Origins (film) - NotLD prequel by Cameron & George Romero

[stray]

I'm all for GAR making yet another Dead film and I'd even pitch in a few bucks to help it along, but explaining the plague is a bad idea. No thanks, -stray-

[Dombant]

Some mysteries are best when not known fully.

[Buzzbomb]

Maybe they'll come up with an explanation of why the zombies are sometimes slow & othertimes super-athletes I'd be happy to see any new GAR film... There's only a couple that I thought were bad (Survival & There's Always Vanilla).

[Trin]

Plus, realistically, any explanation they give is going to disappointing or infuriate or confuse chunks of the audience. You're setting yourself up for a tough time from the get-go. I agree with MZ here. The reason I think this fails is because the overall setup is already contradictory. Everyone who dies comes back without any contact with others (dead or alive). Which means it is not a communicable disease. Yet being bitten by one of the creatures causes illness 100% of the time, and that illness is 100% fatal. Yet that illness doesn't seem easily transmitted from infected living human to uninfected living human. Nor does it seem to be transmitted through being exposed to the blood or bodily fluids of the dead. That's quite a mess of rules. Any explanation that covers all that will end up hokey. And that's assuming they come up with an explanation that doesn't have tons of holes. I'll be the first to admit that I would like to have a plausible, well thought out explanation. I just think that ship sailed before the first film came out. I also get the impression from the website that he is trying to do a zombie movie that corrects everything his dad is criticized over. I expect that will turn out a product that fails in all the ways his dad got right.

[Neil]

^ Guess you could simply consider everyone is infected, but when dead, the infection truly becomes even worse, hence if you're bitten this "worse version" is enough to kill you. A little like the "plaugue"... That's ban enough, but if it starts infecting peoples lungs and becomes a pneumonic plague, that's even more deadly!

[angrysquirrel]

^ Guess you could simply consider everyone is infected, but when dead, the infection truly becomes even worse, hence if you're bitten this "worse version" is enough to kill you. A little like the "plaugue"... That's ban enough, but if it starts infecting peoples lungs and becomes a pneumonic plague, that's even more deadly! Sounds a spin on The Walking Dead. In that world I thought everyone had the virus. If you died from a zombie bite or scratch you came back as a "walker." Actually, I forgot something. Was it that in the Walking Dead world everyone comes back regardless of the manner of death? Too many years following zombie movies and now my memories are muddled as to what is what.

[Rottedfreak]

Okay here's my pitch for the origins: In the early sixties George A Romero and a film crew are filming an advert outside of his real home town of Evans City when suddenly they are attacked by zombies. They flee the site and find a convoy of survivors leaving town, the convoy relaying an attack by crazies. George leads the survivor convoy to a closing asylum where he continues documenting their plight three days into the incident. He films people turning on each other all the while zombies gather in large numbers outside the building. Some soldiers arrive and upon entry begin executing the wounded and disabled not distinguishing between living or undead. George documents all of this and finds a lab beneath the asylum while the place falls into chaos as the zombies finally make their move when the lights go out. He takes the last of the living into the labs for shelter and finds a doctor who accidentally rose the dead by unleashing an experimental formula into the water supply. In the end the US army saves the day, Evans city is bombed to the ground and forgotten by the nation, the survivors are given a million dollars each for their silence and sent on their way while George threatens to go public but his camera is smashed leaving him with nothing, years pass and he decides to get the message out by making a movie. Fifty years later, he recounts all this to a young woman and then reveals he's wearing make up, he hasn't aged a day, he then beats the young woman to a pulp and cuts her flesh off eating it revealing he's been an intelligent ghoul for all this time.

[angrysquirrel]

Sounds like George Jr. jumped the shark. The ending sounds ridiculous.

[pavello]

I went to that page. Graphic design, attitude, the things you people have already told... No cool, not the spirit, I agree with you. I'd have preferred even something like a documentary, and adding to it tension and bizarriness until the end that, *wham!* the zombie. Dry, dry, dry.

[Neil]

Looks like we could be getting an official prequel to Night - we'll finally find out what caused it all, though I'm sure that won't stop the debates around here! If you fancy getting involved they're looking for backers too: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/o...ro-zombie-film I'm seriously thinking about throwing some cash at this... take a punt and become part of the legacy in some small way. Well they reached the $30,000 goal it seems.

[JDP]

Sounds a spin on The Walking Dead. In that world I thought everyone had the virus. If you died from a zombie bite or scratch you came back as a "walker." Actually, I forgot something. Was it that in the Walking Dead world everyone comes back regardless of the manner of death? Too many years following zombie movies and now my memories are muddled as to what is what. Actually that bit (though not explicitly blamed on a virus) is from the Romero zombie movies too, The Walking Dead just took the general idea from there. There is only one strange exception to this "rule" in Romero's movies and it has been the subject of endless discussions: Dr. Logan was not bitten but shot to death on his torso (not the head), yet he did not come back as a zombie. He definitely should have (example: in the very same movie Pvt. Johnson gets killed by shots to the chest too and later on we see his zombified head moving in Logan's lab, so he did become a zombie despite not being bitten.)

[MinionZombie]

Actually that bit (though not explicitly blamed on a virus) is from the Romero zombie movies too, The Walking Dead just took the general idea from there. There is only one strange exception to this "rule" in Romero's movies and it has been the subject of endless discussions: Dr. Logan was not bitten but shot to death on his torso (not the head), yet he did not come back as a zombie. He definitely should have (example: in the very same movie Pvt. Johnson gets killed by shots to the chest too and later on we see his zombified head moving in Logan's lab, so he did become a zombie despite not being bitten.) Well, once Logan's killed (in a freezer, I might add - did that slow down the turn?), everything kicks off pretty quick and there's not much time that passes ... whereas with Johnson several hours pass and his decapitated head has a bunch of electrical wires plugged into it ... so, come to think of it, I'd always thought that Johnson's head was 'alive' and moving specifically because of the electrical current Logan had fed into it (before he was slaughtered by Rhodes). That ties in to the bit with the headless body of the Rhodes' deceased superior officer when Logan turns the current on and off and his arms go up and down. You know, now that I think about it, in all the times I've watched Day of the Dead over the years, I've never actually thought about the issue you raise JDP ... hmmm.

[EvilNed]

Well they reached the $30,000 goal it seems. Most likely not entirely accurate. I looked a few days before they were about to reach their goal and they were not even at 50%. People have started exploiting this Kickstarter deal to the point where you ask for a certain amount of money, then the day before the timeline is up, or whatever, you yourself put in what's missing. That way, you get all the money already donated, even if it's not your goal.

[JDP]

Well, once Logan's killed (in a freezer, I might add - did that slow down the turn?), everything kicks off pretty quick and there's not much time that passes ... whereas with Johnson several hours pass and his decapitated head has a bunch of electrical wires plugged into it ... so, come to think of it, I'd always thought that Johnson's head was 'alive' and moving specifically because of the electrical current Logan had fed into it (before he was slaughtered by Rhodes). That ties in to the bit with the headless body of the Rhodes' deceased superior officer when Logan turns the current on and off and his arms go up and down. You know, now that I think about it, in all the times I've watched Day of the Dead over the years, I've never actually thought about the issue you raise JDP ... hmmm. The time that elapses between Dr. Logan being shot to death by Rhodes and "Bub" freeing himself from the wall-chain, wandering around and finding his corpse seems more than enough for Logan to have revived. In Night of the Living Dead we are told that all it takes is "a matter of minutes" for a cadaver to come back to life. So we know that in Romero's Dead world it does not take long for the reanimation to happen. The freezer door was open, by the way. About Pvt. Johnson's zombified head: Dr. Logan obviously has been tinkering with it, just like he was tinkering with Major Cooper's brain after he died and became a zombie, but his electrodes are not the reason why it is "alive" (or "undead", if you will.) The head is not merely just moving out of reaction to electric impulses, like major Cooper's arms were, it's moving its eyes, gaping and making noises. It's a zombie without a body! Logan doesn't know why dead people are coming back as zombies, that's in fact the reason why he is down there in those caves with the other scientists, to see if they can figure out what the hell is happening (not that any of them succeeded in actually finding out, mind you.) Logan doesn't know how to make an "artificial" zombie any more than he knows why such a bizarre thing is happening naturally. So Johnson did come back as a zombie sometime after he got shot. Logan chopped his head off (presumably before he became a zombie), used his "fresh" body to feed "Bub", and experimented with his zombified head. Truly ghastly stuff. No wonder Sarah and McDermott are horrified when they figure out what the Doc's been up to. But even if you don't want to accept this evidence, there's plenty more in these movies. For example, look at all the zombies in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead that don't show any bites or any other sign of violent death on their bodies, yet they are zombies nonetheless. Obviously in Romero's movies anyone who dies of whatever causes becomes a zombie if their brains are not heavily damaged... except Dr. Logan!

[MinionZombie]

I'm not denying that people who die of natural causes (or, generally, non-zombie-bitey causes) come back as zombies - I've known that for a very long time. Consistency isn't a particular tentpole of GAR's zombie movies though. It can take minutes, but as Peter said in Dawn it can be up to "three days". Freezer door open or not, he's still inside the freezer, surrounded by cold ... so the temperature is going to be several degrees lower - at least - than if he were on the other side of the door with it closed. Add that to the wildly different "turn times" and the relatively short amount of time that passes between Logan getting shot and Bub discovering him, and it's entirely plausible he's just not had the time to come back yet. Johnson's head ... yeah, makes sense ... I just read it as the electrodes the first time I saw it many moons ago and I just left it at that until now. When I was talking about that it was more from the point of view of had the head had enough time to resurrect at that point, or was it purely moving because of the electrodes? Maybe it was hooked up for some kind of 'electrical study of reanimation'? Reanimation as a zombie regardless of the cause of death wasn't in question.