My Thoughts on “Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰”

Foreword: 

This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Saturday May 22, 2021. I should’ve reposted this earlier, like last week, but I was so exhausted after writing that post about the trailers to both Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2025) and Tron: Ares, I needed a long break. If you read that post, you’ll see what I’m talking about, it is long. Both sections are pretty long (longer than I had originally intended), but the Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2025) section is definitely longer than the Tron: Ares section, it took more four days to finish that section, and then it took me an additional two days to write the Tron: Ares section. Altogether, it took 6 days for me to write that post, the only other post that took me that long to write and finish was the one I wrote about Huey Li, who’s a political YouTuber who I’m not subscribed to anymore and who I don’t watch anymore. But, when I wrote that post I was subscribed to him, and I did watch him, but I stopped because he said some things I didn’t agree with and he just got on my nerves. The reasons I unsubscribed from him are in that update at the end of the post. 

I bet when I actually start writing reviews with multiple movies in the same post, it’ll take equally as long. I’m not even sure if I should even do that with the live action G.I. Joe movies, especially the first two, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. I feel like when I do get around to reviewing those, I’ll have so much to say that it wouldn’t justify me putting it all in one post, and it’d be better for me to give each movie its own dedicated post. The only odd one out is Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, I’m not sure if I’ll even have enough to say about that one when the time comes. If I don’t, then I’ll stick to my original plan and review all three of them in the same post. When I review the animated G.I. Joe movies like G.I. Joe: Spy Troops and G.I. Joe: Valor vs. Venom, I’ll review them individually and give them their own dedicated posts. And of course, the G.I. Joe animated series, G.I. Joe: Renegades will get its own dedicated post. Whenever I review a TV show, OVA, or ONA (original net animation), I always give it a dedicated post. 

I’m also thinking of reviewing the Jaws movies this way as well, reviewing them in one post, because I really don’t have much to say about the first one, but I have a little bit more to say about the sequels. I think that franchise will be the one that benefits the most from reviewing them all in one post. Especially since there seems to be no plans by Universal to bring back the Jaws franchise or make anything new in it. No new Jaws movies planned. I guess Jaws: The Revenge really did kill the franchise, that even in this age of reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels, spinoffs, and legacy sequels Universal still doesn’t want to touch it. Or maybe they think the Jaws franchise has just fallen into irrelevancy and no one nowadays cares about it or would go to see a new movie in it, but the recent 50th anniversary of the first Jaws movie shows that’s not the case. People do still care about Jaws, or at least, they care about the first one. The sequels, that’s a whole other story. I think, with the exception of the second one, Jaws 2, most people disregard the sequels entirely. Like, it’s just Jaws and Jaws 2. Jaws 3-D (AKA Jaws 3) and Jaws: The Revenge? Forget about it. I still want a crossover with Piranha though. I mentioned it in the foreword of my post about Rick Worley, I want a Piranha vs. Jaws, I think that would be pretty cool.

Depending on how it takes me to finish watching the longplay of the Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius PC game, this may end up being the last post of July, in case, my review of the Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius PC game will be the first post of August. But, I’m almost done with it. At the time of me writing this part, I’ve gotten to the part where Jimmy and Goddard get to the power plant and have to turn everything off before it overheats and melts down or whatever. They never specify if it’s a nuclear power plant ☢️ or not, but whatever it is, the Yolkians tampered with it…for some reason, and Jimmy has to shut it down, not just to save the town [Retroville], but also he can get the plutonium he needs for the rocket ship 🚀 so he can rescue Carl, who was abducted by the Yolkians. More on that in my actual review. 

Alright, so Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰. The funny thing about this review is the Status Post that I had previously saved to Bookmark Toolbar on my browser (Firefox 🦊) was not the actual review I wrote. The actual review was a different post that didn’t have any pictures on it, just text. The post I had initially saved was a different post that was about Zack Snyder and how people were starting to like him and his work, not just the Snyder fans, and how that was due to the release of the Snyder Cut of Justice League, which was finally released in 2021 under the title, Zack Snyder’s Justice League. But, how a lot of that good will was burned after the release of this movie, Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰, a zombie flick 🧟‍♂️ that he had made for Netflix. Then of all of a sudden, it became popular to hate Zack Snyder again, and call him the worst director in Hollywood. 

Even more of that initial goodwill built up by the Snyder Cut was lost with the release of Rebel Moon, the two-part space opera epic that Snyder had also made for Netflix, with each part being released months apart in December 2023 and April 2024, and each part having a separate R rated version that were released months later in August 2024, on the same day, August 2, 2024 under different titles. I reviewed both parts on this blog if you’re interested reading them. While most Snyder movies besides 300 and maybe Watchmen (2009) have gotten pretty negative reviews from critics, and Snyder himself is not held particularly high regard as a director by critics, the difference this time with both Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 and Rebel Moon especially is that even some Snyder fans hated them, and say that they were his weakest work or his worst movies if they really wanted to be harsh about it. Not all of course, some still liked these movies and stuck by Snyder, but some Snyder fans did break away on these movies and criticize them like everybody else. Whereas before, with the DCEU movies he directed, Snyder fans stood by him and defended those movies and his portrayal of those characters with all their might. 

But, I didn’t hate these movies, I actually liked them. And not just saying that because I’m a Snyder fan and I don’t like how critics seem to have this hate boner for him, this irrational hate for the guy ♂︎ and his movies, and they seem to be always biased against him and never seem to be willing to give his movies a chance, I do genuinely like these movies. I wouldn’t say that I’m a full-on Snyder fan, like I like his movies (all of the ones that I’ve seen anyway), and I like him as a person (which is more than I can say for James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Michael Bay), but I’m not an active participant in the Snyder fandom. I’m not on Twitter 🐦, or on TikTok, or on Reddit, and I don’t endless post about Snyder and his work everyday. 

I just watch them whenever I feel like watching them, I review them when I feel like reviewing them, and I only mention him whenever I feel like it, whenever I deem it to be relevant to the topic at hand. I know being a Snyder fan has a lot of stigma attached to it, especially these days, and if you say that you’re a Snyder fan, people won’t take you seriously or they’ll just dismiss you or say your opinion is stupid or invalid. Maybe, that’s another reason why I don’t consider myself a Snyder fan or I don’t want to say that I’m Snyder fan, but I shouldn’t be afraid to say that I’m a fan of something or somebody just because it’s not the popular or socially acceptable thing to do. I’m conflicted. I guess for all intents and purposes, I’m a Zack Snyder fan, but not a super hardcore one who’s terminally online and is super obsessive or in anyway what detractors of Snyder and his work would consider “toxic.” 

Of course, Snyder haters consider any Snyder fan who likes his movies and defends them “toxic” and seem to preprogrammed to hate on anyone who says they’re a Snyder fan or that they like his movies, or just dunk on him and his fans every chance they get; every time a new movie comes out in a franchise that Snyder was even tangential attached to at one point. I like his movies, I praise them in reviews, and that’s about where it ends for me. I don’t spend any of my time debating Snyder haters about the merits of Snyder’s work, specifically his DC work. James Gunn fans are at war with Snyder fans over the release of James Gunn’s Superman movie, with Gunn fans not just saying that Superman (2025) is a good movie, but the best Superman movie since Superman II, and saying James Gunn understands Superman better than Zack Snyder, and that Snyder fans aren’t “real” fans of Superman or DC in general and they don’t actually understand the character. But no, Gunn fans, they understand Superman as a character, they understand him perfectly, better than anyone 👌. I don’t want any part of that. 

I simply said that I had no interest in watching Superman (2025), I didn’t watch it, and just left it at that. I have no interest in watching Superman (2025) or any of the DCU movies coming up. I just don’t care. I’ll stick to the Snyderverse, I’ve already said my piece on the first entry in the Snyderverse and DCEU in general, Man of Steel, you can go read that review of you want. The funny thing is about this bickering between the Snyder fans and Gunn fans, all of the vitriol and name calling, all of the dumb essay videos talking shit about Snyder and Snyder fans (while praising James Gunn and his Superman movie), Zack Snyder and James Gunn aren’t even enemies. 

They’re actually friends in real life, and they seem to be tight, despite their fanbases hating each other’s guts and saying that the other guy ♂︎ sucks. I mean, they both guest starred on an episode of Rick and Morty, where they voiced themselves and basically took the time to make fun of themselves and make fun of the stupid fake rivalry their fans made up in their heads. Even if the joke was lost on many Gunn fans, who were convinced that the episode they appeared in was just a Snyder hate fest and its only purpose was to make fun of Snyder and make him look like idiot while making Gunn look like the genius they’ve convinced themselves that he is. But, the reality was that both Snyder and Gunn were in on the joke and there is no actual hostility between them. I mean, for god’s sake, Gunn even asked Snyder for advice when it came to deciding Superman’s new suit for this 2025 film, and whether or not to include to the red trunks or not, since Snyder and his team famously (or infamously, depending on how you look at it) chose to exclude the red trunks from their Superman suit in Man of Steel. That’s not something you do if you hate somebody, that’s something you only do you’re friends with somebody and you’re on good terms with them. 

It’s kind of the Star Wars fans who convinced themselves that Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy hate each other are secretly at war with each other, trying to steer the Star Wars franchise into conflicting directions, just because they don’t like Kathleen Kennedy and they like Dave Filoni and see him as the true successor to George Lucas. When the reality is that Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy are colleagues, she’s his boss and they actually get along with each other and Dave actually follows her lead on things. He may disagree with her on some things, he may have some of his own ideas of what Star Wars is, what Star Wars should be, and what direction it should go in, but it’s not to the point of hostility or all-out war between the two. 

I’m also not saying that I like these movies just because I’m a contrarian and I don’t like going along with crowd and liking something or hating something just because everyone else does. I’m actively avoiding watching KPop Demon Hunters or any videos relating to it for that reason, but it’s not the reason that I’m saying that I like Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 and Rebel Moon. I am contrarian, I am willing to admit that, I’ve always had this impulse in me to go with the unpopular opinion on something, especially movies, TV shows, and video games, and not just go along with the crowd, to be an outsider a little bit, but that’s not the reason why I’m saying that I like those movies, or at least, it’s not the only reason. That whole post talking Zack Snyder’s public perception will be included in this post after the main review as an update. 

I like Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰, I think it’s an entertaining movie. I have rewatched it fairly recently, back when I was still able to access Netflix (before Netflix put all their password sharing restrictions in place), sometime in 2023 or 2024, and I remember still enjoying it. Even after watching the prequel, Army of Thieves, which wasn’t directed by Zack Snyder and was more of a straight up heist movie than Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 was. But, he did produce it, so he did still have some hand in its development. Although, I do believe I watched Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 first before watching Army of Thieves. Snyder knows how to do a zombie movie 🧟‍♂️, he proved that with Dawn of the Dead 🧟‍♂️ (2004) (which James Gunn wrote, showing the close connection between the two), and he managed to put a unique spin on a genre that has been done to death (no pun intended), by mixing it with another genre. Doing a zombie heist film 🧟‍♂️ set in an abandoned post-apocalyptic Las Vegas (even though the apocalypse hasn’t actually started yet at this point in the story) is a pretty original and unique concept. And for me, the movie does live up to that premise of a group of people going into a quarantined and zombie-infested Las Vegas 🧟‍♂️ to steal some money 💵 out of a safe underneath a casino 🎰 before it’s destroyed by the US government 🇺🇸. And I like the different types of zombies 🧟‍♂️ we get in this movie, how there’s a zombie hierarchy 🧟‍♂️, and how they have a king and a queen 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️, and how the zombies 🧟‍♂️ are intelligent and are evolving in some ways. 

I know, it’s kind becoming a clichéd and kind of trite thing now for a zombie movie 🧟‍♂️ to have different types of zombies 🧟‍♂️ or more “highly-evolved” zombies 🧟‍♂️ instead of just the classic zombie 🧟‍♂️ that we’re all used to. The inferior sequel to Zombieland 🧟‍♂️, Zombieland: Double Tap 🧟‍♂️ introduced a bunch of new zombie types 🧟‍♂️, Left 4 Dead 🧟‍♂️ of course has different kinds of zombies 🧟‍♂️ and is really the one that popularized this whole idea, Resident Evil kind of has different kinds of zombies 🧟‍♂️ but not to same extent as Left 4 Dead 🧟‍♂️, and the things that people call “zombies 🧟‍♂️” in that franchise are not zombies 🧟‍♂️ at all like the Ganados, Majini, and J’avo. People call them zombies 🧟‍♂️, but they aren’t zombies 🧟‍♂️. They even say so in the games themselves, and the developers of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, and Resident Evil 6 are on record saying that those particular enemies are not zombies 🧟‍♂️. 

That distinction is made even clearer in Resident Evil 6, which does feature traditional zombies 🧟‍♂️ (like really traditional, the slow moving shuffling zombies 🧟‍♂️), although these ones were created by a different virus 🦠 than the ones featured in the original five games (Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, and Resident Evil Zero) and in the earlier spinoff titles (Resident Evil Outbreak, Resident Evil Outbreak File #2, Resident Evil Survivor, Resident Evil Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica, and Resident Evil: Dead Aim). The zombies 🧟‍♂️ in those games were created by the t-Virus and t-Virus variants, whereas the ones in Resident Evil 6, which were created by a new virus 🦠 called the C-Virus, which was created by mixing the t-Veronica virus and the G-Virus together. 

And of course, most recently, we’ve had 28 Years Later, which also felt the need to introduce new types of zombies 🧟‍♂️ than the traditional zombies 🧟‍♂️ we’ve gotten used to, and was not as well received or as universally loved as I thought it would. The movie I’m talking about, not the different zombie types 🧟‍♂️ (that was one of the elements that was actually praised about the movie). Everyone was so hyped for 28 Years Later, expecting it to be one of the best movies of the year because the trailers were so good, but when they actually saw it, they were underwhelmed 😕. They didn’t outright hate it, some did 😤, but most gave it mixed reviews. 

The biggest criticisms levied towards the movie were the overly stuffed convoluted plot with countless subplots, so many different ideas that never reach their full potential, the unsatisfying resolution to certain character arcs, this feeling that the movie was just one big set up for the next movie and fails as a movie all on its own, and the ending, which provided a drastic tonal shift that many people saw as a slap in the face 👋 that invalidates everything that came before, or makes you feel stupid for even caring about what was going on. Some did like the movie, and gave it positive reviews, there were those too, but the majority of critics, audiences, and fans were mixed on the movie, it had things they liked but also things they didn’t like, and some people were more negative about it than others. At least, The Walking Dead 🧟‍♂️, for all of its faults, didn’t feel the need to introduce new zombie types 🧟‍♂️ just to “shake things up.” 

Of course, the different zombie types 🧟‍♂️ in so many franchises is part of this wider trend of introducing new things into a franchise just to “keep things fresh” while downplaying the older things that people got used to and enjoyed in the first place. Like, Jurassic World can’t just have regular dinosaurs anymore, they have to have these crazy hybrid creatures, with the recent Jurassic World Rebirth introducing the D-Rex (Distortus Rex) and the Mutadon, whose design I actually like more than the D-Rex. Predator can’t just have regular Predators anymore, they have to have all these subspecies and “different clans” now, yes, that is the explanation for why the Predators were abducting people in Predator: Killer of Killers, they’re not only a different species than the regular Predators that we’re used to, but also a different tribe; someone replied to a comment I left on a clip of the ending stinger showing Naru at the end of the movie and explained that to me 🙄. Wannabe bet that Dek in Predator: Badlands will also be a different species than the regular Predator that we’re used to? And yes, that is the main Predator’s actual name in the film, Dek. Not a fan of that name I must say.  

Alien can’t just have regular Aliens anymore, they have to have all these hybrids and precursors, even though that was one of the least popular aspects of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant and even Alien Resurrection if you want to go that far back, and yet Alien: Romulus still felt the need to include a hybrid creature in addition to the regular Xenomorph that everyone actually came to see. But, I think Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 does this whole different zombie type thing 🧟‍♂️ a lot better than some of those other examples I mentioned. It helps that this is a new franchise and it’s established as a fixture of this fictional universe right from the get-go, not an already established one that’s gone on for years and years and has started to grow stale and unwieldy, and is only doing it to avoid losing the sauce, even though some of the franchises that have gone and done this have already lost the sauce. 

And yes, Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 is a cinematic universe, or was a cinematic universe I should say, this movie was meant to kick off a franchise, and the planned sequel titled, Planet of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🌎 was going to continue from where this movie left off. And the planned animated series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas 🧟‍♂️🎰 was going to expand the universe even further by delving into the origin of the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️, delve into the characters’ backstories and flesh them out further, and exploring some other things that ultimately went unexplained in the film such as the robot zombie 🤖🧟‍♂️ and the whole talk about other timelines and time loops that somewhat came out of no where in the film. But, alas, all of those projects have been canceled 😞. Snyder announced himself on social media in 2024. So now, Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 is a dead franchise (no pun intended), and this movie and Army of Thieves are the only things we got out of it. 

It’s a shame, I really wanted to see more out of this universe, I really thought it had potential, especially with Snyder himself in charge of it and it being his and not someone else’s franchise that he just got the chance to work on and contribute to, and do his own thing with. He also going to tie it into the Rebel Moon universe by having them exist as two parallel dimensions or two parallel universes in a larger multiverse, and one of the characters from the canceled animated series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas 🎰🧟‍♂️ was going to go through a portal and end up in the Rebel Moon universe. He also started that one of the aliens 👽 in Rebel Moon is one of the characters from that planned animated series, in the animatic that he showed to the public. That definitely sounds a bit weird, it is a bit odd to mix a zombie franchise 🧟‍♂️ with a space one, but if anyone could make it work, it was Zack Snyder, and I’m sure it would’ve led to something interesting. But alas, none of this is going to happen now, so all we can do now is just speculate about and imagine what could’ve been. 

Since I went on a whole diatribe about the criticisms levied towards 28 Years Later, I guess I should address the criticisms levied towards this movie because there are a lot. I won’t address all of the criticisms levied towards Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰, I’ll just address the big ones, the meat of the criticisms towards Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 in which all of the comparatively smaller criticisms trickle down from. The two biggest criticisms levied at this movie are that the plot doesn’t make sense or that it’s incredibly stupid and that nothing is actually achieved by the end, and the cinematography and how a lot of shots in the movie are blurry and out of focus. I know that’s technically three complaints, but the complaint about nothing being achieved by the end is apart of the one about the plot not making sense or being really stupid. I’ll address the criticisms towards the plot and then address the criticisms towards the cinematography. 

The plot of this movie of course is that a group of people are recruited by a millionaire casino owner 🎰 named Bly Tanaka (played by Hiroyuki Sanada in the film) to apparently retrieve some money 💵 from a vault underneath an abandoned casino 🎰 that he used to own in the now quarantined Las Vegas, which faced a deadly zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️, caused by a zombie 🧟‍♂️ that we would learn is an Alpha (who would come to be known as Zeus) escaping from a military convoy driving out of Area 51. The Alpha was being transported out of Area 51 in a containment unit, and it broke out after the vehicle carrying it had a head-on collision with a car 🚗 driven by a recently married couple driving out of Las Vegas while distracted by a blowjob. 

Yes, the zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ in Las Vegas and later the zombie apocalypse 🧟‍♂️ that destroys the entire world is caused by distracted driving, but not just any distracted driving, but by road head. So here’s some advice to anyone, if you really want to have a blowjob inside a car 🚗 (either giving one or receiving one), make sure that you either already parked or if you one of you is driving, pull over to the side and do it. Because not only could you cause a car accident and kill not only yourself and your partner (or one night stand, no judge here) but also the other driver and any other occupants they might have in their vehicle, and you also may accidentally start a zombie apocalypse 🧟‍♂️. Snyder sure knows how to encourage road safety. 

All of the people being recruited by Tanaka for this job are people who fought against the zombie horde 🧟‍♂️ inside of Las Vegas before the city was sealed off by the government, and all experienced some kind of loss and trauma as a result of them fighting against the undead 🧟‍♂️; though I’m not sure if these zombies 🧟‍♂️ are supposed to be undead or not, or if they’re more like the zombies 🧟‍♂️ from the 28 Later franchise where they’re not actually dead, they’re still “alive” but just infected with virus 🦠; in fact, they never say if the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ is a virus 🦠 or not, though given that the Alpha was being transported out of Area 51, they might be implying an extraterrestrial origin for the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️; something that I have no doubt would’ve explained in more detail in Lost Vegas had it actually gotten made. Not only that, but very few of them are satisfied with their station in life after serving their country and helping the military fight the zombies 🧟‍♂️. 

So, they all agree to take this risk and accept Tanaka’s offer to retrieve the money 💵 inside the vault underneath his abandoned casino 🎰 since they’ve got very little to actually lose and Tanaka’s offering to let them keep some of the money 💵 or not, and the amount inside the vault is $200 million 💵, so you know they would agree 🤑. Very few people could turn down $200 million 💵, especially if they’re people who weren’t already insanely rich 🤑 and they knew that they were going to get a cut of it. Especially if that cut was $50 million 💵, which is what it is in the film. Tanaka offers to give them $50 million 💵 out of the $200 million 💵 to divvy amongst themselves. The city is about to be destroyed by the military with a nuclear missile ☢️ to eradicate the zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ inside Las Vegas to prevent it from spreading further, so they only have a limited time to get that money 💵 out. In fact, the fact that the government is going to destroy Las Vegas is the main motive for why Tanaka wants to get the money 💵 out…or apparently wants to get the money 💵 out. 

But, when they actually get inside the quarantine zone and make it to the underground vault underneath the casino 🎰, it quickly becomes apparent that this assignment had a secret agenda to it, especially since Tanaka had his mercenary bodyguard, Martin tag along despite none of the group actually trusting him. And their suspicions were proven correct since Martin not only chops the head off of the zombie queen 🧟‍♀️ (who was a woman ♀︎ who bitten by the Alpha at some point during the outbreak and became an Alpha herself, and goes by the name, Athena, keeping with the Greek mythology theme) and keeps it, and then betrays everyone and leaves them all to die inside Las Vegas while he escapes with head. Or at least, that was his plan. His plan gotten ruined when a zombie tiger 🐅 showed up and ate him before he could escape with the head. 

Not only that, but the group’s guide, Lilly (known as “The Coyote”) switched the bag 💼 with the head with a different bag 💼 so that he wouldn’t succeed and he’d definitely get killed along with the rest of them. Taking him down with them. It turns out, Tanaka didn’t actually care about the money 💵 at all, and that he was actually working with the government the whole time (or at least, the military, the government and the military may not be on the same page about this), and whole heist mission was just a ruse to chop off the head of one the Alphas, ideally Athena or Zeus, and then sneak it out of Las Vegas before the bomb ☢️ hits and destroys the city for good, and bring back to the military for scientific research, in hopes of one day creating a zombie army 🧟‍♂️. But, the mission ultimately fails with almost everyone dying and no body getting what they want. 

The military doesn’t get the Alpha head 🧟‍♂️ they wanted to reverse engineer and create a zombie army 🧟‍♂️ out of it, the main group led by Scott Ward and his girlfriend Maria Cruz (or at least, I think she’s his girlfriend, it didn’t seem like they were engaged or married) doesn’t get the money 💵 to improve their lives after losing everything despite their services to the military in their efforts to stave off the zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ in Las Vegas. Scott’s daughter, Kate not only fails in rescuing the Latina woman ♀︎ she went in there to rescue (the whole reason she forced her dad to bring her along), but she also lost her father who got bitten by Zeus, and turned into an Alpha zombie 🧟‍♂️ and she was forced to shoot in the head (this movie does follow the rule that zombies 🧟‍♂️ can only be killed by shooting them in the head). And even though Vanderohe was the lone survivor of this whole ordeal (besides Kate) and made it out, he still got bitten and is going to turn into a zombie 🧟‍♂️ and is the one that truly triggers the zombie apocalypse 🧟‍♂️ by using the money 💵 he managed to salvage to buy a private plane 🛩️ and go to Mexico 🇲🇽. By the time he discovered that zombie bite on his arm, it was already too late. 

But at least, Scott Ward and his friend managed to go out guns blazing in the heat of battle, fighting zombies 🧟‍♂️ or just barely escaping the nuclear explosion ☢️ in the nick of time, instead of living a sad and miserable existence and then dying after living that sad and miserable existence. That’s really they wanted, they didn’t want the money 💵 (though the money 💵 certainly helped), they wanted to go out with a bang, die in a blaze of glory 🔥, just like their other friends did when they were fighting against the zombies 🧟‍♂️ before the city was sealed off. They are warriors at heart, and warriors would always rather die fighting than die sitting around or lying around in a comfortable, if a bit sad and depressing existence. The parts about the plot people complain about have mainly to do with the twist and the ending, how everything is wrapped up by the end. People say that it doesn’t make sense that Tanaka would lie to these people to get the money 💵 out when his real objective was to retrieve the head of an Alpha, and that it was all pointless anyway since everyone fails and everyone dies, except Kate, who most people blame for why everyone died. They also think that the president’s reasoning for moving the time of the bombing to 90 minutes instead of 32 hours was stupid. Speaking of Kate, people also say that the characters in the movie make really dumb decisions that get themselves and everyone else around them killed, with most of the anger and vitriol being directed at Kate. 

The plot surrounding the money 💵 and the head really isn’t as much of a plot hole as people make it out to be. It’s really simply actually. Tanaka probably did genuinely want to get the money 💵 out when he learned that the military was going to blow up the city with a nuke ☢️, and did try to put a mission and team together to retrieve it before it was too late, but when the military caught wind of it (either thanks to the DIA or CIA spying on him and tapping his phone and bugging his houses), they saw an opportunity to retrieve the head of one of the Alpha zombies 🧟‍♂️ and salvage something from this whole debacle of the one Alpha zombie 🧟‍♂️ escaping from its containment unit due to a freak car accident and triggering a zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ in Las Vegas, Nevada, and becoming the zombie king 🧟‍♂️ known as Zeus (after the Greek god of course), and them being forced to nuke it ☢️ to prevent the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ from spreading. It is clear that the Alpha who would come to be known as Zeus was being taken out of Area 51 and relocated somewhere for further scientific research and experimentation by the military. So by retrieving this head, they’d be able to continue their research from where they left off, before every known specimen is destroyed. 

So, Tanaka agreed to help the military do this, and thus gave the mission two objectives: retrieve the money 💵 and retrieve an Alpha zombie 🧟‍♂️’s head, all before the military themselves nuke the city ☢️ in the space of what they thought was 32 hours, but ends up being a lot sooner simply due to the president’s whims. He would recruit Scott Ward and his old team, lying to them by omission by only telling them about the money 💵 and not about the secret plot to get an Alpha head and sneak out of the quarantine zone to bring it back to the military, while he sends his mercenary associate, Martin to get the head. Martin betraying them and attempting to leave them for dead was not part of the plan, that was just some asshole thing he decided to do because he got what he wanted, he got what he was there to get, and he didn’t really like Scott Ward or any of his team, especially since they didn’t trust him and were treating him like shit the entire time. Also to potentially prevent them from talking and spill the beans about the military’s secret plan to weaponize the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ and create a zombie army 🧟‍♂️ out of it. 

Tanaka didn’t tell Scott Ward or his team about this part of the plan because he knew they wouldn’t agree to it if they knew that was the real objective, or it was one of two main real objectives. Do you really think Scott Ward and his team of veteran zombie killers 🧟‍♂️ would agree to be complicit in a military plot to weaponize the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ and create a zombie army 🧟‍♂️? No. They would only agree if they thought it was just about the money 💵. And Tanaka wanted people who were the best, but also people who had nothing to lose and were disposable enough to where nothing would be truly lost if they were gone, and Scott and his team fit that bill. They’re good, they’re good at killing zombies 🧟‍♂️, they’re good at cracking safes in the case of Dieter, but they’re also incredibly down on their luck and expendable, and no one would actually miss them if they were to die on this mission. 

As for the ending, where everyone dies and ultimately fails at what they ultimately went there to do, I really don’t have a problem with it. People who make that complaint act like this is the first time that a movie ended with the majority of its protagonists dying by the end or failing what they tried to do for the majority of the runtime, and it’s not by any means, the most frustrating or unsatisfactory example of that sort of thing happening. Some of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time end with the main character dying by the end, or straight failing to achieve their goal or goals. The way I see it, I see it as the characters gambling. The movie takes place in Las Vegas, it centers around a casino 🎰, and people trying retrieve money 💵 from a seemingly uncrackable safe, of course there’s going to be gambling involved. Although, since Las Vegas has been quarantined and overrun by zombies 🧟‍♂️ is about to be destroyed, and the casino 🎰 in question is abandoned, they’re instead gambling with their lives rather than with their money 💵. I think that’s what Snyder was going for with this film, he wanted it to be about people gambling with lives and losing. They gambled all and lost. But, it doesn’t matter to them because they got to die a more honorable and glorious death, a warrior’s death, rather than wasting away in a shitty job they don’t like, getting drunk 🥴 in bars, or being alone and miserable all the time. The film could be viewed as a cautionary tale to not do that if zombies 🧟‍♂️ existed, or even they didn’t exist (which they don’t). No amount of money 💵 is worth your life. 

As for Kate, yeah, she did make some stupid decisions throughout this movie, and does have some blood on her hands 🩸, but I don’t think she is the sole one to blame in that. She is the one thing that I’ve shifted my opinion about and will have to disagree with myself in that other I mentioned earlier that I’m including in this post as an update. She wouldn’t have wanted to go to Las Vegas in the first place if that stupid woman ♀︎ didn’t decide to abandon her kids at the refugee camp to go and gamble inside the casino 🎰. She was just going in there to rescue that woman ♀︎ so that her kids wouldn’t you know, lose a mother. Although with a mother like that, those kids probably would be better off with someone else, in Child Protective Services (CPS), and given to foster parents or some relative who could actually take care of them and aren’t neglectful and won’t abandon them for stupid reasons. But sure, save their gambling addict mother who’s stupid enough to go into a quarantined city full of zombies 🧟‍♂️. 

Kate was just doing what she thought was right, you may not agree with her, you maybe think she was foolish for even coming along, but it is what she thought was right. Even she does ultimately fail in her own mission to save this woman ♀︎ since the woman ♀︎ dies in the helicopter crash after the bomb hits Las Vegas, meaning those kids in the refugee camp are now left without a mother and will probably be put under CPS and be placed in the foster care system. So, great job 👍, mom of the year for that lady ♀︎. I know most people blame Kate for that, but that dumb lady ♀︎ is the real one at fault in my eyes. That is of course assuming that those kids and the other people at the refugee camp were evacuated before the bomb was dropped, which considering that time of the bombing was moved up and how callous the US government 🇺🇸 is portrayed in this movie, they probably weren’t. They probably all died in the blast, which is pretty dark to think about. But, this is Zack Snyder after all, the king of dark cinema. 

There are other characters in this that make way stupider decisions and for way less justifiable reasons than Kate does. Normally, I don’t like it when a movie’s entire plot hinges on the characters being complete dumbasses and making the stupidest decisions imaginable (it’s a huge reason why I don’t like Prometheus), I don’t find it as frustrating here as I do in other movies because the characters in this know that they’re doing something risky and stupid, and that anything bad that happens to them is on them. No one else to blame but themselves. They’ve accepted that, and most of them end up dying as a result. And there are enough smart decisions to balance out the dumb ones, at least to me anyway. At least, the actress playing Kate in this movie, Ella Purnell didn’t get endless amounts of hate from misogynists online simply for this role, and she got to be in a project that was more well received than this one, the Fallout series on Amazon Prime. Though most people watched that show for Walter Goggins. As for the reason why the president decided to move up the time of the bombing to coincide with the Fourth of July 🇺🇸, it’s clear that it’s supposed to be a dig at Donald Trump.  

Zack Snyder clearly doesn’t like Trump. I mean, he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election 🗳️ and was very public about it on social media. So, he’s clearly either a Democrat or an Independent, and doesn’t support the Republicans, especially not Trump. Even some Republicans don’t like Trump, they’re called “Never Trumpers,” but there are some Republicans who were once supporters of his, even hardcore MAGA 🇺🇸 even, that saw the error of their ways and turned against him for one reason or another. There are a lot more of those now because of the whole Epstein scandal that has engulfed Trump’s whole presidency in the last few weeks and he can’t seem to shake it off or move on from it. It follows him where he goes, even Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿. But, even though Trump was obviously not the president when this movie came out, he probably was when Snyder wrote this movie. He probably wrote it in 2018 or 2019, maybe even 2020, during the final years of Trump’s first term (which should’ve been his only term if you ask me), and thought he’d throw a dig at him in this movie since we know that it’s possible for a complete idiot devoid of any moral values to become president in this country of ours. 

It’s especially relevant now that Trump is president again, and his second term is way more unhinged than his first term, and he’s actively trying to turn the United States 🇺🇸 into a dictatorship. Trying, but so far failing, only partially succeeding, which is good because I don’t want the US 🇺🇸 to become a dictatorship, I don’t want it to become the next Russia 🇷🇺. And moving the date of a nuclear bombing ☢️ of a quarantined city full of zombies 🧟‍♂️ to coincide with the Fourth of July 🇺🇸 because it would be “very patriotic” is definitely something Trump would do, especially current day Trump and his dementia addled brain 🧠. It isn’t that implausible to think that the US 🇺🇸 would have an idiot president who makes stupid decisions for stupid reasons, in fact, it’s probably the most plausible thing about the movie. The most Honest Trailers could say about it (the most their team of writers could come up with) was that the president was straight of Idiocracy or that this movie apparently takes place in the Idiocracy universe, and they’re some of the biggest Snyder haters out the Internet 🛜. 

Well, people say that America 🇺🇸 is like Idiocracy right now, that we’ve become like the world in Idiocracy (which mostly just focused on America 🇺🇸, showing us a possible future for this country), so…it fits I guess 🤷‍♂️. Though, as some pointed out, the president in Idiocracy, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (yes, that is his actual name) was smart enough to hire a smart person to be the Secretary of the Interior, someone who he thought he was the smartest person in the world, Joe Bauers; who is really just average intelligence, but in the world of Idiocracy where everyone’s an idiot, he’s the smartest man ♂︎ in the world. So, it’s not exactly like that. I’m guessing that since there was going to be a sequel and an animated series, Snyder was sort of setting up a power struggle between the military and the government, the Pentagon and the White House. 

Like, the top brash at the Pentagon didn’t exactly like the current president and how he was running things, seeing him as an idiot and incompetent, and were planning to overthrow him in a coup, and this whole plan to smuggle an Alpha head out of Las Vegas before it’s destroyed and use it to create a zombie army 🧟‍♂️ was part of that. But, that attempt failed, so the military didn’t get what they want, meaning the coup might be off (for now at least), and in a twist of fate, the president, the dumb idiot president, is the only one who gets what he wants and gets to have the last laugh 😂; laughing and clapping 😂👏 that he got to have his firework show 🎆 in what used to be Las Vegas. But, now that there’s a zombie outbreak in Mexico City, the Pentagon may have the chance to enact their sinister plan.

Although they still probably won’t have access to an Alpha, since Vanderohe presumably wasn’t bitten by an Alpha but by a regular zombie 🧟‍♂️ and all the remaining Alpha zombies 🧟‍♂️ died in the explosion 💥 at Las Vegas. Scott also became an Alpha because he was bitten by Zeus while fighting him in the helicopter, and he was killed by Kate, so the last remaining Alpha was killed by Kate by a gunshot to the head. The way the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ works, as Zack Snyder explained it in a featurette available online, is that if you’re bitten by Zeus, you become an Alpha, but if you’re bitten an Alpha, then you just become a regular zombie 🧟‍♂️, which are called Shamblers. With Zeus dead, there’s no new Alphas can be created. Though, I’m sure with access to a tissue sample or a DNA sample 🧬, they could possibly reverse engineer the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ and figure what determines what makes an Alpha zombie 🧟‍♂️ and what doesn’t. 

Alright, I think I’ve talked enough about the plot and why I disagree with the core criticisms levied towards it, now it’s time for me to tackle the cinematography of the film. The cinematography was one of the aspects of the film was greatly criticized upon its release, with most critics saying that it was often too blurry and out of focus. And of course, there was the usual criticism towards Zack Snyder’s use of slow motion, which is par for the course for any Zack Snyder movie, except for Dawn of the Dead 🧟‍♂️ (2004), 300, and Man of Steel, which had no slow motion in it whatsoever. Dawn of the Dead 🧟‍♂️ (2004) and Man of Steel are two movies in Snyder’s career so far that have no slow motion whatsoever. And 300 was the movie that really put Snyder on the map, and established slow motion (and speed ramping) as his trademark, something that he’d have to include in almost all of his movies from then on out; again, except for Man of Steel, which had no slow motion. 

So, no one had a reason to complain about it, in fact, people liked it, people liked his slow motion techniques in 300, in fact some people still consider 300 to be his best movie, including Cody from PointlessHub. I’m not one of those people, I like most of Snyder’s movies, not just 300, in fact I haven’t even seen 300, but they exist. Critics always attack Snyder’s use of slow motion whenever, saying that it’s overkill and too self indulgent. Even though, this movie really doesn’t have as much slow motion as some of his other movies, like Watchmen (2009), Batman v Superman, Justice League (2021), and Rebel Moon, they all use slow motion way more than this movie does. This was the first movie that Zack Snyder had done where he did the cinematography himself, rather than hire his usual DP (director of photography), Larry Fong or any of the other cinematographers he’s worked with like Amir Mokri or Fabian Wagner. 

He purposefully gave the movie a unique look by using some of those out of focus or “blurry” shots, and I’m guessing he did to isolate the characters a bit in certain instances, or highlight their isolation and also play up the horror by having things out of focus come into focus like when we see Athena for the first time, or really anything involving the zombies 🧟‍♂️ that has this blurry out of focus technique. This is an action-horror movie after all, not just an action movie. Snyder would also use this same technique when he filmed that extra scene involving the Joker in the Knightmare world in Justice League (2021), which he apparently filmed in his backyard. That’s honestly impressive, I couldn’t even tell that was filmed in somebody’s backyard. I had no problems with the cinematography in this movie, I never thought the blurry or out of focus moments were overdone, or that it was hard to see. But, if you didn’t like it, that’s fine, I can see why this style or technique wouldn’t appeal to people, the people who didn’t made that very clear. Just don’t be an asshole about it like a lot of the people who complain about this do on the Internet 🛜. 

Everything else, I like about this movie, I have no complaints. I like Dave Bautista in this, I think he’s a really good lead in this as Scott Ward, the main character and protagonist who’s unsatisfied with his lot in life after losing his wife during the zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ in Las Vegas, being stuck being a fry cook at burger joint 🍔, and willingly goes back into zombie killing combat 🧟‍♂️ when given the chance. You sympathize with Scott Ward in this, and you would probably do the same thing if you were in his position. If you were this war hero who helped defend a city against a horde of zombies 🧟‍♂️, you lose your wife during the outbreak, she gets infected and becomes a zombie 🧟‍♀️ and you’re forced to kill her, you’re granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom 🏅 for your efforts, and then in return for your heroism, you end up living in a shitty house (I believe it’s a trailer but I don’t exactly remember) and in a dead end job. 

And then this casino owner 🎰 shows up, and asks you to do a job for him, to lend your combat skills to retrieve $200 million 💵 from an underground safe underneath his abandoned casino 🎰 before Las Vegas is destroyed, and he tells you that if you succeed, he’ll give you a cut of that $200 million 💵. You’d probably say “yes” too, if you know in the back of your head that it’s wrong and it’s a terrible idea, but that’s the gamble you’re taking. And we see that Scott Ward does ultimately pay the ultimate price with his life since he gets bitten by Zeus, and turns into an Alpha, and his own daughter has to shoot him. But, he knew the score and at least he managed to get his daughter out safe and alive. She’s the only other survivor in the movie besides Vanderohe, but even he only “survives” in air quotes because he got bit and he’s going to turn a zombie 🧟‍♂️ and trigger the zombie apocalypse 🧟‍♂️. 

It makes you wish that Dave Bautista did more action movies, that he did more action roles like this. I mean, I get it, he didn’t want to be pigeonholed into just doing action movies and blockbusters, and wanted to be a wider variety movies and play a wider variety of different roles than just an action guy ♂︎; he didn’t want to be the next Dwayne Johnson. But, he’s so good at it, I actually he’s better at it than Dwayne Johnson is. Because unlike in Dwayne Johnson’s other action movies or blockbusters, Dave Bautista is still able to play a unique character and doesn’t just feel like he’s always just playing himself like Dwayne does. I thought Bautista was great in The Killer’s Game, I reviewed that movie, even though it didn’t do well at the box office and got terrible reviews from critics. 

At least Zack Snyder had enough integrity to remove Chris D’Elia from the movie and replace him with Tig Notaro after he was credibly accused of rape and sexual assault. Sure, it cost more, it added money 💵 to the already pretty big budget (the budget for the movie was around $70 million-$90 million 💵), but it was the right thing to do, and they managed integrate Tig Notaro into the film pretty well. They did a pretty good job adding her in, and you can’t even tell that she was added in later in post, that they digitally composited her into the shots that Chris D’Elia was in originally, it’s pretty seamless. And honestly, I think putting the sexual allegations, I think replacing Chris D’Elia with Tig Notaro was an improvement. She’s way more likable than Chris D’Elia is, and she fits this particular crew (Scott Ward’s team) better than Chris D’Elia would have. Not only is Chris D’Elia an asshole, even without the sexual assault and rape allegations, but he just sticks out like a sore thumb and he wouldn’t have fit the tone of this movie at all and would’ve ruined the flow of Scott Ward’s whole team. 

And give this movie credit, at least, they actually call them “zombies 🧟‍♂️” instead of calling them “Walkers” or “Deaders,” or “Dusters,” “Shufflers,” or even just “The Infected.” At least, it didn’t stoop to that low that some zombie movies 🧟‍♂️ or zombie TV shows 🧟‍♂️ do where they refuse to call them zombies 🧟‍♂️, even though everyone watching already knows what a zombie 🧟‍♂️ is and doesn’t want to be treated like an idiot. Yeah, the different zombie types 🧟‍♂️ have different names, like Alphas and Shamblers, but the zombies 🧟‍♂️ as a whole are called “zombies 🧟‍♂️,” and not some other name; acting as if like this is some weird world where zombies 🧟‍♂️ didn’t already exist in pop culture and in folklore, and people didn’t have a frame of reference for them, and thus didn’t have that name to call them if they saw zombies 🧟‍♂️ for real. And they kept a lot of the zombie lore or rules 🧟‍♂️ that we’re all familiar with, like the whole “aim for the head” thing, while adding in all of those different zombie types 🧟‍♂️. 

The use of the song “Zombie” by the Cranberries at the end was excellent. It’s so obvious, but it works. Although they didn’t use the original version of the song, they used the updated acoustic version of the song that the Cranberries recorded in 2017, a year before lead singer and guitarist, Dolores O’Riordan tragically died due to drowning in a bathtub 🛁 in her hotel room while intoxicated (meaning she was drunk on alcohol 🥴🍺) 😔. I just can’t bring myself to hate a movie that was filmed in New Mexico, and was filmed in my hometown of Albuquerque, where I grew up for most of my childhood. Movies and TV shows always get points for filming in New Mexico and in Albuquerque specifically, even more extra points if you actually have the movie or TV show take place there and not just be a stand-in for a different location. If you’re someone who didn’t watch this movie when it came out because you heard all the bad reviews it got, I would say, give it a chance, it’s way better than its reputation would suggest. 

There is one more thing, a couple more things really, that I wanted to mention here before I close this out, since I do like to use these forewords to talk about current events. I’ve already mentioned it earlier when I mentioned Trump and the Epstein stuff, but I’m going to dedicate a whole section to it. I wanted to talk about the recent border war between Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Thailand 🇹🇭 that started last week, on Thursday July 24, 2025, but it seems like the war is over, maybe 🤷‍♂️? Both sides agreed to a ceasefire yesterday, on Monday July 28, 2025, and it was supposed to go into effect today, on Tuesday July 29, 2025, but apparently Cambodia 🇰🇭 violated the ceasefire, or at least Thailand 🇹🇭 accused Cambodia 🇰🇭 of violating it, and then the Royal Thai Army (RTA) 🇹🇭 posted some videos and images of some Cambodian POWs 🇰🇭 they captured, and showed them giving them water 💦 and food, to show that they were abiding by the Geneva Convention and were treating their prisoners humanely. So, the war is still ongoing, maybe, I don’t know. This whole situation is so confusing to me. 

Apparently, this all started because of some territorial disputes between the two countries that date back to the French colonial period 🇫🇷, when France 🇫🇷 controlled Cambodia 🇰🇭, Laos 🇱🇦, and Vietnam 🇻🇳 as part of one colony called French Indochina 🇫🇷, and they both tried to occupy these two temples that they both claim ownership of called Prasat Ta Krabey and Prasat Ta Muen Thom, and one thing led to another and a border skirmish took place that escalated into a full-on war that has so far gone on for four days now. Cambodia 🇰🇭 was shelling the Thai side of the border 🇹🇭 and Thailand 🇹🇭 conducted airstrikes on the Cambodian side of the border 🇰🇭. While every country in Southeast Asia and outside of it tried everything they could to broke a ceasefire and stop the fighting before it gets worse,  before it becomes a full-scale war, and spills over into other countries, which it already has. It has spilled over into Laos 🇱🇦. But yeah, Thailand 🇹🇭 and Cambodia 🇰🇭 going to war in the month of July 2025 was definitely not on my bingo card. I don’t think anyone saw this coming unless, they actually lived in either of those two countries, or lived in the region, or knew the history of those two countries and knew the history of the region, which evidently most people do not; including me, I am no better or different when it comes to the ignorance surrounding the conflict between Thailand 🇹🇭 and Cambodia 🇰🇭. 

Both countries blame each other for starting the war, but it seems to be the commonly accepted fact that Cambodia 🇰🇭 was the one that instigated it, and is thus, baring most of the responsibility for starting this war. It helps that Cambodia 🇰🇭 was losing the war, due to them being a poorer country than Thailand 🇹🇭 and having a much weaker military compared to it. So, most countries sympathize with Thailand 🇹🇭 and are taking Thailand 🇹🇭’s side, and Thailand 🇹🇭 is in the more favorable position. But like I said, even though a ceasefire has been broken, and both sides agreed to it, the war is not technically over. It is still ongoing, and no one can really say when it’s going to end, since Thailand 🇹🇭 is accusing Cambodia 🇰🇭 of violating the ceasefire. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say. 

I don’t live in either Thailand 🇹🇭 or Cambodia 🇰🇭, in fact, I don’t live in Southeast Asia at all. I live in America 🇺🇸, in the Pueblo of Acoma (the reservation, not the actual village on top), I’m as far removed from this conflict geographically speaking as you can get. I’m just reading all this off of the Wikipedia page, which I know a lot of people don’t like Wikipedia, but I like it and I think it’s a mostly reliable source. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly a lot better than its detractors make it out to be. When this war actually ends will be up to the Thai 🇹🇭 and the Cambodians 🇰🇭. It won’t be up to any outside party, no much they try to influence the two belligerents and try to convince them to stop. It certainly won’t be up to Trump, he’s much of a non-factor in this conflict, in this part of the world as you can, and his words don’t mean shit, and any ceasefire agreement he has a hand in brokering or drafting won’t be worth the paper 📄 it’s printed on. Neither will any ceasefire agreement broken by the Chinese 🇨🇳 and the Russians 🇷🇺, Putin and Xi’s words are worth equally as much as Trump’s, which is to say, not very much at all. 

But, the fact that this war even happened shows just how weak ASEAN is. They’re not as strong or as cohesive as the EU 🇪🇺, even though ASEAN is pretty much supposed to be the Southeast Asian equivalent to the EU 🇪🇺. I mean, the Myanmar civil war 🇲🇲 already showed that since Myanmar 🇲🇲 is a member state of ASEAN, and yet ASEAN was unable to prevent a civil war from breaking out inside of Myanmar 🇲🇲. If this were the EU 🇪🇺, none of this would have happened. Myanmar 🇲🇲 would’ve never had a civil war, in fact it wouldn’t have even had a coup, and Thailand 🇹🇭 and Cambodia 🇰🇭 would’ve never had a border conflict. The EU 🇪🇺 is good at preventing internal conflict inside of its member states as well as preventing interstate conflict between each of its member states. 

In fact, in order for countries to become EU members 🇪🇺 they have to have strong anti-corruption measures in place, they have to eliminate all corruption within their government institutions before they’re allowed to join. If they can’t get rid of corruption or they refuse to, then they can’t be EU members 🇪🇺. Now, this system is not perfect, some corruption has slipped through the cracks, in fact, the EU 🇪🇺 straight up has a corrupt dictatorship within its borders, Hungary 🇭🇺, which currently being led by the thoroughly corrupt, authoritarian, and pro-Putin autocrat, Viktor Orbán, who Trump is also trying to emulate. But, it is better what ASEAN has. ASEAN has no anti-corruption laws in place, no anti-corruption requirements in place, no real stipulations or barriers to entry of any kind, any country join ASEAN so long as they’re in Southeast Asia. It doesn’t matter if they’re corrupt or authoritarian, they’re allowed to come in. And the member states are not unified in such a way, the leadership and structure of ASEAN is not set up in a way that it can prevent conflict between its member states or within its member states, and also settle and resolve territorial disputes. 

There still exists territorial disputes between each of the member states, and each one of these territorial disputes can spark conflict, and one already has: Thailand 🇹🇭 and Cambodia 🇰🇭. And as a result, they’re a lot more brittle and less cohesive than the EU 🇪🇺. They’re about as cohesive as the Arab League, which is supposed to be an alliance or a regional organization for the Arab nations, both in North Africa and the Middle East. And yet is barely being held together by a thread and is really a symbolic gesture, since all of the members of the Arab states have gone to war with each other at one point or another, and they’re all either corrupt as hell or are authoritarian. Tunisia 🇹🇳 and Iraq 🇮🇶 are the only true democracies within the Arab League, with Iraq 🇮🇶 being a much less perfect democracy than Tunisia 🇹🇳. Tunisia 🇹🇳 is the country where the Arab Spring started and is the only country that came out of it with its head on top; it actually came out better than it was before. 

If they aren’t careful, ASEAN could easily fall apart completely, and this attempt to bring Southeast Asia together in peace and prosperity, to promote cooperation between the countries of Southeast Asia will have failed. What will they do then? But, it’s crazy to think that yet another war has started somewhere out there in the world. The war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 is still going on, the war in Gaza 🇵🇸 is still going on, the civil war in Sudan 🇸🇩 is still going on, the civil war in Syria 🇸🇾 is still going on, the civil war in Yemen 🇾🇪 is still going on (though that one has simmered down significantly, more than the Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾 certainly), and the civil war in Myanmar 🇲🇲 is still going on. India 🇮🇳 and Pakistan 🇵🇰 had a short war against each other a few months ago, a violent border conflict similar to the one going on now with Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Thailand 🇹🇭, and Israel 🇮🇱 and Iran 🇮🇷 had a short war going on between each other which the US 🇺🇸 briefly got involved in to underwhelming and inconsequential results. 

Then of course, Israel 🇮🇱 invaded Lebanon 🇱🇧 to wipe out Hezbollah, and weaken their capabilities, while  the war in Gaza 🇵🇸 was still going on. Then are countless of other conflicts around the world, particularly in Africa, as well as lower level one in Colombia 🇨🇴, which is the same civil war that has been going on there for decades, dating back to 1964, called the Colombian conflict 🇨🇴. There’s war going on all over the world right now, and it feels like the world is falling apart and everything is on fire 🔥. It feels like it’s only a matter of time until we have World War III and we have a nuclear exchange ☢️. Be glad that you live in a country that’s at peace and isn’t currently at war; with another country or with itself. 

Oh, and one more thing, my second Ruby Gloom post, the one about the alternate theme song is now in the top three most popular posts chart. It currently sits at 219 views. I won’t be surprised if it ends up overtaking my Fifth Element review and becomes the #2 most popular post on my blog below my actual review of Ruby Gloom which is in the #1 spot at 362 views. More than the last time I gave an update about these posts. I am glad that my Ruby Gloom posts are gaining traction, but I don’t want them to the one posts that people see. I want people to see the other posts that I’ve written for this blog because I am proud of my work on all of them, especially since I put a lot of effort into them. 

The only ones I’m not that proud of are my reviews of Godzilla (1998) and Transformers: The Last Knight. If it were up to me, I’d probably rewrite those reviews, or at least the forewords to them, especially the Last Knight review. I feel bad about reviewing that movie without even watching it for myself and basing most of what I had to say about it on Cody’s review of it on his PointlessHub channel on YouTube. But, the foreword to my Godzilla (1998) review was really short, and I feel like I could’ve added a lot more to it, something that I didn’t say or didn’t get to talk about because I didn’t think to talk about it. That was before I wrote really long-winded forewords for all of my reposts, or first-time posts that I wrote a long time ago before I even started this blog. 

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(This is the poster for Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰.)

 

 

Well, I just watched Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 on Netflix, and I thought it was pretty good. I'm not much of a zombie fan 🧟‍♂️, I don't watch a lot of zombie flicks 🧟‍♂️ or TV shows (I've never watched The Walking Dead for instance), but I watched this because it was directed by Zack Snyder. And after watching The Snyder Cut of Justice League, I'm willing to give anything Zack Snyder makes a shot, or almost anything at least. And I was very pleased by what I saw, this movie did something new and interesting with the tired and overdone zombie genre 🧟‍♂️, a heist movie with a whole bunch of colorful characters.

I also liked some of the stuff Snyder did with the lore of the world, especially regarding the smart zombies 🧟‍♂️ and the tribal system that they have, that was pretty unique and something I haven't seen before. Sure, Resident Evil has had the Ganados, the Majini, and the J'avo, but those weren't zombies 🧟‍♂️, they different creatures entirely, and to me they don't really count; despite many people still calling those enemies zombies 🧟‍♂️ anyway even though, they clearly state in the games and in the promotional material that they aren't.

Speaking of Resident Evil though, this movie did remind me of Resident Evil in parts with the zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ being confined to a single city, and the US government 🇺🇸 nuking it ☢️ to stop the spread of the virus 🦠, as well as the existence of zombie animals (zombie tigers and zombie horses); though it important to point out that the device the government used to blow up Raccoon City in the Resident Evil universe was not a nuclear bomb ☢️, it was a non-nuclear device of some kind (because they didn't want to worry about radioactive fallout ☢️), but same basic concept. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more of this world that Snyder created, and I do think that Snyder intends to expand upon it in some way, that's something I've heard. I'm not sure if you could do a sequel given the way the movie ends because the way it ends, the sequel would just be the zombie apocalypse 🧟‍♂️. And we've seen zombie apocalypses 🧟‍♂️ numerous times, it's pretty tired and boring.

That's probably the very thing that Snyder was trying to avoid with this movie which is probably why he had it be a heist, and why he had the outbreak contained to one city. So, I think if he is going to turn this into a franchise, I think the best route would be to make a prequel. It doesn't even have to be a movie, it could be a comic book, or a series on Netflix (which is why putting the movie on Netflix was a good idea), just have it chronicle the events of the "Zombie Wars 🧟‍♂️." The wars that most of the main characters of the film fought in to wipe out the zombies 🧟‍♂️ in Las Vegas, and prevent the virus 🦠 (or pathogen, whatever it is) that causes the zombie infection 🧟‍♂️ from spreading to the outside world. I think that would be really cool to see, but we'll have to see what Snyder does with it if he even continues it at all. But, I do think it's more likely that he'll pursue an Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 franchise than it is that the DC Snyderverse will be restored or continue. He has shown a desire to want to create original stuff with no restraints, and not stuff that's a part of a pre-existing franchise or based on pre-existing material because that comes with strings attached. And he doesn't want to have to put up with an overbearing studio breathing down his neck anymore, and Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 was really the first step in that direction.

So, yeah, I thought it was pretty good, and I recommend it even if you aren't a huge zombie fan because I sure as hell wasn't. Also, one of more thing, and this kind of a spoiler, the whole zombie outbreak 🧟‍♂️ in the film's universe, and by extension, the events of the film itself were all caused by a guy ♂︎ getting a blowjob while he was driving his car. You might say that's ridiculous, but a lot of the biggest historical events have been caused by relatively small, seemingly ridiculous or incidental things like that. So, it isn't too out of the realm of possibility that something like that would happen. But, you know, this is just is a crazy, over-the-top sci-fi zombie universe 🧟‍♂️, so it doesn't really matter that much anyway, just sit back and enjoy it.

 

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Update (Monday September 13, 2021): 
 

 🧟‍♂️🎰

For a while there, when the momentum for the Snyder Cut was building and building, it seemed like people were starting to like Zack Snyder and seriously reevaluate him and his work. Even when the Snyder Cut was finally released this year, in 2021, people were not only liking the movie itself, but they were liking Zack Snyder as a whole. But then, Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰 comes out, and all of a sudden, people are back to hating Zack Snyder again, saying he's the worst director in Hollywood, or all of his movies suck. They're even throwing him in the same category as directors like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich or Uwe Boll or Paul W.S. Anderson. All it took was one movie to make people love him, and all it took was movie immediately afterwards to make people hate him. It didn't that you had YouTube channels like ScreenJunkies and Screen Rant that already disliked Snyder and his work, seize the opportunity and reshape public opinion to suit them with their shows, "Honest Trailers" and "Pitch Meetings."

I personally liked Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰, I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be. Does it have some plot holes, or gaps in logic, perhaps, but none of those bothered me. I didn't even notice or realize that were plot holes in the movie until all these wannabe critics pointed them out. I was pretty caught up in the story, in adventure, and I liked what I was seeing. The only thing I didn't really like that I agree with other people on is Dave Bautista's daughter in the movie. She was pretty annoying, she got basically everyone killed with her stupid and pointless little rescue mission (it's pointless because the woman ♀︎ she was trying to save dies anyway at the end), and she didn't need to be there. That was the one thing that even before I saw all these bad reviews, and YouTube comments parroting the opinions from those bad reviews, I disliked about the movie. And the way people, these idiot YouTube commenters, attack people who praise or like the movie in anyway, even if they acknowledge the flaws, is really horrible.

I mean, you really aren't allowed to have a differing opinion if you're a movie reviewer on YouTube. You have to conform with what the masses agree on. If you don't, then they'll either call you stupid, or they'll call you a corporate shill. That's what film criticism and entertainment criticism in general has devolved into, calling people who don't confirm your biases shills, and going along with whatever dumb reactionary says. 😔😒 Maybe, that's why I left the game, in favor of other things. I now write reviews, instead of make review videos on YouTube. And they're even really true reviews, they're just opinion dumps where I give my thoughts on a movie or show I watched, unfiltered or untainted by outside forces (most of the time). They're not deep analysis or critique, and they're not blind hatred or blind praise. I say what I think of a movie, whether it's good, bad, or average, that's it. And I still like Zack Snyder, I'm willing to give most things he makes a chance. One movie is not going to make me hate him all of a sudden, after I built an appreciation from re-watching his DC films.