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Army of the Dead (2021)

xaxat

By xaxat
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xaxat

xaxat

(edited)

I really enjoyed this. It managed to successfully combine almost all of the zombie genre tropes. From OG Romero, campy Dawn of the Dead action, fast zombies and I am Legend/Omega Man zombie societies. Good ultraviolence and action scenes (The first victim on the team went out like a boss!). And I thought the characters were engaging. (Except for Kate, who was just dumb.)

On top of all that there was a really good soundtrack. Elvis, The Cranberries etc. But by far the best part was when Dieter cracked the Gotterdammerung safe. Not only did they play music from the Wagner opera, they played Siegfried's death and Funeral march. Fitting.

I assume it was done in post-production, but the shot of the Evergreen shipping container in the wall made me laugh.

Still wondering about the time loop theory.

Definitely the most entertaining Zac Snyder film of the year.

Everybody loves a goddamn lobster roll!

Edited by xaxat
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raven

raven

8 hours ago, xaxat said:

Still wondering about the time loop theory.

Holding out hope on this because Snyder wants a sequel and most of the interesting people died.  I mean, I know she's the protagonist's daughter and thus HAS to survive, but Kate??  the most annoying character?  lol.  Though Vanderohe surviving all that pesky radiation after exiting the vault is kind of interesting.  Maybe being bitten helped.

Quote

The first victim on the team went out like a boss!).

She was so badass!!  I knew she was going to die but was holding out a tiny bit of hope because damn, she fought so hard.

Lots of Die Hard vibes and Aliens vibes - you knew the copter would be gone and come back in this one.  Still, I thought it was a lot of fun and didn't feel the 2+ hours of run time.   Speaking of the copter, I didn't realize that Tig Notaro's pilot was added in digitally after the fact to replace Chris D'Elia.   Seemed pretty seamless to me.

We are getting more from this universe and it will be good to see Dieter again.

The Dieter/Vanderohe teaming was a good one and the zombies-testing-the-booby traps scene was very entertaining.

Good, gory summer fun. 

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MisterGlass

MisterGlass

(edited)

This was a good ride with great effects.  I enjoyed almost all of it and will probably watch again.  That said, Kate as the survivor does not quite work for me.  She made bad decisions and got better characters killed.  And we didn't even see her get those kids on a bus out of the blast zone. 

I really liked Dave Bautista as Scott.  I was rooting for him to have that happy ending that they had set up, and I think I would have liked that ending better.  Really all the actors did a good job with their roles.  And I would not have known Tig Notaro wasn't there with them.

One thing I can appreciate is a great montage, and that section showing the fall of Las Vegas and the initial heroics of these characters during the fight was awesome.  I liked the inter-cut shots of them having pictures at some photo shoot/documentary after the fact, where each of the central characters held up something that represented their past life.  That was a great, simple explanation of who they were and how they saw themselves.

Also, while there were things to handwave, I liked that the helicopter did not just start.

Edited by MisterGlass
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xaxat

xaxat

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7 minutes ago, MisterGlass said:

One thing I can appreciate is a great montage, and that section showing the fall of Las Vegas and the initial heroics of these characters during the fight was awesome.  I liked the inter-cut shots of them having pictures at some photo shoot/documentary after the fact, where each of the central characters held up something that represented their past life.  That was a great, simple explanation of who they were and how they saw themselves.

Another smart thing about the montage is that it helped set expectations. It appears that it is our introduction to our bad ass protagonists. You have that hopeful moment where the soccer mom finds her daughter. The dash for the exit. Then. . . 

And you're like "Oh! That's how it's going to be."

If Snyder does make a zombieverse, I'd watch that expanded into a movie.

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MisterGlass

MisterGlass

1 hour ago, xaxat said:

You have that hopeful moment where the soccer mom finds her daughter. The dash for the exit. Then. . . 

Yeah, that was definitely the moment I should have kept in mind as we approached the end.

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WritinMan

WritinMan

I have to say that this also does not feel 2.5 hours long. Very fast-paced. I was a little leery at first because of the runtime. I tend to think that almost all movies and books are too long. TV shows last too long, etc.

But the runtime was just right, and never lagged for me.

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raven

raven

Just going to give props to the trailer - it is really, really good.  I didn't know about this movie until I saw the trailer, which drew me in and uses The Gambler to full effect.  The last time a trailer brought me to a movie that I didn't know about/had not much interest in was the first Guardians of the Galaxy, which also then lived up to the expectations I had from the trailer.

Small peeve - stop shooting at the metal mask!  Once or twice, OK, but after a while you're just wasting bullets.  Since I don't remember them running out of bullets, I guess no harm there.

Agree about the opening montage, drawing us in and setting expectations.  I also enjoyed the very first scenes, with the newly married couple on a collision course with convoy carrying Patient Zero.  You know what's going to happen but I thought it was drawn out well, getting us to know the two guys driving the truck and thinking that maybe one of them would live. 

 

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WritinMan

WritinMan

(edited)
5 hours ago, raven said:

Small peeve - stop shooting at the metal mask!  Once or twice, OK, but after a while you're just wasting bullets.  Since I don't remember them running out of bullets, I guess no harm there.

 

 

I thought that too, but then I started to wonder if they were trying to shoot it in the eye.

Also, that scene where the helicopter drops down the length of that building must have been wild for those who saw this on a big screen.

Edited by WritinMan
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Anela

Anela

(edited)

I guess I’m the only one who isn’t loving it.  The alphas remind me of the vampires in that one show that was on for a few years.   The head of the one woman, reminds me of Return of the Living Dead, part two, “get the dang screwdriver out of my head!”

Edited by Anela
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benteen

benteen

(edited)

I really enjoyed this movie.  This is how you do a CGI movie Godzilla vs Kong!  The film looks great, it's a lot of fun (though I thought it could have used some more jokes) and is a nice return to form for Zack Snyder.  

The movie did a great job of building up its individual characters, like Aliens (clearly an inspiration for this film).  A lot of recent films don't even bother with this.  The opening montage is great (not a surprise, Snyder's opening montage in Watchmen was pretty great as well) and the setting is fantastic and manages to build a world.  Bautista did a good job as the lead.  I would definitely watch a sequel (more on that later).

Loved the use of Richard Wagner's score during the vault scenes, a score I heard for the first time in Excalibur, a film I know that Snyder's fan of.

On 5/22/2021 at 1:33 PM, WritinMan said:

I have to say that this also does not feel 2.5 hours long. Very fast-paced. I was a little leery at first because of the runtime. I tend to think that almost all movies and books are too long. TV shows last too long, etc.

But the runtime was just right, and never lagged for me.

I felt the exact same way.  Movie time can be a concern for me at times but I felt like this movie pretty much flew by.  To me, the standard for a recent action film when it comes to length is Mad Max Fury Road.  It's two hours long, which is just right and never felt like it wears out it's welcome.

Biggest pet peeve was at the end...what the hell happened to Geeta?  Annoying Kate makes bad decisions and got a lot of interesting characters killed all to save her friend (I kept wondering if the two of them were lovers.  I thought there was definitely a more than friends vibe between the two).  She manages to find her and get her to the helicopter and then we never see her again!  WTF?  Her character's entire motivation was to save Geeta and we don't see what happened to her.  I assume she got killed with the helicopter crashed.  But we never see it.  What, you can't have her hand sticking out of some wreckage.  As great a job as he did with the film, that is an inexcusably bad decision on Snyder's part and I'd expect better from even a novice filmmaker than to leave a thread like that hanging.

I would definitely see a sequel to this film and hope for the same amount of fun (although Kate's not the character to lead one).  In any event, this movie was a blast to watch.

Edited by benteen
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cambridgeguy

cambridgeguy

30 minutes ago, benteen said:

Biggest pet peeve was at the end...what the hell happened to Geeta?  Annoying Kate makes bad decisions and got a lot of interesting characters killed all to save her friend (I kept wondering if the two of them were lovers.  I thought there was definitely a more than friends vibe between the two).  She manages to find her and get her to the helicopter and then we never see her again!  WTF?  Her character's entire motivation was to save Geeta and we don't see what happened to her.  I assume she got killed with the helicopter crashed.  But we never see it.  What, you can't have her hand sticking out of some wreckage.  As great a job as he did with the film, that is an inexcusably bad decision on Snyder's part and I'd expect better from even a novice filmmaker than to leave a thread like that hanging.

Yeah, that was really, really weird.  Maybe it wasn't possible to show her without also including Chris D'Elia in the shot.

The other weird choice was for Vazquez (sorry, Chambers) to emerge from that scrum of zombies, knows she's toast, and DOESN"T mention how Martin totally screwed her over.  Could have saved the rest of the team a lot of trouble if she had come up with some more useful last words.

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shrewd.buddha

shrewd.buddha

(edited)

Sometimes (but only sometimes) it is fun to have all the tropes and all the clichés proudly on display in a popcorn flick. This was definitely one of those movies.  It would have been more satisfying (to me) if the movie ended with Bautista back flipping burgers on a grill  ... exactly back where he started with nothing to show for it. 

The most interesting aspect of Tig Notaro's performance was that fact that her character was added post-production - and she has claimed to have never met Bautista.  I was looking to see how they cut between characters and scenes to piece the character in.   Tho, I am not sure if I would have noticed if I had not known before watching. 

Edited by shrewd.buddha
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benteen

benteen

(edited)
2 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Yeah, that was really, really weird.  Maybe it wasn't possible to show her without also including Chris D'Elia in the shot.

The other weird choice was for Vazquez (sorry, Chambers) to emerge from that scrum of zombies, knows she's toast, and DOESN"T mention how Martin totally screwed her over.  Could have saved the rest of the team a lot of trouble if she had come up with some more useful last words.

I've heard that brought up.  That might be the reason but to me, it doesn't excuse not putting in a small scene with Kate seeing her body in the wreckage.  They took the time and money a lot of money to put Tig Notaro in the scene, I can't imagine it wouldn't have taken much more of either to show her handing sticking out of some wreckage.

Agreed on the second point.  She could have screamed that out at the end.

Edited by benteen
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xaxat

xaxat

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(edited)
5 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

The other weird choice was for Vazquez (sorry, Chambers) to emerge from that scrum of zombies, knows she's toast, and DOESN"T mention how Martin totally screwed her over.  Could have saved the rest of the team a lot of trouble if she had come up with some more useful last words.

I think it goes back earlier than that. Why didn't Scott  listen to Peters when she warned them about Martin? Her reasoning was sound and it came from someone Scott and Cruz had trusted their lives with previously. 

If they keep an eye on Martin the whole time, Cruz survives, he doesn't kill the Alpha bride, the heist goes off successfully and Kate gets eaten as she tries to storm the Olympus. Win, win!

Edited by xaxat
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Anela

Anela

I thought Kate was upset, because Geeta had two children, and lost her own mother, but I wasn’t giving it my full attention when they were talking about it.  

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raven

raven

7 hours ago, benteen said:

They took the time and money a lot of money to put Tig Notaro in the scene, I can't imagine it wouldn't have taken much more of either to show her handing sticking out of some wreckage.

It's blink and you miss it but in the shot where we see Notaro's character slumped against the side of the copter, we see the back of Geeta's head pitched forward; she is slumped over the dashboard (if that's what you call it) of the copter.  I remember because I was looking for her specifically, thinking she would survive.   That said, we should have had a scene of Annoying Kate going to the cockpit to look for her.  Actually, Tig Notaro's pilot didn't look dead - I thought that it would turn out that all 3 had survived the crash. 

I also was disappointed than Tanaka didn't get some kind of comeuppance.  Maybe if there's a sequel.

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Enero

Enero

(edited)
On 5/23/2021 at 8:25 PM, Anela said:

I guess I’m the only one who isn’t loving it.  The alphas remind me of the vampires in that one show that was on for a few years.   The head of the one woman, reminds me of Return of the Living Dead, part two, “get the dang screwdriver out of my head!”

You're not alone. This really was not much different than all the other generic man eating zombie movies out there. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood to watch this. Or I’m simply over zombies, at this point. Lol. But I gave it a watch since it kept popping up on my Netflix feed. 

What annoyed me most about this movie was of course Kate surviving. The least interesting character of the bunch and as others have said, the most annoying.   Vanderohe surviving was interesting but made no sense, considering everyone else who was bitten it took mere minutes, at minimum, to a couple of hours at most for them to turn. However, considering he had to walk out of Vegas, which no doubt took him several days, he should’ve been turned. But he didn’t start feeling the effects of the bite until all those days later and even then he wasn’t turning just yet. Convenient that a helicopter would show up right after Vegas was nuked to pick up any survivors. Didn’t understand why the helicopter would be there unless I missed a scene. The entire reason for them going to Vegas ended up being all for naught. Everyone died except the two least engaging characters and thus nobody cared about. One because we didn’t see much of him and the other was just annoying and not very relatable. Kate went through all that trouble, made stupid decisions, got people killed, but failed to save Geeta and take her back to her kids. 

So what was the point of this movie? The action wasn’t all that great and it failed to build much investment in the characters. It wasn’t even a good turn your brain off popcorn flick to me. Someone mention Alien/Aliens earlier. Now that’s how you do an action monster flick, 28 Days Later, World War Z, Train to Busan are others I’d put on that list.  This was just okay and forgettable at best. 

Edited by Enero
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Hanahope

Hanahope

So no one commented on the fetus from the zombie queen?  Was that pre-turning or after? Could the alphas reproduce?  If it was pre-turning why would the king , the zombie from the beginning, act like it was his?
 

but yeah , they don’t figure out Martin has ulterior motives and the worst character survives .  

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raven

raven

Well, I watched Army of Thieves but it doesn't rate a topic due to my opinion of it, hee.

HOW do you make a boring heist movie?  These people did; I dozed off a couple of times.  You also have a completely unnecessary love triangle with people who have zero chemistry with each other.   You have people heisting and never wearing gloves - it was sooo distracting, esp since one of them is a wanted international jewel thief.  Maybe that's why she didn't care about leaving prints everywhere?  The heist plans were so simplistic - especially the last one - that I wondered why more of us don't try it.    The good:  there are some fun parts and the locations are great, or at least look good.   The movie starts well.  I feel like Sebastian/Dieter and Gwen would have been more interesting characters in a better movie.   Oh well.

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revbfc

revbfc

On 10/31/2021 at 8:21 AM, raven said:

Well, I watched Army of Thieves but it doesn't rate a topic due to my opinion of it, hee.

HOW do you make a boring heist movie?  These people did; I dozed off a couple of times.  You also have a completely unnecessary love triangle with people who have zero chemistry with each other.   You have people heisting and never wearing gloves - it was sooo distracting, esp since one of them is a wanted international jewel thief.  Maybe that's why she didn't care about leaving prints everywhere?  The heist plans were so simplistic - especially the last one - that I wondered why more of us don't try it.    The good:  there are some fun parts and the locations are great, or at least look good.   The movie starts well.  I feel like Sebastian/Dieter and Gwen would have been more interesting characters in a better movie.   Oh well.

Dieter was my favorite character from AOTD, so I had a good time.  Some of your criticisms are valid, but they weren’t deal breakers for me.

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paigow

paigow

On 10/31/2021 at 8:21 AM, raven said:

Maybe that's why she didn't care about leaving prints everywhere? 

Her frequent hair style changes ensure that she is one step ahead of old security footage...

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