Anyone feel like its time for a 'soft reboot' of Romero's series?

[Moon Knight]

To me 28 Days Later is more in line with The Crazies. Like Tom Savini once said, they’re not dead people, they’re just crazy people.

[JDP]

To me 28 Days Later is more in line with The Crazies. Like Tom Savini once said, they’re not dead people, they’re just crazy people. Also with other 70s flicks, like Shivers and Rabid. None of them qualify as "zombie movies". Neither does their modern off-shoot: 28 Days Later.

[bassman]

I’m gonna kinda be he odd man out here and say that I’m not totally against another creative team taking a stab at it. Our beloved uncle George has now passed on, it’s been many years since the originals, they’re popular, etc etc. it practically has all the reboot/remake prerequisites checked off. Of course there is a big chance that it could backfire, but there is also the slight chance that it could work well. I’m looking at Frank Darabont as an example of a current director that’s also a huge fan taking the concept and running with it successfully. Darabont’s Walking Dead pilot is the best zombie movie in decades to a lot of fans, myself included. There are multiple writer/directors out there that could pull off something similar, and then set the series off for more original entries. It’s another franchise, but from what we’ve heard, the new Halloween is another good example. David Gordon Green, a predominately COMEDY director, but also huge fan of the original, has taken it and by all apparent reviews thus far, has rebooted it successfully. It’s a risky proposal, but one that stands a small chance of working out. Whether it works out or not, they won’t erase the classic films we adore. Those are there to stay.

[tkane18]

I wish George had made a 4th movie where the survivors from Dawn meet up with the survivors from Day.

[MinionZombie]

I think the main difference, though, is that Romero's zombie films are so intrinsically Romero's take on the world in different decades. The connective tissue, the glue that holds all those films together, is Romero himself, whereas with franchises like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare On Elm Street, the glue holding them together is in the text of the films themselves and particularly their leading - and continual - antagonists (Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger). A Romero zombie film without Romero makes no sense to me. Just make a smart, socially aware zombie film featuring shamblers and have a new voice entirely. You don't need to continue the 'franchise', if you can even really apply "franchise" to the Romero zombie movies. The closest things those films have to "franchise" is the continuation of the "...of the Dead" titles. Beyond that the 'franchise glue' was Romero himself. As Writer/Director/Producer (and some other roles over the years), they were intrinsicly connected to him. Other franchises (like the ones mentioned above) have been told by different voices from film-to-film. Just make a new movie entirely, having been inspired by Romero's writing & directing methodology.

[Philly_SWAT]

The film can just pick up after Day of the Dead, ignoring Land, Diary, Survival, and.... Ughh.. Road. Sorry I didn't want to exclude Land but honestly, that film is a mixed bag for me. However, push come to shove, I'd take Land over the 3 that follow it any day It would be tricky excluding Land, as the events depicted in that movie overlap the events in Dawn, or come shorty thereafter, with Day being much later in the time setting. So it could be done, extracting some of the story line depicted in mid-story arc, however, the events shown in Land do not really affect the overall story anyway.

[JDP]

It would be tricky excluding Land, as the events depicted in that movie overlap the events in Dawn, or come shorty thereafter, with Day being much later in the time setting. So it could be done, extracting some of the story line depicted in mid-story arc, however, the events shown in Land do not really affect the overall story anyway.

[Daoyinyang]

What they could do is reboot the series. Just don't do the whole running zombies, parkour aspect of things, and have more character development. Also have less characters, adds a sense of dread and trepidation when there's less people.

[Skinrash]

This has already been attempted, twice. Flesheater/Zombie Nosh and Children of the living dead were unofficial reboots that ignored all the sequels and were alternate continuations of NOTLD. Both films are regarded as garbage by most people, so the attempts weren't successful, at least not critically.

[BountyHunter]

28 Days Later, while not TECHNICALLY a zombie movie, is what reinvigorated the zombie craze. It's what got me back into it. Cuz lets get real here. Change a couple of line of dialogue in the film (calling them dead instead of infected) and you have a zombie movie. Calling them infected is the only thing that differentiates it from other zombie movies. And guaranteed 95% of casual horror fans think of 28 Days Later as a zombie movie.

[JDP]

28 Days Later, while not TECHNICALLY a zombie movie, is what reinvigorated the zombie craze. It's what got me back into it. Cuz lets get real here. Change a couple of line of dialogue in the film (calling them dead instead of infected) and you have a zombie movie. Calling them infected is the only thing that differentiates it from other zombie movies. And guaranteed 95% of casual horror fans think of 28 Days Later as a zombie movie. Wrong. Changing the labels won't alter the fact that the infected in that movie are actually alive. The fact that they are infected living people and not reanimated corpses is what distinguishes movies like 28 Days Later from proper zombie movies.

[EvilNed]

28 Days Later, while not TECHNICALLY a zombie movie, is what reinvigorated the zombie craze. It's what got me back into it. Cuz lets get real here. Change a couple of line of dialogue in the film (calling them dead instead of infected) and you have a zombie movie. Calling them infected is the only thing that differentiates it from other zombie movies. And guaranteed 95% of casual horror fans think of 28 Days Later as a zombie movie. Don't be silly, of course it's a zombie movie.

[BountyHunter]

Don't be silly, of course it's a zombie movie. I'd definitely classify it as one, as do the majority of movie-goers. Everything about the 28 movies clearly says "We're a zombie movie, but with a tiny twist". I stand by my first post. Pretty sure nothing I said in it is inaccurate.

[MinionZombie]

28 Days Later is only 'zombie adjacent' in that it uses a variety of the hallmarks, but so too does The Crazies, but The Crazies isn't a zombie movie either. The key aspect of a "zombie" is death, either the perception of death (i.e. in voodoo with people believing that their loved ones died and have been resurrected) or actual death (i.e. in the Romero fashion whereby a human DIES and then resurrects as the undead). At no point does anyone in 28 Days Later, The Crazies, and other infection movies (also including Nightmare City, which Umberto Lenzi clearly stated was not a "zombie" movie) actually die, indeed in 28DL the infection is so fast acting there wouldn't even be time, but the infection also doesn't work that way (killing its host). Indeed, in 28 Days Later the infected humans keel over and then die from starvation. Zombies don't die of starvation for two reasons: 1) they're already dead, so they can't die (they can only be 'put down' in a looser interpretation of "killing"), and 2) zombies go on for years whether or not they've noshed on some juicy human flesh or not. "Zombie" movies and "Infection" movies are two distinct subsets of the horror genre. It really is quite simple and clear to see the difference.

[JDP]

I'd definitely classify it as one, as do the majority of movie-goers. Everything about the 28 movies clearly says "We're a zombie movie, but with a tiny twist". I stand by my first post. Pretty sure nothing I said in it is inaccurate. Trying to ignore what has been explained over and over in the thread doesn't really work. The facts still remain, your refusal to acknowledge them notwithstanding. So, no, the "creatures" in that movie are not "zombies", and merely changing the "label" won't make them so either. They are NOT reanimated dead people. That's what a "zombie" is in the proper movie genre sense. The other meanings of the word "zombie", like in the sense of a strange person in appearance or behavior, are NOT what the cinematic "zombie" genre is about. Otherwise, then, Rain Man, for example, would be "a zombie movie"!