Army of the Dead

Army of the Dead

Zack Snyder

2021, USA

Screenplay: Zack Snyder & Shay Hatten & Joby Harrod

There was a moment where Zack Snyder seemed all zeitgeisty. His rendering of cliché with pop-conviction and some cine-smartass pzazz was simultaneously exciting and camp. Even ‘300’ was a pretty confection and laughably preposterous, not necessarily good but bizarrely winningly camp. ‘Watchmen’ brought all the Snyder’s tics in a positive light: with a proper meaty script, he delivered a bold interpretation with his aesthetic, which – at that moment – was perfect for comic book narrative. There was the darkness there mitigated by camp and colour, this was before Snyder became tediously po-faced with his later superhero offerings. But ‘Suckerpunch’ was just bad.

‘Army of the Dead’ doesn’t have enough pzazz or camp to lift it above its clichés. All its explosions signify very little. It starts off with a lady wobbling her cleavage at a man that causes a crash on a desert road (?) with a military procession that causes the release of a zombie that causes the apocalypse in Las Vegas. Vegas is quarantined, etc, but there’s a lot of money still in there that a band of variously desperate and bored survivors think they can get before the city is nuked. A premise that promises fun, but the writing is weak and rather than something poppy and amusing: three screenwriters, but it’s rudimentary stuff. ‘Oceans Eleven’ meets ‘Planet Terror’ surely sounded a winner on paper, but we get tired characterisation, tired odd buddy banter and father-daughter stuff that is too rudimentary to be engaging and yet keeps interrupting all the time. A female cigar-chomping helicopter pilot; some cast-off ‘Aliens’ types; tedious stubborn daughter (eh, you know she’s going to run off); a stoic guide with a conscience; a German safe-cracker that screams high-pitched, and therefore like a woman and that’s apparently indicative of his cowardice and therefore funny* - but he actually proves to be the most engaging character (Matthias Schweighöfer). Oh, and Dave Bautista whose presence and charm are wasted.

Here, being a zombie gives you cool monster vocal effects and athletic abilities. Perhaps having our heisters face a pack of intelligent zombies was a mistake: trying to be clever and smart surrounded by a hoard of mindless cannibals might have been a better conflict? These here could just be any post-‘Mad Max II’ post-apocalyptic gang. The best zombie epics are about the thin threads of civilisation and humanity revealed by the outbreak; when zombies are just cannon fodder, it’s dull and is not so dissimilar to watching someone play a video game, but with less at stake. In ‘Army of the Dead’, they even recruit someone because of his social media presence where he treats the living dead as a shooting gallery, but this is apparently just proof of his skill and never once is his empathy questioned. Yes, it’s not that film but there’s not enough elsewhere to mitigate the anti-zombie genre criticisms that it’s just an excuse for conscienceless shoot-em-ups. For comparison, Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Planet Terror’ had exploitation on its side. But there’s apparently an ‘Army of the Dead’ franchise intended … and it’s not truly an army either, because they’re not fighting any opponents or …  It’s the kind of film that, with a Google search, there’s clickbait like “How Did Th Zombie Queen Get Pregnant?” 

I mean, even going into “a forbidden zone” has echoes of ‘Stalker’ and ‘Escape From New York’ and ‘Annihilation’, but the mystery and/or threat here don’t really ramp up, however much the zombies screech; ‘World War Z’ had far more vivid zombie visuals. ‘Army of the Dead’ does have a zombie tiger, who provides the film’s best head-chomping gore moment, but that’s one engaging gross-out in a sea of mediocre zombie fighting (and the tiger is just distractingly fakery CGI).

We also have the use of incongruous pop-tunes which Snyder helped set the modern trend for (I’ll never forget the rush of suddenly hearing Johnny Cash’s ‘When the Man Comes Around’ in Snyder's ‘Dawn of the Dead’) but now it’s just old hat (the best use in ‘Army of the Dead’ is of Culture Club’s ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’ as elevator muzak). But the pop soundtrack does fit the heist movie genre. The most striking sequence is that trick that Snyder is great at, in using the opening credits to squash in an entire movie or two (my favourite is the guy parachuting into a mob of zombies). But that’s the dramatic high point and, despite the budget, it’s thin blood and loose change and not enough fun.

·    *   I read a Twitter thread recently that discussed how in the ‘King Kong’ spider pit sequence, there’s a lot of high-pitched male screaming and that, over following years, men screaming was presented as a lot lower in tone. High-pitched male screaming is still a trope of amusement, something about immasculinisation, I'd presume.

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice - second watch

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

Zack Snyder, 2016, USA

A second watch of 'Batman vs Superman' and the first twenty minutes are fine. There’s the unnecessary recap of Batman’s origin in nightmare form with Snyder’s particular “opening credits” editing style that was so effective with the ‘Watchmen’ opening credits – but even that can’t liven up this well-worn origin – and some action and some spy-like shenanigans and that’s all good enough. It still seems to have promise. And then Jesse Eisenberg does his impression of Lex Luther as The Joker and it’s pretty insufferable – why conceive Luther that way? Go straight to Vincent D’Onofrio in the ‘Daredevil’ TV series. The films takes a true nosedive them, but it’s never badly made. It’s a mess and overloaded and the rivalry between the two heroes never really convinces, although it’s mostly based on Bruce Wayne being an uncompromising asshole. Jeremy Irons makes for a cranky and quite unlikeable Alfred instead of wry and dryly super-efficient. There’s a dream sequence that seems to be there just to allow Batman the fantasy of a different suit and using a gun and owing down bad guys; and make no mistake, he make not actually wield a gun but there’s so many explosions and physical violence that he obviously kills many by proxy. There’s a confusing appearance from The Flash in a vision of sorts. There’s nothing really wrong with Henry Cavil but this Superman … well, although we’re meant to be convinced that he’s conflicted and angst-ridden, it’s not truly convincing as colouring him in and perhaps going with the Good Guy God approach would have been more interesting, done right (like Peter Parker is better for being naïve and gung-ho). He’s not quite 2D in a way that captures the imagination. But a second watch shows that Gal Godot does much with little and that Doomsday is pretty cool for a CGI creation, if it would only linger a little. Oh, and there’s something about other superheroes too. And why leave a Kryptonite spear underwater where any bad-guy could trace it? And superheroes bonding over mummy resolves conflicts... But by then, true interest has been pummeled away by overstuffing the turkey with CGI, protesting too much forgetting to be fun.

But ‘Batman vs Superman’ does have one stand-out scene with Batman’s hand-to-hand combat with a gang of bad guys in a warehouse. That remains and is the one moment when it all comes alive.

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

Zack Snyder, 2016, USA

Of course, the subheading really doesn’t mean much apart from its own bombast and the promise of The Justice League as an upcoming franchise. ‘Batman vs Superman’ is more concerned with the question of vigilantism and heroism than justice (although in this genre these are ordinarily conflated). At least initially. You have Superman and Batman and the film takes a long time to set them against one another and making this an even fight. When one of Superman’s epic battles, smashing aliens and bad guys through the city, kills those in Wayne towers, Bruce Wayne sets on a path to bring Superman down.

But the world of the Batman has already won: Superman – the supposed antithesis of Batman, representing brightness and hope and overcoming disasters, a general colourfulness, etc – has been placed in the bleak world of the Dark Knight. He no longer wears his mantle of godhood with ease. The colour-scheme is so drained that it might as well be in black-and-white (which makes the appearance of the Batmobile a little hard to make out). The running theme is Destroy Your Gods: in Batman taking on the Man of Steel, to Lex Luthor’s nefarious plan to the people’s protesting at Superman’s supposed wrong doing. And surely there’s a little envy in the way Batman knows he can never do as much to save people as Superman? The film touches on this but never quite uses this to flesh things out, to make Batman’s motivation a little hubristic.  

There is so little humour here that when these guys wonder aloud who Wonder Woman is with, this lighter touch comes as somewhat a surprise: no one is expecting an ‘Avengers’ roster of quips, but the glimmer of a lightness-of-touch reveals how monochrome the approach is and that a little humour would have gone a long way to adding texture. For example, treating the fact that Lois Lane always gets saved by Superman – indeed, this is a major plot point – with a little knowing humour might have helped mitigate how problematic this is for a contemporary female character. This is a continuation of the darker, angst-ridden depiction of Superman as introduced by Snyder in ‘Man of Steel’. In that sense, Superman already met ‘The Dark Knight’. No one stays good all the time, says Superman before flying off with this apparently now part of his ethos. This might appeal more to my particular taste (I prefer things a little jaded) but I am also not certain this is correct for Superman.  

But what I can’t quite see is why ‘Batman vs Superman’ would have a harsher reception than ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ which was surely just as guilty of clunkiness, pomposity, bad moments and franchise appeasement. I felt ‘Ultron’ was as undemanding and… well, diverting but not perpetually good, covering up its flaws with perpetual quips; just as Snyder covers them up with faux-seriousness. Although I continue to admire how JJ Abrams balanced all the characters/franchises without dropping the ball. It demanded as much from me as the much-loathed ‘Fantastic Four’ (2015) film, for example. ‘Batman vs Superman’ is indeed guilty of being overstuffed (which I don’t necessarily mind) and there are several moments where things don’t get to breathe properly – for example, the speed with which Diana Prince gets an email and discovers other metahumans and just immediately shuts her laptop upon viewing the videos is unintentionally humorous. It takes a while for Batman to steal the Kryptonite, etc., but the speed with which other metahumans are introduced feels very much Oh, and this too! You can almost feel the joins of the studio demands of a franchise introduction being pasted onto Chris Terrio and David A Goyer's ready-written script (or, as a general joke goes, a half-finished screenplay that got filmed).

So, no, I don’t really think this is the worst superhero movie ever. It’s true that it’s hard to take its po-faced “superhero landing” seriously after ‘Deadpool’ and it’s true that it has some dodgy dialogue; that it speeds over some areas of narrative so fast it produces potholes and labours over other points; that Jesse Eisenberg is allowed to let all his annoying tics run wild as if he is channelling Lex Luthor via The Joker. Or do I have this wrong and Eisenberg, as A.A. Dowd has it, actually the only one having fun. And for what it’s worth: Ben Affleck makes good Batman; Henry Cavill looks good but is saddled with a mopey Superman that he can’t do much with; Gal Gadot as Diana Prince doesn’t get to do much here except look good in red in a washed-out world and hog the most slo-mo poses.

But what does it get right? If you think things are too easy to resolve for Superman, then most of his action gets brief screentime. There is a great Batman fight (featured in the trailer but late in the film) that is given time to play out and, although it’s not quite ‘The Raid’ or the kind of fight we see in the ‘Daredevil’ series, it goes some way to showing how this one man can beat gangs of bad guys. There are fanboy Easter eggs, such as Batman’s battle-suite being blocky a’la Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight’; or an appearance by what looks like Zombie Superman.Then, when the Doomsday plot kicks in (and the shift to this different film is surely major evidence why people think it’s overwritten) Batman is relegated to the sidelines more to let Superman and Wonder Woman – the invulnerable ones – take centre stage, which is certainly sensible. It’s a Zack Syder film, which means it is often as good as it is bad and only as good as the script. For example: ‘Watchmen’, good; ‘Suckerpunch’, bad bad bad. And if the opening credits are trying to ape the technique of ‘The Watchmen’, the fact that it’s simply summarising Batman’s origin story – again! – surely makes it too familiar to be in any way exceptional. This is a director that has helmed two of the best openings in genre film: ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘Watchmen’. He has also brought us ‘300’ and ‘Suckerpunch’. So with ‘Batman vs Superman’ I found I always had an eye on the flaws, but since my expectations were so low that I was surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe.

And if the first half of the film stems from the genre problem of what to do with all the fall-out of mass destruction from a super-fight, this self-analysis is all washed away in the third act when surely hundreds and thousands died in the showdown. Talk about carnage. In fact, all the time (in the fiction as well as in actual watched minutes) it takes to set up the premise seems redundant when it amounts to a final act that undoes any thinking or themes that came before. Snyder apparently cannot help but be enamoured by super-beings being punched through a sequence of sky scrapers, or characters moving bad-assly and heroically in slo-mo towards the camera.  In that sense one can see why he has been chosen as a superhero director of preference, happily delivering the clichés and managing the enterprise with some hard-faced fare even as the most successful Marvel entries are those with large wodges of tongue-in-cheek. 

It would seem that Christopher Nolan’s Batman films have cast a long shadow still over the DC Universe. As a friend of mine said, it’s probably not what Snyder was aiming for, but it’s fine. ‘Batman vs Superman’ isn’t special in any way, but it’s not nearly as some would have it. And I guess that's damning with faint praise.

Buck vs. "300"

300

Zack Snyder, 2006, USA

Finally, I get to see "300", a film so fuelled by testosterone, it made me want to oil myself down and photoshop my abdominals. It's one big shout for manly war filtered through blood red, gold and slo-mo. As an army promotional tool, as a call for the arrogance, self-righteousness and sacrifice of kamikaze soldiers, it scores highly. There are also, famously, lashings of homoerotica, homophobia, a little racism, a little misogyny, a little nod to feminism (behind every great man… etc.), a little sneering at the soldiering pretensions of the proletariat, an annoying mythologizing voice-over, some scary stuff about making boys battle-friendly the day they can play-fight, acres of blood and slaughter, shouting… It's like being tea-bagged by a fascist.

There is little refuting the passionate and widespread criticisms of Zack Snyder's adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel, and it barely wears a posing pouch of subtext. It is not pacifist-, leftist- or liberal-friendly and like any happy hawker, it shouts its way into war, bellowing "Victory!" even when its forces are very visibly being wiped out. But such seriously politicised evaluations do seem to wane in the light of fabulist beasts and an artificial aesthetic every bit as consummate at that other Miller adaptation, "Sin City". While "Sin City" had the virtue of being pure pulp with nihilistic frission and pull of noir plotting, "300" lacks true substance. It does not hold up to scrutiny: it's not hard to discredit its seeming use of the Spartans as the American underdogs fighting for liberty, fraternity and warmongering against mysticism and tyranny. It is not hard to make a leap to more appropriately imagining the Spartans as, say, Vietnamese or Muslim radicals. Why, I am not sure there is ever really a sense of three hundred Spartans at all… a few dozen, maybe. While its superficial agenda is unprogressive, reactionary and arguably reprehensible to any moderate, it is also such a work of superficiality and absurdity that it is barely worth taking seriously. It is, very much, a dumb action film and, moreover, pure hyperbolic fantasy.

As fantasy, it has more lineage with Harryhausen Sinbad romps than typical Hollywood historical epics. It has all the usual trimmings: an outrageous, slightly monstrous villain advocating genocide and bling; an association between ugliness and Evil so obvious, a five-year old could elucidate upon it; a dominant but ultimately substance-free hero who can crack wise, avoid villainous queer-tinged come-ons, lead his men to the fight and appreciate the occasional moment of disingenuous pathos; a little courtly intrigue and betrayal; some state-of-the art monsters; a few gorgeous visuals… and all of this in that blood red, gold and slo-mo. All politics (i.e. diplomacy and debate) are proven as antiquated (as lecherous old men, for example), weak and corrupt - meanwhile, the beefcake soldiers get on with dealing with the threat with their fists, like real men. In red capes and thongs. But the political subplot really is filler, and the monsters seem to be carrying on careers from Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, dropping in for cameos that barely register (as a potential monster movie, it is also a bit of a cheat). There is nothing here as truly gripping, thrilling or carefully staged as the opening of Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" remake.

Being a product of the post-9/11 climate gives "300" that much more impetus as a battle cry, with its portrayal of bad guys as literally inhuman and its presentation of war as the greatest of inevitable glories and deaths and, indeed, as unavoidable and part of the system. All with a dash of occasional electrifying metal-edged guitars for extra cool. But, again, once submerged wholly in the artificial landscapes and beautifying slow-motion (my favourite being the impossible storm at see laying waste to Persian ships), long before we get to the CGI monsters, the whole pantomime is so preposterous that, for all its lack of substantial story and deplorable politics, it can be enjoyed on dumb fantasy and aesthetic levels. With its bursts of beauty and occasional inventiveness, it can be tolerated like an entertaining, loud-mouthed, probably deplorable but intermittently talented asshole with whom one has no qualms at humouring and laughing at.