DBSnappa wrote:
Atrocity Exhibition wrote:
After a slightly shaky start with the conversation in the cop car, I thought the main protagonist panned out pretty well.
He didn't do anything massively stupid (setting off down the pitch black stairs with just a book of matches when the zombies were trapped behind a padlocked door wasn't genius though), he came round to a grim acceptance of the situation in a reasonably believable fashion, and whilst they put in some suspect super-healing of his gunshot wound going on we don't really want to watch weeks of rehabilitation when there are zombies around.
We also have to assume that some stuff happens off screen, it goes without saying that as his day and night with the dude and his son progressed, they talked a lot and he was convinced that it was all real, especially considering what he'd seen with his own eyes prior to that.
I know nothing about the comics and indeed have never laid eyes on a single one, but I do like my zombie films and The Walking Dead got more right in its first episodes than most 'proper' films manage in their entire running length.
By the end of it I felt emotionally invested in the main character, his former partner and their friends, and also the dude and his son - it wasn't perfect by any means, but I'm interested to see what happens next and where the story goes.
My biggest complaint was CGI blood, which never, ever, looks convincing. Can it really be better/cheaper to use CGI blood over a $10 squib?
It might be worth spoilering some of that.
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Anyway, my concerns were the fact that a trained law officer, regardless of his daze after coming out of a coma (we don't know how long he was out, but quite a few weeks I would imagine, which would negate the worst of the gunshot wound healing problem), proceeded to walk through a fucked hospital with all the sharps over the floor, through a war torn environ to his house, for ten minutes of episode time, without feeling the need to put anything on his feet or put any clothes on. This felt simply like an art direction choice rather than a logical one — marvel at our set dressing, while a too buff for his condition Andrew Lincoln moseys around in a pair of Jockey shorts and a hospital robe. He then encountered Lennie James and after being attacked and recuperating, proceeds to ask no questions. Then we have to deal with the clunking scene with his patrol partner and the scene where they do three things, two of which are simply plot mechanisms which are patronising. They establish that Atlanta is a bad place to go, which is where our hero is going, they establish that patrol partner and principal character's wife are getting it on, which leads us to flimsily surmise that is why principal character was abandoned to his fate in the hospital when the town was evacuated. Then we have to deal with a trained law officer blithely riding past a few zombies, noting that it's only a few but having witnessed already their ability to congregate is then shocked by the mob he encounters. I slapped my head at this point as I knew this was coming a mile off.
Oops yes spoilers done.
I'm not fundamentally disagreeing with your points, they're all valid, but I came to this from the perspective of knowing I was watching the start of a series, and that there are going to be bits of it that are a shade on the clunky side.
More importantly, I'm painfully aware that a good chunk of mainstream cinema and TV output is utter fucking shite these days, and has been for years, which is partly why I've got far more interested in world cinema recently, although I can't say I've done the same for telly.
On its own, The Walking Dead got off to a pretty strong start IMO, and considering the competition its up against, it's head and shoulders above much of the rest.
They set a lot of stuff off in motion (and you have to remember the evilness of the US syndication system, they'll cancel shows without blinking), and they had to get a lot in to make a 'strong' first episode (i.e. enough actions and zombies and 'easy wins' if you will), I still say this is going to settle down into a really great series - Darabont's cinema work shows how he likes to tell a tale the long way but has been limited by the 2 to 3 hours format of film.
You only need to look at the likes of 28 Weeks Later to see how much they can fuck things up in true studio fashion, following the brilliance of 28 Days Later.