This is when the ‘genius’ of a director that’s so popular at the moment comes into question since the fact is that Zack Snyder’s movie, Army of the Dead, was supposed to be something that people were going to be blown away by. That was the hype at least since the idea of different zombies in the same movie was pretty enticing. But once a person gets done watching it the idea of going back to pick out the issues doesn’t appeal to some folks, but it’s hard for others to avoid. The idea of a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas was pretty cool, to begin with, and even walling up the city in order to keep people safe wasn’t bad. Firebombing the city wasn’t even a bad idea. But the trouble is when we get to Tanaka, the moneyman that wants a group of mercenaries to wander into a zombie-infested wasteland and collect the kind of money that would take more than a handful of ragtag mercenaries to transport, and will require a safecracker, even though this supposedly Tanaka’s vault where HIS money is stowed. Keep in mind that this is money he’s been insured for, and that should probably stay where it is. But offering $50 million to someone that’s been working as a short-order cook since hanging it up as a merc is bound to catch the attention of someone that has very little to lose and everything to gain. Not only that, but did anyone happen to notice how the denominations for each new partner ended up getting lower and lower? It’s not hard to think that Scott would take a huge share along with his closest teammates, but chiseling the others in such a way feels as though it was bound to end badly if the lot of them did survive. Oh yeah, spoilers might be coming up, so if you haven’t seen the movie, by all means, stop reading.
One thing that’s been bugging me and it’s likely that others have asked this is the fact that there are alpha zombies in Vegas. That’s right, ALPHA, ZOMBIES. Basically, undead that can think things through and do more than just shamble about. They’re not rocket scientists by any means, but they’re smarter than the typical zombie, so it’s fair to wonder how the top dog, the male alpha, wouldn’t have figured a way out of Vegas yet. Or perhaps he was content getting his freak on with his queen zombie. Oh yes, there was a queen, and she was pregnant if you can believe that. Typically we’re shown that zombies are composed of dead, rotting flesh that doesn’t heal doesn’t regenerate or grow back, and definitely doesn’t take on the qualities of life, meaning there’s NO potential for growth, only for decay. It would appear that Snyder wanted to take fictional biology a step further and make it possible for the undead to procreate, but only with this one individual zombie couple. Who knows, maybe the alpha would have impregnated another few undead ladies and started the next generation of the undead. But this doesn’t just fly in the face of mother nature, it flies in the face of every zombie movie ever seen. But then, so does a zombie tiger, and a zombie horse, and last but not least, zombie robots.
What, you thought the movie couldn’t get crazier? Somehow, animatronic robots can catch the virus as well and get down with the sickness like everyone else, with my apologies to Disturbed for that pun. But these things come racing around corners with their blue eyes glowing like the white walkers from Game of Thrones, looking every bit as sickly as their undead brethren, and yet they go down just as well as the regular zombies. At some point this movie started to feel as though Zack Snyder, who was given his freedom for this picture, was simply adding things in that he felt were cool and would look awesome on screen since let’s be honest, a lot of us can remember the days when we were kids, playing with our toys when we would put different toys together in order to have a sort of battle royale between something like a G.I.Joe and Barbie just to see how it might play out. That’s almost how this movie ends up feeling by the end since the fact that there’s little to no way that some of the scenes should be happening as they do and that Vanderohe, played by Omari Hardwick, could just walk out of a burning radiation-doused area with no issue and two huge sacks of cash. It’s fun to watch action movies and simply forget the laws of physics and reality, but there are times when directors take advantage of this, and Snyder definitely did what he wanted.
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