I’m not holding out any hope for extra scenes for the DVD. The movie was pretty short, I wouldn’t imagine that they have much to work with.
I agree, but I’m sure they’ll include the Tallahassee/Columbus viewer mail segments I linked earlier. Something, anyway.
I was hoping for a score counter in the corner of the screen when Tallahassee was lighting things up at the amusement park. Play up that game aspect a little more.
Really enjoyed the film.
My boss was telling me yesterday that in an interview with the directory, it happens they cut a lot of scenes out to make the movie as short as it was, the goal was to make the movie “laser focused” and “tight” or something. So, there might be more additional scenes than you think.
That’s funny, because I don’t remember the film being that short. Seemed just right to me. It also does not seem “laser focused” or “tight” to me, not in the way I usually think of those terms. There were plenty of moments during the driving middle of the film that I felt like I was just along for a ride. On a roadtrip. And I liked that feeling.
Of course a glance at the running time reveals it to be 81 minutes, so my sense that it wasn’t short is totally off.
-xtien
Well, I went in knowing that it was a particularly short 81 minutes, so I was expecting a short movie, but I thought it seemed just right. I didn’t feel like I was ripped off or anything.
Wow, it was really only 81 minutes? For some reason it felt a bit longer than that.
Not to say that it dragged or anything, but I am pretty impressed that it managed to sneak under the “average movie time” of 90 mins without me noticing at all.
Yeah I didn’t mean to imply that the movie felt short. I thought the pacing was perfect, but I was laughing enough that I wanted to see more, and could easily have bared another 10-15 minutes.
But if that was the goal for a running time, I suppose it’s possible there’s a decent amount of cut scenes that will be available for DVD/BR.
Saw it again today with my brother who hadn’t yet… it held up pretty well for a second viewing. And being able to turn and watch someone’s reaction to scenes I know are coming is always nice.
I want a Twinkie.
It didn’t feel short to me also, which is probably another way of saying it did a good job of not dragging things out. There’s not a lot in this movie. Zombie outbreak. Handful of people surviving. Dash of romance. Surprising and charming cameo. Cinematic snark. Eighty-one minutes is probably about right.
I could see this as a TV series. I don’t know what the overall goal would be, they’d have to be aiming at something, but with the right actors and good writing, this could be something fun.
I just saw this tonight and had a good time. My nitpicks were piling up pretty quickly at the beginning. (Columbus says in narration he lived in a dorm room when the outbreak occurred, then in flashback he lived in an enormous, tastefully appointed apartment…the discrepancy was bad enough without the awkward stylistic approach to the narrative. How does he tote around enough ammunition to double tap every zombie? Why did the two girls set up their ambush in the back room of a zombie-infested supermarket? How does every character handle their firearms in such a cavalier manner without a horrible mishap occurring? Etc.) Soon, though, I was able to unclench my rigid joy-prevention barrier and accept the movie for what it was: young, dumb, and full of Woody Harrelson.
Other random thoughts:
*I hope that the Indian gift shop they demolish for the heck of it was the same roadside stop from Ace In The Hole, if slightly remodeled.
*During the big Hollywood Screen Kiss scene, they played an awesome Black Keys song. Man, someone knew what they were doing with the soundtrack to this movie.
*Most post-apocalyptic movies that have male and female survivors at least hint at the need to replenish the human race. Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone quickly paired up, but that leaves Woody and Abigail Breslin as Couple #2. No matter how precociously Abigail can play her characters, I find it a little distasteful. Hopefully they leave that plotline alone for a couple of sequels.
Shaun of the Dead is still my high water mark for zombie movies. And romantic comedies, too, actually. Also movies where the youthful protagonist realizes that he needs to sort out his life. Zombieland didn’t come close to it on any of those counts, but it was a fun movie to catch with a bunch of friends and laugh with. Brought to you by Mountain Dew Code Red and the good people at Hostess Snack Products.
I think what they were going for is that Woody takes on a fatherly role for Abigail. Any bits of repopulation can come from introducing a new survivor. Plus the new boyfriend meeting the over protective father, but in Zombieland, bit practically writes itself.
Every time he runs over a zombie corpse his ammo is replenished.
-xtien
M-M-MONSTER KILL!
Hey everybody, remember my weird, OCD crazy person rambling about how I didn’t like the numerical ordering of the Zombie rules? I thought I’d mention that hearing that it was conceived as a television show, with 12 times as much material for fleshing that stuff out, actually completely explains away my complaint.
I thought:
He actually shoots very few zombies. Many of his rules seem designed to prevent contact. I know if I was wandering around in Zombieland I’d be carrying a supply of water/food/ammo- each to be refilled as needed during my travels. So, for example, if I have a bad day and have to double tap a ton of zombies, guess what my next foraging trip is going to be for?
I figured the two girls were foraging, and realized they had company. Being accomplished scam artists, they devise a plan right then and there to deal with it. It may not have been the first time they worked that scam in the zombie era, keep that in mind. Scam artists tend to do the same ones over and over, why not if it works?
You have to be deliberately negligent, not just cavalier, to have a horrible mishap with a firearm…which, now that I think of it, they DO have a horrible mishap with a firearm.
I didn’t think this story was about him sorting out his life. He was living the way he wanted, except without the girl he wanted. Looking for a chick isn’t ‘sorting out your life’ in my book. This was just a boy meets girl story. What he did was take advantage of the situation(most people are gone) to get what he wanted(the hot girlfriend with hair he could play with).
Plus, the only purpose he had left in his life, besides getting the girl, was gone- his family was gone. So what else is he gonna do? That’s hardly sorting out your life.
spoiler
From a character development standpoint I think it is more important that he rejects his rules to try to save the girls than he gets the girl. The first 75% of the movie he is living in fear, the vibe is that he was living like that well before the zombie outbreak. His decision to fight is his characters arch.
Not that its amazingly in depth or anything, it is a summer action comedy after all. But the character arch is there.
Okay, that’s an excellent point. One hasty mistake led to wiping out perhaps one-fifth of the world’s healthy population, certainly the funniest proportion of the population.
I didn’t think this story was about him sorting out his life. He was living the way he wanted, except without the girl he wanted. Looking for a chick isn’t ‘sorting out your life’ in my book. This was just a boy meets girl story. What he did was take advantage of the situation(most people are gone) to get what he wanted(the hot girlfriend with hair he could play with).
Plus, the only purpose he had left in his life, besides getting the girl, was gone- his family was gone. So what else is he gonna do? That’s hardly sorting out your life.
I think Columbus establishing a new family/society-in-microcosm was the movie’s theme, and hooking up with a hot girl was a subset of that theme. Whether through character action or plot contrivance, he was able to keep himself in a group with a crazed loner and a paranoid sibling duo. Everyone in the group would have been happier on their own, but by sticking together they were able to rely on each other to create a little bubble of civilization. Within that bubble they could “enjoy the little things” society afforded, not simply plugging hordes of zombies in aesthetically pleasing ways, but being able to safely use the bathroom or brushing hair over an attractive girl’s ear without fearing death. Realizing this, and trying to save the girls in the third act, was a huge improvement over constantly being zombie-prey, and that is what I mean by the protagonist sorting his life out. It’s one of those movies where responsibility is less fun but offers slightly greater rewards than nihilism.
(What Kael said.)
Congrats, I think you’ve graduated from a simple curmudgeon to an amusing eccentric! :)