Zach Snyder's back! Again! To make both a zombie film AND a heist film, and fails at both. Booooo-urns. Come for the blurry, nauseating cinematography, and stay for the dead pixels.
Boy, wouldn't this movie have been more interesting if the zombie apocalypse happened during an Ocean's 11 style Vegas bank heist. And this wacky group of thieves had to adjust their plans on the fly as Vegas crumbles.
I know right! Army of the Dead had a significant lacking of Bautista riding around on a tri-cycle dressed up in a pink bear costume while the American anthem plays
"$2 million dollars? That's all for me that's my cut?" "Yes but--" "Yes, the answer is yes. I'm in." "But don't you want to see the script or a rough cut of the--" "Nope."
At the end when Dave Bautista gives his daughter the money from his vest - "now you can help the refugees" - I said out loud "Oh, the refugee camp that was next to the city that was just nuked?"
@@wayner396 Did Geeta even die? I went back and checked and we just straight up don't see her again after the nuke goes off. Before that she was perfectly fine on the helicopter.
In real life they would be mostly fine. Power of nukes and ensuing fallout is exagerrated in common perception. Ofc i'm not suggesting movie makers thought like that. They didn't think at all.
@@MitchellD249 in the helicopter crash the daughter was the only person who got up. Dave Bautista mentions to help her kids as I'm pretty sure everybody else died in that crash
That scene made me go "OH! OK!???!" As it was so quick, quiet and subtle. Then just how she's on the ground like "IM DEAD BITCH!", It had me chuckling at that point lol. And also, there was No backstory with those two.. So just as she confessed and died? Was the same velocity of their backstory lol, pointless!
Every time the zombies would run into a scene, they would stop and pose for the camera. It made me feel like I was watching West Side Story and the Jets were showing up ready to rumble or dance.
I laughed at that too! I kept thinking "Finally! The parkour kids hard work doing all that running around and jumping gaps has paid off! Yay them!" Hahaha
"Japanese lens maker" sure makes it sound exotic and mysterious, like you can just smell the incense burning at the Shinto shrine. It's Canon... just say "Canon."
Maybe I'm giving Zach Snyder too much of an excuse but I wonder if it's possible he was originally saying "Canon" and then they said "ooh we don't have that copyright Zach. You gotta say Japanese lensmaker" and he was like "that sounds so stupid" but he had to, and they were too lazy to blur the logos.
the microwaved hand scene stops seeming like a "spark of cleverness" when you realize that the entire zombie population of Las Vegas has been baking in Nevada heat the entire time.
Or when you realize they were just pressure plates so they could have chucked any one of the many dead zombie bodies surrounding them onto the switch to trigger the traps
And the zombie plays fetch with this tiny morsel of flesh thrown all the way down the other end of a corridor rather than just simply turning and taking a hulking bite out of the warm, chatty humans stood inches away either side of him...
I thought I was losing my mind when they found out the nuclear bomb was being dropped in an hour and...yeah, the film carried on like nothing had happened, no one was hurrying, no one was particularly bothered, the film didn’t pick up pace at all. Do you know how fucking quickly you would move if you were surrounded by zombies and a nuclear bomb was about to be dropped on you?
And you only had 9 minutes to run back, find somebody, kill some zombies, go back to the roof, fight off the biggest zombie, and still have enough time to fly out of the reach of a nuclear bomb.
The whole movie defy time and physical distance, they supposedly took two hours from the entrances to the location, yet caiote and the other guy went back to the entrance Waited for the Queen to appear, guy killed her and went back to the location all that for like 5 minutes
I would need to time it, but I'm pretty sure they take longer then what they were told they had time wise. Also a guy get out of a locked safe and jut walks through the nuclear radiation of nuked Vegas.
I find this in many movies these days, lack of realistic reaction to peril, maybe its because there is so much acting on green screen, or should that be lack of acting, it's like watching a video game.
Dave Bautista is an actor wating for a a good director to make a masterpiece. His little role in blade runner was so good it caught me off guard. The guy is perfect for a dramatic role in some movie that does not yet exist yet.
I love how the military couldn't hit their shots, but everyone else can. Oh, and the two soldiers decide to walk away from the zombie rather than getting in the humvee and driving away...
Not to want make excuses for Snyders lazy writing, but you could explain it that the soldiers didnt know what they are fighting against and they are trained for years to shoot at the torso area. So thats what they did. They never tried to shoot the head. The others know, months after the outbreak, that these are zombies and they are just killed by headshots. Why they have magic aim so that they can shoot zombies running at them, in a panic situation, perfectly in the head...thats a whole different story... EDIT: Because some maybe think I liked the movie...again...not making excuses for Snyders lazy writing...its more a "How can I explain the scene to me so that I dont have an urge to shove a spoon through my eye into the brain." I didnt like the movie. But that would have been the LEAST problem I had with it. Like the point that the whole Heist didnt make any kind of friggin sense, if Tanakas plan from the start was just to get the head. Why this convoluted plan about the heist. Especially do it several times, as we saw with the dead bodies from before. Get six Merc assholes that will kill their mother for money, use one victim (some bum from the streets) as sacrifice to lure the Alphas out, get the head and walk out of there...ok the movie would have been done in 15 minutes...but still...the whole Heist plot didnt make any kind of sense. And in the end wasnt even really relevant because there were hundreds of other distractions to the story.
I mean did any of you pay attention? They had no clue they had to head shot him to kill him. You wouldn’t automatically know that when he’s the first of his kind.
Why didn't I even think of that logical error the first time? Given his appearance upon escaping the vault means not much time has passed, he'd likely to have spread radioactive matter and probably died before even getting to the plane. That said, radioactive zombies would've been a more interesting dangerous threat to have come out from space if they were going for the alien zombies route.
My biggest question is why didn't that lady yell out "That guy tried to kill me!" before getting eaten by zombies? Instead she just yells "RUN! .....RUN! .....RUN!"
I thought so, too, but him being infected might've had a role to play in that scene. Also, a ground burst modern tactical nuclear weapons wouldn't yield that much radiation. The most unbelievable part would be him escaping the debris.
@@readhistory2023 yes, I'll take the word of some dude in the RU-vid comments section with a poor grasp on the English language instead of what I've learned in my career.
She also has agreat Star Trek name. It's also why she slipped in so well into Discovery. She was a tiny glimmer of light in an otherwise abyss of a show.
@@spunkyspaz Now I actually have a bit of admiration for the technical marvel they accomplished because of some sex pest. It‘s an alright student film in that way. A for effort, good job special effects team!
When I started watching the movie I literally thought the lady was a plant by some sort of shadowy organization to blow up the convoy with C4 hidden in the car. But nope, just a really bad accident.
Yeah but see, when Zacky boy drives his tank into vehicles in GTA (which is totally the most awesomest game ever), they explode! And that's just so epic and cool.
@@swagromancer But even in GTA, the cars only explodes if it's on fire for a few seconds, so at least it's somewhat explainable as gas fumes catching on fire and resulting in an explosion.
They didn't mention the basic plot doesn't make sense. Instead of concocting a fake mission to rob the vault, Tanaka could have just told them the actual mission and they could have accomplished it in about five minutes at the edge of the city.
I somehow never considered that, but lmao yeah, why go through literally any of the charade? If it's worth more than the $200 million in the vault anyway then just offer to pay them the same amount or more. Only issue I can think of is that they might say no if they realise it's to make more zombies for military purposes, but they were able to trick the Coyote into helping by telling her they just wanted a blood sample and she's the only person they actually needed to accomplish the real mission. Scott and the gang weren't needed for anything.
Now it make more sense if they had to go deeper into the city to find this zombie queen but if she just at the gate of the quarantine zone no one had to die really
To be fair, given their main contact for the camp's reaction when the head is bagged, I don't think it's stretching credibility to say that being open about the plan from the start would jeopardise their chance of getting everyone onboard in the tight timescale afforded to them by the nuke. Wanna take millions of dollars from an abandoned Vegas vault? Much easier to sell. Not that I'm defending this film (I'm not, it's terrible),
@TheMowens NO NEVA!! True metal fans stan the og cut! It would be betta if metalica was neva borned! NEVA!!!! The Metallica cut DOESN'T EXIST!! REEEEAAAAAHAHHHHHHHHH!!! (*proceeds to roll van over)
Can't believe they didnt talk about how they mentioned that rain would reanimate all of the dead zombies in the first 20 mins of the movie and then NO RAIN SCENE at any point
@@zakkapradana7180 I think it was just their way of saving money because of the lower budget. "Oh we don't want to have to CGI a whole city's worth of shamblers so we'll just say they're all dead from dehydration"
Zack Snyder appears to be the kind of director that whenever he tells people what a particular scene should be like, he finishes with a "wouldn't that look cool though?"
The Coyote saves their ass with the saw when dude locks them in to screw the team over, but yeah, he was right by the ‘door’ with a $2 Billion “asset”. Non-sense.
@@CoolGobyFish I'm guessing it's a secrecy thing. They can't leave witnesses who might let the public know that they kept a zombie head to make more zombies with.
@@MitchellD249 everyone knows about zombies. what sort of secret can there be? pretty sure everyone already assumed the the government will be taking samples. just bad script.
The way the Zombie Queen runs off after the first encounter makes me laugh every time I see it. It's like she's Naruto running off. It's unintentionally hilarious.
Judging purely on the basis of his filmography, you would think Zack Snyder is a douchy gym bro. The fact that he is a genuine and considerate person irl is such a whiplash.
Compared to Quentin Tarantino, who is a certified douchbag but cranks out one classic movie after the other really shows that personality and skill don‘t need to go together
I’m sure 90% of fans want to see Snydercut because of Joker “we live in a society” scene, just to find out that scene is just a dream and Jared Leto didn’t get to say the magic word.
The movie is a false ad in a nutshell. To advertise it as a zombie HEIST film, and have ZERO HEIST. Just trying to open the vault and taking money is not a heist, as there's no tactics involved...
"But there's a team, and a vault, and money, and it's in Vegas, but it's better because there's zombies.... Shut up! All that matters is that IT FUCKING LOOKS *COOOOO9L!!1!one"* - Hack Snyder
@@minhgiangtuan96 Proverbs 21 20 says "A fool and his money are soon parted" as a warning to the fools that they may spare themselves from poverty and debt, wasting the sweat of their brow on frivolities. Hack Snyder must have come across that passage (presumably as he was tearing pages out of the Old Testament while he was beating off to the New Testament) and thought it was career advice. Hack Snyder's fans have never read that verse because they don't know how to read.
Agreed. It was more of a looting situation than an "heist". They didn't steal anything; they were just paid to claim it, and to do so without being eaten.
I’m so glad you guys pointed out they rip off the scene from American werewolf in London. Many channels didn’t say anything about it where it is super obvious.
how the hell they didn't notice that? its not like dead pixel on your Nintendo DS or 3DS, this is camera we talking about, camera person should been fired not noticing during shoots
My favourite bit was when they played Zombie by The Cranberries- because to quote the greatest author of our generation "I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards" (TM Garth Merenghi)
A Huey helicopter is one of the loudest and most distinctive sounding rotorcraft in the world. You can absolutely hear them from sixty miles away and know exactly what kind of helicopter it is.
The sadest part is that I actually could see it working rather well if it was just used sparingly and in the appropiate moments/enviornments, instead of just everywhere all the time like with zero moderation.
The little boy actor who points at his crotch in Back To The Future 3 actually did this to signal the crew off camera that he had to pee, and the young actor unfortunately chose to do this while cameras were rolling, which slipped by everyone at the time. Look it up.
@@britishnerd3919 Zombie is a pretty sad song about 2 kids get blown up by bombs left over from "The Troubles" in Ireland. And the pointless bloody war that the bomb came from. "Zombie" refers to the soldiers continuing to fighting for no good reason.
Like being told the zombies would be reanimated by rain. Chekhov's gun, right? If you show something somewhat promising, never deliver or something like that.
i like the part where they microwave the hand to fool the zombie into thinking it's alive, not just a zombie hand that's been in 110 weather every fucking day... by this "logic", wouldn't all the zombies outside be attacking each other every time the sun comes up?
I still can't understand why business man hired them to steal money when he didn't want the money in the first place. Wouldn't it have made more sense to hire a whole team of people who's main goal was to capture a zombie for his nefarious purposes? So they are all on the same page? Why send in 1 lone wolf with the team? I don't get it...none of this plot made a lick of sense.
A 2010 video game about smashing things with shopping mall furniture somehow managed to tell a more unique, fun, yet incredibly original "Zombies take over Las Vegas" story than a 90 million dollar Zack Synder movie... Dead Rising 2. If you compare the two stories its actually shocking how much more fun and interesting a stupid, over-the-top VIDEO GAME that let's you duct tape a machine gun to a giant teddy bear is actually better in almost every way than a $90,000,000 Netflix feature length film. For those unfamiliar with the Dead Rising 2 narrative: Dead Rising 2 takes place in a post-pandemic world which has suffered, and recovered, from a vast number of zombie outbreaks across the country/world. A pretty original concept in and of itself is the fact that, unlike just about every other Zombie outbreak story... ever.. society didn't completely break down after the outbreaks took place, and most were actually contained or eliminated by the military. Zombifcation, how it works, and what to do with it kind of becomes a big, hot button social and political issue that permeates throughout modern society. People who have zombified relatives, for example, want to keep them alive in captivity in hopes that a cure can eventually be discovered to reverse the zombification process, while many other people pretty much have the sentimentality that *all* zombies should be eliminated for safety concerns. There are extremists on both sides of the issue, and some geo-political organizations and movements for both sides have even taken to acts of violence to further their agendas. The main character is Chuck Greene, a stunt driver/athlete that is participating in an extremely controversial reality gameshow called "Terror is Reality" which uses captured zombies as part of their show and point scoring system as part of an arguably sick yet profitable Pay-Per-View type event and venue located in "Fortune City"... which is basically just the Vegas strip on steroids. Chuck Greene is a somewhat jaded single father that actually doesn't like doing the show, but he does so because he needs the money and his daughter requires expensive yet essential medication that she needs to take every 24 hours or she'll turn. Chuck performs and does well (or not well, depending how well you play), gets paid, and just as he and his daughter start to leave an explosion occurs in the lower levels of the reality show venue, and its discovered that a member of an extremist zombie rights group purposely detonated a bomb in the zombie containment area to trigger an outbreak. Chuck barely gets himself and his daughter to what is essentially an underground bomb shelter that was designed for this purpose. Because of his daughter's condition, however, (which he keeps secret from the other survivors in the shelter), he has to sneak his way out of the shelter to look for medication for his daughter, and in doing so he gets tangled up into a much larger conspiracy that results in Chuck initially getting blamed for the attack, and he winds up having to investigate the bombing to clear his name in order to continue keeping his daughter safe. (Spoilers) You later find out that the only reason an extremist was even able to access the zombie containment area was because the host and executive producer of the gameshow, Tyrone King (whose basically just a TV show host version of Simon Phoenix from Demolition Man), planned the attack himself and made it look like it was an attack from a well known extremist group on purpose so he could use the news coverage and outbreak as a diversion to forcefully knock off every casino vault in Fortune City with hired mercenaries. It was all a ruse for a several hundred million dollar casino heist. it turns out there's even more to the mystery than that, but just think for a second just how much BETTER of a story, or honestly a movie, Dead Rising 2 would have made than Army of the Dead. Its sad, actually.
So you're telling me you can't fly/land a helicopter, find a person in a 15 story hotel, and have a fight with a super zombie, AND have time to escape in 9mins? I am in shock 😲.
Effects Guy: "So you know when grenades explode they just explode right? Like a bang? They don't create hellish napalm firestorms." Zack Snyder: "Haha explosion goes BOOM"
@@jcvscorner Depends on what kind of music video of course. There's plenty of artists that have awesome music videos like Rammstein with their latest songs.
@@AdamSandal83 95% of music videos don't feature a cohesive narrative. Neither does 95% of what Zach Snyder writes and directs... but I'm sure that's just a coincidence......
It's funny, but Aliens actually did do a sort of subversion with the "obvious betrayal" character. Bishop as an android was sort of framed ambiguously throughout the movie, especially when he was talking about how awesome the xenomorph and face hugger biology were, and the only other android we knew was Ash in the first movie -- a psycho, company-loyal robot who was willing to kill his entire crew and even himself to ensure Weyland Yutani got their specimen. The whole movie you're expecting Bishop to go rogue and evil, especially after Burke reveals his true character, but Bishop remains on the good side with the humans. I was really hoping for something similar with that government agent guy.
You know what would have been cooler? A film about a regular vault heist, wherein the owner of the money wants it to go missing so he can sue the casino and double capitalize on the heist. But during the heist, a zombie outbreak happens, making it much more difficult for them to escape and to stay alive.
It starts off with a premise like Escape from New York, becomes Aliens, and ends up making you wonder why you spent 2.5 hours watching a generic zombie movie instead of Aliens or Escape from New York.
In a generic zombie movie people die from the zombies mostly in this movie people died because of other people the girl that fought her way out of the zombie room died because everyone just stood there watching for a good 3 mins then started shooting after she got bitten then everyone else that died died because of Dave Batista's daughter So it was worse than a generic zombie movie
Its always worth sitting back and taking a moment to appreciate what a perfectly crafted action/horror movies aliens is. and that it still holds up 35 years later.
Watching Snyder attempt to communicate ideas other than "action with pop music playing" sounds like torture. Watching him to attempt to communicate terrible ideas from a terrible book might just result in the most unintentionally hilarious movie of recent decades.
I just saw this crazy zombie film where a group of survivors are on the run and encounter some crazy super strong zombies, and then at the end of the film they fight a CG zombie tiger. It was crazy! Zombie Apocalypse from 2012 with Ving Rhames! What are we talking about here?
they're talking about that not so good movie where some guys go into a zombie-infested area to retrieve money. Oh wait, they're not talking about the south-korean sequel Peninsula? what are we talking about then?
for me it was the werewolf in london bit. they both have the really inapropriate laugh when they fall over. the glow sticks in the slightly dimly light room was hilarious.
Yeah, he talks like a 14 year old too. Have you see him disrespect his own fans? Even at fundraisers no less! Sure, RLM may not want to say he's a horrible human being...but I'm sorry. He's a horrible human being.
A better version of this movie would be a hiest that is planned before the outbreak, but as the outbreak gets worse the crew decides to go ahead anyway. So it starts mild and about money and ends in chaos about survival
Or maybe just the fall of Vegas like the opening of the film. Bautista has to save his family and escape the city, it could’ve been like Escape from New York, but with zombies.
Now yeah it was impressive they did that. But y what was the point. All they had to do is do like they did with radio. The man that played radio never was able to be on set to infect with others actors alot of the times. An they just shot his scenes separate from the otherwa an just edit it in a way to make it look like he was there never used special affects. Or wastes a budget to add him in. Just creative editing to do it
Someday, Hollywood will rediscover the profession called "WRITER". It's actually a special skill that takes years to get good at just like cinematographers, composers, directors and other stuff.
Hollywood: Maybe we should give more writing power to directors so they can focus on a vision. ...and then we won't have to hire writers and can save millions
Hollywood will never rediscover it beyond super low budget films. Translating films with actual depth to every language on earth and making the story make sense doesn't make money. Things with explosions that the eludes to having a plot is what makes money now.
Thank you for pointing out the lack of originality. Snyder never had an original idea in his life, Everything is a copy, remake, retelling, inspired by, etc. Zero originality. How he had fans at all is a mystery to me.
Yeah, I definitely think Snyder intends to more or less rerelease the movie, with events unfolding just a differently enough to result in a better end.
Yeah, they didn't need her Whatsoever. Looking back? They didn't need her to "Get them in" as refugees because, lmfao, once they were on the quarantine grounds? They couldn't care less as they were in full gear, weapons, all ready to go and there was literally No one there except the douche security guy.
Vegas being the only area infected and quarantined is a brilliant idea. It allows you to make a fun zombie movie with an upbeat ending because the fate of humanity isn’t on the line. So anyway, everyone dies and it’s miserable.
This whole video is just proof of how much Zack Snyder is a hack. Just badly and lazily copying other much better movies... Great work, guys. Your reviews are awesome.
@@rumblefish9 I do think Snyder directed Dawn much better than he directed his other movies. I don’t know, maybe he was more restricted or maybe he was more humble... something there seems more honest, more cohesive and more raw than all his other overly bloated, overly produced stuff. However, I also agree that the script there is way better than anything else penned by him for sure and this certainly elevates the material a lot. Had he written it, it would certainly be a worse movie...
@@lehanderjau6269 Zack Snyder is okay when someone else takes care of all the creative parts and the studio makes him stick to a tight run time. Whenever he's given free reign his inner 10 year old comes out and the whole project spirals the drain...
Having only seen 300 and Man of Steel prior to this movie i'm convinced people only hate on Zack Snyder because he's successful. I watched this thing on a weeknight and had a great evening. I'm not sure what everyone else seems to have been expecting.
@@RangerMcFriendly Not just beat up, beat him so badly the old man lost an eye. Marky Mark was a real shitbag back in the day and has never acknowledged his past.
I recall a similar explanation. That the kid had a hand signal between him and his mother and that she would then communicate his need to pee to the director.
Film making 101: - watch a ton of films from before 15 years ago. - take out the scenes you liked for research purposes - tell actors to act out these very scenes - make scenes longer than they need to be to get a good screen time (longer means the film is better) - Martha
@@patriciapandacoon7162 He's the worst type of "artist". The man can see what other film makers are doing, but seems to only understand why it works on the most basic level. Instead of "construct scenes and dialogue in a style reminiscent of a certain era of film making" he only understands it as "copy old movies". But that seems to just be Hollywood, which probably explains why the man is always working lol
35:30 in the director's cut of aliens, Ellen Ripley returns after decades and finds out that her daughter has passed away long ago. This is why she formed such a unique connection with Newt as she recently lost her own child. It was removed from the 1986 original cut, which seems unthinkable. It makes the film even more powerful and impactful.
It's weird to me how a decade ago the game Dead Rising 2 came out and did zombies in vegas really well and they couldn't get like, any of that right in this.
It was his money, but I thought it was being kept in the vault for him by the casino. Hence why he didn't know the combination and needed it to be broken into. I may be misremembering the dialogue, though.
I'm pretty sure it was literally his casino, that's why the head of security worked for him, there was some weird dialog where the main dude says he never liked the japenese dude when they met in the diner but it's literally never expanded on or explained in any way