Zombos Says: watchable, but not memorable.
“Look, I’m just saying that every time Snyder drops a load it’s like fanboy nirvana minus substance to some. To others, his ass must be red from all the ass-kissing he gets when he spends millions of dollars and stretches time beyond normal physics in a way Einstein would have been proud.”
I finished and looked at Paul Holstenwall (see my review for Neon Maniacs). He looked back at me. His eyes narrowed, his mouth was puckering. Any minute he’d have his riposte to my criticism of Army of the Dead, yet another zackstravagance from Zack Snyder, the director many of us either love or hate or dream about, but fanboys simply swoon over with glee. Paul was consummately a fanboy.
“But there’s a zombie tiger!” Paul grasped. Shiny stuff tends to distract him.
“So what? He doesn’t do anything with it! It’s like he told the CGI guys we need some shiny stuff. I know, let’s have a zombie tiger!” I barely contained myself. “Oh, and obviously he took notes from Will Smiths’s I am Legend, revamped it a little and filled in the dead time with zombie-like mutants that go all tribal primitive and grunt a lot.” The only fun aspect of this is he plopped them down in Las Vegas. Oh, wait a minute, didn’t Resident Evil: Extinction kick some sand around in Las Vegas too with primitive zombie-mutants? Granted their budget was a wee bit smaller so more sand than glitz, but hell, Paul, the movie’s a rehash of stuff we’ve seen before, and so so, again and again, my eyes watered.”
I sipped my Jack and Coke and leaned back. Paul took a long draw from his Screwdriver–his third one by the way–and leaned forward. Chef Machiavelli entered the room pushing a dessert cart filled with apple pie and rich, dark chocolate scones. He took one look at the situation and wheeled it between the two of us and hastily left. One of the perks of Zombos’ mansion was an excellent chef, followed by another perk of having the best stock of bottled inebriation on Long Island. If Paul kept up his enthusiasm for this, yet another, Snyder-snickle (the pickle kind, that is), round two of our discussion would need a stronger malt whiskey to see me through.
“Wasn’t there anything you liked about the movie?” asked Paul, grabbing a scone in one hand while drinking his screwdriver in the other. He was finally coming to his senses. Or maybe leaving them, which would be a good thing, too, in his case.
“Well, let’s see. Yes. First, the cheeky opening credits montage led us into thinking he was going for a Zombieland tongue in cheek approach…but then the movie changed to a more serious tone, so no, that’s not it.” I took a piece of apple pie while I stalled. This was going to be harder than I thought.
“Okay, the characters were well chosen with solid actors to back them up (Dave Bautista, Tig Notaro, Ella Purnell, Theo Rossi, and the bunch of them). No one does snark the way Tig does. And for hulking presence, sort of like a Hostel Yogi Bear, there’s Bautista’s physical gravitas. You don’t know when to duck where he’s concerned and that’s off-setting and tension-building. Of course, having great talent to work with and then doing nothing much with them but a graphic novel’s worth of window-dressing and cliché’s, that’s a blown opportunity. Either the movie needed more solid backstory in a shorter amount of time or Netflix should have gone with a limited series to allow for less montage, more backstory, more meaty events to take place in the fight for survival. Sure, the visual look and feel of the movie is all casino gloss, but when you roll the story dice, it’s just shamblers, faster shamblers, and higher functioning mutants pissing their turf boundaries. Even Garret Dillahunt’s Martin is the usual inside man you know will do wrong. Those sunglasses are a dead giveaway he’s going to be trouble.”
Zombos popped his head into the library and saw Paul was still with us.
“Come on in,” I said. Yes, I was desperate. Zombos always managed to disappear when Paul visited the mansion. Zombos made a funny sawing motion with his hand across his throat and quickly poofed into thin air again before Paul turned his head.
“You just don’t like Snyder’s knack for giving an audience what they want to see,” said Paul. He was definitely over the limit on screwdrivers and scones. I pushed the dessert cart out of his reach with my foot.
“That’s quite true. I fully agree with you. If you’re going to put zombies in Las Vegas, you better come up with a better kickstart than the it’s so old it’s got saggy balls, dog-eared, military super-soldier experiment gone horribly wrong or infected soldier gone horribly wrong. And oops! We let it loose because we needed to, to have a story, so its maximum security container is really a tin can easily dented. One wonders how they got Zeus (Richard Cetrone) into that tin can to begin with? He’s smart enough to wear a bullet-deflecting face mask? You’d hope he’d be more of a problem for them as they work on getting into the casino, cracking that incredibly complex safe, and getting out with millions of dollars that must be awfully heavy to carry.”
I reached for a scone.
“And another thing, why is it always so easy to crack a super-safe by some person on the team? I mean, this should have been more mission impossible than let’s mind our turf and Zeus will mind his and we’ll get in and out like aces. One more thing: Snyder wouldn’t know how to cheer things up if his life depended on it. Everything is doom and gloom and his characters may start out in different ways, but they always end up with the short end of the stick. Would it kill him to make a happier movie at least once?”
I sipped my drink and realized Paul was out cold on the couch. Probably dreaming about the next Snyder movie, he had a smile on his face. If only the rest of us could be so lucky. Here’s something really scary: what if he comes out with a director’s cut of Army of the Dead that’s four hours long. Once he’s infected Netflix, lord knows what will happen.