What's a Zomie?!? (durr)
It really bothers me when I watch and or play a game that has zombies in it, and the characters in it act like they've never heard of zombies before. I think it's just plain unrealistic. The scene where the guy gets up from being dead and the cop puts an entire clip into his chest and then says "Oh my god! What is he!?!" is entirely fake.
In our age today, zombies are as much an Icon of Popular Culture as Michael Jackson. And that being said, the Music Video to "Thriller", one of Michael Jacksons most famous songs has zombies in it!
TL;DR: Why the hell do people in movies/games act like they don't know what a zombie is?
In our age today, zombies are as much an Icon of Popular Culture as Michael Jackson. And that being said, the Music Video to "Thriller", one of Michael Jacksons most famous songs has zombies in it!
TL;DR: Why the hell do people in movies/games act like they don't know what a zombie is?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
because they don't believe it actually could happen let alone to them ?
on other words you don't believe any fictional story till your living it then some will stay in denial for a while .
Given what the average person knows about zombies, how could it NOT be the first thing you assume?
You see someone who was dead start walking, that alone should be the "Oh shit it's a zombie!" alarm. Little alone when you shoot it in the chest a dozen times and it keeps moving, then drops from one bullet to the brain.
How do people possibly think that it was anything but a zombie?
yes i do believe you have not read my above comment properly...
denial ?
people like 'irene' who believe in certain things will and are refuse to face the facts even when it's in there face.
But I don't think that's the case of what I'm talking about. As I can't recall a single zombie anything, where people knew what a zombie was before it happened.
If you can please tell me.
Some kind of candy like jujubes?
there isn't really anything other than some crazed human who eats flesh like a cannibal but doesn't respond to you shouting and or takes head trauma to stop it... story in news recently had a freak/zombie google it
Did I...
*goes to check*
AHHHHHHHHHHH I did forget the "b"!
Dammit!:p
True...
But what was the very first thing that everyone started to say after that happened?
"ZOMBIES!"
I think that alone proves my case.
i'm confused here what was your point ?
Yeah, for us, in 2012, we're probably the most able yet to comprehend zombies; however, disbelief will still make plenty of people think it's not actually zombies until it's too late. On the other hand, gung ho folks will probably shoot more humans twisted on drugs when they are convulsing or whatever.
I'm more terrified of what people do in catastrophes than of corpses ripping me to pieces. I mean, it would be even worse if a person decided to rip you to pieces...
My point is that everyone knows what zombies are, and if they ever attacked, we would know we were dealing with zombies.
Someone eats someones face (after getting high on Bathroom Salts [I believe]) and instantly we labeled him as a zombie.
So why in movies/games when they see zombies eating people, do they have no idea it's a zombie?
My point is...
because everyone knows what zombies are, it's unbelievable in zombie things that the people act like they don't know what zombies are.
Why would you use Irene as an example? She knew perfectly well what was going on and what happens when you're bitten. Hence her wanting to stop herself from coming back and harming others after she was bitten. Her beliefs didn't blind her to her situation.
But even then... the only reason she knew is because she saw it happen to her Boyfriend(?). She didn't know it because she knew about zombies, she knew because she saw it happen first hand.
The reason why it's in films is because it's funny to see them flailing around but it would be boring with out the suspence / some level of knowledge and thus they have to make people dumb to sell the movie
yes films have put both groups in and usually the group that knows, survives longer so the dumb groups are just there for zombie chow.
also my point about irene was (yes i know she knew) but i was trying to say she has her belief in god and that god wouldn't allow zombies to exist yet there they are chompin on her...so she accepted it.
What does this have to do with Milo's assertion that Irene's beliefs somehow caused her to go into denial?
Exactly. I tend to think of this stuff as somehow being outside the general zeitgeist / consciousness. For example if something kept snatching food from your hands whenever you tried to eat, most people wouldn't be thinking Harpy so much as wtf.
There were what... 6 good zombie movies and a few dozen crappy ones? No video games...
In the show they do not call them "zombies" often. Nor do they call them zombies often in the comic. I do remember the comic listening it once, but ultimately they called them "walkers" and "geeks" (show) and other names.
I agree that some horror movies kind of need people to be aware of the creatures. Watching a vampire movie in a world that has never seen or heard of vampire is kind of silly. But how many vampire movies are ultimately survival horror tales that dictate the personalities of the survivors? Most of the time...monster movies tend to have beings that people can kind of relate to...Frankenstein (felt sorry for him, it wasn't his fault he was given an Abby Normal brain) Wolfman...guy is human when he's not trying to savage people, vampires...they sparkle or they are misunderstood!
Zombies...you can kind of give them a personality as Romero did in Land of the Dead, and in many cases...if we are given some background w can feel sorry for them, but ultimately they're sort of just unfortunate moaning robots. We can't really associate with zombies.
Plus...they are created by some sort of plague, virus, comet, mystery meat. The whole idea of the government developing a superflu that destroys us all is kind of something that screams SURPRISE! And it really is more entertaining to see people witness the reanimation of people they love, trust, or bond with.
Survival horror needs to show people distraught and broken. I think it is easier to have them kind of running around midst the chaos not understanding what is going on.
If you had a zombie movie where the person just stopped midst the moaning and groaning and stared right into the camera and said, "GOD DAMN YOU COMMUNIST ZOMBIES! I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS!"
I am pretty sure it would ruin everything.
Whereas the idea of "cannibals" "cultists" and other widespread theories showing ignorance gives the viewer something of a guilty pleasure. We know what is going on. We can be in the safety of our own boring world...watching these people try to survive. Once we see the repulsed look on their faces as it all clicks (kind of how it does Hershel on the show) totally makes it worth it.
So basically ignorance works with zombies. Other monsters...eh, I don't know.
It's an artistic convention, a narrative device that has been around for ages, and it still is used a lot these days.
Imagine what would happen if in the "Sherlock" series, people would always ask the protagonist in 2011 about his name's similarity to a certain Arthur Conan Doyle character... it would break the series. Reality is a tiny bit different there for the story to work, there hasn't ever been a fictional Holmes in that series.
I'm sure you could think about a lot of books and movies where the same logic is applied. Like Vampire novels in which people haven't heard of those bloodsuckers and so on. It's not that much of a stretch.
It's become a running joke that characters in zombie films/games have never seen a zombie movie. Certain parts of the film industry in particular are notorious for refusing to divert from precious formulas. and discovering the weakness of the big bad monster has been a staple of just about every horror movie ever. It kinda drains away the atmosphere when a character instantly knows everything about a creature and how to defeat it right from the start.
The problem is you've seen plenty of zombies in films/games, you know how to defeat them, and it's frustrating the characters don't. For the tension to work you're supposed to be as clueless as the characters so you can identify more closely with them, because at heart these movies/games are all about fear of the unknown. That's the problem - you know everything about the conventional zombie! Remember 28 Days Later? That was a great movie because it changed the rules. Suddenly you weren't sure what the characters were dealing with.
You mean 28 Days Later?
*shifty eyes*
Exactly. I dont remember where but i know that i heard somewhere(like in an interview or something) that in zombie movies or books, the world is only a tiny bit different from ours and of course the only difference is, it doesnt involve zombie movies, books and things like that so that's the reason why everyone acts like they havent heard of them before because they actually havent heard of zombies.
though im sure if it could be done right, it would make for an absolutely fantastic film (comedy of course)
I also think that storytellers strive to make their stories timeless and reach a broad audience, and that's harder to pull off if you have to take external pop culture pre-requisites into account that limit your audience.
I know that most people TODAY are familiar with zombie lore as currently defined, but those "common knowledge" elements change over time.
I think this is why the people trapped in the house in "Night of the Living Dead" (and its many successors) don't waste time looking for the voodoo symbology and rituals they would have associated with zombies, circa the 1960s when NOTLD was released. White Zombie and The Zombies of Sugar Hill weren't zombie movies as we think about them today. And if I wanted to make a golem movie today, I suspect I would have to explain the nature of the monster to a lot of people, even though the concept goes back to the 1500s and was all laid out in The Golem, a movie released in 1920.
I'd be thinking seagull
The other thing to consider is that the image of the Zombie has changed DRASTICALLY over the last 50 years. We went from the origional Zombi, having to do with Voodoo, which was basically just a person under mind control who could only enact simple actions. It went from that to basically a magically risen corpse that usually crawled out of a grave with skeletons and other 'creatures of the night' and finally ended up as the modern day "infected human". It really depends where your ideas and beliefs land on the situation.
As far as Zombie "Canon" in general goes it really depends on the genre as well. Some zombies could only be destroyed if the magical object that tied them to their master was removed from them. Other ones still rely on regular bodily functions (enough shots to the organs will bring them down) and the super-virus zombie undead can apparently survive unless shot in the head and even that in some cases is several times.
In short, it really depends on the zombie, and even as a pop culture icon, a lot of people won't know about it or only will know general information based on which media they've been influenced by.
Because it's a game...also making the characters feel fresh to the situation makes the film/game feel more urgent, the characters are vulnerable, you feel vulnerable...Sorry quoted wrong dude
Voodoo zombies are different, but yeah that's where the stories originate from. JUJU!!
Confirmed for truth. Kirkman has stated the Romero movies were never made at least. So some movies may have been made, just not popular ones.
First of all it would make the whole scenario much more realistic.Cause it would feel like this is our world, where people talk about Zombies and the apocalypse all the time.So when we see a movie or a series where the Zombie Apocalypse takes place in a world that's exactly like ours, the whole thing would feel so much more frightening because it would depict the exact happenings that would take place in our world too and not something which happens in an alternate world where noone knows zombies.And of course the characters would be much more realistic as well and more relatable, because that person could just be you, who before the Apocalypse talked about Zombies with his Friends or made jokes about it and is now right in that position which he previously talked about. This small change opens the door to DOZENS of possible characters and stories that are just not possible to tell in a world where Zombies are unknown. And because noone has done this before for reasons i will never understand, a story with these traits would be original and feel fresh and would be something totaly new.
I think this is so freaking obvious that it really blows my mind how people can not see this! I even have some character stories in mind that would be really interesting but which could only exist in a world where Zombies are already known and a part of the pop culture and it only took me like 2 minutes to come up with them it's so obvious.