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

[Publius]

Dr. Logan was not bitten but shot to death on his torso (not the head), yet he did not come back as a zombie. Actually, we don't really know that Logan was only shot in the torso. Reviewing the scene again, it plays out as follows: 1) camera on Rhodes as he starts firing, 2) camera on Logan from the front as Rhodes continues firing, no apparent head injuries yet and only impacts shown are to the torso, 3) camera on Rhodes as he fires a few more rounds, 4) camera on Logan from behind as Rhodes continues to fire and Logan falls. The conclusion that Logan was only shot in the torso is really based on part 2. But it's possible that he could have been hit in the head during part 3 or 4. Especially part 4 where Rhodes continues to fire as Logan falls back so his head passes through the same height that his chest was at.

[JDP]

Actually, we don't really know that Logan was only shot in the torso. Reviewing the scene again, it plays out as follows: 1) camera on Rhodes as he starts firing, 2) camera on Logan from the front as Rhodes continues firing, no apparent head injuries yet and only impacts shown are to the torso, 3) camera on Rhodes as he fires a few more rounds, 4) camera on Logan from behind as Rhodes continues to fire and Logan falls. The conclusion that Logan was only shot in the torso is really based on part 2. But it's possible that he could have been hit in the head during part 3 or 4. Especially part 4 where Rhodes continues to fire as Logan falls back so his head passes through the same height that his chest was at. Watch when "Bub" discovers Logan's body. His head and face do not have any wounds or even splatter. He died from bullets to the torso (unlike his head/face, his torso is logically full of bullet wounds and splatter, just like we should expect from the execution scene #2 that you described.) He should have been a zombie. - - - Updated - - - 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. Peter says it takes up to three days for a person to die from zombie bites, not to come back as a zombie. Freezer door open means that he would not have been frozen, perhaps a bit chilly, but since it does not take hours for "Bub" to find his corpse we can assume coldness can't play much of a factor here, even if we speculate that it can possibly have any effect (and why would it? zombies themselves are "cold".) By the way, the doctor from Night of the Living Dead who is being interviewed regarding the zombies also clearly says " In the cold room at the University, we had a cadaver..." when he is explaining that it's only a matter of minutes for a cadaver to come back as a zombie, so I would say that it is very safe to assume that coldness has no bearing on this question. It certainly took "Bub" at least quite a few "matter of minutes" to find his corpse. He finished the "meal" that Logan had given him right before he is executed by Rhodes, he was licking the blood from his chains when he accidentally frees himself, he wanders around until he finds the open freezer. It sure sounds like plenty of "a matter of minutes" for Logan to have already come back.

[Trin]

My gut feelings is that Romero never intended Logan to become a zombie regardless of circumstances or rules. It was filmed in such a way that Bub finding Logan inanimate was required for the impact of the scene on Bub and his ensuing revenge. That said, I think Logan should've become a zombie based on having no visible head wound and a seemingly long enough time to reanimate. It seems like a plot hole. But I'm not willing to say conclusively that a rule was broken. How long really passed between Logan's death (we don't know he died immediately upon hitting the floor) and Bub finding him? It couldn't have been terribly long ... events happened fast after that. Was there damage to the brain from all that gunfire ricocheting around inside his body? Did he suffer sufficient head trauma just from his head hitting the concrete floor? If I recall, Peter had time to get comfortable while sitting in the room watching Roger's corpse beneath the sheet. It looked like he's been waiting a while when Roger finally reanimated. Was that an hour or more? If so, then Logan still had plenty of time to reanimate. Maybe we should call for a movie where the reanimated Logan continues to dissect zombies in the bunker (just doing what he did in life) and eventually finds a cure.

[AcesandEights]

Logan obviously hit his head pretty hard in that fall after being shot and was not able to reanimate due to damage to his brain. I mean, obviously.

[JDP]

My gut feelings is that Romero never intended Logan to become a zombie regardless of circumstances or rules. It was filmed in such a way that Bub finding Logan inanimate was required for the impact of the scene on Bub and his ensuing revenge. That said, I think Logan should've become a zombie based on having no visible head wound and a seemingly long enough time to reanimate. It seems like a plot hole. But I'm not willing to say conclusively that a rule was broken. How long really passed between Logan's death (we don't know he died immediately upon hitting the floor) and Bub finding him? It couldn't have been terribly long ... events happened fast after that. Was there damage to the brain from all that gunfire ricocheting around inside his body? Did he suffer sufficient head trauma just from his head hitting the concrete floor? If I recall, Peter had time to get comfortable while sitting in the room watching Roger's corpse beneath the sheet. It looked like he's been waiting a while when Roger finally reanimated. Was that an hour or more? If so, then Logan still had plenty of time to reanimate. Maybe we should call for a movie where the reanimated Logan continues to dissect zombies in the bunker (just doing what he did in life) and eventually finds a cure. Based on what we see, there was definitely plenty of time for Logan to reanimate. "Bub" even had time to finish his KRJ (Kentucky Raw Johnson) bucket-meal that Logan brought him before he was court-martialed and summarily executed on the spot by Rhodes. He frees himself quite accidentally while licking the blood remaining on his chain from the meal he just had. Meanwhile we see a bunch of stuff happening elsewhere in the compound. Plenty of time. Definitely more than just a mere "matter of minutes". Roger was covered with a sheet and we can't see exactly when he died, how long it took him to come back after actual death, or how long has been Peter waiting there, so that scene can't prove or disprove anything. However, in Night of the Living Dead we do know straight from the mouth of a doctor who has been observing this phenomenon that it only takes "a matter of minutes" for a cadaver to come back to life as a zombie. This colloquial expression plainly refers to a short space of time -say like 5 minutes or less, for example- not longer intervals of time, like say half an hour or an hour. So the doctor accordingly dispenses the healthy advice of getting rid of the recently dead "immediately... soak them in gasoline... and burn them". Romero could very easily have avoided this contradiction to his own "rules" by simply showing doctor Logan get hit in the head with a bullet from Rhodes' gun, but he did not. It was a slip up on his part.

[Publius]

Watch when "Bub" discovers Logan's body. His head and face do not have any wounds or even splatter. He died from bullets to the torso (unlike his head/face, his torso is logically full of bullet wounds and splatter, just like we should expect from the execution scene #2 that you described.) He should have been a zombie. You mean this scene? You really can't see much of his head there. In particular, you can't see his neck or chin. I don't see how you can rule out a bullet entering his skull from the underside of his head as he fell back. Sort of the reverse of Michael Brown in Ferguson, who was shot in the top of the head as he fell forward through the line of fire.

[JDP]

You mean this scene? You really can't see much of his head there. In particular, you can't see his neck or chin. I don't see how you can rule out a bullet entering his skull from the underside of his head as he fell back. Sort of the reverse of Michael Brown in Ferguson, who was shot in the top of the head as he fell forward through the line of fire. You can clearly see a great deal of his face and head. Had a bullet from an M16 hit any part of it, including through the chin or neck, it would make quite a mess, just like we see the mess that these bullets have made of his torso. Another thing: Some people apparently as kind of a "joke" want to pull the excuse that when Logan fell he hit his head against the floor and that might have damaged his brain. Judging by the repeated heavy blows to the skull with a tire iron that Ben in Night of the Living Dead has to inflict on the zombies for them to die, I would say that there's hardly a chance that a simple fall would do the trick. Plus we also saw Johnny fall and hit his head on a gravestone, and yet he came back as a zombie too. Evidently a very severe trauma to the brain must happen for someone not to come back as a zombie, more than any mere fall at floor level would inflict on the brain. On top of that, we can clearly see that Logan fell on Johnson or Miller's corpse, not on the solid floor. So you can rule that one out as well. Dr. Logan should be a zombie.

[AcesandEights]

Another thing: Some people apparently as kind of a "joke" want to pull the excuse that when Logan fell he hit his head against the floor and that might have damaged his brain. Judging by the repeated heavy blows to the skull with a tire iron that Ben in Night of the Living Dead has to inflict on the zombies for them to die, I would say that there's hardly a chance that a simple fall would do the trick. Plus we also saw Johnny fall and hit his head on a gravestone, and yet he came back as a zombie too. Evidently a very severe trauma to the brain must happen for someone not to come back as a zombie, more than any mere fall at floor level would inflict on the brain. What's more likely? That Logan's brain was somehow damaged in a way we're not privy to, if not during his death (bullet, impact etc.), then off-camera after his death (coup de grace of some sort), OR GAR was trying to launch a major plot point about the 'curse' having ended and did so in a completely haphazard and disparate fashion? My point is you're making an extraordinary narrative leap based on what is likely a technical error in a film that was shot with a reworked script on a compressed filming schedule.

[Trin]

While the arguments for why Logan should've reanimated are good ones, and I agree he should've turned at some point, I am not convinced that they are good enough to state that the rules were broken. We just don't know how long he was lying there dead or how much damage made it to his brain. We really don't have good maximum times for reanimation.

[MinionZombie]

Different people reanimate on different time schedules ... Logan wasn't dead all that long. Nuff said, really. He'd just not had the time to come back ... although I do like the idea that, perhaps, the virus had changed (or he was a different case) and the irony is that nobody would learn about that change. The practical realities of the changed script and compressed schedule also ring true to me. I'd also warn against using Night of the Living Dead to establish 'rules' of how the virus worked. Romero himself has stated that they never had any rules in Night, and it was only when he came to do Dawn that he thought 'shit, better come up with some rules here!'. Some of the stuff in Night applies, but it's also very vague on details, whereas Dawn and Day provide much more information on the virus and how it works (albeit still, relatively speaking, not that much info). While a zombie bite and being riddled with bullets are very different deaths, I still think Peter saying that people could survive "no more than three days" helps give an idea about how vague the effects of the virus can be. Some people might come back quick, others slowly ... and particularly with the events after Logan's death being over a rather short amount of time (a few hours at most), it's likely we just never hung around long enough to see him come back ... and that, quite possibly, Romero & Co just forgot about Logan's body. Have any of the key creatives spoken about Logan's death and the lack of reanimation?

[JDP]

What's more likely? That Logan's brain was somehow damaged in a way we're not privy to, if not during his death (bullet, impact etc.), then off-camera after his death (coup de grace of some sort), OR GAR was trying to launch a major plot point about the 'curse' having ended and did so in a completely haphazard and disparate fashion? My point is you're making an extraordinary narrative leap based on what is likely a technical error in a film that was shot with a reworked script on a compressed filming schedule. It still counts as a slip up on the filmmaker's part. This is one of the most basic premises of the movie series: dead people come back to life as zombies, and they do so "in a matter of minutes". He could easily have avoided it by simply having had the good doc shot in the head. - - - Updated - - - Different people reanimate on different time schedules ... Logan wasn't dead all that long. Nuff said, really. He'd just not had the time to come back ... although I do like the idea that, perhaps, the virus had changed (or he was a different case) and the irony is that nobody would learn about that change. The practical realities of the changed script and compressed schedule also ring true to me. I'd also warn against using Night of the Living Dead to establish 'rules' of how the virus worked. Romero himself has stated that they never had any rules in Night, and it was only when he came to do Dawn that he thought 'shit, better come up with some rules here!'. Some of the stuff in Night applies, but it's also very vague on details, whereas Dawn and Day provide much more information on the virus and how it works (albeit still, relatively speaking, not that much info). While a zombie bite and being riddled with bullets are very different deaths, I still think Peter saying that people could survive "no more than three days" helps give an idea about how vague the effects of the virus can be. Some people might come back quick, others slowly ... and particularly with the events after Logan's death being over a rather short amount of time (a few hours at most), it's likely we just never hung around long enough to see him come back ... and that, quite possibly, Romero & Co just forgot about Logan's body. Have any of the key creatives spoken about Logan's death and the lack of reanimation? Peter's eyewitness account appertains to how long can people survive zombie bites, a totally different issue that is only addressed for the first time in the second movie. There is little room for speculation regarding how long it takes for a dead person to come back. The series made that "rule" very clear from the very first movie. And it obviously took way more than just a mere "matter of minutes" for "Bub" to finish his "meal", accidentally unlock his chain and wander around until he found the freezer room. The good ol' doc should already have come back as a zombie. The first movie obviously counts, in fact it counts more than any other due to seniority, and yes, it did establish some very clear "rules" that were faithfully followed through the next movies (dead people come back to life as zombies, zombies die only from severe trauma to the brain, zombies crave human flesh, etc.) And Romero's movies never make it clear what is it that is causing the zombies, so it is not established at all that a "virus" is causing this. - - - Updated - - - While the arguments for why Logan should've reanimated are good ones, and I agree he should've turned at some point, I am not convinced that they are good enough to state that the rules were broken. We just don't know how long he was lying there dead or how much damage made it to his brain. We really don't have good maximum times for reanimation. Does it look to you that between Logan's execution scene and the time that "Bub" accidentally discovers his corpse only "a matter of minutes" has passed? I would say that judging from all the things we are presented with in the film plenty of "matter of minutes" have already passed between these two events, more than enough for Logan to now be a member of the zombie legions.

[MinionZombie]

If a zombie bite can reanimate someone in anywhere between minutes and 72 hours, then surely death by any other means can likewise cause reanimation in a similarly vague and unpredictable time scale. Day of the Dead spirals out of control pretty quick once Logan has been blasted.

[Christopher Jon]

nerds.

[MinionZombie]

nerds.

[JDP]

If a zombie bite can reanimate someone in anywhere between minutes and 72 hours, then surely death by any other means can likewise cause reanimation in a similarly vague and unpredictable time scale. The thing is that zombie bites in this series are not supposed to do that. What Peter says is that it can take up to about 3 days for a person to die from zombie bites, but the person with the bites is still alive in the meantime, he/she is not dead yet, just like it happened to Roger. It took at least a couple of days for him to die from the zombie bites, but in the meantime he was not a zombie, he was still human. First you die, then you become a zombie. In these movies you do not become a zombie "directly", you have to go through actual death first. The issue at hand is that once the person dies (either from the zombie bites or from something else that has not severely damaged his/her brain) then the reanimation as a zombie comes in "a matter of minutes". Day of the Dead spirals out of control pretty quick once Logan has been blasted. Still, the action we see take place between after he is executed and when "Bub" finds him in the freezer is definitely more than just a few minutes.