lupine

so 'land of the dead' was a bit less interesting in terms of mythology of the genre then i had hoped. the idea that the zombies were 'evolving' was played well, very subtly and often imperfectly, but the entire concept was left unexplained. plus, no one has bothered to spend any time on figuring out why the newly dead get up and walk around, why they quest for human flesh, and why they don't seem to eventually rot away. in some respects this is good: it keeps the plot from digressing into some kind of mystic quest or cheesy pseduo-religious research movie. the fact that there has never been a battle between human protaginists and some kind of 'higher power' in these movies is a good thing. still, you'd think someone could come up with something.

also, the 'have's and have-not's' theme was overplayed and largely under-resolved. we knew there was a resistance leader, we knew he had been taken prisoner, but during the second to last scene we see him free with a shotgun and followers, headed off for some better life. uh-huh. the workers win again because the capatilists are lazy and weak and end up zombie-food. while this probably isn't far from the truth there were obviously scenes that were shot but never shown or scenes that were never written and, hence, never shot at all. these scenes would have been useful for any kind of serious argument about the dangers of keeping up the market-based system during an era of walking dead. as it stands, the movie's capitalist sub-theme went stray due to, in my opinion, lack of proper author attention. we could discuss the merits of including such a sub-theme in a zombie movie (and i could probably be persuaded to the school of thought that says there should be no such sub-theme) but if you are going to include it, develope it and excecute it well. not doing so only waters down your movie.

so there.