Dawn of the Dead remake

[Shawn]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/06/film.dawn.reut/index.html

Normally, I'd cheer for joy. However, given the general lack of quality in remakes, and the fact that this is being scripted by the guy who did Scooby Doo... well, I'm less than enthusiastic.

I was just watching Dawn of the Dead again a week or two ago and thinking "Wow, shopping malls sure have changed a lot since then." It should be interesting to see how much things have changed.

One thing, though: It's almost a certainty that this movie is going to have all sorts of commercial tie-ins. Which, instead of being beneficial to the movie, will only further reinforce Romero's social commentary of the original. :\

[JonathanLB]

I am glad you made this thread. In about a week, I want to add a link to an essay I wrote on Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead (the idea began as an essay on just Dawn, actually) for my ENG 220 class.

I have poured hours and hours into this paper and just turned it in tonight. I spent probably 20 hours writing it and another 8 just editing it, not to mention just going through Dawn of the Dead today actually! By today I mean 3 a.m. "last night," but yeah... lol.

My paper is about 11 pages long now, but was 13.5 before I reduced the font from 12 point to 11 point, so it's fairly good sized.

In my paper, which I wrote as a more scholarly essay intended for people serious about analyzing these movies in depth, I argue against Paul Wells' statement in his book, The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch, where he says that Dawn merely continues the themes that Romero presents in Night.

My English 220 class is actually called "Film Horror," but the entire focus of this 3 credit, 10 week course was on 4 movies -- Romero's Dead Trilogy and Savini's Night of the Living Dead remake, which I think is quite high quality (I still prefer the original, personally).

Anyway we spent literally tens of hours discussing these movies and various themes, so it's safe to say besides the Star Wars movies I have never analyzed any film as fully as the four zombie movies by Romero and Savini. It's truly incredible how much is hidden beneath the surface of those movies. We had a class of 34 people and everyone wrote quite a different paper, so there is much to explore.

I wrote an 8 page review of Night, a 6 page review of Dawn, a 7 page review of Day (coincidental because it's my least favorite...), a 6.5 page review of the remake of Night, plus my 11 page paper contrasting Night and Dawn.

It was a great class, just had my last class period tonight, and I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to explore some good to great movies in amazing detail.

I'll be adding a section to my site on the films and those 5 documents I wrote shortly, but probably next week actually.

I am not sure what I think of a remake of Dawn, but I mean, wow, that's pretty interesting! I'm excited just because I have studied the first movie in such incredible depth and I'd love to see what they do with a remake.

Dawn is consistently voted one of the greatest horror films of all time. It made #11 on Cinescape's best sci-fi/horror/fantasy list, just behind ANH and ESB, for instance. Ebert loves Dawn, too.

Thanks for bringing this article to our attention!

[Shawn]

I just noticed that there's a script review on AICN: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=13363

Apparently, the script isn't too bad. But it's nothing at all like DotD. If this is so, then it's ultimately only going to hurt the film by carrying the DotD name, since many fans of the movie will be screaming bloody murder at the changes.

It sounds like it has a bit of potential, but I'm doubting their ability to poignantly portray everything that's supposed to be in the script in ~ 90 minutes.

Dawn of the Dead was always my favorite installment in the trilogy. It had that overwhelming feeling of "We're never going to actually beat these zombies, so it's just a matter of staying alive as long as we can". But it also had just a few glimmers of hope. Day of the Dead was too... desolate - and ultimately boring - for my tastes.

[JonathanLB]

Yeah, you are right, and Day was loaded with cliches too. Terrible dialogue, boring in parts, just lost a lot of the appeal of the earlier two films, IMO. I gave it 3 stars. I appreciated the themes in the film, liked the movie still, but it was a bit of a disappointment to me.

Dawn is a lot of fun, aside from having a ton of great themes. The anti-consumerist messages are rather obvious. I focus mainly on that theme in my essay, but I'll post that at some later point. I'm hoping for more feedback from her so I can make a third and final draft before posting it.

I think Night is still my favorite of the entire group of films, the 1968 film that is, and it's probably my all-time favorite horror film. Nonetheless, Dawn is great for other reasons. It's a much different film, really. As Romero says, it is not traditionally scary, but it is psychologically scary, another idea I cover in my essay. Essentially, what is scary about the film is how materialistic humans are and how everyone is susceptible to this consumerism, which is a frightening message, if you believe it's true...