GAR Intelligent Zombies - Bub vs. Big Daddy

[Danny]

Hey now, While the movie version of Twilight leaves something to be desired, the four-book series it's based on are exceptionally well-written, and do a better job of depicting the so-called "humane vampire" than any of the host of sentimental drivel-movies that have come before it. Rip on the movie if you want, but leave the books out of it. Photoluminescent vampires are a damned sight better than running wall-crawling zombies. there not, they really, really are not. I weep for the future of the literacy world if that wish fulfillment fan fiction is deemed as serious works of note.

[Mike70]

Well, what if Bub wasn't just any old zombie? What if Logan had tried to train dozens or even hundreds of zombies prior to Bub, and Bub was the ONLY zombie he'd ever succeeded in training? I had always taken the stance that Bub and Big Daddy were fundamentally different. After careful consideration I've concluded that I am torn on the topic. So... discuss. And try to be civil. I'd rather this not turn into a thread to bag on intelligent zombies or any movie in particular. good point about bub. it brings to mind the difference in intelligence in people in general. maybe zombies mirror the human bell curve as far as intelligence goes. there are a few really smart ones who remember and are able to use more info/memory than your usual zombie. while the mass of zombies of "average" intelligence aren't able to do much more than simple manipulation of objects and the most basic of decision skills.

[Trin]

Anyway, no, I tend not to feel empathy for anything trying to kill me. ZOMBIES ARE NOT HUMAN! They are dead! They want to eat you. I think this is a crucial distinction for Big Daddy. He shows no signs of wanting to eat anything, and there's no explanation for why. Bub, on the other hand, showed a trained suppression of the instinct to feed, but we saw first hand that the instinct was still present. For me zombies are scary because they cannot be reasoned with. They try to eat you. They are monsters. The fact that they are former loved ones makes it even more horrific. When intelligence becomes reasoning ability and then overrides the need to feed - then you don't have a monster anymore. My opinion on the two "smart" zombies is this..... Bub could do what he did because Logan was the catalyst and brought those memories back to him. Big Daddy was the same as Bub, but took a longer time to "remember" the memories because a human didn't help him push it forward. It's a good explanation. I'll admit I'd like it a bit more if Big Daddy weren't such an aberration from the other zombies that Riley and crew were familiar with. It stands to reason that they saw A LOT of zombies. Why this one particular zombie was special is still a bit hokey for me. But if I had to choose one explanation that makes the most sense with the least grrrrr factor, this would be it. That's an interesting point about the time difference. If you believe that Land comes several years after Day then Big Daddy had time to figure out what Bub was taught.

[shootemindehead]

I've never had a problem with the "intelligent" zombie aspect of Romero's world. There's indication of it throughout the series. The first zombie that we see uses a rock to smash glass to get at Babs. They are also "intelligent" enough to know that fire is dangerous. In 'Dawn of the Dead', there's the zombie who's fascinated by guns and Steven retains knowledge of where his former mates were holed up. There's also a couple of zombies that sit and study Fran instead of going bezerk trying to get through the glass to eat her (the nun and the guy in the sports shirt). In 'Day of the Dead' the corralled zombies learn to avoid the exit gates, because they suspect something is dangerous about it. Fisher also mentions that he saw "...one of those things sitting in a car in D.C. trying to drive down Independence Ave." Logan says that he Bub live, because "...he was responding so well" which suggests that Bub is one of several (if not many) experiments in domestication. He also says that one had become "...to unruly" and had to be destroyed. However, I think that the "Big Daddy" character in 'Land of the Dead' may have been a step too far. Mad roars of anguish, his "enough is enough" epiphany and his "teaching method" just made him too human. But, as somebody said, I think a lot of "Big Daddy's" flaws are just down to bad acting. It's not enough to make the film a failure for me though. I liked it a lot. It's the weakest of the original quad of course, but it's still light years ahead of 'Diary of the Dead' and (I'd wager) the rest of this "re-boot" idea that Romero has wedded himself too.

[Philly_SWAT]

A few weeks back we nudged up against the topic of Bub vs. Big Daddy. Since then I have been giving a lot of thought to intelligent zombies in GAR movies. The Big Question: - Were Bub and Big Daddy very much alike or fundamentally different? A well thought out and intelligent topic to bring me out of semi-retirement... Arguments for alike: - Both displayed intelligence and behavior at a higher level than their zombie peers. - Both showed a cognitive ability to manipulate their environment - i.e. problem solving abilities. - Both communicated with humans beyond just trying to eat them. - Both showed a diminished (or non-existent) need to pursue/eat humans on sight. I am not so sure we can take it that they displayed intelligence and behavior at a higher level than other zeds. Throughout the GAR dead movies, we are shown very little of particular zombies, and their behavior patterns. What we predominantly see (and justifiably so) if what the LIVING are doing, thinking, etc. Other than Bub and Big Daddy, we are not shown any other zombies in enlightening situations...only as part of a horde, or an individual with no background, characterization, etc., following their instincts. For all we know, given the limited amount of time we spent with any GAR zeds on-screen, Bub and BD could either be two of the smartest zeds in the world, two of the dumbest, or just two middle of the pack, in terms of intelligence, abilities, etc. Arguments for different: - Bub was driven/enticed by the need to feed. Big Daddy showed no inclination to feed even when presented with food. - Bub was trained & conditioned by Dr. Logan. Big Daddy's higher level behavior had no visible catalyst. - Bub paid no attention to other zombies. Big Daddy was highly empathetic to other zombies. One thing that is a consistent theme in GAR dead movies is that the zeds "are us". And of course, they are, or were. But we see ample evidence in all the movies that all zombies retain some knowledge of former life...how to walk, how to pick up objects and use them as a weapon, bludgeon, tool, etc., avoiding fire, the list goes on. If you accept that they are "us", then just like us, it only makes sense that different individuals within a large group would have different abilities, different ways of thinking, behaving, etc. So while Bub and BD do indeed act differently, I am not sure that is any different than any two of us here on this board acting differently. Another question is whether Bub and/or Big Daddy were really *that* much more intelligent than their peers. There is a lot of evidence that other zombies were learning: - The captured zombies in Day began to avoid the zombie pen gates. - The wandering zombies in Land didn't come around the Green electric fences anymore. - The Uniontown zombies in Land learned quickly with a little Big Daddy prompting. - The horde of zombies in Land began to ignore food sources in their pursuit of Fiddler's Green. - The horde of zombies in Land learned to ignore the fireworks without prompting. - The Hari Krishna zombie in Dawn chose to go up the stairs rather than pursue Stephen. - The pit fighter zombies learned to fight over food rather than just lunging for the closest human. You point out a bunch of examples here to illustrate what I was saying above... different individuals in a large group are bound to be different. I have another hypothesis to throw into the mix. I think a lot of us work from the assumption that Bub was just any old zombie pulled from the pen and trained by Dr. Logan to behave. And that makes him fundamentally different from Big Daddy because he was merely trained while Big Daddy was independently intelligent. Well, what if Bub wasn't just any old zombie? What if Logan had tried to train dozens or even hundreds of zombies prior to Bub, and Bub was the ONLY zombie he'd ever succeeded in training? It stands to reason he would've tried to train others. And it stands to reason he failed since we only have Bub. So it may be that Bub was very much like Big Daddy and all Logan did was identify it. I dont think that Dr Logan was initially looking to keep a zed and train it, I think he just stumbled across that idea when Bub seemed to be easier to control/more receptive than the other zeds he had been dealing with. As Sarah tells him "You're making a lot of assumptions here", and I agree with her, although in a different way than she was saying. Even if Bub could have been trained to "not want to eat us for one thing" as Logan tells Rhodes, that does not necessarily mean that all zombies could be controlled/trained in the same way, or that any other ones could, for that matter. No legitimate scientist would take ONE example and extrapolate that it would hold true for an entire population. If anything, Logan's own experience with every other zed other than Bub (like the one he destroyed because it was too rowdy) should have led him to the conclusion that Bub was more than likely an exception, not a rule. Plus you have to remember that Dr Logan was quite deranged....which would explain how a scientist would think that a proper reward to give to a creature you are trying to train to not eat human flesh would be to GIVE HIM HUMAN FLESH to eat?!?! If anything, Bub was pretty adept at training Logan to do what Bub wanted, not the other way around. I had always taken the stance that Bub and Big Daddy were fundamentally different. After careful consideration I've concluded that I am torn on the topic. My answer to your initial question above would have to be this....for sure, Bub and BD were different than the random zeds we see throughout the series, but we do not know enough about the zed population at large to know HOW different they were in relation to other zombies. Even in Land, we only see a handfull of zeds that appear to be "communicating" with BD, the rest of the horde may have easily been just following the crowd cuz they had nothing better to do at the time. As far as differences to each other, we do not know how long both Bub and BD had been "undead" for, what their zed experiences were prior to the start of the movies, etc. so it is hard to draw finite conclusions about that either. Any argument either way, that Bub was more advanced than BD or vice versa would be dependent on information that we do not have access to as viewers. Hmmm, seems I did not actually answer the question. I guess I will agree with you to be torn on the topic.

[Trin]

A few points for consideration... I am not so sure we can take it that they displayed intelligence and behavior at a higher level than other zeds. Throughout the GAR dead movies, we are shown very little of particular zombies, and their behavior patterns. ... For all we know, given the limited amount of time we spent with any GAR zeds on-screen, Bub and BD could either be two of the smartest zeds in the world, two of the dumbest, or just two middle of the pack, in terms of intelligence, abilities, etc. I think we can safely conclude they were at higher levels than their peers in the larger zombie population. Riley made a point of saying that the zombies in Union Town are different. He seemed positively shocked by what he saw in Union Town. Riley was an expert on zombies and would have seen thousands of them in lots of different settings. His testimonial speaks to the larger zombie population. Other than Bub and Big Daddy, we are not shown any other zombies in enlightening situations... I would question whether Big Daddy was shown in an enlightening situation. He was a gas station attendant. The fact that he became enlightened seems to indicate he was different simply because he had no catalyst to become so. You mention that Dr. Logan was deranged, and I think we'd all agree. That makes it very difficult to use his actions/thoughts as evidence of anything. But we do know one thing for sure. He tried to train more than just Bub and failed. How many more - we don't know. Was Bub the sole trainable zombie from a group of a hundred? I think that's a conservative guess based on how many we saw in the zombie pen. If so, Bub would be in the 99th percentile of zombies with regard to train-ability. I'm not trying to prove anything with my hypothetical line of reasoning. I'm merely pointing out a viable alternative that portrays Bub a lot more like Big Daddy than is commonly thought. The common consensus has always been that Logan trained Bub, end of story. But maybe Bub was already enlightened. It's impossible to tell. All I'm looking for is "maybe." Even in Land, we only see a handfull of zeds that appear to be "communicating" with BD, the rest of the horde may have easily been just following the crowd cuz they had nothing better to do at the time. That may have been true during the journey to Fiddler's Green. But in the motor pool the entire horde stopped eating and followed BD. They clearly had something better to do - eat human flesh - and they stopped at his urging. Any zombie that ended up crossing the river with BD has to be in the group that was communicating. Welcome out of retirement btw!! And welcome to torn!!

[acealive1]

Yeah, I'd feel bad about putting down my rabid family dog afterwards...not during. Like Seth Gecko said in From Dusk till Dawn, "Fight now, cry later!" I don't think I would feel too bad about shooting a zombie neighbor. They would already be dead. I wouldn't be the one killing them, I'm just the one with the unwanted task of ending their threat. You'd need to look at it as such just to maintain a grip on your sanity. agreed, i'd have to blow my cousin's head smoov off. it's either me or him and i dont wanna be a zombie

[Philly_SWAT]

I think we can safely conclude they were at higher levels than their peers in the larger zombie population. Riley made a point of saying that the zombies in Union Town are different. He seemed positively shocked by what he saw in Union Town. Riley was an expert on zombies and would have seen thousands of them in lots of different settings. His testimonial speaks to the larger zombie population. I am not sure that I agree with the premise that because Riley said they are "different" that this necessarily means "more advanced". But even if it did, that would mean that all the zeds around there were advanced, not just Big Daddy, which was your original premise. I would question whether Big Daddy was shown in an enlightening situation. He was a gas station attendant. The fact that he became enlightened seems to indicate he was different simply because he had no catalyst to become so. When I used the phrase "Other than Bub and Big Daddy, we are not shown any other zombies in enlightening situations..." I meant enlightening to us, the audience, not zombie enlightenment. I did not mean that BD was shown in an enlightening situation, but that we the audience were enlightened to exactly what this particular zombie was up to. You mention that Dr. Logan was deranged, and I think we'd all agree. That makes it very difficult to use his actions/thoughts as evidence of anything. But we do know one thing for sure. He tried to train more than just Bub and failed. How many more - we don't know. Was Bub the sole trainable zombie from a group of a hundred? I think that's a conservative guess based on how many we saw in the zombie pen. If so, Bub would be in the 99th percentile of zombies with regard to train-ability. What evidence are you basing your statement that we "know for sure" that Logan tried to train more than Bub and failed? He was doing experiments on other zeds....not trying to train them. In fact, about 50 minutes into the movie, Logan says "Bub has been doing so well lately I let him live...". To me that shows he didnt initially have any special training plans for Bub, like I said before, he just stumbled across the idea. I'm not trying to prove anything with my hypothetical line of reasoning. I'm merely pointing out a viable alternative that portrays Bub a lot more like Big Daddy than is commonly thought. The common consensus has always been that Logan trained Bub, end of story. But maybe Bub was already enlightened. It's impossible to tell. All I'm looking for is "maybe." It is easy for me to give you a maybe. Maybe Bub and Big Daddy were very much alike. But again, we have no idea if they were drastically different than the general zed population or not. That may have been true during the journey to Fiddler's Green. But in the motor pool the entire horde stopped eating and followed BD. They clearly had something better to do - eat human flesh - and they stopped at his urging. Any zombie that ended up crossing the river with BD has to be in the group that was communicating. That could be true. I would be tempted to chalk that up to "poor writing", but I guess that wouldnt be very constructive! Remember, Land had studio influence. But even disregarding that, it would seem less likely that an undead Big Daddy was using mystical powers to communicate with his fellow undead brethren, and more likely that all those zeds were more or less on he same plane of thinking, therefore, diminishing the concept of BD being on a higher plane than the average zed around. Micheal Strahan may have been the leader of the Giants defense, but that didnt mean that Julius Peppers was some ignorant follower. I say they were on an equal plane, just that Strahan was acknowledged as a leader. Welcome out of retirement btw!! And welcome to torn!! Thanks! Not sure how long it will last....

[krakenslayer]

PHILLY!!? Got Dayom! Welcome back man! Thought the zombies had taken you.

[Danny]

to throw another 2 cents into the jar, i think bub was an intelligent one taught tricks in expectation of reward. Whereas big daddy was some kind of zombie savant. I guess it goes back to the "pure motorized instinct thing". If a horse can be born and know how to get up and walk on instinct, why cant a creature thats basically an extremely primitive ape do what we do?, they walk, see, hear, eat, solve basic puzzles, In fact they had prior knowledge before, and if the brains still functioning as a brain, and as bub showed they have the capacity for basic learning is it so out of the realm of possibility in a world where the dead walk that the one in a billion chance does occur?I think the total number of "big daddys" would be very small, maybe it depends on the brain before they died, the current state and outside stimulus that can create this randomly generated alpha zombie, and george just makes him the focus as a semi-likeable frankensteins monster type of movie monster. Because i see him as something bridging the gap between the archetype monsters of old and the regular shamblers, the others in his "tribe" just seemed to follow him on impulse and learn by example, we dont know who big daddy was before he died, or what level of intelligence he had, any special conditions of his death that may retain some familiar past functions. Bub was like one of big daddies followers, not having too much of a sentient emotion behind them, just an attachment like "okay, this one is leader, he is smarter, lead us to reward", for bub it was frankenstein, for the zombies of fiddlers green it was big daddy. I guess in essence, frankenstein failed to create his goal, while it occurred naturally by any number of freak random occurrences in the wild, so to speak.

[kortick]

Romeros biggest change in 'intelligent zombies' is mentioned here a few times. Up until Big Daddy, they were all trained to perform in a controlled manner. In Day that was released in the theaters it was Logan. In the original script there were many more 'intelligent' zombies as soldiers that Rhoades was in command of. Big Daddy was a departure from Romeros original idea of trying to make them behave by controlling them thru thier feeding habits. Big Daddy never bit anyone, which is something that makes absolutely no sense. Even if he wasnt feeding, it is most likely he would have killed by biting at least once. And as for Land, as far as I see, BD is an 'intelligent' zombie, and a bad idea at that, there was no need for him, all the zombies could have just started walking towards the Green for food, they didnt need a leader, they could have just followed the urge to feed and went where the food was. This would be more true to established history. And the underwater scene makes no sense, if u ever scuba dove u know u need weights to get to the bottom, and walking across a flowing river bed that size without getting taken away by the current is impossible. Land would have been better if it showed more of a colllective intelligenge in the zombies, instead of a 'genuis leader' like BD. Bub wasnt intelligent, just more easily trained to act the way Logan wants as long as he is fed. But that being said it was stated in Dawn they all have some small bit of intelligence, some more than others. But up until Land any use of thier intelligence was used to feed. Thats where Big Daddy took it off the rails.

[bassman]

I've never understood the problem with Big Daddy not eating. Just because we don't see him eating doesn't mean he never did. There are countless movies set over a long period of time and the characters are never seen eating. Does that mean they didn't eat at all? No...we just didn't see it. I believe there's that example and also the example that a leader doesn't mingle or dine with his soldiers.

[kortick]

thats the point. BD could have eaten a lot off screen But Romero never used his need to eat as a device for his behavior change, where with Bub and the others it was all about feeding them to control them. The fact that it was never shown BD eating just enforces how he wasnt manipulated by his appetite. He seemed to be motivated by revenge, or something like it. A total departure from past Romero 'rules' to use a word.

[Trin]

I am not sure that I agree with the premise that because Riley said they are "different" that this necessarily means "more advanced". But even if it did, that would mean that all the zeds around there were advanced, not just Big Daddy, which was your original premise. Riley's comments came directly after observing Big Daddy and how he influenced the other zombies around him. His comments were clearly indicative that he felt these zombies were a threat due to being more advanced. If Riley thought they were "different" and less advanced he wouldn't have been warning Kaufman about it. What is not clear (and this is a good counter-argument to my premise) is whether or not what Riley saw in Big Daddy was a phenomenon exclusive to Union Town. Riley does say something along the lines of "They're changing," which implies that he was not convinced they'd always been this way. It might also imply that he'd seen other instances of similar "changing" behavior. So it's not out of the question that zombies everywhere were changing and zombies like Big Daddy were popping up all over. But, hey, that's part of the fun with speculating!! What evidence are you basing your statement that we "know for sure" that Logan tried to train more than Bub and failed? He was doing experiments on other zeds....not trying to train them. In fact, about 50 minutes into the movie, Logan says "Bub has been doing so well lately I let him live...". I see your point, but I don't wholly agree. The statement could just as easily be interpreted that Bub was exceeding the smaller controlled training experiments and Logan was using him to test the boundaries of their train-ability. Perhaps a better "know for sure" is that Logan believed in behavior as the key. At the time of the events it was the entire focus of his efforts. I believe (I'll back off slightly from "know for sure") that we can assume Logan tried his training techniques on numerous other zombies without success. Another possibility is that Logan succeeded with Bub only because he had real human flesh to use as a reward. You have to figure that was not something he could have done with a whole bunch of zombies. I would be tempted to chalk that up to "poor writing", but I guess that wouldnt be very constructive! The films are certainly guilty of poor writing at times, plot loopholes at times, message overriding plot at times... all those things make these discussions more difficult. It's hard to focus solely on the events to prove/disprove anything when at times the events took a backseat to another moviemaking goal. All we can do is be careful to use such arguments as "poor writing" sparingly and objectively. to throw another 2 cents into the jar, i think bub was an intelligent one taught tricks in expectation of reward. Whereas big daddy was some kind of zombie savant. That is certainly a valid conclusion, and the one I'd lean toward if *forced* to choose. why cant a creature thats basically an extremely primitive ape do what we do?, they walk, see, hear, eat, solve basic puzzles, The question becomes, at what point does the ape become so advanced that it stops being an ape? If it learns to read and talk and stops eating bananas is it still an ape? If Big Daddy learns to hate and communicate and stops eating flesh is he still a zombie? for bub it was frankenstein, for the zombies of fiddlers green it was big daddy. And for us it is Neil?? And the underwater scene makes no sense, if u ever scuba dove u know u need weights to get to the bottom, and walking across a flowing river bed that size without getting taken away by the current is impossible. Land would have been better if it showed more of a colllective intelligenge in the zombies, instead of a 'genuis leader' like BD. Those are two points I've stressed again and again. The latter is relevant to this thread in that we'd be having a whole other discussion if Big Daddy had been more like the rest, and the rest had been more like him. That would've been more palatable to me. I've never understood the problem with Big Daddy not eating. Just because we don't see him eating doesn't mean he never did. The problem is that we see him NOT eat in a situation that would've had any other zombie chowing down. All the other zombies in his throng started salivating at the first sign of human. It's a fine plot development that they were able to override the instinct in order to pursue a goal. That even jives well with Bub's training. But to just not have the instinct at all? That's where I start to question things.

[EvilNed]

The fact that it was never shown BD eating just enforces how he wasnt manipulated by his appetite. He seemed to be motivated by revenge, or something like it. A total departure from past Romero 'rules' to use a word. Well. Rules are meant to be broken, and it's up to Romero, not us, whenever he wants to break those rules. Infact, maybe the rules were just rewritten for Land.