Nobody wanted this film to be good more than I. Last year when the script was posted online I read it in one sitting from start to finish. Totally fascinated. I thought it was a brilliant exercise in class warfare, race, the human condition, etc. In other words, more than the mindless Italian zombie movie, and more than anything Romero did before. It contained some of the elements that he retrieved from the original "Day of the Dead" script (that he wasn't able to film back then when his budget was cut by 2/3 or so)...
Anyway, so I came to this movie with high expectations based on the phenomenal reviews by both media and the fanboys...maybe I shouldn't have read so much for this has to be the most disappointing movie of the year! First, if you come into this looking for gore, you are going to be disappointed. I believe there is more cannibalism and blood in last year's "Dawn" remake...weird that no one mentions that. But worse than that is the script. I get the feeling Romero had to cut a big bit down (what else is new, George?) from the script I read online because most of the character development was completely gone. Only "Cholo" (nice name) had any kind of motivation and even that could have been explained a lot better. Sure, he represents the working class that wants to move up in society but they could have done more with it...the scene where he gets blown off by Hopper looks like it was rushed. There was zero subtlety...not that well done. Simon Baker's character fared worse. We get the feeling that he and the Robert Joy guy had a bit of a history working together --that's it for his back story. A bit about his dead sister, nothing more. Sorry, it's hard to care about characters we don't know anything about. Contrast this with the scene in the "Dawn" remake where you actually had people sitting around talking about their stories, where they came from, etc. Like night and day, no pun intended.
As for the "Fiddler's Green" refuge for the rich-- I was looking forward to seeing something out of Ballard's "High Rise" the way it was described in the press but Romero hardly even showed it or explained anything about it. Who were the people who lived there? How did Hopper decide who gets to live there and who stays in the city streets? where did the city people live? Could we see their housing situation? Too many questions, not enough answers. If a point was trying to be made about classism -- and it could have been a damn good one -- it sure wasn't made in this movie.
Anyway, so I came to this movie with high expectations based on the phenomenal reviews by both media and the fanboys...maybe I shouldn't have read so much for this has to be the most disappointing movie of the year! First, if you come into this looking for gore, you are going to be disappointed. I believe there is more cannibalism and blood in last year's "Dawn" remake...weird that no one mentions that. But worse than that is the script. I get the feeling Romero had to cut a big bit down (what else is new, George?) from the script I read online because most of the character development was completely gone. Only "Cholo" (nice name) had any kind of motivation and even that could have been explained a lot better. Sure, he represents the working class that wants to move up in society but they could have done more with it...the scene where he gets blown off by Hopper looks like it was rushed. There was zero subtlety...not that well done. Simon Baker's character fared worse. We get the feeling that he and the Robert Joy guy had a bit of a history working together --that's it for his back story. A bit about his dead sister, nothing more. Sorry, it's hard to care about characters we don't know anything about. Contrast this with the scene in the "Dawn" remake where you actually had people sitting around talking about their stories, where they came from, etc. Like night and day, no pun intended.
As for the "Fiddler's Green" refuge for the rich-- I was looking forward to seeing something out of Ballard's "High Rise" the way it was described in the press but Romero hardly even showed it or explained anything about it. Who were the people who lived there? How did Hopper decide who gets to live there and who stays in the city streets? where did the city people live? Could we see their housing situation? Too many questions, not enough answers. If a point was trying to be made about classism -- and it could have been a damn good one -- it sure wasn't made in this movie.