Monday, January 12, 2009
My issues with the movie 28 Weeks Later...
I just watched the movie 28 Weeks Later on Blue Ray tonight via Netflix. I have some issues with the movie, because feel the logic in a few parts really killed the suspension of disbelief for me.
The first, and probably biggest error in the logic of the story, was how the whole infection starts again. If you haven't seen this movie and don't want to know what happens, then stop reading, otherwise keep going... this one error with how the outbreak starts, for me, was pretty lame. Basically, it starts because the military brings back a female survivor who is appearantly immune to the Rage virus to a point where she doesn't go berzerk like the usual infected, but is instead a carrier. Medically, she's extremely important to finding a cure and possible immunity for everyone else. Now here's where all logic goes out the window, and I started having trouble from this point on believing in the movie- another character, who is this woman's husband goes into the isolation room where she's restrained on a table.
He goes in there because earlier in the movie, he abondons her for dead when a bunch of infected blitz their hideout. So, in his guilt he appearantly abandons all logic and enters the isolation room which isn't even being remotely monitored by CCTV, to be with her which results in his eventual infection and thus all hell breaks loose. The fact that he went into the chamber to be with her is not what I have a problem with; it was a traumatic moment when he had to ditch her earlier and probably his emotions overrode his logic. I could believe that.
What I don't believe, is that she was in a military held section of the Green Zone, which is the portion of London that's safe and protected for the Britons returning to England. This guy had a high clearance level and it was inferred earlier in the movie that he could basically get access anywhere in the green zone. Um, yeah, I call bullocks on this. The man is a civilian. There's no way in hell the military would give him access to the medical station of their installation, much less the ability to access the wife, who is basically the holy grail of beating this virus. It just wouldn't happen. No one in that whole place would have access to her except the installation commander and the doctors assigned to study the woman's immune system. This civilian guy would probably have limited access in the military installation pertaining to his civilian job of maintaining building the civilians lived inside, but there's just no way he'd get even in a hundred feet of his wife.
It totally killed the movie for me. After that it was just watching situations unfold that never even should have transpired in the first place because the writers had to have some conveniant McGuffin to further the plot. It just wasn't very creative to me in the manner the outbreak started.
Another thing that bugged me, but not as badly because this is used a lot in action movies, is the manner in which the Air Force blows the crap out of London. When the outbreak gets out of control the military's last ditch attept to stop everything is to napalm the streets. What I find bogus about all this is the way the napalm spreads through the streets- it just went everywhere, like it was following some invsible fuse, and wherever it went shit just spontaniously exploded. It just wasn't believable. I wish there would be an action movie where they represented explosions with real laws of physics...
There's also another part where the three remaining characters run into the underground (English for the subway) and there are corpses from the previous outbreak all over the place... the characters just run around in there like the whole place only smells like a casual fart. Umm no.
The underground needs ventilation to circulate the air and keep it cool. Since we can assume the power to the A/C units has been dead for weeks dead, the air down there is probably very stagnant. And with hundreds of decomposing corpses inside, the fumes would be so bad the characters wouldn't be able to walk, much less stay alive for very long. This is because the decomposing body emits ammonia and hydrogen sulfide- noxious in small doses and lethal in large. I think it's safe to say that in an atmosphere of stagnant air with hundreds of rotting corpses the air would be lethal. Even with the benefit of the doubt that it's not lethal, the smell from rotting flesh and roden exrement would be so bad that no one, not even these characters would have been able to stand the odor for long; hell they'd smell the rank stench long before they even got to the enterance of the underground.
Anyway if you can get past that stuff the movie is okay, I guess... It was entertaining, but I just feel that a little more effort into the research and writing could have been done.
Sometimes it sucks being so smart.
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3 comments:
eh, no movie is perfect. I didn't really care for the movie either...
I remember in 28 Days Later, Selena says "And that's when the exodus started. Before the TV and radio stopped broadcasting there were reports of infection in Paris and New York. We didn't hear anything more after that." yet in 28 Weeks Later they seemed to have forgotten about this ! Then at the end of the film we see Paris.
I also didn't like the fact that Robert Carlyle's character seemed to be more intelligent than the rest of the rage victims once he was infected.
Yeah I hear that. The first movie was better in my opinion. The second one just had lazy writing. The helocopter dicing up the zombies was funny but also pretty far fetched. The rotor blades of a copter are pretty fragile. There's no way they would have withstood all that abuse...
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