*** Official DAWN OF THE DEAD Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Romier S]

Agreed Robert, excellent points.

 

[SteveGon]

Actually, if I remember correctly, the little girl was bitten. Barbara's brother as far as I know, wasn't - he probably died when his head struck the tombstone. As slow as the zombies in Romero's films move, it's hard to imagine them spreading so quickly if you have to be bitten to become one. If you die naturally and turn, that would be a much more widespread and harder-to-control problem.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Yeah, but if the radiation is affecting that area of pittsburg, to the point where ALL the dead people in the area are getting up--that's a nice size amount of people. A little easier to overrun other small towns. That's not taking into account any other towns nearby that got hit.

I think you can't call it a worldwide thing, either, otherwise the dead EVERYWHERE would have rose up out of their graves, and we would have simply skipped straight from Night to Day of the Dead, and being outnumbered 400,000 to 1.

 

[Michael Allred]

Saw it Saturday night, loved it.

 

[Ray_Gootz]

Robert-

Intresting points but looks at some of the zombies in Dawn or Day, they look like they didn't die violently,which would indicate a violent struggle. Some key zombies are the Hari Krishna in Dawn, Bub in Day, The fat naked guy and the black zombie in the projects in dawn. And the way the people in the projects keep the zombies in Dawn. I have a feeling that these were people that died naturally, CAME back and the people were so shell-shocked they kept them around. Anyway Night is part of the trilogy and that's canon so I'm gonna say if you die in a Romero film you come back as a zomibe. Plus that's the only way you could explain the zombies multiplying so fast in the series. Thousands die every day and if they all just stuck around...it'd get pretty crowded pretty quick.

 

[Ray_Gootz]

I also belive that in the romero film if you've recently died you get back up. In other words if you died 2 weeks before Barbra got to the cementary then you wouldn't rise. But anyone that died that day or after rises again. I also belive it's a world-wide problem bevcause if not then a bunch of other countries would've came to the U.S's aid.

By the way they did make a shooting game based on the Romero films-it was called House of the Dead and it, unfortunetly, was made into a movie last year.

 

[Romier S]

House of the Dead (the game) was, at most, only influenced by Romero's zombie films. Even that is stretching it since his films have influenced just about every last bit of "undead" entertainment you can find out there. The House of the Dead series (there are three games in total) however was in no way officially based on those films.

The Resident Evil series of games (especially the first release of Resident Evil) is far more influenced by Romero's work (heavily influenced IMHO) and he was in fact supposed to bring the Resident Evil film to the screen originally. Unfortunate that we never got to see his vision for the film....

 

[Paul_D]

Just saw this last night at a preview here in London. Enjoyed it a lot and found it pretty shockingly violent.

Given how lenient the BBFC is compared with the MPAA, and the relative freedom inherant in a strict 18 rating compared with the wider R, I wonder if we got the full uncut version here in the UK, or were we just given the MPAA-R-requirements-tweaked-version? Anybody know.

I did find some of the headshots and flesh biting very explicit, and wouldn't expect the version I saw last night to be R-level material.

 

[Darren Davis]

Saw it yesterday afternoon and the theater was laughing out loud for the most part. It just didn't seem that scary because it was hard for me to take it seriously. Oh well, at least I enjoyed myself. I do think it's worth a watch because there are some parts that are pretty good, whether scary, funny (celebrity sniping ), or just cool (ammo guy's missing head).

BTW, the song first played over the credits is "People Who Died" by The Jim Carroll Band. I was pretty impressed by this obscure song being in the movie.

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

Thanks Darren. I had to see the movie a second time just so I can find out what song that was. Okay, I went to see a second time because more of my friends were going and I had nothing else better to do.

 

[Chris Tedesco]

Wow, that's very suprising to me...very. I can understand if someone might say they still liked the original better, but to say it was awful? Everybody has an opinion I guess.

As for me, hands down this one is superior. Sure it's a remake so you can't call it original. However for me, action ,realism, acting, story, special effects etc. are all superior. It being a brand new movie it should have better special effects. Acting, well people if you saw the original you can't compare.

So the original holds dear to my heart, I mean I first saw it when I was 10, but this one in my opinion has past my expectations.

I give it an A

 

[JoshB]

Box Office numbers for this weekend (March 19-21): $27,326,000


Very impressive. The film has already topped its budget ($27 million) and should have a great run in the theater before hitting DVD. I saw on Davisdvd that the Director Zack Snyder had to go back 4 or 5 times after the MPAA refused an R rating. He said the cut material, which equals about 5 minutes of gore and 5 minutes of character will be on an extended version DVD release.

I see this film ending somewhere around $75-80 million.

Saw it at the first showing Friday night, in a theater with DTS. My god did it rock. People were laughing and jumping the how time through the film (All showing have been sold out this weekend where I'm at), and it's the most entertaining one I've seen since ROTK.

Reviews for this are very strong, with many critics giving high marks across the board. Audiences seem to be loving it to, with many exit polls saying people loved it.

As for the DVD, here are my predictions for what we can expect:


2-Disc Set.
-Widescreen (of course)
-DTS audio (hopefully. it is Universal after all, but...)

-Directors Commentary
-Cast Commentary
-Making of Featurette
-Featurettes on make up, visual effects, production design, sound design, etc.
-Interviews
-deleted scenes(put back in the film.
-That sweet as hell Trailer.

Plus the material cut in the first place the gave the film an R rating. Would liek to see it in its uncut version. Anyone else have any thought?

Also, what Johnny Cash song was that which was playing over the opening credits, showing various news broadcasts of society falling apart? Thanks

 

[Chris Harvey]

The supremely awesome "The Man Comes Around", from his "American IV" album.

 

[JoshB]

Excellant. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

I saw the film yesterday and really liked it. It works on the level it tried to achieve, nothing more but nothing less.

About whether the situation is local or national, I think it's intimated as being global. There's the shot of the secret service opening fire in front of the White House and also a short sequence that looks like it was Tehran, Jerusalem, or another Mid-East location where the media is assaulted, mid-broadcast, by zombies.

 

[JoshB]

The only thing that bothered me a little about the film was

how the virus or plague started to begin with. I think it was touched on it the original, and I'm sure in NOTLD it was some


Still, minor complaints. I really liked the opening, clearly the best part of the film, even though the rest was still great: You can tell its starting small in the inner city with a few random mysterious victims here and there, and then by dawn has spread to the suburbs.


Also, about how long were they in the mall before the escape at the end?

 

[Shawn_KE]

Saw it last night and loved it. Raw and nonstop. The scene where the 2 buses were surrounded by the dead was awesome. And the cameo's were nice. Can't wait to get the dvd.

I would love for this to lead into the original version of Day of the Dead with Romero on board.

 

[Chad Ferguson]

Just curious about the ending. During the credits they show some stuff and near the end it just seemed to be flashes of Zombies. SO ileft but then a friends asked me this question. Does it show at the very end the people on the boat bring zombies?

THanks

 

[AaronMan]

This was Dawn of the Dead for people with Attention Deficit Disorder. Way too fast.

I'll say it again, where was the gore? The stick through the head was nice, but if anyone thought this was gory, please watch the original Dawn, Day of the Dead, or Dead Alive to see what real on-screen gore is. The zombies are famous for eating people; show it!

The characters were extremely dumb. It wasn't just me, I could hear people in the audience complaining after every dumb move.

You have to credit the producers. They crafted a film that was exactly what the mainstream audience would devour: slick, lightning-fast pacing, and utterly mindless. But who wants to make a movie that they want to stand on its own, yet has the same title as another movie? Brand name association, that's all. For me, I would rather fail miserably at something original than succeed at doing a remake.

I thought some stuff did work, the friendship with the gun shop owner, Tom Savini's scene (twitchers), and the trashed out city looked nice.

Maybe I am pissed because the guy who practically invented the genre, Romero, is struggling to get his 4th one made. Think he has any leverage now? He has next to none. Why get Romero, a risky independant filmmaker, when Hollywood can get the next safe trendy MTV director to spit out another film exactly like this remake? Hollywood is like cancer and and Jay Leno. Like cancer, it consumes things that are creative and exploits it to the max, then moves on to the next ripe fruit in its path. Like Leno, it is safe, stale and bone dry of anything imaginative.

Did anyone else notice how quickly Romero's screen credit was "smeared" away at the beginning? It was barely on screen for a second.

 

[Ryan Wishton]

It does sound strange the the man responsible for this whole trilogy to begin with cant even get $10 million to make a film...