Never choose greed. You dumb mutherf***ers. Never. That strategy only works in real life. In fiction, greed is always punished; y’all should know better, but, hey, you’re fictional. Whatchagonnado?
I’m getting ahead of myself. First thing fictional dudes gotta do is follow orders. Which they do not. Probably wouldn’t have mattered. But when the top secret military cargo is compromised on the highway in the Vegas desert and you get an order to “LEAVE IMMEDIATELY, NOW!!” from the brass, it’s not yours to hesitate or question, soldier. Let’s face it: at that point, you deserve to be a human fruit roll-up.
And that’s how the zombies got to Las Vegas. You want to say that they were naturally attracted to an area devoid of human value, but the truth is, they were right there the whole time, like a malignant tumor, or Republican racism. I know we like to make fun of Trump here, but let’s just say—we’ve seen how the Trump government reacts to disaster. The most unbelievable part of this film is not the zombies, the super-zombies, the zombie tiger, or the inexplicable absence of Mike Tyson; no, the silliest plot point is that the Trump government contained the zombie outbreak.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You’re kidding, right? Yeah, tell me again about the timeliness and effectiveness of the China travel ban, or how much effort
Trump put into slowing the spread or contact tracing. Only a RW apologist like Zack Snyder could imagine a Trump world where an outbreak is contained.
And yet, that’s the subplot – Vegas is a quarantine zone and the army is all set to sink that battleship in four days; if you’re still alive at that particular juncture of space and time, oh well, sucks to be you. In the meantime, there are people still alive in the zone, including Dave Bautista –who has a whole lot of skin to eat, zombies – just sayin’ – and a bunch of violent survival folks who look a lot what would happen if you recast Aliens in 2021; and they’ve all been given the choice of a HUGE payday if they can ward off the zombies, rob the casino, and still make it out on time.
I don’t have to tell you what they choose and I don’t have to tell you how I feel about it. From a basic POV, however, it looks like Zack Snyder woke up one day and said, “I want to remake Aliens and Ocean’s Eleven in the same go.” Not satisfied with the plot steal, the most intense scene in Army of the Dead –a tiptoe through sleeping
zombies- is a straight ripoff of the Silent Hill franchise.
The biggest coup here is that the race of flesh-eating zombies includes some very smart, very human zombies. I know this is all tongue-in-cheek: “What if Vegas was all zombies?! Wouldn’t that be funny?” “What if there were smart zombies? Wouldn’t that be head scratcher?” “What if there were a Siegfried and Roy zombie tiger? Wouldn’t that be a hoot?” Ha! Well, it is on one level. On another, we’re coming off a year in which our idiot President politicized a worldwide pandemic and came down almost entirely on the side of inaction and misinformation while hundreds of thousands of Americans died on his watch. And in light of Infectious Agent Orange’s monumental stupidity, 74 million people wanted to reward his negligent and criminal behavior. In other words, zombie Vegas is neither as stupid nor as far-fetched as reality. And that’s how this films feels to me … zombie outbreak? Vegas lost? Meh. Wake me when you write a character I really care about.
Still, the most unbelievable thing in Army of the Dead is the containment. Aw, you crack me up, Zack. And here I thought you couldn’t tell a joke. Good one.
♪My shoulder’s not quite right
Did I have arms last night?
Messed up like Elvis, why am I eating a class ring?
Oh, there’s your brother
Guess he won’t be on time
Don’t eat a baby
QAnon will slay thee
Shut-up put your jaw back where your mouth is
That’s what you get for being dead in Vegas
Get up and hustle after that dude with a heartbeat
That’s what you get for being dead in Vegas♫
Rated R, 149 Minutes
Director: Zack Snyder
Writer: Zack Snyder & Shay Hatten and Joby Harold
Genre: Not-so-Russian-Roulette
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Zombies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Mercenaries
♪ Parody Inspired by “Waking Up in Vegas”
