Trailers: Batman Begins & Land of the Dead
Published May 03, 2005
The website ComingSoon.net has become one of my favorite daily visits due to their selection of trailers that can be viewed without mucking around with Quicktime or Real Player or what have you. Today I took a peek at two upcoming films: Batman Begins and Land of the Dead.
Batman Begins looked good to me, and of course the cast is stellar (no sign of Gary Oldman in the trailer, unfortunately). Having not read the comic book, I cannot profess to be a Batman expert, but it seems to me that part of why this one looks promising from a general audience standpoint is in the villains they chose. Like it or not, people still have images of the TV series in their heads whenever Batman is discussed, and the particular campy way the villains were portrayed on the series seemed to carry over to all four of the films that came out between 1989 and 1997. With this new film and new villains, the ghosts of Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith and Otto Preminger have been laid to rest and been replaced by villains that most people have no pre-conceived notions of, which I argue is a very good thing.
As for Land of the Dead, I was stoked. I had seen all three original Romero films and enjoyed the recent resurgence of the genre with 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead. I was really, really excited about this one.
Was.
What changed? Well, I have four words for you: Zombies firing machine guns. Fast zombies I was able to accept, folks, but not this. Of course, the trailer could be misleading as trailers often are. That could be a good, living guy disguised as a zombie for the purpose of an ambush, but I'm fearing the worst. I may chalk this film down a notch on my "must see" list. Besides, the presence of Dennis Hopper simply doesn't inspire as much confidence as it used to.
- Trailers: Batman Begins & Land of the Dead
- Published: May 03, 2005
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Writer: Alonzo Mosley (FBI)
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Comments on this articleComments
By "these movies," apparently you mean zombie movies? Gee, thanks for the wisdom.
Alonzo - machine guns? Oh, man, now I've got to watch the trailer. Tell me it ain't so!
just watched the Land Of The Dead trailer. it looks more like a sequel to the 2004 Dawn... than Romero's original.
But here's hopeing.
And you gotta love that Hopper. "Zombies, man..."
The zombies probably are firing machine guns. In this film the zombies begin to think. I'm not sure how much sense it makes in the zombie mythology, but satirically it must serve some purpose.
And Romero's other films are not all the same. They all use zombies quite well to represent something different in each. I never saw Day of the Dead, though.
The main reason that Land of the Dead will stink more than rotting flesh is that Romero has come back to the genre supposedly to show everyone how the master does it but more likely to cash in on the recent fashions. My wish is that he's more inclined to cater some wit akin to Shaun of the Dead as opposed to the adrenaline-charged action of Dawn's remake (Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have cameos).
Wasn't a zombie firing a pistol in DAY OF THE DEAD...what's the difference?
Day of the Dead made absolutely clear that the zombies - as exemplified by Bub - were increasing in functional intelligence and organization while retaining their amorality and hunger for flesh. Zombies with machine-guns is just a logical outgrowth of that process.
dave
I have posts with links to both trailers:
Land of the Dead
and
Batman Begins
I read somewhere that the zombies in this film are in a state of evolution, an extension of what was seen in Day... and regardless of the confidence that Hopper brings, I have every confidence in George and the genre he brought to life.
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All of the movies sucked cause they are all the same. They are all about zombies and junk. I would rather watch my best friends wedding and maybe some barney cause I got it on dvd.Welt later........