Between animation and live-action there’s usually a pretty big difference in what can happen and how the laws of physics are applied when it comes to certain actions. Practical effects can only go so far in a live-action movie until CGI is needed to smooth out some of the rougher stuff, but the drawback is usually that some parts of the movie end up looking fake and don’t mesh as well with the rest of it. That won’t be a concern with Night of the Animated Dead, which is headed back to George Romero’s beloved horror flick in a way that we haven’t seen it yet, and with plenty of famous voices as well to take on the roles of the main characters. It’s kind of funny to think of what might have happened had someone suggested a project like this decades ago since it likely would have had a lot of people up in arms about destroying the cartoon experience. Just imagine the impassioned pleas to not poison the minds of young children everywhere with the horrific images that they might see. People remember that a lot of us grew up with the old 70s cartoons that tended to look like acid trips gone wrong, right?
All joking aside for the moment, that was a different time and it’s fair to state that animation for adults wasn’t as big of a thing yet. Times have definitely changed, and people have changed with them, kicking and screaming along the way at times or finding themselves drawn like moths to a flame to see what’s so interesting about each new project. It stands to reason that this version of Romero’s vision will be rather interesting since it’s going to be fun to see how this story will be adapted to animation and how far the storytellers will go with each scene. One has to remember that for its day, in fact even for today’s standards, the original movie did get pretty graphic at times since some folks still can’t watch it during various scenes.
The appearance of the undead has certainly changed as makeup and special effects methods and techniques have become refined over the years. But with animation, there’s no need to be too careful in terms of what will hold or fall off in certain situations and what will be accepted by the fans versus what simply looks cheesy. The efforts of those that create live-action zombie effects are impressive and definitely noteworthy but at the same time it’s going to be fun to see what happens in this animated project and it will be intriguing to see what the voices of Josh Duhamel, Katee Sackhoff, Will Sasso, and many others will bring to the table. It’s kind of interesting to think that the term ‘zombie’ wasn’t even used back when the original movie first came out, and if one is paying attention there have been a few different projects that haven’t wanted to use the word as much either. From The Walking Dead to Shaun of the Dead, the word ‘zombie’ has been eschewed more than a few times as other words have been put in its place.
Amazingly, the term ‘zombie’ was first used back in the early 19th century, but its popularity didn’t really start to rise until the 60s when zombie movies were starting to become a big thing. Even now though, the term isn’t something that gets used unless it’s by people that are simply trying to classify the undead into their own category. Obviously that would be kind of confusing since vampires and mummies are undead as well, but are allowed to have their own classification thanks to the difference in how they’re created. Movie zombies are typically mindless automatons, heaps of rotting flesh that live only to feed and in some cases have been likened to a virus. Vampires and mummies, and yes, Frankenstein’s monster, were given a very different purpose even though they are technically dead creatures that still live. If anyone remembers the original Night of the Living Dead, the zombies were apparently created by radiation from a space probe that had been returning from Venus and exploded in the earth’s atmosphere. That’s kind of an interesting but confusing way to reanimate the dead, but it was accepted.
In recent years it’s usually been a virus that’s run unchecked from one source or another and has spread like wildfire as people have done everything they could to survive. The news of an animated version of Night of the Walking Dead was enough to put a smile on many faces no doubt since it’s a way to reimagine an old classic and something that might be kind of fun to watch. Plus, with animation, it’s likely that the experience will be quite a bit different.
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