but the action and gore is more important to me.
Yea...I was pretty much joking about this reason to leave. The fact is they didn't have a good reason to leave at that moment in time. Even if they get to an island without zombies, they didn't have a clue about what island they would be arriving at, if there would be food/water available, etc. . Their plan was based upon being clueless. Just get to the island. Arghhhhh! I was thinking the sewer system would get them really close to the boat as they didn't actually travel that far in the buses. All of the zombies in the vicinity were at the mall/gun shop and they all came from the mall when they took the buses. Apparently, these zombies had some form of telepathic communication or a strong sense of smell for live flesh as they all knew where the live human food was. It was at least an option. The buses were a zombie magnet. They didn't exactly have much of a plan for exiting the bus at the marina except the one security guy apparently gave up his life to blow up the bus but that was just luck that it turned out that way. No sense in debating the lack of smarts in this film. It's just not that type of film. These characters were as stupid as the story made them out to be. It's unfortunate they didn't think it out more before making some of these dumb storyline decisions. That's all I'm saying. The storyline could have had less holes in it.
To add a few more questions to the conversation: The zombies don't like water, correct? They refused to go into the water on the docks, and then there was the zombie in the beginning that, when introduced into the fountain, could do nothing but twitch and bounce around. Yet they tromped through the sewer water like it was nothing. Also, what "island" are they going to? I could have sworn that the mall was in Milwaukee or something, wasn't it? The nearest bodies of water are the Great Lakes. But they acted like they were all alone and marooned out in the ocean, and that their situation was completely hopeless because they had run out of water and fuel. If there are islands out in the Great Lakes (I'm no geography buff), why would anyone assume that they would be uninhabited? And why rush out onto the island without checking first? And then once you see zombies everywhere, why not just turn back? You're not in the middle of the Atlantic. You're off the coast of Wisconsin.
The movie didn't imply that zombies hated water. The zombie in the fountain was a "twitcher" who had been shot. The zombies could have very well swam if they wanted to since their motor activity was functioning. The setting was Everett, Washington. I don't know any islands off the coast of Washington but there may be a few small ones. I'm not exactly a geography buff in that part of the US. Edit: I guess it was Wisconsin. The site that said Washington I took that from appears to be wrong. The same point I brought up earlier in regards to your first question. The fact that they exhausted their fuel prior to putting up the sail is laughable in itself as the fuel could have been used to make an escape once the zombies on the island came at them. Their stupid people I tell yea! STUPID!!!! THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN ZOMBIES AS THEIR BRAIN ACTIVITY WAS EQUIVALENT!!
