Maybe this movie will be the speed metal of the zombie genre, whereas Romero’s type of zombies are more like old fashioned rock and roll.
I didn’t read the book, so can only go by what I saw in the trailer. I did get that it probably didn’t have much in common with the book, though, since one of my friends commented once that in the Survival Guide Brooks pointed out that all you had to do was remove your staircase and you’d be safe, since zombies couldn’t climb.
I didn’t think these moved like the fluid ghosts from Lord of the Rings, as another poster mentioned. They reminded me more of a documentary I was watching about fire ants once. These zombies just crawl on top of each other like rats or ants and make themselves into ropes, or ramps, or maybe even bridges. These reminded me a bit more of crabs, tho, not so much helping each other as scrabbling over each other and pulling each other down as they tried to scale walls. I thought it was an odd effect, but given how single minded and determined they seemed, like hurling themselves off a roof to try and get at people in a helicopter, it didn’t seem so out of character.
So two things struck me a little oddly. First, WWII fighter, they looked like P-51s. Why are they being used? They came up a couple times in the trailer. Slow and steady for more pinpoint bombing of zombie masses, maybe?
The second thing was that I really don’t consider death to be a super-power, but a handicap. Sure, you can shamble away and never get tired for some reason, don’t worry about wounds because, hey, dead already. But you are still a mindless, rotting corpse. You don’t heal. Eventually you are going to wear your feet off and be crawling around. These turbo-charged, super-strong, extra-fast, tireless zombies? Yeah. They just don’t click with me. At least in 28 days later they weren’t actually dead, and we saw them starving and falling apart throughout the movie.
Splitting hairs, I know. Vampires are supposed to be dead, and look at them. Immortal, super-powered, maybe even glittery pederasts. But zombies are just meat puppets. It’s sort of the whole point, right? And if they aren’t actually dead, then how long could they survive doing the crazy calorie-consumption, system-stressing and physically stupid things we saw just in the trailer?
I dunno. The things just didn’t click. I’m hoping it was just a bad trailer, because I hear the book was good and the acting i saw didn’t look bad. the effects, while not necessarily to my taste, looked pretty carefully done, too.
I’m sorry that I have to say this, but complaining about fast versus slow zombies is right there with nitpicking about how Phasers really work or learning yourself the Klingon language. It’s kind of meaningless and obsessive.
Were those the A-10 Thunderbolts?
You know how I know you’re not a geek?
It’s just unnecessary to bring it up every single time there’s a new zombie movie. Give it a rest already.
I’m not sure how closely this will follow the book, if at all, but the trailer does at least demonstrate the correct sense of scale. I’m hopeful that it will depict full-scale zombie warfare, rather than just focusing a small group of people trying to survive. Key scenes in the trailer seem to suggest they nailed that bit, at least.
I’d usually agree, but it’s completely appropriate given the source material here. It’s like having a Nazgul on a motorcycle.
Agreed. I don’t care one way or the other since I think either version of zombie can be used effectively depending on the tale you want to tell, but I do think it’s a valid point of discussion when the book very much depended on slow Romero style zombies for many of the stories. Obviously, the movie ignores much of the book, but this isn’t just nerdy Star Wars versus Star Trek kvetching. This discussion actually involves the tone of the movie compared to the source material.
Yes.5
Fast and slow zombies make for totally different types of books/movies/whatever. Saying that you prefer horror to action movies doesn’t seem all that obsessive to me, and I certainly wouldn’t compare it to trying to learn a fictional language.
That said, I agree that it’s not necessary to bring it up every time a new zombie movie is made, but as has already been pointed out, the source material for this movie used slow zombies, and wouldn’t have worked with fast zombies (because they make for a totally different kind of book/movie/whatever).
I haven’t read the book, I just remember it being summed up as “blind monk with a shovel is more effective vs zombies than an entire army,” so at first I thought it looked like an ok fast zombie movie. Then I got to the part with the zombies rolling over each other in the alleyway towards the camera and was like “Well, yeah, that was pretty dumb and impossible looking, but maybe people are overreacting a little.” Then I got to the last shot and the stupidity and bad cgi of them assaulting the wall just blew my mind. Apparently now becoming a zombie not only involves the usual hand-waving related to becoming undead, but also lets you just start ignoring physics entirely to create zombie fountains.
Hand waving away hundreds of development details and saying that the speed of the monster defines whether the film is action or horror, is exactly what I’m talking about.
I quite liked the ant/crab horde effect they had going on with the wall. It was mentioned in the book, as high walls were less effect against the mega swarms but that was more a slow pile of zombies building up over time.
Right, so let me rephrase: I think that slow zombies lend themselves better to horror movies, and that fast zombies lend themselves better to action movies.
However, it’s not the speed of the monster, but the monster (in the case of zombie movies, usually millions of monsters) itself, that makes the difference. Fast zombies are usually a completely different type of monster than slow ones, tending also to be much stronger, and obviously much more dangerous.
Obviously, there are many other important aspects to a movie, but the choice of monster(s) is so fundamental that it influences most other aspects from the start. Most (good) horror starts with the monster and builds from there. Switching the alien from Alien with Dracula or Wolfman would probably make for a totally different movie, influencing all the other hundreds of development details you’re talking about. Switching it with a million aliens (or fast zombies, for that matter), would probably play a major part in turning that movie into an action movie, much like what happened in Aliens.
For me it’s not even a concern about fast or slow zombies. I love the slow zombies in The Walking Dead and I love the fast zombies in 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake. This is a completely different thing altogether. It’s like a zombie version of Starship Troopers. Why didn’t they just make another Starship Troopers movie where alien bugs invade the Earth.
Fast or slow, it’s all good. But zombies don’t flow like water.
I can see how this is an appealing argument, but in closer inspection it just doesn’t hold water. There are great horror movies with fast monsters and awesome action flicks with slow enemies. It’s the combination of a multitude of different elements that define the mood that is projected unto the viewer, and the speed of the monster is simply one of them. And in either case, it can serve well both in horror and action flicks.
I know that geeks will lecture about this till the end of time, and I think I’ve said all I have to say about the topic. I’m not invested enough to continue to argue about it, but I do hope that in the future it’s not used as a silly argument against a movie that is not even out yet.
Wish granted, since it will be used as a completely cogent argument against a movie that is not even out yet. Said argument is based upon the fact that slow zombies are an integral part of the book this film is supposedly based upon, so integral that changing them into parkour speedsters eliminates almost every character, scene, and plot development. It makes as much sense to say this film is based on WWZ as it does to say Star Wars is based on Wuthering Heights.
The thing that makes me feel fast vs slow is important in THIS movie is because it has a huge effect on the time frame of the action.
If the world is swarmed by super powered, ultra fast zombies, it’s going to be a very short fight(win or lose). Either humanity is going to come up with a counter move immediately or it’s over.
The epic nature of WWZ, the ‘world war’ aspect, depends on a lengthy struggle. It’s a tapestry of things like Yonkers, the blind guy fighting his private demons and literal ones, the girl’s family struggling in the north, etc. All these things are what makes it not just another typical barricade story. If the war takes time, Brad Pitt’s character will have time to travel the globe, doing whatever, and running into movie versions of some of those characters.
These super fast zombies though hint at a storyline that going to be very compressed. Get family to safety, get mission, leave family, carry out mission, end. I don’t see him having the luxury of mingling in any single area long enough for those side stories to get developed.