Zombie Lore
OK, so last week, Mike and I rented "George Romero's Land of the Dead," and while I was thrilled to see yet another zombie movie (particularly one with a social commentary subtext - was anyone else rooting for the zombies when they took down the luxury apartments??), this movie exposed me to some zombie lore that raised more questions than it answered. Specifically...
1) So this is the first zombie movie that I have seen that posits that, post-zombie apocalypse, everyone who dies, even if they are not bitten by a zombie, will become a zombie. So everyone will need to die twice: once as a human, once as a zombie. Now I am a little confused. Remember the guy in the beginning who got bit, but before he turned, he shot himself? So does he become a zombie because he just died once? Or, because he got infected but didn't yet turn, does he only need to die the one time? Does it matter that he shot himself in the head (and thus destroyed the brain) - would he become a zombie if he had killed himself without destroying his brain?
2) There were lots of scenes (that Mike covered his eyes for) where the zombies were graphically depicted as consuming humans and eating up all of their bodies. So if the zombies eat all of the body and not just the brain, then how do the new zombies get created? The eaten-up humans can't become zombies. Are they all the result of bites that the humans are able to escape from? That seems odd.
Mike was sick last weekend, so we stayed in and watched a bunch of movies besides Land of the Dead. We saw the new "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which didn't suck as much as I was afraid it was going to. It was actually pretty good. I like the old Oompa-Loompa songs better though. We also saw "Unleashed," which was ok. We also went to the theater to see "Doom." I have been telling the rest of pop5 that it is not fair that I have to go and see all of their science fiction and video game movies, and none of them will go and see "Pride and Prejudice" with me. When I told that to Buddy, he just said, "Good luck with that," and when I told it to Rob, he said that there were already three Pride and Prejudice movies, and so they already know how it ends. That didn't stop you from seeing the Lord of the Rings, now did it?
In panda news, the baby panda is getting so big! She is more than a hundred days old now, so they named her Su Lin. I liked the other name better.
Comments
Vicki,
Lord of the Rings is the exception to the rule! I thought Unleashed was pretty damn good, but what do I know?
Posted by: Rob | November 15, 2005 10:57 AM
I liked the whole beginning of Unleashed up until the time when he gets rediscovered by the bad guys and taken back a second time. I just thought there were way too many plot holes after that. I'm glad it had a happy ending, since Mike was predicting a sad one after only ten minutes in.
Posted by: Victoria | November 15, 2005 9:09 PM
the guy who got bit would only turn once because he was alive. when he shot himself in the head he was dead for sure and could not come back due to the lack of "brains."
Posted by: mike | November 15, 2005 10:12 PM
that panda picture is one of the cutest. she cracks me up when she rolls around in her pen. i want to squeeze her.
Posted by: mike | November 15, 2005 10:13 PM
I am a huge Romero fan, and I loved LOTD... (That’s land of the dead not lord of the rings):
As for your zombie question - in the early films it is the recently dead who rise as flesh eaters; no one knows why it is happening (though in Night of the Living Dead a theory that The Venus Probe caused it is advanced)--- no bites are needed, you just have to die from anything and you are now a zombie! That's how the initial catastrophe happens.
Once the zombies are roaming and searching for lunch, people start getting bit; those that avoid becoming a main course initially think they got off easy with just a love bite, but they soon found out that the bite itself is lethal causing death and then reanimation. I guess it's something like an infection or maybe the bite of a vampire. However, once bitten it might take days before one change's (at least that's how it was portrayed in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead).
Hope that helps!
Great blog (Pax – AKA Mike of Mike ‘n Rob)
Posted by: Pax Romano | November 27, 2005 5:15 PM