TWD: Dead City teaser...

[MinionZombie]

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Starts June 18th.

[JDP]

Just when you thought The Walking Dead was really "over"... hehehehe! No, producers won't let it "die" that easily. There's still plenty of money to be milked out of it.

[Neil]

I'll give it a few episodes...

[MinionZombie]

I'll give it a few episodes...

I think it's just a mini-series of six and done.

[Neil]

Ohhh! Well, that's good IMHO. A defined single story.

[JDP]

I think it's just a mini-series of six and done.

There seems to be conflicting information regarding this, as apparently AMC itself has mentioned a "first season" (which naturally implies that there could be at least a second one):

https://www.cinemablend.com/television/isle-of-the-dead-quick-things-we-know-about-the-walking-dead-spinoff

"Dead City Could Potentially Be More Than One Season

As I said before, there are many spinoffs that have been announced, most of which have ended up being two seasons (The Walking Dead: World Beyond) or one season (Tales of the Walking Dead), so far. However, I have a theory that Dead City could potentially be more than one season.

When AMC revealed the series, it noted that the “first season” would consist of six-episodes. This could mean that if Dead City ends up being popular enough, we might just get the chance to see Negan and Maggie in Manhattan for longer. Now that sounds like something I’d be down for."

https://1428elm.com/2023/03/12/the-walking-dead-dead-city-release-date-more/

"Although the first season will be relatively short, consisting of only six episodes, the anticipation for this exciting new series is sure to make each episode a thrilling experience. As for what the future holds beyond the first season, only time will tell, but for now, fans can eagerly anticipate the debut of the new show."

[MinionZombie]

If they do do a second season they should leave it at that. You can't string out the 'captured Hershel' impetus for their adventure into NYC for very long and, well, you want Maggie to be back with the gang living happily.

Tales of The Walking Dead blew goats like a goat blowing champ (i.e. it was terrible), meanwhile TWD: World Beyond was so irritating so immediately I never got beyond episode two of season one. FearTWD has been the most wildly variable show in terms of quality, but I'm glad it's coming to an end and will trudge through the final season just for completion's sake.

The one I'm really looking forward to is the Rick/Michonne mini-series.

[Neil]

On the back of the reviews I didn't even bother with "Tales of The Walking Dead" :(

[MinionZombie]

On the back of the reviews I didn't even bother with "Tales of The Walking Dead" :(

You made the right decision. I trudged through four-out-of-six of them (playing them at damn near double speed, too!) and they were a fucking chore.

So much of it didn't fit in with the TWD world at all - such as the 'groundhog day' style episode, which was beyond idiotic and so friggin' bad.

A couple of half-decent ideas in amongst the sludge, but they were all squandered. Such poor writing in general. Yeesh.

Hey, Hollywood - look outside your area code for fresh talent, 'cos the pool you're currently fishing around in is so full of dead tiddlers.

[shootemindehead]

On the back of the reviews I didn't even bother with "Tales of The Walking Dead" :(

You missed nothing.

And this will probably be a load of crap as well.

The entire enterprise has descended into muck at this stage.



The whole idea of Negan and Maggie together in any capacity is just intellectually insulting on such a grand scale, it beggars belief.

[Moon Knight]

You missed nothing.

And this will probably be a load of crap as well.

The entire enterprise has descended into muck at this stage.



The whole idea of Negan and Maggie together in any capacity is just intellectually insulting on such a grand scale, it beggars belief.

This right here.

[MinionZombie]

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Full trailer.

Looks like it could be okay, so fingers crossed. Certainly some nice scale going on in there, a bit of an Escape From New York-ish vibe in some respects. The 'fused together' zombie looks pretty cool.

[Neil]

I give it a go in the hope it has something good in it...

[shootemindehead]

This is shit.

I think I hate the walking dead at this point.

[beat_truck]

This is shit.

I pretty much figured it'd be. That's why I didn't watch it.



I think I hate the walking dead at this point.

I've honestly hated it since the beginning of season 8. I stuck through watching it until the middle of season 10. I still have the rest recorded, but I've all but decided that I won't be forcing myself to watch it.

During the early days of the show, I never would have thought I'd grow to hate TWD.:( Thanks a lot Gimple (and whoever else played a part in royally fucking up a once great show):mad:.

[shootemindehead]

Well, most TV shows just keep lumbering on until they run out of steam. The problem with something like a zombie apocalypse scenario is that once the living are on their feet, in some capacity, they only end up having themselves to fight. And that can get tedious, because once you have your protagonists defeat one bastard you're left with no option but to create another one and then another one and then another one.

That's the thing that Kirkman didn't get when he created his "never ending" comic. Without an end, you wind up going in circles.

'The Walking Dead', though, also suffers from bad writing and bad showrunning in that it introduced far too many people and factions that the audience just gave up even trying to remember who was who. Into the bargain, a lot of these people were completely unmemorable outside of their trope. We had "the lesbian", "the non gender person", "the gay guy", "the deaf person", ad nauseam. It seemed that if your were a minority of some sort, your chances of surviving the ZA went up considerably. But outside of their basic descriptor, these characters were generally nothing and they had nothing interesting to do or say either. They didn't even die in "interesting ways", as Tom Savini might put it.

They were a far cry from the likes of Carol, whose character actually grew over the course of the show, or fan fave Daryl (was never a fan personally) who also had an arc. Or even Carl who grew from annoying little brat into, what was becoming, a decent young man. But as the core characters were eliminated, they were getting replaced by multiple cyphers that most people didn't give a toss about and that's always a bad sign in any TV show.

But, also, TWD just wrote itself into a scenario that was too big with the likes of the Commonwealth. That whole idea was just awful and it was never going to work successfully. Plus, the time jump was a terrible idea, even if it was made somewhat necessary by Andrew Lincoln's decision to bugger off in a vain pursuit of a non-existent movie career.

Thing is, there are possible opportunities outside of the main show to reboot, as it were, and see the ZA from a different perspective. But these efforts have been haphazardly handled too. 'Fear the Walking Dead' became a shambles in its first series and has lumber on into crashing bore territory as well. 'The World Beyond' was an astonishing disaster from the get go and it's a miracle that thing got the green light at all, and now this 'Dead City' thing looks like its going to be rubbish too. But, frankly, the entire scenario involved here and the producers insistence on pushing Neegan as some sort of semi-reformed sinner has always been a no no for me. Especially as he's been teamed up with Maggie. That kind of "idea" might sound great as a brain fart in round table session, but the reality of it is non-existent. It's like the producers never even saw Neegan beat to death two unarmed and restrained people with barbed wire baseball bat. In the real world, there's just no coming back from that.

I'll probably check out a couple more episodes, but beyond the NYC setting it doesn't look like it's going to hold much for me.

[JDP]

Actually, this first episode was not that bad. It is actually better than pretty much all the stuff the last few seasons of TWD and FTWD have been throwing at us. The big city setting is nice for a change, plus Negan and Maggie at this point obviously don't get along (this will probably change later on, though), for the obvious expected reasons. They have to cooperate with each other because it is convenient for them to do so.

BTW, if the zombie that attacks Maggie during the opening sequence looks familiar... well he should! It's an obvious "nod" to a certain 1979 movie:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSGtVrlWIAAaxTQ.jpg

[MinionZombie]

Just watched the first episode myself, and similarly caught the ZFE nod with the chunky water-logged zombie down by the waterside.

There were various bits that I enjoyed - like the 'raining zombies' sequence, or piloting their way through the 'floater infested' water towards the city - and there was a great hero walker on display: the one with a rat coming out of its mouth! :elol:

Now, the Marshalls ... as Shoot was saying, the problem with this 'never ending story' idea is that all stories need an ending at some point, and indeed, TWD did end, so... :p ... ... anyway ... it does irk me when you've got these larger communities who use plainly bad means of punishment to enforce law and order. It doesn't jive with this idea of civilisation in the slightest bit, and the 'optics' of such brutal penalities is pretty frigging terrible - so how on earth is it an effective way to run a community?

Sure, you've got to be tough on traitors and those seeking to do harm to your community in the ZA, but this super Old Testament level of retribution for all the sections and sub-sections of the law? Come on, now.

I do like the idea of having more contained mini-series within a single 'world', and the NYC setting certainly gives things a fresh feeling after so many years spent amongst the green and abundant kudzu.

Was the episode a game changer or a real breath of fresh air? No, of course not, TWD has been running so long now that there's little juice left to squeeze from the franchise. However, at the same time I did enjoy it well enough and will certainly continue. Hopefully it doesn't make a balls of it going forward.

[MinionZombie]

Okay, three episodes in now...

It certainly won't win over anyone who had had their fill of the TWD universe, and even for fans like me some of the same problems rear their ugly heads again (e.g. annoying teens who do chronically stupid things for reasons???) ... plus, there is the inescapable issue that we've pretty much seen all this before.

The Croat, the main bad guy here, is nothing new - he's pretty much just Negan, but nastier, and he's using rotting walkers to produce methane gas for renewable energy. Now, there's something of an interesting idea in that, but again, it just kinda feels a bit 'meh' here and swept aside somewhat in favour of 'bad guy bad / merry band of randoms we encounter good'.

There's some good stuff in there, too, though and I'll certainly see out the remaining episodes, but there's also plenty that's a bit underwhelming. I think episode three was fairly weak in some regards and plodded a bit, although episode four looks like it should have a bit more oomph to it.

Faults aside, it's still far superior to World Beyond (I could only stomach two episodes because it was so annoying) and Tales From TWD (I struggled through four out of six episodes of that and left the other two un-watched).

[Neil]

Given the feedback I gave up after 1 episode... :(

[MinionZombie]

I did episode five the other day.

There's good stuff in every episode, but there's also bad stuff or stuff that's just 'meh, seen it a bunch of times already in this franchise'.

Then there's silly stuff - in ep5, for instance, they go into the sewers where there's supposed to be shitloads of methane (which we've already seen used to partially hinder someone for a Escape From New York-ish cage match against some zombies) ... yet they get in there and now there's only 'pockets' of methane (er, ok?). Fast forward and they now have a couple of tanks of oxygen (justified), but when it just comes down to Maggie and the annoying mute girl who has added nothing of value to the show it isn't made clear why the second tank is no good for Maggie to use ... and what's more Maggie never shares the tank with the girl (and the girl never offers to share it - what a bitch!, is what you end up thinking of her as a result of that :stunned: )

It was really distracting and annoying and never worked properly because too many elements have just been half-assed to actually make it make sense.

Speaking of the mute girl, Maggie is in NYC to rescue her son Hershel - who we've barely seen this entire time. A couple of small flashbacks that gave us very little insight into their relationship etc. So why not not have the mute girl and then spend that screentime on flashbacks that fully flesh out Maggie's relationship with Hershel, because we saw some of that in the comics and this would've been the perfect chance to show that ... but no, here's a random mute girl to make Negan a bit nicer-seeming. Speaking of, they didn't need the girl for that as the reason that Negan is on the run from the New Babylon law is one of those things where you'd go "Yeah, I'd do the same thing" and is, frankly, quite justified in that world (hell, even in this world pretty much). Similarly, that plotline hasn't really been worked on very much and was just kinda splashed out there in some dialogue in episode one and that's that, when it could've been more of a mystery as to why this guy was being bounty hunted (e.g. has he gone back to his old ways?) and we could've had all sorts of guesses and rumours as to the details, but then in a later episode we get the truth from Negan and then that shifts perceptions.

So it's a very mixed bag. Another underwhelming villain, too, and yet more cannon fodder survivors who have added very little to proceedings ultimately ... like I say, they're cannon fodder with a small amount of character development and you never gel with them because you're much more interested in Maggie & Negan.

[JDP]

Fast forward and they now have a couple of tanks of oxygen (justified), but when it just comes down to Maggie and the annoying mute girl who has added nothing of value to the show it isn't made clear why the second tank is no good for Maggie to use ... and what's more Maggie never shares the tank with the girl (and the girl never offers to share it - what a bitch!, is what you end up thinking of her as a result of that :stunned: )

At first it is obviously because she becomes aware of Tommaso's "betrayal". She wants nothing to do with anything that was involved in it and all the deaths it has caused. But after the whole thing is exposed, and Tommaso explains why he did what he did, and even more so after he dies, there should no longer be any reason why Maggie would not take advantage of the oxygen tanks. They are there, period. How and why they got there is no longer an issue. What's done, is done, and Tommaso has paid for it with his own life.

[MinionZombie]

At first it is obviously because she becomes aware of Tommaso's "betrayal". She wants nothing to do with anything that was involved in it and all the deaths it has caused. But after the whole thing is exposed, and Tommaso explains why he did what he did, and even more so after he dies, there should no longer be any reason why Maggie would not take advantage of the oxygen tanks. They are there, period. How and why they got there is no longer an issue. What's done, is done, and Tommaso has paid for it with his own life.

Even refusing to use them because of "betrayal" (of people she's known for a matter of hours) is in itself moronic because she has a clear and practical need for the tank of oxygen, so it's silly writing to have her refuse it.

The multi-zombie was awesome, though.

[Mikasuki]

I hope it will be a story about zombies, and not about how people (living) arrange showdowns against the backdrop of zombies. The Walking Dead was that bad example after 2-nd season (