Excerpt: There need be no ponderous moments of tenderness or human connection.
Zach Snyder’s Army of the Dead is fine: not great, not bad or insufferable, just fine. It’s what is referred to in India as a good “time-pass,” something you’re not emotionally invested in and that allows you to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday munching the second half of a delicious and buttery almond croissant you swore you’d save for Sunday’s breakfast coffee (the Pandemic Pounds are real, and calories are your enemy), gone as you brush the crumbs off the cot you lovingly refer to as your daybed.
I’ve picked up a pandemic habit of talking to myself and Army somehow exacerbated that because I found myself rolling my eyes so often and yelling, Duuuuude, no. The story is, you know, fine: zombies escape from a giant container truck and soon take over all of Las Vegas, infecting visitors and residents. Somehow the government manages to contain all of them inside the city and sets up a quarantine camp just outside. The plan is to eventually nuke Las Vegas and thus obliterate the threat from the face of the earth. The mayhem and killing rampage that helps control the situation takes place during an excellent opening credit sequence that’s truly worth watching.
The rest of Army doesn’t live up to the promise of that beginning, but it’s, yes, fine. There’s a mysterious, Japanese, and Very Rich and Powerful person, Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), who offers Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a former mercenary, 50 million of a 200 million dollar stash of money he left behind in his vault in the city. Ward brings together a crack team of various experts, including Ludgwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), a German safecracker. If you’ve seen even one heist movie, or heard of any, then you know there’s always the usual assortment of characters. Here we do have at least some interesting women, including Tig Notaro, who greenscreened her entire performance away from the principal actors when she replaced Chris D’Elia who was digitally removed from the finished film after allegations of sexual harassment.
Notaro probably had one of the toughest acting jobs (reportedly, she has still to even meet Bautista in the flesh), and she’s fine. Her reputation is built on her standup comedy routines and as I’ve written here, she’s actually a terrible comic, described as very funny by both straight people and lesbians who can’t admit that she’s not that good, because the Forces of Homophobia Will Swallow Us Whole if we don’t support every unfunny lesbian comic out there. She has apparently acquired a large fan following for her appearance so, well, good for her. Maybe this will finally free us of her bad comedy, I said out loud to no one in particular.
The band of mercenaries enters Las Vegas, surreptitiously, with a female coyote named Lily, a Frenchwoman with a sharp blonde bob. Decades of film watching have taught us never to ask questions about matters like mascara and hairstyles that remain un-mussed and perfect even while escaping through monster-infested swamplands. Lily informs the crew that Las Vegas has not been taken over by mere, mindless zombies but is ruled by a particular species that has evolved to human-like sentience, governed by an Alpha Queen (Athena Perample) and a King who models himself after a statue of Zeus (Richard Cetrone). The two appear deeply mired in each other, practically making out in front of a collection of lesser zombies who do little more than grunt and jump up and down in what we must assume is zombie…glee? A giant zombie jerk-off? It’s like watching a particularly putrid version of a high school prom. No, I’m not slut-shaming here: can you imagine the actual stench of rotting bodies in that room? And, Oh, great, I thought (and, again, said out loud). Even a zombie flick can’t dispense with the creaking conventions of heteromonogamy and monarchy.
But the Queen is more than just some haughty dame shuffling around in torn old rags, ruling through the force of sheer personality. Oh, no, this one is dressed in the full and glamorous regalia of the lead showgirl she must have been during her past … is it rude to zombies to call it “life?” Her outfit comes complete with a gorgeous red and black headpiece that resembles a crown, and our first glimpse of her involves a pair of boiled gooseberry eyes, some rather rotten teeth and then a forceful jump onto the ground from a height, executed beautifully and with what turn out to be two, allow me this, incredibly shapely legs (if pockmarked by the rot that besets her kind).
And that is when it hit me: Hey, wait, she has breasts. Really luscious ones. As Army progresses towards its inevitable end, we’re constantly shown these zombie breasts, apparently untouched by the degradation of the flesh that otherwise marks the undead.
Why, you might ask, do I pay so much attention to these breasts? Well, they’re there and they are somewhat unusual for a zombie. They’re part of the somewhat freakish elements that make up this movie that’s mostly just fine. Others include the King Zombie dude, who rides around on zombie horses. There’s Valentine, the zombie tiger that was once part of the Siegfrid and Roy act, we’re told, who acts adorably kitten-like when she stops at one point, plops herself on some broken column and proceeds to yawn as the creatures hunt for the humans all around her. It is best that we not think about what she may have done to her masters, after having endured years of public humiliation and of being confined to small spaces. King Zombie also walks around in a cape and is often seen riding a zombie horse, spear in hand, and shields his brains with a metal mask (remember, for the times you will need it, the first rule of zombie killing: aim for the head). Oh, great, delusions of masculinity AND he knows how to make a getaway on a horse. It’s all very Valkyrie combined with Walking Dead and Planet of the Apes. Which is fine, fine.
Do zombies have breasts? Do androids dream of electric sheep? Will they let the Black dude live? Why is the back of the Queen’s body untouched by rot? Who named her Queen anyway? Did they vote? These were the questions that would not have occurred to me during a more riveting movie. And yes, my thoughts drifted to another, better movie in the midst of this one. As it stands, Army of the Dead is enough to not feel boring, is visually striking, and fun enough. But it strains to be more than what it needs to be. Somewhere in the first third, Ward is compelled to have a heart to heart talk with his daughter about their drifting apart (she saw him kill her mother who had turned into a zombie, understandably the cause of rifts in any normal family). He does this just as he readies himself to rev up the generator that will light up the whole casino so they might go up to where the safe is. Fine, I thought, you’ve had your father-daughter moment, but there IS an apocalypse all around you, and actual zombies, so you could just shut up already? And then, to my deep annoyance, he launches into yet another heart-to-heart in the next third, this time with his partner among the mercenaries who, oh surprise, is also an ex and then they have to talk about why they are no longer a couple but that yes, this time, things could work out (the millions will no doubt make things easier). And again I found myself snipping, Seriously, now, are you going to do this with every single member of your team? MOVE ALREADY!
That’s the problem with Army: it wants to be more than a zombie flick when it really doesn’t have to be. The best zombie movies work because they take their central premise seriously: this is about the end of the world and humans getting eaten in really horrible ways and, yeah, sure, there’s a metaphor or something about capitalism and the death of the soul in all this but, really, mostly, listen: it’s about humans getting eaten.
There’s no shame in this and unless you’re the kind of New York Times critic who gets huffy about the laws of gravity underwater in Aquaman—a film also about an impossibly beautiful man riding seahorses so, really, which part is not fantasy?—you’re generally fine with a zombie movie being about zombies and stuff. There need be no ponderous moments of tenderness or human connection. There’s actually plenty of that in Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later, but neither excellent film stopped the action midway just to beat us on the head with A Message. The human problems were woven in seamlessly with the threat of monsters eating human brains and tearing limbs apart.
As I finished my viewing of Army of the Dead, I read that Snyder has plans for a sequel. But why? What would be the point?, I wailed, to no one in particular.
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See also my “Your Trauma Is Your Passport: Hannah Gadsby, Nanette, and Global Citizenship.”
And my “Jason Momoa and the Queer Art of Friendship.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, 1851-1852.