darth los
30-Oct-2008, 08:47 PM
How strong/fast are zombies really? What should be within the limits of their abilities and what shouldn't?
We all know that GAR is not a stickler for detail and the inconsistencies in the dead films are numerous. But what's maddening to me is how fast zombies move sometimes as compared to others and how strong they become when the situation calls for it. Now I am well aware I'm geeking out over this but the reason consistency is important is that it allows us to more readily accept the premise of a world where the dead are returning to life and areattacking the living if there are rules. So, In order to do this GAR needs us to suspend disbelief and go with a few ground rules.
1) Anyone who dies will reanimate and atack the living to sate their instinct to feed.
2) These "beings" can be destroyed in only one known manner and that is by incapacitating the brain.
3) The ghouls are weak and uncoordinated but extremely dangerous when encountered in large numbers.
4) Their disease or condition is communicable. If a human is bitten and the area is not quickly removed or amputated the victim will surely die only to rise later.
5) Although they have seemingly little intelligence, some do have memory of activities from their former lives. This is the premise for the zombies in the shopping mall:- "what are they doing ? why do they come here ?", "somekind of instinct, memory, what they used to do, this was an important place in their lives."
First we have the strength inconsistency. The weakest, slowest zombie that I can think of was the Hare Krishna zombie. The Strongest/agitated zombie is a tie between the fireman zombie from DAy (it seemed that if you ever encountered this guy he'd rip your balls off and toss them in a tall grass never to be seen again!! :stunned:) and big daddy ( who was able to lift a jack hammer and use it to break through some pretty thick glass to gain entrance to the green. That's a pretty wide spectrum if you ask me. :rockbrow:
This is not all. Even in the same movie, the original night, Cooper tells the story of how they came to be at the house. He says that a pack of ghouls turned over his car and bit his daughter on the arm. Knowing what we know about the mythology, doesn't this seem like an impossible feat? At the same time Ben is taking on 4-5 of them single handedly.
Now we come to the speed issue. The three fastest ghouls i can recall are the first one we ever see, Hinzman, and the kids kids at the airport in dawn. In contrast I'll take you back to the Hare kriishna zombie. Could this guy be any slower? Fran could have gotten a pedicure in the time it took for kojack to get to her. :bored: Again this is occuring in the same film. So the argument that these are different zombies from different films with different traits doesn't fly.
Now, I am a proponent of the point of view that the Zombies in each successive film are different and therefore exhibit different characteristics. But c'mon, we're talking about the same films here. While at the same time i do recognize their strength/speed is contingent on the situation and what GAR needs them for at that particular moment. You mean to tell me that those ghouls could have gotten to Peter in the loft? Especially while he was trying to make his escape. There's no way he should have been able to make it out of there alive. They should have swarmed him in an agitated frenzy like we have seen so many times before and since. We all know that happens when they're in a close proximity to food. So what happened there? Juxtapose that with the way they ambushed stephen in the elevator. They seemed much more frenzied, like a pack of jackals. He didn't stand a chance. All I'm saying is that some consistency within the same FILM would be nice, that's all.
Any thoughts? Theories?
BTW, Thanks Lee.
:rant:
We all know that GAR is not a stickler for detail and the inconsistencies in the dead films are numerous. But what's maddening to me is how fast zombies move sometimes as compared to others and how strong they become when the situation calls for it. Now I am well aware I'm geeking out over this but the reason consistency is important is that it allows us to more readily accept the premise of a world where the dead are returning to life and areattacking the living if there are rules. So, In order to do this GAR needs us to suspend disbelief and go with a few ground rules.
1) Anyone who dies will reanimate and atack the living to sate their instinct to feed.
2) These "beings" can be destroyed in only one known manner and that is by incapacitating the brain.
3) The ghouls are weak and uncoordinated but extremely dangerous when encountered in large numbers.
4) Their disease or condition is communicable. If a human is bitten and the area is not quickly removed or amputated the victim will surely die only to rise later.
5) Although they have seemingly little intelligence, some do have memory of activities from their former lives. This is the premise for the zombies in the shopping mall:- "what are they doing ? why do they come here ?", "somekind of instinct, memory, what they used to do, this was an important place in their lives."
First we have the strength inconsistency. The weakest, slowest zombie that I can think of was the Hare Krishna zombie. The Strongest/agitated zombie is a tie between the fireman zombie from DAy (it seemed that if you ever encountered this guy he'd rip your balls off and toss them in a tall grass never to be seen again!! :stunned:) and big daddy ( who was able to lift a jack hammer and use it to break through some pretty thick glass to gain entrance to the green. That's a pretty wide spectrum if you ask me. :rockbrow:
This is not all. Even in the same movie, the original night, Cooper tells the story of how they came to be at the house. He says that a pack of ghouls turned over his car and bit his daughter on the arm. Knowing what we know about the mythology, doesn't this seem like an impossible feat? At the same time Ben is taking on 4-5 of them single handedly.
Now we come to the speed issue. The three fastest ghouls i can recall are the first one we ever see, Hinzman, and the kids kids at the airport in dawn. In contrast I'll take you back to the Hare kriishna zombie. Could this guy be any slower? Fran could have gotten a pedicure in the time it took for kojack to get to her. :bored: Again this is occuring in the same film. So the argument that these are different zombies from different films with different traits doesn't fly.
Now, I am a proponent of the point of view that the Zombies in each successive film are different and therefore exhibit different characteristics. But c'mon, we're talking about the same films here. While at the same time i do recognize their strength/speed is contingent on the situation and what GAR needs them for at that particular moment. You mean to tell me that those ghouls could have gotten to Peter in the loft? Especially while he was trying to make his escape. There's no way he should have been able to make it out of there alive. They should have swarmed him in an agitated frenzy like we have seen so many times before and since. We all know that happens when they're in a close proximity to food. So what happened there? Juxtapose that with the way they ambushed stephen in the elevator. They seemed much more frenzied, like a pack of jackals. He didn't stand a chance. All I'm saying is that some consistency within the same FILM would be nice, that's all.
Any thoughts? Theories?
BTW, Thanks Lee.
:rant: