Brad Jones, The Cinema Snob

[TheManWithNoPlan]

Day of the Dead is in the bunker and that's my personal favourite.

[Guest]

A guy whose entire worldview was fed to him by Hollywood. The type of person who thinks stupid, ham-fisted garbage, like George Romero movies and Star-Trek episodes are incredibly deep, nuanced, multi-layered "social commentary"...

Well, since the only authors he's read are Hunter S. Thompson and Harlan Ellison, Hadley's ideas of what "social commentary" is are rather crippled. There is social commentary in Romero movies and Star Trek episodes, but it sure as hell isn't deep or nuanced; it's pretty heavy-handed and trite. "Dawn of the Dead" is about consumerism, so it takes place in the most obvious of places: a mall. That's not deep or nuanced. And the statement made in Romero's flick about consumerism is littler more than "people like to buy shit." There's a lot of Star Trek episodes about racism that are simply: This alien is different so people hate him, then they find out he's not so they accept him. It's every after-school special, just with Shatner and company in it.

There are plenty of works with all kinds of different social commentary and enlightening things to say about the world. Which Hadley won't ever watch because he likes to live in ignorance and claim that "Land of the Dead" is the high-point of artistic merit.

"...And the statement made in Romero's flick about consumerism is littler more than "people like to buy shit.""

See, there you go, right there! You pretty much made the point I was hitting on.
Thing is, all of these "oh-so-clever" movies, TV series, or whatever don't actually talk about anything. They merely make mention of things in a shallow, if not entirely straw-mannish fashion.

To make it brief and stick only with the "Dawn of the Dead" example(though you can expand this to anything);
Yeah, consumerism is a thing. But why is it a thing? What fuels it? Is it bad? Is it good? If so, why? and so on... There's never any exploration of any facet of the issue. Not to mention, stuff like that is almost invariably presented as a lecture, as in "THIS is the opinion you must have!", otherwise, you're one of the evil/stupid ones.

As a general rule, movies and the like, are at best, able to ignite a spark that causes someone to go on and research a subject beyond them.

Only, the problem lies in people who will watch that stuff, buy into it, and think that only by doing that, they've gained some deep insight about humanity, or whatever else, when in reality, thinking as much has effectively intellectually crippled them.
This is pretty much one of the genesis for the whole SJW phenomenon, and why they're so attached to entertainment and fiction.

[beanerX]

My favorite romero films are the original Night of the Living Dead and the one in the military bunker. I think that was Land, but I'm not sure. That one was relentlessly dark and depressing and I loved it. The opening with the calendar is awesome.

that's DAY

[Cuckara]

The one you're thinking of is Day of the Dead. Anyway, Romero made some great stuff in the 60s-80s. I detest bleeding heart bullshit but that doesn't prevent me from loving the original of the Dead trilogy. Romero was always a flaming liberal but when he was young he knew how to write a good story and interesting characters, in the 00s he officially stopped giving a shit and started prioritizing politics over everything else.

[rabidtictac]

Day of the Dead is in the bunker and that's my personal favourite.

Shit, you're right.

Yeah, Day is the one I will watch no matter what. If I flip channels and it's on, I'm stopping to watch. If I see it got added to some service like Netflix? I'll zip over to watch. It's one of those movies like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or Goodfellas that always gets my attention when I see it.

Night of the Living Dead is a great film and it has all that sweet history, but Day is the one I come back to for fun. I love the Jamaican helicopter pilot and the heroine is one of the better female protagonists.

Land of the Dead was fucking trash.

Day of the Dead actually has a pretty good discussion within the film itself about what the point of life is, what's the point of living if you have no future, etc? All of the characters in the bunker have their own ideas about how things should return to normal and what that would look like. It's probably the most philosophical of the three. The first movie is about zambies attacking a farm house. Second one is zambies coexisting in a mall with humans and how humans are the real monsters (lel.) The world is already fucked 5 minutes into Day. The rest of the movie is about how people deal with an apocalypse scenario where no help is ever coming.

[misterX]

i told josh from the get-go: round off the harsh edges, make this a character who appeals to the hardcore but doesn't alienate the normies, CUT THE DAM DUCK DYNASTY RAPIST BEARD, quit being a luddite dyck, make fun of yourself cuz u get the joke n ride this content gravytrain til the wheels fall off

he never got it

[Cuckara]

Land of the Dead was fucking trash.

He should've retired from filmmaking right after Hollywood rejected his Resident Evil script.

[TheManWithNoPlan]

Whenever I think of all these great directors who's films went to shit after a couple of decades Romero, Carpenter, etc I always think of this clip.

[Whybother]

I take issue with lumping Carpenter into that group. He had a couple shit movies in the 90s... but he had the good sense to more or less retire before he perma-fucked his reputation and legacy.

[Cuckara]

Second one is zambies coexisting in a mall with humans and how humans are the real monsters (lel.)

It sounds like you're thinking of Land again. In Dawn the main characters successfully wipe out all of the zombies in the mall and it's never implied that you're supposed to feel sympathy for the zombies. Land is the one where the zombies dindu nuffin and at the end one of the main characters seriously fucking says ""They're just looking for a place to live." That ending still infuriates me.