Army of the Dead [Zack Snyder, Netflix]

yankinlk

I was told to come here and defend this. But after reading a few pages it's like facing a zombie horde. Ye are bunch of miserable sods.

Great movie and the camera work was superb. That's bokeh not blur folks.

I've watched more than my share of this genre and probably before most of ye were out of nappies. Fair dues to ZS this was a proper twist on the zombie style. I bet there will be tons of copycat films that repeat the "out of focus" camera work. Ye might as well sell yer 4k tvs you will be miserable from now on.

The making of is well worth a watch as well.

spookwoman

To notice dead pixels just shows how bad the move was

Greyfox

yankinlk wrote: »

I was told to come here and defend this. But after reading a few pages it's like facing a zombie horde. Ye are bunch of miserable sods.

Na were just disappointed that this was a bad zombie film, it didnt even offer mindless fun, very hard to care about any of the characters.

ThePott

yankinlk wrote: »

Great movie and the camera work was superb. That's bokeh not blur folks.

And? Having a name for the aesthetic doesn't make it a good creative choice. He used a vintage lens with a shallow depth of field and it doesn't look good. It didn't look any better when he used it for the Justice League reshoots. It looks like he's trying to hide dodgy CGI and greenscreen. To each their own but acting like knowing bokeh makes it a good choice is dumb. It has it's place (especially in still photography) but doing so for the majority of the film doesn't work and detracts from the movie.

yankinlk wrote: »

I've watched more than my share of this genre and probably before most of ye were out of nappies. Fair dues to ZS this was a proper twist on the zombie style.

I'd be interested in what twist he but on the genre to be honest, since you've apparently seen more than anyone. Zombies with a space twist isn't new, Train to Busan's sequel had a Zombie heist element. Hierarchy and intelligent zombies has also been done. So what exactly was a proper twist in your opinion?

plastic glass

This film was terrible, too long and boring. I don’t know how you make a film about zombies in Las Vegas boring but synder managed it.

Unnecessary plot points like intelligent zombies (that aren’t really zombies) and way too many characters make this film pretty much unwatchable. Even one of Snyder’s strengths of having good visuals is lacking in this film.

The White Wolf

yankinlk wrote: »

I was told to come here and defend this. But after reading a few pages it's like facing a zombie horde. Ye are bunch of miserable sods.

Great movie and the camera work was superb. That's bokeh not blur folks.

I've watched more than my share of this genre and probably before most of ye were out of nappies. Fair dues to ZS this was a proper twist on the zombie style. I bet there will be tons of copycat films that repeat the "out of focus" camera work. Ye might as well sell yer 4k tvs you will be miserable from now on.

The making of is well worth a watch as well.

Good on you....I laughed.

ThePott

I genuinely can't tell if he's serious or not. Years of dealing with Snyder Cultists has melted my brain haha

FunLover18

It was just boring tbh. None of the characters stood out and the plot made very little sense. The cinematography annoyed the hell out of me and clever zombies with a society aren't scary.

Dades

I was super-hyped to watch this, so it was never going to live up that.

But it was the most enjoyable nonsense I've watched on a Friday in a good while. I don't give a crap about bokah or dead pixels, it was shiny and colourful and had Dave B killing zombies.

The plot holes were there for all to see, the protagonists did stupid things, the guns had 1,000 rounds per clip... whatever. Once the wine is open at the weekend the bar is low for what passes as entertainment.

buried

This ran on for way way to long. At least one hour of this could have been cut down to a proper shlock movie timelength of 90 minutes, not 2 hours and 30 minutes. This thing also suffers from showing some of the best and fun looking action scenes in the opening credits, then you have to slog through a whole heap of boring smarmy set pieces where nothing really happens and a bad script to go with it until you get some action again in the last 30.

Sudden Valley

I enjoyed it but really batista is too weak an actor to be the main protagonist. Sure the plot holes were huge but I did find myself rooting for some of the characters. Las Vegas is a great location for a zombie movie

duffysfarm

No 2 in the top most watches on netflix in ireland for the past week.

Outkast_IRE

I am an hour in and it's all character development . Zack Snyder may of learnt his lesson that story must come first but he is never able to tell that story well in a normal runtime .

Will hold full judgement till I finish it but happy enough with it so far.

Banjaxed82

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

I am an hour in and it's all character development . Zack Snyder may of learnt his lesson that story must come first but he is never able to tell that story well in a normal runtime .

Will hold full judgement till I finish it but happy enough with it so far.

Characters are defined by their actions, not scenes where they talk about the inner workings of their head and sh!te from the past.

I'm amazed how so many films still continue to have numerous scenes that literally stop a film dead in its tracks in order for us to "get to know" the characters. The best films reveal characters during action and we learn who they are by the decisions they make.

This film is a bag of balls when it comes anything close to character development.

Snyder is all spectacle.

Dades

It's funny, but I love ensemble type movies, and the first act gathering is always my favourite part. It rarely lives up to the expectation after that.

Maybe that's that the easy part?

Banjaxed82

Just watched the 'making of' on Netflix. It's all about special effects, lens choice, 3D location mapping, CGI and character/Production design.

Beyond Snyder's "idea" for the film, there's literally no mention of how the script/story evolved, character development and the inner workings of the story.

It just baffles me how a filmmaker can into a production, and put so much detail into the visuals yet be happy to shoot a film from that script.

Too many "visionary" commercials/music video directors, not enough story tellers.

Atlantic Dawn

Sudden Valley wrote: »

I enjoyed it but really batista is too weak an actor to be the main protagonist. Sure the plot holes were huge but I did find myself rooting for some of the characters. Las Vegas is a great location for a zombie movie

It would have been great if they filmed inside any of the actual Vegas casinos or the shopping malls, surprised there wasn't big interest from the resort owners to assist them, seemed to have been zero co-operation whatsoever.

Outkast_IRE

Finished it tonight . It's a 6.5/10 for me . Enjoyable for the year that's in it , but in normal movie year it would be pretty quickly called out for the fluff it is.

I don't particularity like the whole intelligent zombie take on it. It never works well in my opinion . Wouldn't be in a rush to watch it again.

ziedth

I just finished it there too. It's terrible really isn't it?..... like it's so baffling in places that not only did it take me out of the film I was just shaking my head at how awful it was.

Batista, Sanada and Hardwick are the only ones who get out of this with any sense of credibility I think. Everyone else is really poor. The smart zombies were just kind of thrown in and nothing really came of it and I won't even get started on the sacrifice to walk through their land shíte.

Having said that, the start was excellent and the action scenes when they got going were entertaining. I'm a fan of "turn your brain off films" even from Snyders own films I love 300 and Dawn of the dead but this is lightyears behind the latter

Somebody said it above. Film would have been infinitely better if Sanada hired them to rescue his daughter but it was a ploy to capture the Queen and have the daughter the Coyote character.....

A 4/10 for me at best...... save your time and watch Dawn of the dead IMO

The tiger was cool though

johnny_ultimate

It’s easy to point out the ways this film is terribly written (the whole ‘alpha zombie’ carry-on alone shouldn’t have made it past a first draft). But I’m more fascinated by how terribly shot it is. What an ugly bloody movie. DTV-level explosion effects. A bland grey and dark orange colour palette. Pink opening credits* that look like they were tacked on in MS Paint. Not to mention the excessive use of shallow focus. An eyesore of a movie, full of awful effects and straight-up misguided cinematography choices.

Only thing the film really has going for it is a sense of tragic chaos in its final act as everything goes to ****. Its undercut by woeful dialogue and cheesy stylistic flourishes, but there is a sense of desperation and bleak futility to it. Not enough to elevate it above ‘bad movie’, mind you.

*baffled by the opening montage. It’s not very good - has that over-digitised like and obvious music choices that all Snyder movies suffer from - but it suggests a sense of playfulness and vibrancy that the colourless slog that follows simply does not try to live up to.

silverharp

Take a good 90's or early 2000's heist/assemble team movie, throw even more money at it, but write and cast a team with no charm or reason to care whether they live or die and just vomit so much on screen to bamboozle the audience into thinking they are on a whirlwind ride is all I got from it. Basically any other heist movie is better than this and any other Zombie movie too.

mikhail

silverharp wrote: »

Take a good 90's or early 2000's heist/assemble team movie, throw even more money at it, but write and cast a team with no charm or reason to care whether they live or die and just vomit so much on screen to bamboozle the audience into thinking they are on a whirlwind ride is all I got from it. Basically any other heist movie is better than this and any other Zombie movie too.

artvanderlay

Awful ****e altogether. I gave up after an hour. Jesus, the dawn of the dead remake was infinitely better than this. Horrible characters, lazy storytelling plus it looks awful. How do they spend so much to produce so little? Romero had tiny budgets for his movies and yet made something horrifying yet absorbing. Plus Snyder's choice of music makes me wish him ill. Some sappy sounding bird warbling Bad Moon Rising while picking a guitar? No thanks. Netflix is where talent goes when it dies.

rob316

So much potential, I loved the premise and plot but terribly written. I didn't give one **** about what characters lived or died. That WWE is fella, is one awful actor, like a pound shop Dwayne Johnson without the charm.

yourdeadwright

rob316 wrote: »

So much potential, I loved the premise and plot but terribly written. I didn't give one **** about what characters lived or died. That WWE is fella, is one awful actor, like a pound shop Dwayne Johnson without the charm.

To be fair his character in Guardians of the Galaxy has probably been more successful than anything The Rock has done to date ,

yourdeadwright

I watched this last night ,

I think the idea was really good and the back drop was brilliant but it just failed to deliver & was poorly written

I wasn't expecting much from it at all & it didn't deliver much but I still kind of enjoyed it ,

Just a pop corn movies as they call them these days

Denny61

Denny61 wrote: »

It's,got to be one of the worst movies I've ever watched.

Sums it up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC1LiBBkDdo

buried

The whole thing would have been fine if the running time was set to what most zombie movies are, 1 hour 30 - 1 hour 50. There is so much useless and totally unwarranted stuff going on in this thing. Pointless character motifs with backstories that nobody gives a $hite about. Its a shlock horror zombie flick not feicing Lord of the Rings, although maybe that's where Shnyder thinks he's heading with this, considering the ending.

Hurrache

I found the movie very entertaining and fun. Jaysus, it's a zombie movie, don't go looking too deep and complaining about how certain things make no sense, just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

Sabre0001

Give me the opening montage and the casino escape scene and I'm on board. But when you make an attempt to be more and run for 2.5 hours, I'm going to expect more

murpho999

Hurrache wrote: »

I found the movie very entertaining and fun. Jaysus, it's a zombie movie, don't go looking too deep and complaining about how certain things make no sense, just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

I'm more than capable of doing that but it simply wasn't enjoyable.

It lacked tension, full of ridiculous plot holes and stupid family and romance dramas and was pretty boring at times.
Just because it's a zombie movie does not automatically mean it has to be poor and allowances made for.

silverharp

The setup meant it was going to lack a lot of elements, most Zombie films are set with everything still stranding and interactions with other survivors which makes it interesting, this is set in a bombed out city with essentially no survivors, then the heist side of it was profunctionary and was more like a dodgy indiana jones scene with "traps".
If time was short you would get more utils of satisfaction from a rewatch of World War Z or Oceans 11

Agent Coulson

When can we expect the Joss Whedon cut?

stateofflux

Watched it, fairly meh.

the critical issue is i did not care about the characters, apart from Bautista. Also some of the supposed dramatic scenes were just too silly and badly acted to be taken seriously

pixelburp

A highlights reel shows just how seamless Tig Notaro's insertion was; but, interestingly, they don't show how they removed Chris D'Elia first :pac: NSFW also for some CGI gore and blood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlj9eQkmd0

silverharp

you mean there is a version where she isnt in it? I wish I had seen that instead

molloyjh

Saw it last night. I mean, yeah it's a bad film, but not in a frustrating or aggrevating way. It's just confusing. I found myself wondering why certain shots were included. The Japanese guys hand after explaining the plan for instance. What was that about? Or why certain plot points happened the way they did, like the love story out of nowhere that lasted less than a minute to try and give some gravitas to a death. Why not just make more of an effort to establish that earlier? The most interesting character of the lot was the first one to die (excluding the guard fella). Someone who seemed to be more than they originally seemed and was actually pretty clued in rather than a total idiot. And yet that individual managed to survive the impossible only to die with everyone watching on when they could have, you know, helped. But nope, script requires characters death. And what about the woman in the opening credits montage. I was sure that was going to fit into the story someonhow. Nope. Also, how could the guy who owned the safe not have any way to get into the safe?

Then we had some of the standard nonsense like the safe cracker who had never shot a gun before being a perfect shot from the moment he laid hands on a gun. Headshots everywhere. The female tag-a-long character who couldn't make a headshot from 1m one minute but was making headshots from distance time after time almost immediately after, like she unlocked that skill in a computer game. Either make her proficient or don't. And why do handguns make standard bullet holes in zombies sometime and literally blow their heads in two others? The Alphas just reminded me of Ghosts of Mars.

After watching the prevailing word was "why". A bunch of recycled ideas cobbled together and executed badly. None of the laughs were funny, none of the drama hit the right tone, none of the deaths mattered as they were all by the numbers. I've seen that film before. Loads of times. And without the shallow focus or bloated run time. It passed the time and wasn't offensively bad, but I've seen plenty of films deliver the same on a much, much smaller budget.

Also, can anyone explain to me why anyone would take on a job to liberate $200m dollars, take all of the risk and put in all of the effort for a mere 25% of the overall score? How was Bautistas first reaction (because I'm fecked if I can remember any of the characters names) not "make it 50% and we'll start talking"? Again, why? This one will have me scratching my head for the next day or two before I ultimately forget everything about it.

molloyjh

silverharp wrote: »

you mean there is a version where she isnt in it? I wish I had seen that instead

She wasn't great, but to be fair to her, she was doing all of it on her own (bar 1 or 2 scenes). It must be all but impossible to shoot that with absolutely nobody else there to work off. You could tell the lines were left exactly as they were for the D'Elia which wasn't a great idea either. The character wasn't the same with her in it. The dialogue should have reflected that.

Fysh

Sweet holy hell, that film was the most tiresome lumpy turd of a zombie film I've seen since WWZ. How do you make such a dull, tedious film out of a concept as good as "casino heist during a zombie outbreak"?

Also, stylistic choice or note, the short depth of field stuff was as bad as The Room at some points, there's a shot where Zombie Queen literally steps backwards into a blurry mess. Intention notwithstanding, it looked crap.

Glad I watched that as a Bad Movie Night where some friends and I ripped strips off of it in group chat, because if I hadn't had that to keep me going I would be extremely annoyed right now.

ChickenDish

First 2 thirds of movie were decent, last third descended into madness and not in a good way.

EoinMcLovin

https://youtu.be/OdbXnboJCVw

molloyjh: The Alphas just reminded me of Ghosts of Mars.

THANK you! Could NOT place them 😂

EoinMcLovin

https://youtu.be/Ith2WetKXlg

Army of Thieves arriving on Netflix, October 29th

Dades

While this is not a universe I would have said is destined for multiple movies, this look like fun.

Slydice

No sign of Zombies..

Spoiler Warning

signs of Aliens in Army of the Dead

I get the feeling this Expanded Universe might have a very wide range of potential

pixelburp

Looks like this attempted univese may get even loopier - though with Synder at the helm I don't anticipate it being as fun as it might read:

What can you tease about “Planet of the Dead” for people who are hoping to see more from this world?

ZS: First of all, I know exactly what I’d want to see in the sequel. We’re doing the animated series, which will come out next year. The animated series very much delves deeply into the “why” of the zombie apocalypse and where the zombies come from exactly. I think the time loops, portals, doorways to other realms, things of that nature, are very much in play. So all of those clues that Dieter gives us are very much part of how we continue to spiral out the “Army of the Dead” universe.

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/army-of-thieves-army-of-the-dead-sequel-1235102891/

johnny_ultimate

Add all the portals your want: it’ll still be a dour fart of a movie, if the original piece of crap is anything to go by.