Yes, it is. Chris Stuckmann enjoyed it quite a bit despite being too long:
I guess this is the right thread for it:
“There’s no sitting down, like, I banned chairs from the set. The nice thing is, it’s really intimate. I can just talk to the actors right there, I’m not back in a monitor across the room. It was definitely the most purely engaged I’ve been making a movie.”
As a former crew member that slaved away on sets for years: “Fuck you Zack.” Great for you to chat to your cast, but it’s not cool to force this rule on to your hardworking team!
I just watched it here at work and I can put up with bad acting and dumb action and long drawn out character progressions at times, and I love zombie movies, but I just found this one too long with some fairly bad acting here and there, some just bad dialogue and character interactions, and just not enough interesting action over the whole course of the movie. Just kind of stale IMO.
Twenty minutes in and the base premise is just so dumb I’m having a hard time moving forward. You contained a zombie threat, it seems to be a typical zombie threat where head trauma kills them, the US military could sort that shit out in an afternoon. Reminds me of the last act of the second John Dies at the End book, it’s just silly.
You give the military an impetus to build a bomb that sprays out shrapnel at head level, something I guess like a spinning bomb with the right fuse timer and whatnot, and they will knock that out over lunch. Much less just a bunch of soldiers on the walls with millions of rounds of ammo. But hey, twenty minutes in, maybe that gets explained, or maybe we’re just doing fun stupid stuff for the gore.
An hour in, and I think this is going to be a patented Tom Chick Ha Ha movie, Snyder essentially remade Sorceress from Suicide Squad.
End of the thing, I flipped through the last 20 minutes even after watching seventeen hours of the beginning, just a waste. Michael Bay is pretty happy he didn’t direct this.
Before I even came here to read, I KNEW that this would be badly viewed by a lot of people here.
Its like I am the ANTI-Qt3 crowd here, but its fine- anyways, below is anothe take on this movie.
My GF and I really, really liked it - it was absurd and over the top (For gods sake, the main protagonist wears a cape - A CAPE?! :-D ) But it was great fun, and it was all the things that zombie movies has to be, and set in a setting that resonates enourmously in what zombies typically showcase, consumerism, greed, and capitalism. Not that it makes any especially poignant points that others don’t, but its there and its not subtle.
All in all, a great movie in a genre I havent personally enjoyed for years - much recommended!
It is dumb, but it’s very Escape from New York and it’s played that way. A broad ridiculous premise whose absurdity is ignored by everyone in the movie, so you can just roll with it.
But then there’s the rest of the movie, which is variously levels of juvenile, awkward, tedious, and incompetent. There are some cool elements. Tig Notaro was just what the movie needed, and I could have used more of her. I had no idea she was Christopher Plummered in! At least that was relatively seamless. The concept of smarter zombies was a nice twist, especially for the queen zombie, who was a lot of fun. And Garrett Dillahunt’s fate was almost worth the price of admission. But otherwise, ugh, Zack Snyder is like a more disappointing Paul Anderson because at least he used to have style. Now he’s just churning out artless comic book schlock that’s too serious by half and twice as long.
-Tom
Damnit Tom, you know just what to say to get me interested in watching this.
To the script’s credit, the set-up works pretty well and Snyder’s trademark slo-mo cinematic tableaus of everything unfolding are a lot of fun. We’ve come a long way from Andrienne Barbeau doing voiceover for 80s-era vector graphics! If the entire running time of Army of the Dead had been A-10’s making bombing runs over the Vegas Strip, I would have been delighted. This is one of those movies that only disappoints you as the running time progresses.
-Tom
We watched and it was some fun escapist tomfoolery. we did wonder why smart zombies couldn’t figure out a way over or under the container wall. That scene where the coyote is holding the queen’s head and the queen is trying to signal something to her King with her eyes was a hoot.
I liked that there were a few actors I hadn’t seen before, I do wish Zack would have given them a little more time to develop their characters.
Head band gal who raised her hand when the group was asked if there was anyone who hadn’t killed a zombie before sure learned quickly.
Is there a drop off point or more of a steady degradation?
This is an example of Snyder’s incompetence. He just got finished telling us she was new to this whole thing and didn’t know what she was doing. Then he makes her the lone player in a drawn-out badass zombie killing sequence? To paraphrase a cartoon some of you guys love, “Are we not doing continuity anymore?”
It’s a sequence of jagged downward cuts for the whole two hours plus.
-Tom
No kidding! We were popcorn munching away at this opening act. Ocean’s Zombies w/ Tig Notaro? We’re in!
…until my partner got up to grab dessert, and I realized there were TWO HOURS left?! Whaaaaaaaat?!
So now we’ve decided this is a silly limited TV series. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s episode. Or maybe I’ll get to it whenever I feel like it. But I’ll enjoy it, dammit! And if I don’t, oh well, we can always fast forward to the Tig Notaro bits. She’s the reason we turned it on in the first place.
I agree Tig Notaro was great, mostly because she comes off as very authentic which kinda highlighted the downfalls in other areas. It felt trapped between trying to be a clever heist movie, which it wasn’t, and an action-packed zombie romp, which it also wasn’t. If it had committed to either lane it would have been much better.
Try watching it - a few of us here actually enjoyed it.
Its funny - In Denmark a well respected newspaper that normally looks down upon this kind of baser movie, gave it 5 out of 6 stars, which is very unusual. I don’t think if my enjoyment of the movie is related a bit to that expectation as well, seeing as if I see something here being heaped upon by everyone as a poor movie, it affects my own enjoyment, but - as I mentioned earlier, we really liked it!
I honestly said several times that I thought Batista was becoming a great actor, especially considering his background.
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Ten minutes in and I’m treated to Sean fucking Spicer. Fuck this so much.
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Why is the depth of field cranked up to 9000?
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You tell a bunch of mercs to go in and steal money as ruse to bring in one dude with the real mission of retrieving alpha zombie samples, but why overcomplicate things? Especially since that plan didn’t work before? Just hire mercs to get the sample and get out.
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“But you can fly out!” Wait. What? Why would the military allow someone to fly out of the zombie quarantine zone? Wouldn’t one of their primary orders to be to make sure NOTHING ever gets out?
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Speaking of which, everyone seemed to know about the coyote and how she routinely ferried people in and out of the zone. Why??? Why would that ever be allowed???
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And hey coyote! You don’t think the information that the zombies have built a primitive kingdom with a hierarchy and are able to communicate enough to work out a trade deal with you isn’t something you should maybe tell people?
Bonus nitpick: Guzman shot a plastic gas tank and it blew up.
Finally, did my brain break from this movie, or did I see a couple of zombies with glowing blue robot eyes and blue sparks when they got shot???
Ugh. This movie.
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Show dude fucking up zombies with a concrete saw in the prologue. Make a big deal of him digging that baby back up and asking it if it’s ready to play. Have a TF2 Heavy scene of someone touching that saw and getting their hand slapped because no one else is allowed to touch his baby. Use it only to cut some concrete in the actual heist and not by him.
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Desiccated zombies revive in the rain! Oh man, I’m sure gonna love seeing that happen! Crickets.
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What happened to the woman they rescued at the very end? Did I miss her death?
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Oh no! The evil dude’s plot to sell the zombie sample to the military didn’t work. I guess the military will just have to recreate their own zombie experiment.
Hmm - I think its time to give up on Qt3 for me - Like Brian has said quite a few times lately, you guys here are relentlessy pessimistic and hates with a vengeance on anything it seems.
There is very little joy and positivity to be found here, and its just getting worse and worse.
This thread is just the latest example and it really bums me out - so.
I hope that you stay @Razgon . It can be a tough crowd. Maybe avoid certain parts of the forum? Or take a break? I do that periodically and I mute a lot of threads.
Some of us do try a different tack and we need all the likeminded folks we can get.
Blurring spoilers would help for starters for movies that recently premiered.
Yep, hope you stick around! During the past year I’ve also started avoiding P&R and all the more heated debates since I’m also tired of heavy / negative stuff, particularly during these times.