June 17, 2025 • 61 mins
Seeing 28 years later this weekend? Listen to this first! As we get ready for the long awaited 3rd installment of the “28 later” franchise as we’re calling it, Rosie is here to prep you with a recap of 28 days and weeks later, with lots of first hand knowledge as a former Londoner and Jason has a special Zomnibus prepared for us on the history of the Zombie trope and how it has evolved over the years!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning, Today's episode contains spoilers for the twenty eight Later franchise,
both twenty eight days Later and it's sequel twenty eight
weeks later.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I just like twenty eight later, though, that's all I
call it. Twenty eight guys, twenty eight Later, twenty eight
l NFE.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hello, it is Jason Concepcion and I'm mersday Night and
welcome back to x ray Vision of the podcast where
we dive deep. It's your favorite shows, movies, comics and
pop culture coming to you from ir Heart Podcast, where
we'll bring you three episodes a week every Tuesday, Thursday
or Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
In today's episode, as we hinted in the spoiler zone,
we're not going into the alock today.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We're going into the quarantine zone.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Recapping twenty days later, the honestly radical zombie hit that
Dan fated the genre and it's rather successful sequel twenty
eight weeks later, which Carmen will.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Tell you is her favorite of the two.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And then we are going to have the Zomnibus.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Jason is digging deep into zombie law.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
What do zombies represent in our society and how have
they changed over the years, and how does that tie
into the twenty.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Eight years weeks and soon to be a months. No,
those three will work together the twenty eight L franchise.
How do they tie in? You will find out, But
first let's talk about twenty eight days later.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, Rosie, take us through to twenty eight L movies,
okaying out as we prepare for twenty eight years later.
And I think it's only right and proper that you
do this as this is said in your home Yes,
I land down your home country's going to.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Be giving you some some British insights, some hints.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
At what what you may be seeing and how the
movies were made.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Also, Jason, first let me quickly ask you, do you
remember the first time you watched this movie?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
For sure, I saw it. I saw it in the
movie theater.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I think I was aware that it was dimly aware
that it was a zombie film, but it just looked
more like a dystopian, you know, Fall of Society kind
of film, and I was like, I gotta go see it.
I saw it, and I was blown away. It really
stuck with me.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, It's one of definitely one of those movies where
I think at the time it felt essentially like revolutionary.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
One of it feels so different because it was shot
it's mostly on mini DV cameras. The new movie, as
many people have talked about, is going to be shot
predominantly on iPhones and that we've seen some crazy iPhone
rigs that Danny has.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Been creating, these sixty rigs that like shoot a character
from almost a full semi circle in front of them.
It's pretty insane. Yeah, And the mini DV tech is
very interesting because that was basically consumer level technology, like
not thought of as like a pro sin camera exactly,
(03:14):
and it gives you this very grainy, very textured look
that I think is it's weirdly divisive. Now. I've seen
people talk about it when when watching the film on
you know, twenty twenty five television say why does this
movie look like shit? I have to say, like, at
(03:34):
the time, on the big screen, it felt more real
because of the mini DV. It felt authentic and almost
more documentarian.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, exactly, I think it felt like that kind of
shaky cam but pre Jason Bourne. And it was very
horror and also obviously our biggest zombie movies up until
this point, and zombie kind of of.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Media in general.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Are the Sam Rami movies and those were obviously made
on especially Evil Dead.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Oh no, yeah, sorry, we have the Georgi ra Merra.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Movies obviously beautiful, Night of the Living Dead, everything else.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Then we have Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and those both.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Movies were made with a low budget, with you know,
limited technology, limited money. So this continues that trend, honestly,
and as we will get into the sequels, continue the
trend of kind of then expanding out that world in
that budget. But yes, twenty eight days later, let us begin,
in classic British fashion, twenty eight days later begins thanks
(04:40):
to the horrific reality of animal rights activists, something that
for some reason British people just like really get pissed
off about. There's a lot of them, there's a lot
of bit's interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of animal testing
in England, so definitely this is kind of a leftover
of that kind of There was a lot of anti
nuclear protests in England, learn a lot of direct action
(05:01):
groups in the eighties and nineties who were breaking into
animal testing facilities.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So I thought that was.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
A really funny kind of time capsule moment. And when
that very direct action group breaks into a testing facility.
They accidentally unleash the rage virus on the world thanks
to as far as I could tell, a chimpanzee who
has been forced to watch videos of riots, violence and
cars being set on fire.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
He's really going.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Through it, yes, that poor chimpanzee. And they do try
to warn him, they say, hey, come on, guys, this
guy's got the rage virus, but she doesn't listen. She's
got to let him free, and so the virus begins
and it's.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Not going well.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
But we don't learn very much about that until twenty
eight days later. Wink Wink, Silly and Murphy's bike courier,
Jim an that's a very London job as well to
be a bike career.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Jim wakes up in.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
A deserted hospital on the bank of the River Thames
and takes a now iconic and still very impressive, impressive
empty walk for like fifteen minutes runtime through a deserted
London and the abandoned kind of landmarks like Big Ben
and the Houses of Parliament.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And Oxford Tree.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's unbelievable to kind of see what they were able
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
It's really really impressive. If you watch the director commentary
or have written any interviews about this.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Boyle talks about how they did it. They had to
collect these shots over the course of several weeks at
very early in the morning, mostly weekends. We would be
the least traffic, and they would just kind of hold
up whatever traffic there was, so silly and Murphy could
kind of walk across frame. They'd get the shot with
nothing in the background. Crazy, then the world would start
up again. Really really impressive.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And also like this was this was actually movie was
made pre nine to eleven, so.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They during the film. Yeah, so they were.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Able They were basically able to shut down Whitehall to
They bought a bus that they turned over in front
of Downing Street, which is where the Prime Minister lives,
and they were able to just quickly do it, get
the shot in thirty minutes of him walking past, get
it away. It's like really kind of crazy, almost like
gorilla filmmaking, like Werner Herzog does, but in a kind
(07:25):
of genre space. Interestingly, as well as we get more
into like the infected and the notion of the monsters
in this movie, they are also not your average zombies
at this point, so as the viewer and Jim learn
that there has been kind of a complete societal collapse
thanks to a number of very fun world building techniques
(07:46):
like these kind of missing flyers and torn newspapers, and
Jim ends up being attacked by the first human rage
virus victim that we meet, and he's terrifying and at
the time completely original. Kind of monsters were not originally
intended to be zombies. It was kind of this new
idea of a rage infection. But Danny Boyle and Alex Garland,
(08:10):
whatever they wished was kind of superseded by the fact
that this would reinvigorate the entire zombie movie and also
zombie media genre, because after this, you get the Walking
Dead comic, you get the Walking Dead TV show. Zombies
become the genre, you get the Dawn of the Dead remake.
A great movie, and it's a really interesting thing because.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
This movie is, as you said, you know, it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Does not necessarily look like the most high definition kind
of like restart of a full subgenre, but there was
something raw and authentic and scary, and before we got
on MIC, we were actually talking about, you know, movies
that scared us and blow which project came up. And
I think this is in that same space where if
you were young enough, you could have watched this and
(08:56):
been like, oh my god, like is this real?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
You know, is this real? Like that thing? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So Jim he is about to be killed by the infected.
That would be the end of his story, but he
is saved by two survivors, Nomi Harris, who, by the way,
this movie has like an unbelievable cast list truly h
Selena and Noah Huntley's Mark, who squirrel him away inside
a shop on the now destroyed local high street. Soon,
Jim convinces them to go on a mission to his parents'
(09:24):
house in Deptford, which, by the way, is like really
fast stupid mission.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Wow, So how far? How far is that like walking?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Okay, So if you're on like.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Waterloo Bridge area and you're going to like South London,
I mean walking, you're talking about like two or three
hours like minimum, and I would think actually longer. He
gets there quickly realizes that his parents killed themselves. Rather
than kind of face down the rat the infected, we see.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Him watch a home video of them. Again.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I feel like this is a very bleak kind of
depressing take on zombies that would go on to be
very influential on like what we see in The Walking
Dead and what we see about the way that humans
react to these horrible crises, and the kind of fact
that a lot of times humans are the more dangerous factor.
(10:14):
During an attack on the house by the infected, Mark
is killed rip Mark, and he's killed by Selena because
he gets wounded, and she is just like fuck you,
shoots him in the head and.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
She just goes crazy on him. Well I think she does.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She not.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I think she hacks him up with him hicks him up.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
With it incredible even better, That's that's I'm used to.
I'm so used to American zombies now that she becomes
the most.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I mean, that is a heartbreaking moment where he says
like he's like, hold on, just get wait a second,
let me see if I turn because he's got the bite,
it's bleeding on his arm.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, and he was protecting them too.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
She just like hacks him up ruthlessly and then turns
to Gym and says you are next, like, I will
do that shit if you are big, you no question.
And now the roving survival party is down to two.
Not for long though, as they are joined by two
more survivors, Brendan Gleeson's Frank again unbelievable and young British
(11:12):
actor and my former roommate Meghan Burns. Yes, this was Hannah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Hannah.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Hannah was my roommate.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
She was also a very cool a musician.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Now she she.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Was a very cool musician called Betty Curse, and I
met her through my lovely friend Charlotte. And now Meghan
is actually a band manager in.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Her own right. But yes, she's very young in this movie.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
He was handpicked by Danny Boyle and has like a
really kind of scary and cool role as it rolls
out for a young actor.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Because things get really messed up from here.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Frank has heard a broadcast from Manchester claiming that there's
some military barracks and they're safe and there's potential cure,
and so they decide that they're gonna head to Manchester
again very far. I feel like this is one of
the things that I would encourage in a zombie apocalypse
(12:09):
and in a zombie in general. I was like, don't
be trying to like go really far. It's gonna end up.
You're gonna end up in trouble, but hilariously, their journey
is actually not that bad. And again another really famous
sequence there is where we get the drive through the
moat that empty motorways England, which are just like essentially
(12:30):
like our highways, but we don't have them in every city.
They kind of join. They're like the veins of England
that join all the cities together. And these were TV
shots that were again those kind of like pause the traffic,
get what we can move on, and that is some
of the most impressive.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
London to Manchester, how long?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Oh baby? On a train because I don't drive.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Oh a drive is like a solid four hour drive okay, and.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The train it's like I've done, like it's been like
three hours.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I would say, Holy, you could drive in in maybe
like three hours if you were driving really fast and
there was no traffic. And somehow they do manage to
make it to Manchester in one piece in Frank's taxi.
But once they arrive there, the barracks seem empty and
we get this. Really I love this moment because it's
(13:23):
so movie ish, but it's also like you can so
imagine it happening.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Frank right, Frank sees it at barrack's empty. He's pissed off.
He starts kicking the wall and.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Like a blood a drop of blood from an infected
who's like on the wall, like falls.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Into his eye.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Oh that's so crazy.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, I'm like, it seems like it would never happen.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
But if you've ever got like a splinter under your
nail or something that should never have been there, you're like, okay,
I could, I could see it. And a last Frank,
he's dead because you can't survive. You've gotta be killed.
That's the only option. And now without Frank, who was
you know, kind of in the know that something strange
was going on, Jim, Selena and Hannah are left at
(14:06):
the whims of Christopher Eggleston, another fantastic British actor, as
Mayor Major Henry West, who has been broadcasting his claims
of a cure in a safe place in order to
lure women to the barracks so that in his greater
plan he can basically be like, I need to repopulate
the country. But really he means like you're going to
(14:28):
be my sexual slaves.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
For mean some type exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Very like he must spread his seed and obviously that's terrifying.
I remember this reveal feeling so like shocking, yes when
I first watched it, and I think something that's really
interesting about it is that it leans very heavily into
something that, as I kind of mentioned earlier, the Walking
Dead and these zombie projects that World War was he
(14:58):
would kind of lean into, which is, yeah, the zombies
are bad, but the humans are oftentimes worse because they
can control their behavior, but they.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Choose not to.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So Jim is obviously less than happy about that, and
along with another soldier who agrees that who disagrees and
won't go along with the plan, is sentenced to death.
But thanks to an argument between some of the kind
of ever fracturing group of soldiers who are like incredibly hungry,
who are under the watchful eye of this insane man,
(15:30):
Jim is able to escape and we get this moment again,
another moment that I think about a lot, which is
he sees like the trail of a plane in the
sky and it kind of reinvigorates him to remember that, like,
if there's a plane in the sky, the world must
be going on somewhere, and he is able to essentially
(15:53):
lure away West Freeze an infected soldier that they'd been
keeping prisoner, which I always think, like, okay, so they
were experimenting on the prisoner, so maybe at some point
there was some truth to the idea of the trying
to find the cure. But then they realize, like, we
don't know what we're doing, so let's just like assault
some women because that's fun and there's no laws, and
(16:15):
they get into the car make at their escape, and
I really this moment is such a classic horror moment,
which I think is really funny because the rest of
the movie is very unconventional. But essentially we end up
in a situation where West is actually hiding in the
backseat of the car, so you think that they're safely away,
and then he pops up shoots Jim. But then Nomi
(16:38):
Harris's Selena makes a great move where she kind of
throws the car back by breaking it and flings him
through the back window, and he's he's killed. Allah, you
know the t Rex and Jurassic Park. Now the infected
is helping and he's going.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
To become the next meal.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And hilariously, watching this movie, I was surprised by how
much of it I kind of did remember or what
really stuck with me. But the final sequence I think
is the thing that to me really defines this movie,
which is another twenty eight days later, we joined Jim's
He's recovering Selena and Hannah and they are in a
(17:14):
small cottage. Yeah, and it's kind of this very cozy
English like off tract.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
You I would say, like the Cotswolds or something. But
I also, like, I am from London, so I have.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
No idea, like I am not good at geography, even
British geography. But you know, somewhere I would say, like
somewhere that a rich person would probably have like a
weekend home, and every time Nabors visit there, the locals
would be like Callipiste off because the locals are probably
like miners and shit. And they kind of see a
(17:49):
plane fly over and we see them unfurl this huge
banner that says hello, and the pilot seems to spot them,
offering up like hopeful ending for what would become, you know,
one of the bleakest kind of big budget smash.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
It's the movie was made for you know, very.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Very very very minimal amount of money and ended up
going on to make in England. It made you know,
it was relatively successful. The movie was cost eight million dollars.
In England it made six million, which is pretty good.
But in America it made forty five million, and soon
you know it would go on to make over eighty
(18:31):
million dollars. So yeah, that's twenty eight days later. It's
a very good movie. And it hasn't been streaming for
a very long time, but very long series of rights issues.
But it is currently streaming for free with ads on
Pluto TV, and you can buy it or download it
on demand wherever if you are in it's so inclined.
(18:55):
Twenty eight weeks later though, it's streaming on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Hulu and Cormond's favorite.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's her favorite. She thinks it's really good, okay, so
twenty eight weeks late. This is very interesting because they
choose to begin during the original outbreak in a small
English town this time, I would say more like, I
don't know, like Burnley or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I think my family's from up north, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But where Robert Carlile's Don and his wife Alice are
surviving alongside some neighbors. It's kind of a fractured survival.
But interestingly, something that they continue. Here is kind of
this establishment of like an old school technology, the way
that you know, videotapes, stuff like that. We see that
in twenty eight days later as Jim watches the video
(19:39):
of his family. We've seen it in the trailers for
twenty eight years later where the kids are watching videos
of the Teletubbies.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
So I think that kind of low.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Technology is being brought back in the new one, which
I really love.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
But their kind.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Of very shaky safety is put at risk when a
young born he starts knocking at the door. His wife
cannot ignore the young boy because they have children and
they don't know where they are.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
And Don is like, please.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Don't let in this kid, like we know how this
is gonna go down. The kid gets let in, the
infected take over the house, and soon I have to
say Don not a good husband, because he leaves his
wife like he just wither quickness without the quickness, like
she's eaten in the house.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
There is at least some true anguish that crosses his face,
but he hesitates for like half a second and then
he is like sorry, babe, yeah out yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
He's like he's like I can't do it, My love,
like it's not happening for me.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I'm gone for the boat.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
I gotta go for the boat.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And then I think that we get something here that
is a really interesting Again, these are movies that I
think are very shaped by the technology of the time
and also the way that you could utilize technology that
was just becoming accessible to kind of lower budget filmmakers,
because we get that instantly recognizable drone shot where even
if you haven't seen this movie, you probably have seen
(21:11):
Robert kyle Le running across the grass the kind of
British countryside to.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Get to the boat.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
He's got a drone shot following him. It's super surreal
and shaky, and yes, he gets to the boat and
he embarks on a new journey and we'll join him
there twenty eight weeks later, Bae.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Imagine that. I love the way that they use.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The actual timing in the movies is never endingly hilarious
to me. So in a classic Hollywood sequel move I
(21:54):
feel Here. The film introduces us to an England that
has essentially been taken over by NATO after the seeming
starvation death of the effect infected where they couldn't eat enough,
they've started to die out, and the US government is
now essentially trying to rebuild Britain along with its NATO partners,
and keep the rest of the world safe, keep the
(22:15):
infected inside Britain if there are any left, and work
out stuff like.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
What happens to their dead bodies and.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
How you know, basically classic science stuff, and something I
didn't get to mention in my recap of the first
movie that I forgot twenty eight days later does fit
in to something that we have been calling the Jurassic
Park Coralie, which is like, look, man, if you think
they say that the first one is a science fiction movie,
(22:45):
but in the first five minutes they basically explained the science,
so maybe it is. This one is definitely more interested
in that wider post apocalyptic science fiction horror kind of
mash up. The tone is very different, and in the
NATO safe zone we meet Don's kids, Tammy and Andy,
who have somehow survived. Good for them, young Imagen Poots
(23:07):
here she is in many movies that you will see
and only seems to be getting into more now, another
great British actress, and they end up Tammy and Andy
somehow being the first children let into this zone that
they call District one.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Rose Byrne doing a very funny American accent here like
she's she's too.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's just there's something about it that sounds like very
like I'm an American doing a military like serious voice.
And she's very angry because she's like, wait a minute,
why are their kids here?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
We don't know what to do with kids.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
We don't know how kids are going to respond to
what we're doing here.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And this time I can tell you where they are
because they're in the Isle of Dogs, and.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
They've essentially militarized that the Isle of Dogs to turn
it into a little kind of safe zone slash. Honestly, yeah,
in prison, because that is.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
This is the answer to iraq anxieties. And oh the
movie that's that's explicitly about how bad America and its
Western allies are at occupy places.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, and how dangerous those occupations are. And soon, in
an incredible twist, they are reunited with their dad.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Love that that's a that's a.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Dons Mac and I don't know how Don ended up there,
but good for him. And he immediately lies about how
the mom died, which I think was like painfully real
for anyone who maybe has a dad who's not the
most truthful person. And we then kind of start to
meet the different characters here we have uh the incredible Again,
(24:51):
this is another movie with just an unbelievable cast. Like
you have Harold Pernu as a sniper, you have obviously
Rose Burnt, we have Jeremy I know who we meet here,
Rener Hives stand up, They're they're here, They're I'm sure
he would have loved to be in the sequel, but
I will be intro I don't think that's happening for him.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Tammy and Andy as they.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Are children and they were out of the country during
the original outbreak, which makes me think they don't really
understand how serious this is. They decide that they are
just gonna sneak out. They'll fun adventure, have some good
always a good. I feel like again, if children can
sneak out of your like DMZ kind of like protection Zone,
probably not doing very well.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
No, No, I don't think you're a very high security
of the area.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I think this again speaks to me about like kind
of the the trappings of this do feel like a
bigger Hollywood sequel. You add the kids, just like you
add kids you can make it a PG thirteen, you know,
or make it if it's in America, it can still
be r rated. But now there are kids that people
can relate to. It's very terminated to in that way,
and they have a very child life like.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Reason for leaving.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
They want to find a picture of their mom and
they want to get family pictures from their home. So
they head home. But bad news because their mom, Alice,
she's not dead. Whoops, whoops, Sorry, dad.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You you got some explaining to do.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Inside their house they.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Saw saw die. She's delirious and just like completely out
of it. And just then sadly the Jeremy Renner has
snitched on them. They bring them all back to District
one and their mom is quarantined and tested, and we
(26:51):
find out, in a you know, hopeful for the society,
not maybe so great for Alice, that she seems to
be an asymptomatic carrier of the rage virus. Now, I
think it's very interesting because I don't think in most
zombie movies that when they just don't tend to use
that kind of language that we can understand, you know
(27:13):
what being an asymptomatic carrier of like a cold is
it's not this kind of.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Ellie all in all out immunity.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
There is a kind of granular nature to how they
represent the zombie apocalypse here that does feel real, that
does feel more like something that could happen. And obviously
that comes from the way that Doyle and I mean
Boil and Garland approached it in the first movie and
introduced us to this notion that to them wasn't even
a zombie movie, you know, it was this race virus.
(27:40):
But of course this kind of running zombies, these violent zombies,
would take over pop culture for the next like fifteen years. Incredibly,
I now understand why Tammy and Andy are not making
good decisions because Don decides that he is is gonna
go on an unauthorized visit to Alice bad idea, begging
(28:04):
her to forgive him.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Then he kisses her.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Come on, come on, guy, like, look around you crazy?
How do you think that this infection is spread by
bodily fluids?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
My friend, that's why they bite people.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
He immediately gets infected then brutally kills her, which like,
what the fuck, bro, this is I didn't realize, I think,
and you know, Calm and actually touched on this before
we came on, but I didn't realize actually that under
until I rewatched this for this recap under the trappings
of kind of the bigger budget, bigger scope horror movie,
(28:45):
it's still very much has this kind of thread of
like male violence, just like the first.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Movie for sure, and even the way they shoot, even
the way they shoot Carlisle during the attack when he
kills her, they show is they close up in on
his face. It's very quick and they do it several times,
and he's got like this most like demonic, you know,
infected kind of rage grin like on his face. But
they really don't do that. It's not previous movie at
(29:14):
all or with any of the other zombies that much
like during an attack like person make it intimate and
personal like that.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, and even and also it makes you feel like, well,
he could have just done it, because we get that
moment at the end of twenty eight days later when
Jim comes and saves Selena and Hannah. He kills the
soldiers so violently that at first Selena they don't know, yeah,
he is infected, And we get that moment here where
even though we knowed On is infected because he kissed
(29:42):
Alice you see a violence in him, and a recognizable
kind of male violence that feels very real. And just
like every fucking zombie man who gets bitten and doesn't
tell people and goes crazy, he creates like essentially massive outbreak.
He's killing refugees, he's killing military people. Then there every
(30:06):
single person he bites, you know. I think the general
understanding in fandom is like, if somebody was a zombie
and everybody bit too people, it would only take like
seven days for the world to be overtaken. And we
see this happen in a microcosm here in District one.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And while Doyle refuses, good job Jeremy Renner.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
To kill all the refugees and people who are still
trying to survive, which is what the government and his
bosses want, that does start to happen.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Chaos ensues.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think you made a brilliant point, actually, Jason, that
I hadn't even really kind of thought of.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
This is definitely.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
A statement on kind of the idea of over militarized occupations.
And it's very interesting with that read because we start
to see as Doyle is trying to help people escape, innocent,
uninfected people other for snipers, are just shooting at them,
and they end up killing these family members, and Doyle
(31:13):
ends up deciding he's going to shoot his own men
in order to try and save them, and it ends
up being Scarlet who saved Tammy and Andy because she
considered that perhaps there is a world where they continue
the genetic possibilities of finding a cure and another survivor, Sam,
(31:33):
and then we get this horrifying moment, which again I think,
to me, I.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Just think is like.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
A very ahead of its time moment, and honestly, I
feel like, now if somebody did this in a movie,
they'd be like just just true political. But they essentially
have the air force firebomb the entire sub district one,
which was where there were survivors, where there was research,
where there were animals, there was a potential of a
(32:04):
new society there. But it doesn't work, and we end
up with Flynn Harl Perrino flies as helicopter to Regent's Park,
very famous, kind of near to one of the sixth forms.
I tried to go to. Beautiful park, gorgeous, beautiful, lovely
(32:25):
flowers and arrangements, and it's just one of those brilliant
green spaces that we get in London. I spend a
lot of time hanging out there as a teenager, and
he's like, broa, you gotta infect the others. Bro, Like
you gotta leave them, don't worry about it, Like it's
just me and you. Bro's to the end, and unfortunately
the infected people are on their tail. Sam tries to
(32:49):
get onto the flying helicopter and this is the stuff
I really remember from this movie.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
I think maybe I was kind of too young when
it came out.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I was so into the first twenty eight Days Later movie,
and I think my young mat was kind of like, oh,
it's so Hollywood, it's so big budget, like it doesn't
really understand the origins of the movie. But I'm realizing
now it's not from rewatching, is not really the case.
And also it's just that some of the set pieces
are so crazy, like this one where you have Flynn
(33:19):
like using his fucking helicopter rotor blades, yeah, to try
and like thin out the zombie crowd, which is so crazy.
And then another iconic English place here if you watch
any kind of sports, even NFL has had matches here.
But obviously if you are a fan of European soccer,
British soccer football as we call it, Wembley Stadium. That's
(33:42):
where he's like, come here, and Doyle's like, I've got
to save these guys.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I've got to do it. I can't do it.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They then break into I love like the specificity of
this and for some reason, this is like a very
popular classic British car, but it's like a Volvo V seventy,
which is like a really funny, like basically a hatchback
that like an executive would drive. I don't know why,
but English people they love Volvos. They hide in the
(34:09):
car because there has been like a terrifying gas that
has been released to kill the infected. Again, great commentary
here on how population doesn't matter and it's all about
control of the virus and the danger, which honestly, as
the movie ends, we realize is probably what they should
have been focusing on. So I'm not gonna like complain
too much about the government, because the zombie apocalypse does
(34:33):
end up spreading in this movie RP to Europe. But yeah,
then we get really fun sequence where they go into
the tube, the very famous London underground been there for
like one hundred and fifty years, incredible public transport system.
I love it can get you across London in like
twenty five to fifty minutes, depending on where you're going.
(34:54):
But what's really cool is we do have a few
different movies in London set in the underground. There's a
great movie Creeps Out Under that but in this sequence
they use night vision to go through the tunnels and.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's really creepy. It's really unique.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And then well I hate it and kind of forgot
is that Donn is still on their tail.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, he's still going after this.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
There's something something maybe pheromones or DNA.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
It like in the scene where he murders his wife,
even though he is infected at that moment, there's always
this implication again with the way they shoot him, with
the way they shoot him when he's running through the crowd,
that there's something of his previous consciousness, his emotions that remains,
and that is animating him, and that is keeping him
(35:44):
following them.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
And I think like, something that's really interesting about that
is the notion of kind of like.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Muscle memory, body memory, like who this guy was.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Because also when I got to the end of the
movie and I saw that don was still chasing them
was still public. I recalled the beginning, I went back
and rewatched it, and when Alice is really worried about
the kids and kind of like doesn't know where they
are and everything, he really shrugs it off in a
way that I thought was him trying to reassure her,
but actually I realized now is he probably.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Doesn't care in the same way that she does.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
So they end up going to They go through the tunnels,
Don is chasing them, and luckily Tammy Don and Alice's
daughter ends up killing her dad, which feels very pointed
in the read the Toxic Masculinity read, and she ends up.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Being the hero.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They get to Wembley Stadium, they meet Flynn, who flies
them to France. Seems like maybe there's something good that
could happen it. I feel like they shouldn't have immediately
gone to another country.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Probably should have.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Just like gone to many of the rural places in
England that they could have, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Bene small islands like yeah, also not.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Even just that, but like England is like America.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
There's loads of it that's inhabited, but also there's like
tons of it that isn't.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So I just feel like you could have gone to.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Like the moors or somewhere, you know, gone to like
a beach and tried to hide out there.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Something.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I feel like going to France was irresponsible, as we
will learn it was because twenty eight days later, a
French boye whui whui. That's why it's are the French?
I know guys me uh, yes, that's it. I was
gonna say, may I am i rosie, but that's not
that's not French. But yes, they are asking to help.
(37:37):
They are asking for the rape. You can hear them
in the radio from Flint's abandoned helicopter and ut ooh,
a group of infected people busts from a Paris metro
station and in one of the most hilarious in my opinion,
like feels like maybe a kind of like maybe an
exec cast for this or maybe they were like, oh,
(37:58):
let's see if we can make it happen the same
where we did in England. We see the effected in
front of the Eiffel Tower. They were like, what's French?
They were like see that, yeah, And that is interestingly,
where we leave the franchise for you know, many many years,
almost twenty years, twenty eight weeks.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, twelmost year later.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It was two thousand and seven, and that movie was.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Actually while we had Boyle and Garland on as producers.
It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and it was
like there was a screenplay with multiple writers on it,
including Rowan, Joffy, Hemry Kue Lopez Levine, and Jesus Olomo.
And it's interesting because I do think that it feels
(38:46):
very different and I feel like at the time it
did make a lot of money, but I don't know
if it necessarily people received it in the right way.
But I think rewatching it, it's really interesting and I'm
not surprised at all that ended up being Carmen's favorite.
She's got lots of great some great tastes.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
It is a good one. It's underrated, and I think
for me, I think that the escape from the house
in the opening m hm, Don's like as he runs
out of the house and he's looking back over his
shoulder and he's kind of like running in this small
valley like between like at the bottom of like a hill,
(39:22):
and you see he looks to his left and on
the hill above him, you see infected start coming over
the hill down towards him. I think that's, for me,
the scariest moment in the series, when you're just like it,
because you really it's hard for me to fully blame
him for you know, he's mindlessly scared, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
The opening, you're meant to think like, Okay, I could
see how I could do that too.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I couldn't see how I could do it.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, But I also think something that I love is
when he's first running away.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Something else this movie does.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Well is like go because when he first runs away,
he's looking behind him and there's only like seven zombies
and it doesn't look that scary, but you still got
to run away from those seven zombies like you only
need one to bite you. You know. Yeah, I think
it's such an interesting movie, and I'm very I'm intrigued
to see if on revisiting and if they can deliver
with twenty eight years later, this could go down as
(40:21):
like a very legendary horror franchise, horror trilogy.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I think, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
One of my favorites, and it's like everyone else, it
reinviuriated my love of zombies. That was always a big
zombie guy. I saw Romero's Dawn of the Dead when
I was too young to see it on VHS. Of course,
I think, you know, the helicopter blade scene from twenty
eight weeks is I think a clear homage to the
(40:48):
helicopter partial decapitation from Dawn of the Dead. Slow motions obviously,
and just a great movie. Great movie, fast zombies. It
really ups the for me, It up the fear. Fat Well,
let's take a quick break and we be right back
with our zombie omnimous x omnibous omnibus. And we're back
(41:22):
with the Zomnibus. Welcome to today's edition of the Zomnibus,
where Loura, analysis and understanding come together. Today we're talking
about zombies.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Zombies.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Zombies arose from tragedy. The concept initially emerged in Haiti
under the slave regime of French colonial rule. As Mike
Mariano writes in a excellent zombie historiography in The Atlantic Quote,
the zombie archetype, as it appeared in Haiti and mirrored
the inhumanity that existed there from sixteen twenty five to
(41:55):
eighteen hundred, was a projection of the African slaves relentless
misery in subjugation and slave people in Haiti believed that
dying might free their souls to go back to their homeland,
but those who took their own lives were doomed instead
to wander the plantations eternally trapped in their bodies soulless
(42:17):
zombies no e z MBIs condemned to a nightmare existence
of perpetual servitude. After Haiti's revolution in eighteen oh four,
the zombie myth entered general local lore, where it evolved.
There was the addition of bokhors, who were these kind
of sorcerers who could reanimate people to do their bidding again.
(42:39):
The slave metaphor is central to this idea, and there
were several points over the course of the nineteenth century
where Haiti, though free, it seemed like it might have
slavery reimposed upon it, and the folkloreic zombies of this
period were, as Marianna writes, quote, a more fractured representation
(43:00):
of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with
the cult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy. Even then, the
zombies roots in the horrors of slavery were already facing dilution.
Fast forward to the twentieth century. The Zombie then enters
Western popular culture with American writer William B. Seabrooks and
sensationalistic nineteen twenty nine non fiction book of The Magic Island.
(43:24):
This story introduced readers to Haiti's voodoo zombie, which Seabrook
described as a corpse revived by witchcraft, shuffling along obediently
with quote eyes staring, unfocused and unseeing, as if truly undead.
The book described seabrooks travels to Haiti during the US
occupation of the island and his encounters with various elements
(43:46):
of Haitian culture and voodoo practice, all of which is
presented within a pretty racist context, and casting the Haitian
people as this kind of other world, otherworldly, primitive, exotic
culture and society. In the chapter dead Men Working in
(44:07):
the Kingfield, Seabrook describes for the first time in literature,
the zombie these undead laborers animated by strange magic. The
book was a sensation. A review in the January ninth,
nineteen twenty nine edition of The Brooklyn Eagle reads, and
I think it's at least for the reviews I've read
that we're contemporary. Is this is pretty pretty much part
(44:28):
of the course. The Magic Island reeks with sacrificial blood,
the odor of cadavers, the sinister breath of witchcraft, the
horrendous exaltation of unholy terrors slaked in the steaming passions
of human animals. It is a grim story of voodooism.
This The Magic Island, filled with sickening mummeries, repulsive rituals,
orgiastic expiations and propitations, and armed with an uncanny ability
(44:52):
to woo the reader into his own experiences. Seabrook has
again created a book that commands attention, although it has
no other literary distinction than to be extraordinarily interesting. The
first zombie film appeared shortly thereafter. It was White Zombie
from nineteen thirty two, starring the legend Bella Lagosi as
a voodoo master in Haiti turning people into zombie slaves.
(45:14):
It leaned heavily on seabrooks account and played on White
America's racist fears of black people and their general antipathy
towards Africans in general. In these early depictions, you know,
zombies weren't out to eat you. They were still this
kind of broad based metaphor for enslavement. During World War
Two and into the Cold War, the zombies cross pollinated
(45:37):
with that era's anxieties about war, about authoritarianism, and about
nuclear destruction. In King of the Zombies nineteen forty one,
a foreign spy uses voodoo zombies to extract military secrets.
And in the horror comedy Revenge of the Zombies, which
is the first horror film that actually presumed that audiences
understood what a zombie was like. There was no non
(45:59):
a zombie origins story, no exposition dump. This features an
evil doctor raising an army of Nazi undead, and in
the b picture Creature with the Adam Brain nineteen fifty five,
a rogue scientist reanimates corpses with nuclear energy to his bidding.
As Zachary Krokett and Javier Zarachina write in the Vox
(46:20):
article how the zombie represents America's deepest fears. After Hiroshima
and the start of the Soviet nuclear test quote, American
fears of nuclear radiation and communism began to manifest in zombies.
These were America's fears made real about the dead and
the incarnet, about armies of soulist killing machines, about atomic
fallout about being enslaved by communism and Red Scare, brainwashing, etc.
(46:45):
But through this entire period, zombies basically remained very niche
until a Pittsburgh area independent filmmaker burst upon the scene.
This is Georgia Merrow with his nineteen sixty eight cinema
classic Night of the Living Dead. Interestingly, Romero originally didn't
call his creature zombies on set. He called them ghoules
(47:05):
because of his aversion to the original linkage of the
term back to French slavery in Haiti. But his film's
impact essentially reinvented horror and created the modern zombie template
as we know it. His innovation, Romero's innovation was to
kind of strip away all the supernatural voodoo and the
sorcerers and all that stuff. Is very little in the
(47:28):
way of actual explanation, kind of a vague there's like
a vague hypothesis that it might be like space radiation
or something. But the crucial innovation, and something Rosen and
I talk about all the time, is that the enemy
in Night of the Living Dead is not the zombies.
It is us. It is people. The film's shockingly bleak
(47:49):
ending shows Dwayne Jones the hero of the story, black protagonist,
surviving the zombie apocalypse of that night, only to be
mistaken for a ghoul and shot dead by a white posse,
which I can only imagine resonated like a gut punch
in the climate of nineteen sixty eight. As many have noted,
(48:13):
Night premiered the same year that Martin Luther King Junior
was assassinated and its finale black hero killed by trigger
happy white militia felt ripped from the headlines. Night of
the Living Dead pulsed with the anxieties of its era,
civil unrest, violence, fragility of the social order, and perhaps
most centrally, America's fascination with guns and with militia violence
(48:36):
with extra legal violence. Dawn of the Dead from nineteen
seventy eight, my personal favorite, traded the rural farmhouse for
a shopping mall and a cutting critique of aria of
American materialism and capitalism. Romero later explained that after Night
became a surprise hit, he felt pressure to make the
sequel that mattered, which is why it took a little while.
(48:56):
Quote everybody was after me to make another one. I said,
I don't want to just make it on the one.
I have to have an idea, I have to have
something to say, And it took ten years before inspiration
finally struck. Ramiro visited one of Pennsylvania's first indoor malls
and was struck by this spectacle of a consumer paradise. Quote.
I saw the trucks coming in, bringing in everything you
(49:18):
could ever possibly want. It just seemed like this temple
to consumerism. The light went off and I thought, maybe
I could do something with this, And man, does he
ever do something with this. The movie opens with what
I think is like the best twenty minutes maybe in
a horror movie ever. It feels so real, you really
feel society coming apart. It takes place in this local
(49:40):
news studio where this news program is both covering the
dissolution of the world under the weight of this zombie infection,
but also is giving you this fantastically charming like exposition
dump as this expert is like, the dead will rise,
they will kill more, and those will rise and they
(50:01):
will never stop coming. It's like you're just like, whoa,
it gave you away. Yeah. And then, of course, much
of the movie takes place as characters escape from the
kind of small safe havens that they had put together
as the as the weight of the zombie hordes kind
of like break down these small havens. A small cast
(50:24):
of characters flees to this shopping mall where they create
a fortress and for a time, a utopia. There's the
scene that stuck with me and that I think probably
sticks with a lot of people because I saw this one.
I was maybe ten or eleven was they first break
into the mall and then they spend there's this montage
of our heroes going having a grand ole time, going
(50:47):
from store to store, taking clothes, taking different consumer electronics,
filling up shopping carts with stuff over this kind of
jaunty soundtrack music, and that really stuck with me. And
of course it can't last. The utopia cannot last forever.
The zombies get in. They start eating people, including a
truly horrendous like intestine eating scene. But you know, by
(51:13):
this point the genre and its template had been set.
Through the eighties and nineties, zombies kind of shuffled along
in pop culture with a varying degree of vitality. There
were sequels Day of the Dead Return of the Living Dead,
which by this point are starting to kind of revert
to the more b movie origins.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Well, also there was a weird situation which allowed zombie
movies to thrive, which was the proper trademarking of Night
of the Living Dead was never done, which is why
it's on every free streaming. It's why any studio, i mean,
any distributor can put it out on DVD. It's why
you can watch it on YouTube. It was never properly copyrighted,
(51:55):
which means a lot of movies were able to come
out and sound like they were connected Tonight of the
Living Dead, but they were not necessarily officially connected, which
I think is still one of the weirdest Hollywood kind
of confusions that's ever happened.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
But yeah, and so it allowed that to be this
kind of wave of rip offs.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
You know, fa sounds like they're connected, but they're not connected.
And yeah, and there's still going on. I mean, there
are still you can still find movies that seem like
they are amer connected when they're not.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Perhaps because of this inundation of the marketplace with zombie content,
the eighties and nineties was kind of a sorry for
this turn of phrase, was kind of a dead period
for the zombie It was mostly kept alive through video games,
most notably Capcom's nineteen ninety six Resident Evil, and that
many many sequels, but it's a turnover the new millennium,
(52:54):
the Zombie returned to bite us yet again. A trio
of Landmark works ignite I did the revival, with Rosie's
Homeland central to this. It first came a twenty eight
Days Later from two thousand and two, Sean of the
Dead from two thousand and four, and then Americans Can't
(53:15):
let the English have all the fun the Walk and
Dead comic, which debuted in two thousand and three twos
and two to two thousand and four. Pretty crazy period
crazy for the Zombie.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Also really interesting because twenty eight Days Later is a
complete reimagination to the point where Danny Boyle at first
does kind of like Romero, doesn't think it's a zombie film,
then Shan of the Dead, which instead goes back and
introduces kind of like a mega social commentary comedy version
(53:49):
that's very much in the screen mold of something that
feels familiar and has loads of references, and you kind
of have to be inundated in zombie law as we
all are to understand it. But then you have The
Walking Dead, which is so out of the range of
what we understand by being a comic book and was
(54:10):
at the time, and I'm sorry if I've told the
story before, but I love it was so expected to
be a flop. It was so underprinted. Image Comics that
actually turned down Robert Kirkman's idea for The Walking Dead
multiple times because they said, nobody cares about zombies, nobody
wants to read a zombie comic. So he lied to
(54:31):
them and he said, well, at certain point in the story,
you're going to find out that really the zombies were
sent by aliens and it's part of this kind of
alien you know, invasion story.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
And Eric Stimson said.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Okay, great, like you can make the Walking Dead, And
so the first issue comes out and the second issue,
and slowly they say to him, hey, when are the
aliens coming? And then the book becomes such a big
hit that he doesn't ever have to do it, so
like he had to lie to get the comic made.
But then that comic ended up completely changing the landscape
and changing the way that we would see zombies. Bringing
(55:04):
us back to that twenty eight days later, a style
of kind of like a new way of telling the
story and like, who are the real Walking Dead us
or the zombies?
Speaker 4 (55:14):
Like that's a crazy three year hit though, and of course,
as zombie stories had done previously, twenty eight days later,
even Sean of the Dead and certainly The Walking Dead
tapped into the anxieties of the era biocontagion, terrorism, protest,
(55:35):
and social unrest, you know, stars had was emerging at
the time the anthrax attacks had happened, and of course
twenty eight days later it feels as if it predicts
a lot of the kind of post nine to eleven
(55:56):
cultural iconography. The wall with the pick of a missing.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Which ironically was a coincidence.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Coincidence completely before filmed before nine to eleven and all
of that emerged.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
You talk about something here that I think is kind
of interesting, and this is not you know, I'm sure
somebody has written a great article about this, and I'll
go find it afterwards. But also there is a level
of just like the early zombies, Abell Legosti zombies, which
were incredibly you know, very racist, the white zombie version
of a zombie that if you actually think about it,
the representation of this idea of like a community who's
(56:31):
so filled with rage, and you'll never understand them, and
they'll just destroy your country's kind of.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
There's a racist reading of it, Sure you could.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
There's definitely some interesting stuff to be tapped into there
as well. Yeah, I mean it's so interesting just how
much it is a time capsule of exactly what was
going on right then.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
I think the most successful and long running, certainly a
zombie property of this or any era, has to be
the adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which began
as an anti comic in two thousand and three, as
Rosie said, and then debuted on AMC in twenty ten,
quickly became a blockbuster and at least for me, became
a you know, it added the element of I think
(57:16):
it put the American soul front and center. This is
a story in which, like a law enforcement officer is
the main guy, you're dealing with regular people, school teachers
who become these like local warlords. And it's a lot
about the kind of core American love of guns and
(57:38):
the thought, you know, experiment that I think many Americans
play all the time, which is, okay, what happens when
the shit pops off and I have to start shooting
people and man the Walking Dead. I think a lot
of it's long running, it it's endurance in the popular
cultural imagination is because of this particular way. It has
(58:03):
put its finger on something about the American psyche. But
the rest of the world was also getting involved. Most
only Asia there was Trained to Busan from twenty sixteen,
a Sang Ho's iconic, heartfelt, heart breaking zombie film that harnesses,
(58:24):
you know, Korea's particular lens about class and capitalism. And
it is a story about a workaholic businessman and his
young daughter who end up on a train filled with
zombies and have to deal with the zombies but also
the kind of like craven ambitions of like regular humans.
(58:46):
The director reflected in an interview quote, if in Trained
to Busan, we say that selfishness spread like a virus.
His zombies may be fast and ferocia, but the true
villains of Training Bussan are human greed and cowardice. So
what is it about the zombies that keeps us coming back?
They're blank slate, They're versatile, they are the perfect every enemy,
(59:10):
you know, like Nazis, which I think for certain nondiances
are complex now because like people are are not sure
if they're the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, apparently so, And I will say reflectively, we see
less stories right now about how Nazis are that evil
catual villain and zombies this kind of more flexible. You
can put whatever you want onto them, become that clean slate.
Anyone can kill them without feeling guilty.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yes, they Aileen. They've been metaphors for everything from looters, rioters,
rampant materialism in the way that they only consume and
mindlessly consume this. Cultural critic James Parker observed, the zombie
is quote old, reliable, outlasting even its sexier monster cousins,
(01:00:04):
the humble ghoul. That quote rides the bestseller list and
consumes the pop unconscious like no other. From Haitian sugar
plantations to shopping malls the nineteen thirties B movies to
presstch TV, the zombie has shambled and then run and
then sprinked it all the way. Its evolution is the
story of pop culture itself, always mutating cross pollen, I
(01:00:25):
responding to our collective hopes and fears with a disgusting,
rotten grin. Well, that's it for this episode. Next time
on X ray Vision. We're getting you ready for Marvel's Ironheart.
No Mit Education acquired few. That's it for this episode.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Bye x.
Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion, I'm Rosy night
and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Our executive producers a Joe Alminique and Aaron Kleman.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Our supervising producer is Abu safar Ah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Produces a common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wack.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
A theme song is by Brian Vasquez with alternate theme
songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Heidi are Discord moderator
Warning, Today's episode contains spoilers for the twenty eight Later franchise,
both twenty eight days Later and it's sequel twenty eight
weeks later.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I just like twenty eight later, though, that's all I
call it. Twenty eight guys, twenty eight Later, twenty eight
l NFE.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hello, it is Jason Concepcion and I'm mersday Night and
welcome back to x ray Vision of the podcast where
we dive deep. It's your favorite shows, movies, comics and
pop culture coming to you from ir Heart Podcast, where
we'll bring you three episodes a week every Tuesday, Thursday
or Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
In today's episode, as we hinted in the spoiler zone,
we're not going into the alock today.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We're going into the quarantine zone.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Recapping twenty days later, the honestly radical zombie hit that
Dan fated the genre and it's rather successful sequel twenty
eight weeks later, which Carmen will.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Tell you is her favorite of the two.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And then we are going to have the Zomnibus.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Jason is digging deep into zombie law.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
What do zombies represent in our society and how have
they changed over the years, and how does that tie
into the twenty.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Eight years weeks and soon to be a months. No,
those three will work together the twenty eight L franchise.
How do they tie in? You will find out, But
first let's talk about twenty eight days later.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, Rosie, take us through to twenty eight L movies,
okaying out as we prepare for twenty eight years later.
And I think it's only right and proper that you
do this as this is said in your home Yes,
I land down your home country's going to.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Be giving you some some British insights, some hints.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
At what what you may be seeing and how the
movies were made.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Also, Jason, first let me quickly ask you, do you
remember the first time you watched this movie?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
For sure, I saw it. I saw it in the
movie theater.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I think I was aware that it was dimly aware
that it was a zombie film, but it just looked
more like a dystopian, you know, Fall of Society kind
of film, and I was like, I gotta go see it.
I saw it, and I was blown away. It really
stuck with me.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, It's one of definitely one of those movies where
I think at the time it felt essentially like revolutionary.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
One of it feels so different because it was shot
it's mostly on mini DV cameras. The new movie, as
many people have talked about, is going to be shot
predominantly on iPhones and that we've seen some crazy iPhone
rigs that Danny has.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Been creating, these sixty rigs that like shoot a character
from almost a full semi circle in front of them.
It's pretty insane. Yeah, And the mini DV tech is
very interesting because that was basically consumer level technology, like
not thought of as like a pro sin camera exactly,
(03:14):
and it gives you this very grainy, very textured look
that I think is it's weirdly divisive. Now. I've seen
people talk about it when when watching the film on
you know, twenty twenty five television say why does this
movie look like shit? I have to say, like, at
(03:34):
the time, on the big screen, it felt more real
because of the mini DV. It felt authentic and almost
more documentarian.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, exactly, I think it felt like that kind of
shaky cam but pre Jason Bourne. And it was very
horror and also obviously our biggest zombie movies up until
this point, and zombie kind of of.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Media in general.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Are the Sam Rami movies and those were obviously made
on especially Evil Dead.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Oh no, yeah, sorry, we have the Georgi ra Merra.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Movies obviously beautiful, Night of the Living Dead, everything else.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Then we have Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and those both.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Movies were made with a low budget, with you know,
limited technology, limited money. So this continues that trend, honestly,
and as we will get into the sequels, continue the
trend of kind of then expanding out that world in
that budget. But yes, twenty eight days later, let us begin,
in classic British fashion, twenty eight days later begins thanks
(04:40):
to the horrific reality of animal rights activists, something that
for some reason British people just like really get pissed
off about. There's a lot of them, there's a lot
of bit's interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of animal testing
in England, so definitely this is kind of a leftover
of that kind of There was a lot of anti
nuclear protests in England, learn a lot of direct action
(05:01):
groups in the eighties and nineties who were breaking into
animal testing facilities.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So I thought that was.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
A really funny kind of time capsule moment. And when
that very direct action group breaks into a testing facility.
They accidentally unleash the rage virus on the world thanks
to as far as I could tell, a chimpanzee who
has been forced to watch videos of riots, violence and
cars being set on fire.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
He's really going.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Through it, yes, that poor chimpanzee. And they do try
to warn him, they say, hey, come on, guys, this
guy's got the rage virus, but she doesn't listen. She's
got to let him free, and so the virus begins
and it's.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Not going well.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
But we don't learn very much about that until twenty
eight days later. Wink Wink, Silly and Murphy's bike courier,
Jim an that's a very London job as well to
be a bike career.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Jim wakes up in.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
A deserted hospital on the bank of the River Thames
and takes a now iconic and still very impressive, impressive
empty walk for like fifteen minutes runtime through a deserted
London and the abandoned kind of landmarks like Big Ben
and the Houses of Parliament.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And Oxford Tree.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's unbelievable to kind of see what they were able
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
It's really really impressive. If you watch the director commentary
or have written any interviews about this.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Boyle talks about how they did it. They had to
collect these shots over the course of several weeks at
very early in the morning, mostly weekends. We would be
the least traffic, and they would just kind of hold
up whatever traffic there was, so silly and Murphy could
kind of walk across frame. They'd get the shot with
nothing in the background. Crazy, then the world would start
up again. Really really impressive.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And also like this was this was actually movie was
made pre nine to eleven, so.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They during the film. Yeah, so they were.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Able They were basically able to shut down Whitehall to
They bought a bus that they turned over in front
of Downing Street, which is where the Prime Minister lives,
and they were able to just quickly do it, get
the shot in thirty minutes of him walking past, get
it away. It's like really kind of crazy, almost like
gorilla filmmaking, like Werner Herzog does, but in a kind
(07:25):
of genre space. Interestingly, as well as we get more
into like the infected and the notion of the monsters
in this movie, they are also not your average zombies
at this point, so as the viewer and Jim learn
that there has been kind of a complete societal collapse
thanks to a number of very fun world building techniques
(07:46):
like these kind of missing flyers and torn newspapers, and
Jim ends up being attacked by the first human rage
virus victim that we meet, and he's terrifying and at
the time completely original. Kind of monsters were not originally
intended to be zombies. It was kind of this new
idea of a rage infection. But Danny Boyle and Alex Garland,
(08:10):
whatever they wished was kind of superseded by the fact
that this would reinvigorate the entire zombie movie and also
zombie media genre, because after this, you get the Walking
Dead comic, you get the Walking Dead TV show. Zombies
become the genre, you get the Dawn of the Dead remake.
A great movie, and it's a really interesting thing because.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
This movie is, as you said, you know, it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Does not necessarily look like the most high definition kind
of like restart of a full subgenre, but there was
something raw and authentic and scary, and before we got
on MIC, we were actually talking about, you know, movies
that scared us and blow which project came up. And
I think this is in that same space where if
you were young enough, you could have watched this and
(08:56):
been like, oh my god, like is this real?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
You know, is this real? Like that thing? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So Jim he is about to be killed by the infected.
That would be the end of his story, but he
is saved by two survivors, Nomi Harris, who, by the way,
this movie has like an unbelievable cast list truly h
Selena and Noah Huntley's Mark, who squirrel him away inside
a shop on the now destroyed local high street. Soon,
Jim convinces them to go on a mission to his parents'
(09:24):
house in Deptford, which, by the way, is like really
fast stupid mission.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Wow, So how far? How far is that like walking?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Okay, So if you're on like.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Waterloo Bridge area and you're going to like South London,
I mean walking, you're talking about like two or three
hours like minimum, and I would think actually longer. He
gets there quickly realizes that his parents killed themselves. Rather
than kind of face down the rat the infected, we see.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Him watch a home video of them. Again.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I feel like this is a very bleak kind of
depressing take on zombies that would go on to be
very influential on like what we see in The Walking
Dead and what we see about the way that humans
react to these horrible crises, and the kind of fact
that a lot of times humans are the more dangerous factor.
(10:14):
During an attack on the house by the infected, Mark
is killed rip Mark, and he's killed by Selena because
he gets wounded, and she is just like fuck you,
shoots him in the head and.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
She just goes crazy on him. Well I think she does.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She not.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I think she hacks him up with him hicks him up.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
With it incredible even better, That's that's I'm used to.
I'm so used to American zombies now that she becomes
the most.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I mean, that is a heartbreaking moment where he says
like he's like, hold on, just get wait a second,
let me see if I turn because he's got the bite,
it's bleeding on his arm.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, and he was protecting them too.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
She just like hacks him up ruthlessly and then turns
to Gym and says you are next, like, I will
do that shit if you are big, you no question.
And now the roving survival party is down to two.
Not for long though, as they are joined by two
more survivors, Brendan Gleeson's Frank again unbelievable and young British
(11:12):
actor and my former roommate Meghan Burns. Yes, this was Hannah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Hannah.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Hannah was my roommate.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
She was also a very cool a musician.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Now she she.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Was a very cool musician called Betty Curse, and I
met her through my lovely friend Charlotte. And now Meghan
is actually a band manager in.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Her own right. But yes, she's very young in this movie.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
He was handpicked by Danny Boyle and has like a
really kind of scary and cool role as it rolls
out for a young actor.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Because things get really messed up from here.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Frank has heard a broadcast from Manchester claiming that there's
some military barracks and they're safe and there's potential cure,
and so they decide that they're gonna head to Manchester
again very far. I feel like this is one of
the things that I would encourage in a zombie apocalypse
(12:09):
and in a zombie in general. I was like, don't
be trying to like go really far. It's gonna end up.
You're gonna end up in trouble, but hilariously, their journey
is actually not that bad. And again another really famous
sequence there is where we get the drive through the
moat that empty motorways England, which are just like essentially
(12:30):
like our highways, but we don't have them in every city.
They kind of join. They're like the veins of England
that join all the cities together. And these were TV
shots that were again those kind of like pause the traffic,
get what we can move on, and that is some
of the most impressive.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
London to Manchester, how long?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Oh baby? On a train because I don't drive.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Oh a drive is like a solid four hour drive okay, and.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The train it's like I've done, like it's been like
three hours.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I would say, Holy, you could drive in in maybe
like three hours if you were driving really fast and
there was no traffic. And somehow they do manage to
make it to Manchester in one piece in Frank's taxi.
But once they arrive there, the barracks seem empty and
we get this. Really I love this moment because it's
(13:23):
so movie ish, but it's also like you can so
imagine it happening.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Frank right, Frank sees it at barrack's empty. He's pissed off.
He starts kicking the wall and.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Like a blood a drop of blood from an infected
who's like on the wall, like falls.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Into his eye.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Oh that's so crazy.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, I'm like, it seems like it would never happen.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
But if you've ever got like a splinter under your
nail or something that should never have been there, you're like, okay,
I could, I could see it. And a last Frank,
he's dead because you can't survive. You've gotta be killed.
That's the only option. And now without Frank, who was
you know, kind of in the know that something strange
was going on, Jim, Selena and Hannah are left at
(14:06):
the whims of Christopher Eggleston, another fantastic British actor, as
Mayor Major Henry West, who has been broadcasting his claims
of a cure in a safe place in order to
lure women to the barracks so that in his greater
plan he can basically be like, I need to repopulate
the country. But really he means like you're going to
(14:28):
be my sexual slaves.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
For mean some type exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Very like he must spread his seed and obviously that's terrifying.
I remember this reveal feeling so like shocking, yes when
I first watched it, and I think something that's really
interesting about it is that it leans very heavily into
something that, as I kind of mentioned earlier, the Walking
Dead and these zombie projects that World War was he
(14:58):
would kind of lean into, which is, yeah, the zombies
are bad, but the humans are oftentimes worse because they
can control their behavior, but they.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Choose not to.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So Jim is obviously less than happy about that, and
along with another soldier who agrees that who disagrees and
won't go along with the plan, is sentenced to death.
But thanks to an argument between some of the kind
of ever fracturing group of soldiers who are like incredibly hungry,
who are under the watchful eye of this insane man,
(15:30):
Jim is able to escape and we get this moment again,
another moment that I think about a lot, which is
he sees like the trail of a plane in the
sky and it kind of reinvigorates him to remember that, like,
if there's a plane in the sky, the world must
be going on somewhere, and he is able to essentially
(15:53):
lure away West Freeze an infected soldier that they'd been
keeping prisoner, which I always think, like, okay, so they
were experimenting on the prisoner, so maybe at some point
there was some truth to the idea of the trying
to find the cure. But then they realize, like, we
don't know what we're doing, so let's just like assault
some women because that's fun and there's no laws, and
(16:15):
they get into the car make at their escape, and
I really this moment is such a classic horror moment,
which I think is really funny because the rest of
the movie is very unconventional. But essentially we end up
in a situation where West is actually hiding in the
backseat of the car, so you think that they're safely away,
and then he pops up shoots Jim. But then Nomi
(16:38):
Harris's Selena makes a great move where she kind of
throws the car back by breaking it and flings him
through the back window, and he's he's killed. Allah, you
know the t Rex and Jurassic Park. Now the infected
is helping and he's going.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
To become the next meal.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And hilariously, watching this movie, I was surprised by how
much of it I kind of did remember or what
really stuck with me. But the final sequence I think
is the thing that to me really defines this movie,
which is another twenty eight days later, we joined Jim's
He's recovering Selena and Hannah and they are in a
(17:14):
small cottage. Yeah, and it's kind of this very cozy
English like off tract.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
You I would say, like the Cotswolds or something. But
I also, like, I am from London, so I have.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
No idea, like I am not good at geography, even
British geography. But you know, somewhere I would say, like
somewhere that a rich person would probably have like a
weekend home, and every time Nabors visit there, the locals
would be like Callipiste off because the locals are probably
like miners and shit. And they kind of see a
(17:49):
plane fly over and we see them unfurl this huge
banner that says hello, and the pilot seems to spot them,
offering up like hopeful ending for what would become, you know,
one of the bleakest kind of big budget smash.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
It's the movie was made for you know, very.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Very very very minimal amount of money and ended up
going on to make in England. It made you know,
it was relatively successful. The movie was cost eight million dollars.
In England it made six million, which is pretty good.
But in America it made forty five million, and soon
you know it would go on to make over eighty
(18:31):
million dollars. So yeah, that's twenty eight days later. It's
a very good movie. And it hasn't been streaming for
a very long time, but very long series of rights issues.
But it is currently streaming for free with ads on
Pluto TV, and you can buy it or download it
on demand wherever if you are in it's so inclined.
(18:55):
Twenty eight weeks later though, it's streaming on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Hulu and Cormond's favorite.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's her favorite. She thinks it's really good, okay, so
twenty eight weeks late. This is very interesting because they
choose to begin during the original outbreak in a small
English town this time, I would say more like, I
don't know, like Burnley or somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I think my family's from up north, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But where Robert Carlile's Don and his wife Alice are
surviving alongside some neighbors. It's kind of a fractured survival.
But interestingly, something that they continue. Here is kind of
this establishment of like an old school technology, the way
that you know, videotapes, stuff like that. We see that
in twenty eight days later as Jim watches the video
(19:39):
of his family. We've seen it in the trailers for
twenty eight years later where the kids are watching videos
of the Teletubbies.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
So I think that kind of low.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Technology is being brought back in the new one, which
I really love.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
But their kind.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Of very shaky safety is put at risk when a
young born he starts knocking at the door. His wife
cannot ignore the young boy because they have children and
they don't know where they are.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
And Don is like, please.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Don't let in this kid, like we know how this
is gonna go down. The kid gets let in, the
infected take over the house, and soon I have to
say Don not a good husband, because he leaves his
wife like he just wither quickness without the quickness, like
she's eaten in the house.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
There is at least some true anguish that crosses his face,
but he hesitates for like half a second and then
he is like sorry, babe, yeah out yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
He's like he's like I can't do it, My love,
like it's not happening for me.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I'm gone for the boat.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
I gotta go for the boat.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And then I think that we get something here that
is a really interesting Again, these are movies that I
think are very shaped by the technology of the time
and also the way that you could utilize technology that
was just becoming accessible to kind of lower budget filmmakers,
because we get that instantly recognizable drone shot where even
if you haven't seen this movie, you probably have seen
(21:11):
Robert kyle Le running across the grass the kind of
British countryside to.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Get to the boat.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
He's got a drone shot following him. It's super surreal
and shaky, and yes, he gets to the boat and
he embarks on a new journey and we'll join him
there twenty eight weeks later, Bae.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Imagine that. I love the way that they use.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The actual timing in the movies is never endingly hilarious
to me. So in a classic Hollywood sequel move I
(21:54):
feel Here. The film introduces us to an England that
has essentially been taken over by NATO after the seeming
starvation death of the effect infected where they couldn't eat enough,
they've started to die out, and the US government is
now essentially trying to rebuild Britain along with its NATO partners,
and keep the rest of the world safe, keep the
(22:15):
infected inside Britain if there are any left, and work
out stuff like.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
What happens to their dead bodies and.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
How you know, basically classic science stuff, and something I
didn't get to mention in my recap of the first
movie that I forgot twenty eight days later does fit
in to something that we have been calling the Jurassic
Park Coralie, which is like, look, man, if you think
they say that the first one is a science fiction movie,
(22:45):
but in the first five minutes they basically explained the science,
so maybe it is. This one is definitely more interested
in that wider post apocalyptic science fiction horror kind of
mash up. The tone is very different, and in the
NATO safe zone we meet Don's kids, Tammy and Andy,
who have somehow survived. Good for them, young Imagen Poots
(23:07):
here she is in many movies that you will see
and only seems to be getting into more now, another
great British actress, and they end up Tammy and Andy
somehow being the first children let into this zone that
they call District one.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Rose Byrne doing a very funny American accent here like
she's she's too.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's just there's something about it that sounds like very
like I'm an American doing a military like serious voice.
And she's very angry because she's like, wait a minute,
why are their kids here?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
We don't know what to do with kids.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
We don't know how kids are going to respond to
what we're doing here.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And this time I can tell you where they are
because they're in the Isle of Dogs, and.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
They've essentially militarized that the Isle of Dogs to turn
it into a little kind of safe zone slash. Honestly, yeah,
in prison, because that is.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
This is the answer to iraq anxieties. And oh the
movie that's that's explicitly about how bad America and its
Western allies are at occupy places.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, and how dangerous those occupations are. And soon, in
an incredible twist, they are reunited with their dad.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Love that that's a that's a.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Dons Mac and I don't know how Don ended up there,
but good for him. And he immediately lies about how
the mom died, which I think was like painfully real
for anyone who maybe has a dad who's not the
most truthful person. And we then kind of start to
meet the different characters here we have uh the incredible Again,
(24:51):
this is another movie with just an unbelievable cast. Like
you have Harold Pernu as a sniper, you have obviously
Rose Burnt, we have Jeremy I know who we meet here,
Rener Hives stand up, They're they're here, They're I'm sure
he would have loved to be in the sequel, but
I will be intro I don't think that's happening for him.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Tammy and Andy as they.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Are children and they were out of the country during
the original outbreak, which makes me think they don't really
understand how serious this is. They decide that they are
just gonna sneak out. They'll fun adventure, have some good
always a good. I feel like again, if children can
sneak out of your like DMZ kind of like protection Zone,
probably not doing very well.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
No, No, I don't think you're a very high security
of the area.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I think this again speaks to me about like kind
of the the trappings of this do feel like a
bigger Hollywood sequel. You add the kids, just like you
add kids you can make it a PG thirteen, you know,
or make it if it's in America, it can still
be r rated. But now there are kids that people
can relate to. It's very terminated to in that way,
and they have a very child life like.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Reason for leaving.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
They want to find a picture of their mom and
they want to get family pictures from their home. So
they head home. But bad news because their mom, Alice,
she's not dead. Whoops, whoops, Sorry, dad.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You you got some explaining to do.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Inside their house they.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Saw saw die. She's delirious and just like completely out
of it. And just then sadly the Jeremy Renner has
snitched on them. They bring them all back to District
one and their mom is quarantined and tested, and we
(26:51):
find out, in a you know, hopeful for the society,
not maybe so great for Alice, that she seems to
be an asymptomatic carrier of the rage virus. Now, I
think it's very interesting because I don't think in most
zombie movies that when they just don't tend to use
that kind of language that we can understand, you know
(27:13):
what being an asymptomatic carrier of like a cold is
it's not this kind of.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Ellie all in all out immunity.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
There is a kind of granular nature to how they
represent the zombie apocalypse here that does feel real, that
does feel more like something that could happen. And obviously
that comes from the way that Doyle and I mean
Boil and Garland approached it in the first movie and
introduced us to this notion that to them wasn't even
a zombie movie, you know, it was this race virus.
(27:40):
But of course this kind of running zombies, these violent zombies,
would take over pop culture for the next like fifteen years. Incredibly,
I now understand why Tammy and Andy are not making
good decisions because Don decides that he is is gonna
go on an unauthorized visit to Alice bad idea, begging
(28:04):
her to forgive him.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Then he kisses her.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Come on, come on, guy, like, look around you crazy?
How do you think that this infection is spread by
bodily fluids?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
My friend, that's why they bite people.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
He immediately gets infected then brutally kills her, which like,
what the fuck, bro, this is I didn't realize, I think,
and you know, Calm and actually touched on this before
we came on, but I didn't realize actually that under
until I rewatched this for this recap under the trappings
of kind of the bigger budget, bigger scope horror movie,
(28:45):
it's still very much has this kind of thread of
like male violence, just like the first.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Movie for sure, and even the way they shoot, even
the way they shoot Carlisle during the attack when he
kills her, they show is they close up in on
his face. It's very quick and they do it several times,
and he's got like this most like demonic, you know,
infected kind of rage grin like on his face. But
they really don't do that. It's not previous movie at
(29:14):
all or with any of the other zombies that much
like during an attack like person make it intimate and
personal like that.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, and even and also it makes you feel like, well,
he could have just done it, because we get that
moment at the end of twenty eight days later when
Jim comes and saves Selena and Hannah. He kills the
soldiers so violently that at first Selena they don't know, yeah,
he is infected, And we get that moment here where
even though we knowed On is infected because he kissed
(29:42):
Alice you see a violence in him, and a recognizable
kind of male violence that feels very real. And just
like every fucking zombie man who gets bitten and doesn't
tell people and goes crazy, he creates like essentially massive outbreak.
He's killing refugees, he's killing military people. Then there every
(30:06):
single person he bites, you know. I think the general
understanding in fandom is like, if somebody was a zombie
and everybody bit too people, it would only take like
seven days for the world to be overtaken. And we
see this happen in a microcosm here in District one.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And while Doyle refuses, good job Jeremy Renner.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
To kill all the refugees and people who are still
trying to survive, which is what the government and his
bosses want, that does start to happen.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Chaos ensues.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think you made a brilliant point, actually, Jason, that
I hadn't even really kind of thought of.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
This is definitely.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
A statement on kind of the idea of over militarized occupations.
And it's very interesting with that read because we start
to see as Doyle is trying to help people escape, innocent,
uninfected people other for snipers, are just shooting at them,
and they end up killing these family members, and Doyle
(31:13):
ends up deciding he's going to shoot his own men
in order to try and save them, and it ends
up being Scarlet who saved Tammy and Andy because she
considered that perhaps there is a world where they continue
the genetic possibilities of finding a cure and another survivor, Sam,
(31:33):
and then we get this horrifying moment, which again I think,
to me, I.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Just think is like.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
A very ahead of its time moment, and honestly, I
feel like, now if somebody did this in a movie,
they'd be like just just true political. But they essentially
have the air force firebomb the entire sub district one,
which was where there were survivors, where there was research,
where there were animals, there was a potential of a
(32:04):
new society there. But it doesn't work, and we end
up with Flynn Harl Perrino flies as helicopter to Regent's Park,
very famous, kind of near to one of the sixth forms.
I tried to go to. Beautiful park, gorgeous, beautiful, lovely
(32:25):
flowers and arrangements, and it's just one of those brilliant
green spaces that we get in London. I spend a
lot of time hanging out there as a teenager, and
he's like, broa, you gotta infect the others. Bro, Like
you gotta leave them, don't worry about it, Like it's
just me and you. Bro's to the end, and unfortunately
the infected people are on their tail. Sam tries to
(32:49):
get onto the flying helicopter and this is the stuff
I really remember from this movie.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
I think maybe I was kind of too young when
it came out.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I was so into the first twenty eight Days Later movie,
and I think my young mat was kind of like, oh,
it's so Hollywood, it's so big budget, like it doesn't
really understand the origins of the movie. But I'm realizing
now it's not from rewatching, is not really the case.
And also it's just that some of the set pieces
are so crazy, like this one where you have Flynn
(33:19):
like using his fucking helicopter rotor blades, yeah, to try
and like thin out the zombie crowd, which is so crazy.
And then another iconic English place here if you watch
any kind of sports, even NFL has had matches here.
But obviously if you are a fan of European soccer,
British soccer football as we call it, Wembley Stadium. That's
(33:42):
where he's like, come here, and Doyle's like, I've got
to save these guys.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I've got to do it. I can't do it.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They then break into I love like the specificity of
this and for some reason, this is like a very
popular classic British car, but it's like a Volvo V seventy,
which is like a really funny, like basically a hatchback
that like an executive would drive. I don't know why,
but English people they love Volvos. They hide in the
(34:09):
car because there has been like a terrifying gas that
has been released to kill the infected. Again, great commentary
here on how population doesn't matter and it's all about
control of the virus and the danger, which honestly, as
the movie ends, we realize is probably what they should
have been focusing on. So I'm not gonna like complain
too much about the government, because the zombie apocalypse does
(34:33):
end up spreading in this movie RP to Europe. But yeah,
then we get really fun sequence where they go into
the tube, the very famous London underground been there for
like one hundred and fifty years, incredible public transport system.
I love it can get you across London in like
twenty five to fifty minutes, depending on where you're going.
(34:54):
But what's really cool is we do have a few
different movies in London set in the underground. There's a
great movie Creeps Out Under that but in this sequence
they use night vision to go through the tunnels and.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's really creepy. It's really unique.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
And then well I hate it and kind of forgot
is that Donn is still on their tail.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, he's still going after this.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
There's something something maybe pheromones or DNA.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
It like in the scene where he murders his wife,
even though he is infected at that moment, there's always
this implication again with the way they shoot him, with
the way they shoot him when he's running through the crowd,
that there's something of his previous consciousness, his emotions that remains,
and that is animating him, and that is keeping him
(35:44):
following them.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
And I think like, something that's really interesting about that
is the notion of kind of like.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Muscle memory, body memory, like who this guy was.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Because also when I got to the end of the
movie and I saw that don was still chasing them
was still public. I recalled the beginning, I went back
and rewatched it, and when Alice is really worried about
the kids and kind of like doesn't know where they
are and everything, he really shrugs it off in a
way that I thought was him trying to reassure her,
but actually I realized now is he probably.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Doesn't care in the same way that she does.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
So they end up going to They go through the tunnels,
Don is chasing them, and luckily Tammy Don and Alice's
daughter ends up killing her dad, which feels very pointed
in the read the Toxic Masculinity read, and she ends up.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Being the hero.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They get to Wembley Stadium, they meet Flynn, who flies
them to France. Seems like maybe there's something good that
could happen it. I feel like they shouldn't have immediately
gone to another country.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Probably should have.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Just like gone to many of the rural places in
England that they could have, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Bene small islands like yeah, also not.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Even just that, but like England is like America.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
There's loads of it that's inhabited, but also there's like
tons of it that isn't.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So I just feel like you could have gone to.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Like the moors or somewhere, you know, gone to like
a beach and tried to hide out there.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Something.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I feel like going to France was irresponsible, as we
will learn it was because twenty eight days later, a
French boye whui whui. That's why it's are the French?
I know guys me uh, yes, that's it. I was
gonna say, may I am i rosie, but that's not
that's not French. But yes, they are asking to help.
(37:37):
They are asking for the rape. You can hear them
in the radio from Flint's abandoned helicopter and ut ooh,
a group of infected people busts from a Paris metro
station and in one of the most hilarious in my opinion,
like feels like maybe a kind of like maybe an
exec cast for this or maybe they were like, oh,
(37:58):
let's see if we can make it happen the same
where we did in England. We see the effected in
front of the Eiffel Tower. They were like, what's French?
They were like see that, yeah, And that is interestingly,
where we leave the franchise for you know, many many years,
almost twenty years, twenty eight weeks.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, twelmost year later.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It was two thousand and seven, and that movie was.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Actually while we had Boyle and Garland on as producers.
It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and it was
like there was a screenplay with multiple writers on it,
including Rowan, Joffy, Hemry Kue Lopez Levine, and Jesus Olomo.
And it's interesting because I do think that it feels
(38:46):
very different and I feel like at the time it
did make a lot of money, but I don't know
if it necessarily people received it in the right way.
But I think rewatching it, it's really interesting and I'm
not surprised at all that ended up being Carmen's favorite.
She's got lots of great some great tastes.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
It is a good one. It's underrated, and I think
for me, I think that the escape from the house
in the opening m hm, Don's like as he runs
out of the house and he's looking back over his
shoulder and he's kind of like running in this small
valley like between like at the bottom of like a hill,
(39:22):
and you see he looks to his left and on
the hill above him, you see infected start coming over
the hill down towards him. I think that's, for me,
the scariest moment in the series, when you're just like it,
because you really it's hard for me to fully blame
him for you know, he's mindlessly scared, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
The opening, you're meant to think like, Okay, I could
see how I could do that too.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I couldn't see how I could do it.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, But I also think something that I love is
when he's first running away.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Something else this movie does.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Well is like go because when he first runs away,
he's looking behind him and there's only like seven zombies
and it doesn't look that scary, but you still got
to run away from those seven zombies like you only
need one to bite you. You know. Yeah, I think
it's such an interesting movie, and I'm very I'm intrigued
to see if on revisiting and if they can deliver
with twenty eight years later, this could go down as
(40:21):
like a very legendary horror franchise, horror trilogy.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I think, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
One of my favorites, and it's like everyone else, it
reinviuriated my love of zombies. That was always a big
zombie guy. I saw Romero's Dawn of the Dead when
I was too young to see it on VHS. Of course,
I think, you know, the helicopter blade scene from twenty
eight weeks is I think a clear homage to the
(40:48):
helicopter partial decapitation from Dawn of the Dead. Slow motions obviously,
and just a great movie. Great movie, fast zombies. It
really ups the for me, It up the fear. Fat Well,
let's take a quick break and we be right back
with our zombie omnimous x omnibous omnibus. And we're back
(41:22):
with the Zomnibus. Welcome to today's edition of the Zomnibus,
where Loura, analysis and understanding come together. Today we're talking
about zombies.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Zombies.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Zombies arose from tragedy. The concept initially emerged in Haiti
under the slave regime of French colonial rule. As Mike
Mariano writes in a excellent zombie historiography in The Atlantic Quote,
the zombie archetype, as it appeared in Haiti and mirrored
the inhumanity that existed there from sixteen twenty five to
(41:55):
eighteen hundred, was a projection of the African slaves relentless
misery in subjugation and slave people in Haiti believed that
dying might free their souls to go back to their homeland,
but those who took their own lives were doomed instead
to wander the plantations eternally trapped in their bodies soulless
(42:17):
zombies no e z MBIs condemned to a nightmare existence
of perpetual servitude. After Haiti's revolution in eighteen oh four,
the zombie myth entered general local lore, where it evolved.
There was the addition of bokhors, who were these kind
of sorcerers who could reanimate people to do their bidding again.
(42:39):
The slave metaphor is central to this idea, and there
were several points over the course of the nineteenth century
where Haiti, though free, it seemed like it might have
slavery reimposed upon it, and the folkloreic zombies of this
period were, as Marianna writes, quote, a more fractured representation
(43:00):
of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with
the cult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy. Even then, the
zombies roots in the horrors of slavery were already facing dilution.
Fast forward to the twentieth century. The Zombie then enters
Western popular culture with American writer William B. Seabrooks and
sensationalistic nineteen twenty nine non fiction book of The Magic Island.
(43:24):
This story introduced readers to Haiti's voodoo zombie, which Seabrook
described as a corpse revived by witchcraft, shuffling along obediently
with quote eyes staring, unfocused and unseeing, as if truly undead.
The book described seabrooks travels to Haiti during the US
occupation of the island and his encounters with various elements
(43:46):
of Haitian culture and voodoo practice, all of which is
presented within a pretty racist context, and casting the Haitian
people as this kind of other world, otherworldly, primitive, exotic
culture and society. In the chapter dead Men Working in
(44:07):
the Kingfield, Seabrook describes for the first time in literature,
the zombie these undead laborers animated by strange magic. The
book was a sensation. A review in the January ninth,
nineteen twenty nine edition of The Brooklyn Eagle reads, and
I think it's at least for the reviews I've read
that we're contemporary. Is this is pretty pretty much part
(44:28):
of the course. The Magic Island reeks with sacrificial blood,
the odor of cadavers, the sinister breath of witchcraft, the
horrendous exaltation of unholy terrors slaked in the steaming passions
of human animals. It is a grim story of voodooism.
This The Magic Island, filled with sickening mummeries, repulsive rituals,
orgiastic expiations and propitations, and armed with an uncanny ability
(44:52):
to woo the reader into his own experiences. Seabrook has
again created a book that commands attention, although it has
no other literary distinction than to be extraordinarily interesting. The
first zombie film appeared shortly thereafter. It was White Zombie
from nineteen thirty two, starring the legend Bella Lagosi as
a voodoo master in Haiti turning people into zombie slaves.
(45:14):
It leaned heavily on seabrooks account and played on White
America's racist fears of black people and their general antipathy
towards Africans in general. In these early depictions, you know,
zombies weren't out to eat you. They were still this
kind of broad based metaphor for enslavement. During World War
Two and into the Cold War, the zombies cross pollinated
(45:37):
with that era's anxieties about war, about authoritarianism, and about
nuclear destruction. In King of the Zombies nineteen forty one,
a foreign spy uses voodoo zombies to extract military secrets.
And in the horror comedy Revenge of the Zombies, which
is the first horror film that actually presumed that audiences
understood what a zombie was like. There was no non
(45:59):
a zombie origins story, no exposition dump. This features an
evil doctor raising an army of Nazi undead, and in
the b picture Creature with the Adam Brain nineteen fifty five,
a rogue scientist reanimates corpses with nuclear energy to his bidding.
As Zachary Krokett and Javier Zarachina write in the Vox
(46:20):
article how the zombie represents America's deepest fears. After Hiroshima
and the start of the Soviet nuclear test quote, American
fears of nuclear radiation and communism began to manifest in zombies.
These were America's fears made real about the dead and
the incarnet, about armies of soulist killing machines, about atomic
fallout about being enslaved by communism and Red Scare, brainwashing, etc.
(46:45):
But through this entire period, zombies basically remained very niche
until a Pittsburgh area independent filmmaker burst upon the scene.
This is Georgia Merrow with his nineteen sixty eight cinema
classic Night of the Living Dead. Interestingly, Romero originally didn't
call his creature zombies on set. He called them ghoules
(47:05):
because of his aversion to the original linkage of the
term back to French slavery in Haiti. But his film's
impact essentially reinvented horror and created the modern zombie template
as we know it. His innovation, Romero's innovation was to
kind of strip away all the supernatural voodoo and the
sorcerers and all that stuff. Is very little in the
(47:28):
way of actual explanation, kind of a vague there's like
a vague hypothesis that it might be like space radiation
or something. But the crucial innovation, and something Rosen and
I talk about all the time, is that the enemy
in Night of the Living Dead is not the zombies.
It is us. It is people. The film's shockingly bleak
(47:49):
ending shows Dwayne Jones the hero of the story, black protagonist,
surviving the zombie apocalypse of that night, only to be
mistaken for a ghoul and shot dead by a white posse,
which I can only imagine resonated like a gut punch
in the climate of nineteen sixty eight. As many have noted,
(48:13):
Night premiered the same year that Martin Luther King Junior
was assassinated and its finale black hero killed by trigger
happy white militia felt ripped from the headlines. Night of
the Living Dead pulsed with the anxieties of its era,
civil unrest, violence, fragility of the social order, and perhaps
most centrally, America's fascination with guns and with militia violence
(48:36):
with extra legal violence. Dawn of the Dead from nineteen
seventy eight, my personal favorite, traded the rural farmhouse for
a shopping mall and a cutting critique of aria of
American materialism and capitalism. Romero later explained that after Night
became a surprise hit, he felt pressure to make the
sequel that mattered, which is why it took a little while.
(48:56):
Quote everybody was after me to make another one. I said,
I don't want to just make it on the one.
I have to have an idea, I have to have
something to say, And it took ten years before inspiration
finally struck. Ramiro visited one of Pennsylvania's first indoor malls
and was struck by this spectacle of a consumer paradise. Quote.
I saw the trucks coming in, bringing in everything you
(49:18):
could ever possibly want. It just seemed like this temple
to consumerism. The light went off and I thought, maybe
I could do something with this, And man, does he
ever do something with this. The movie opens with what
I think is like the best twenty minutes maybe in
a horror movie ever. It feels so real, you really
feel society coming apart. It takes place in this local
(49:40):
news studio where this news program is both covering the
dissolution of the world under the weight of this zombie infection,
but also is giving you this fantastically charming like exposition
dump as this expert is like, the dead will rise,
they will kill more, and those will rise and they
(50:01):
will never stop coming. It's like you're just like, whoa,
it gave you away. Yeah. And then, of course, much
of the movie takes place as characters escape from the
kind of small safe havens that they had put together
as the as the weight of the zombie hordes kind
of like break down these small havens. A small cast
(50:24):
of characters flees to this shopping mall where they create
a fortress and for a time, a utopia. There's the
scene that stuck with me and that I think probably
sticks with a lot of people because I saw this one.
I was maybe ten or eleven was they first break
into the mall and then they spend there's this montage
of our heroes going having a grand ole time, going
(50:47):
from store to store, taking clothes, taking different consumer electronics,
filling up shopping carts with stuff over this kind of
jaunty soundtrack music, and that really stuck with me. And
of course it can't last. The utopia cannot last forever.
The zombies get in. They start eating people, including a
truly horrendous like intestine eating scene. But you know, by
(51:13):
this point the genre and its template had been set.
Through the eighties and nineties, zombies kind of shuffled along
in pop culture with a varying degree of vitality. There
were sequels Day of the Dead Return of the Living Dead,
which by this point are starting to kind of revert
to the more b movie origins.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Well, also there was a weird situation which allowed zombie
movies to thrive, which was the proper trademarking of Night
of the Living Dead was never done, which is why
it's on every free streaming. It's why any studio, i mean,
any distributor can put it out on DVD. It's why
you can watch it on YouTube. It was never properly copyrighted,
(51:55):
which means a lot of movies were able to come
out and sound like they were connected Tonight of the
Living Dead, but they were not necessarily officially connected, which
I think is still one of the weirdest Hollywood kind
of confusions that's ever happened.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
But yeah, and so it allowed that to be this
kind of wave of rip offs.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
You know, fa sounds like they're connected, but they're not connected.
And yeah, and there's still going on. I mean, there
are still you can still find movies that seem like
they are amer connected when they're not.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Perhaps because of this inundation of the marketplace with zombie content,
the eighties and nineties was kind of a sorry for
this turn of phrase, was kind of a dead period
for the zombie It was mostly kept alive through video games,
most notably Capcom's nineteen ninety six Resident Evil, and that
many many sequels, but it's a turnover the new millennium,
(52:54):
the Zombie returned to bite us yet again. A trio
of Landmark works ignite I did the revival, with Rosie's
Homeland central to this. It first came a twenty eight
Days Later from two thousand and two, Sean of the
Dead from two thousand and four, and then Americans Can't
(53:15):
let the English have all the fun the Walk and
Dead comic, which debuted in two thousand and three twos
and two to two thousand and four. Pretty crazy period
crazy for the Zombie.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Also really interesting because twenty eight Days Later is a
complete reimagination to the point where Danny Boyle at first
does kind of like Romero, doesn't think it's a zombie film,
then Shan of the Dead, which instead goes back and
introduces kind of like a mega social commentary comedy version
(53:49):
that's very much in the screen mold of something that
feels familiar and has loads of references, and you kind
of have to be inundated in zombie law as we
all are to understand it. But then you have The
Walking Dead, which is so out of the range of
what we understand by being a comic book and was
(54:10):
at the time, and I'm sorry if I've told the
story before, but I love it was so expected to
be a flop. It was so underprinted. Image Comics that
actually turned down Robert Kirkman's idea for The Walking Dead
multiple times because they said, nobody cares about zombies, nobody
wants to read a zombie comic. So he lied to
(54:31):
them and he said, well, at certain point in the story,
you're going to find out that really the zombies were
sent by aliens and it's part of this kind of
alien you know, invasion story.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
And Eric Stimson said.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Okay, great, like you can make the Walking Dead, And
so the first issue comes out and the second issue,
and slowly they say to him, hey, when are the
aliens coming? And then the book becomes such a big
hit that he doesn't ever have to do it, so
like he had to lie to get the comic made.
But then that comic ended up completely changing the landscape
and changing the way that we would see zombies. Bringing
(55:04):
us back to that twenty eight days later, a style
of kind of like a new way of telling the
story and like, who are the real Walking Dead us
or the zombies?
Speaker 4 (55:14):
Like that's a crazy three year hit though, and of course,
as zombie stories had done previously, twenty eight days later,
even Sean of the Dead and certainly The Walking Dead
tapped into the anxieties of the era biocontagion, terrorism, protest,
(55:35):
and social unrest, you know, stars had was emerging at
the time the anthrax attacks had happened, and of course
twenty eight days later it feels as if it predicts
a lot of the kind of post nine to eleven
(55:56):
cultural iconography. The wall with the pick of a missing.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Which ironically was a coincidence.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Coincidence completely before filmed before nine to eleven and all
of that emerged.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
You talk about something here that I think is kind
of interesting, and this is not you know, I'm sure
somebody has written a great article about this, and I'll
go find it afterwards. But also there is a level
of just like the early zombies, Abell Legosti zombies, which
were incredibly you know, very racist, the white zombie version
of a zombie that if you actually think about it,
the representation of this idea of like a community who's
(56:31):
so filled with rage, and you'll never understand them, and
they'll just destroy your country's kind of.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
There's a racist reading of it, Sure you could.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
There's definitely some interesting stuff to be tapped into there
as well. Yeah, I mean it's so interesting just how
much it is a time capsule of exactly what was
going on right then.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
I think the most successful and long running, certainly a
zombie property of this or any era, has to be
the adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which began
as an anti comic in two thousand and three, as
Rosie said, and then debuted on AMC in twenty ten,
quickly became a blockbuster and at least for me, became
a you know, it added the element of I think
(57:16):
it put the American soul front and center. This is
a story in which, like a law enforcement officer is
the main guy, you're dealing with regular people, school teachers
who become these like local warlords. And it's a lot
about the kind of core American love of guns and
(57:38):
the thought, you know, experiment that I think many Americans
play all the time, which is, okay, what happens when
the shit pops off and I have to start shooting
people and man the Walking Dead. I think a lot
of it's long running, it it's endurance in the popular
cultural imagination is because of this particular way. It has
(58:03):
put its finger on something about the American psyche. But
the rest of the world was also getting involved. Most
only Asia there was Trained to Busan from twenty sixteen,
a Sang Ho's iconic, heartfelt, heart breaking zombie film that harnesses,
(58:24):
you know, Korea's particular lens about class and capitalism. And
it is a story about a workaholic businessman and his
young daughter who end up on a train filled with
zombies and have to deal with the zombies but also
the kind of like craven ambitions of like regular humans.
(58:46):
The director reflected in an interview quote, if in Trained
to Busan, we say that selfishness spread like a virus.
His zombies may be fast and ferocia, but the true
villains of Training Bussan are human greed and cowardice. So
what is it about the zombies that keeps us coming back?
They're blank slate, They're versatile, they are the perfect every enemy,
(59:10):
you know, like Nazis, which I think for certain nondiances
are complex now because like people are are not sure
if they're the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, apparently so, And I will say reflectively, we see
less stories right now about how Nazis are that evil
catual villain and zombies this kind of more flexible. You
can put whatever you want onto them, become that clean slate.
Anyone can kill them without feeling guilty.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yes, they Aileen. They've been metaphors for everything from looters, rioters,
rampant materialism in the way that they only consume and
mindlessly consume this. Cultural critic James Parker observed, the zombie
is quote old, reliable, outlasting even its sexier monster cousins,
(01:00:04):
the humble ghoul. That quote rides the bestseller list and
consumes the pop unconscious like no other. From Haitian sugar
plantations to shopping malls the nineteen thirties B movies to
presstch TV, the zombie has shambled and then run and
then sprinked it all the way. Its evolution is the
story of pop culture itself, always mutating cross pollen, I
(01:00:25):
responding to our collective hopes and fears with a disgusting,
rotten grin. Well, that's it for this episode. Next time
on X ray Vision. We're getting you ready for Marvel's Ironheart.
No Mit Education acquired few. That's it for this episode.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Bye x.
Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion, I'm Rosy night
and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Our executive producers a Joe Alminique and Aaron Kleman.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Our supervising producer is Abu safar Ah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Produces a common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wack.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
A theme song is by Brian Vasquez with alternate theme
songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Heidi are Discord moderator
Hosts And Creators
Jason Concepcion
Rosie Knight
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