Episode two. As a courtesy to others use spoiler tags for anything from the comics that has not been shown onscreen. Do not use spoiler tags for anything that airs on TV.
I’m not watching it. Hell, I haven’t watched the first episode, though I’m psyched to do so.
I’m recording Metropolis on TCM. It conflicts with Walking Dead and the Dallas Cowboys game.
I’ll have to get back to you later.
Is it the new version of Metropolis with the lost scene they recently found?
Don’t know about the extra scene. It is the Blu-Ray version coming out in a week or so.
There is a post-apocalyptic zombie series and I was not informed?
I’m watching it right now, actually, and it’s not bad. Not bad at all.
I just checked a movie news site and it is the new version. Dammit, I missed the movie because I watched Boardwalk Empire and am now watching The Walking Dead.
:smack:
I am liking it. It kept a sense of “ohcrapwhatnow” during most of the shots in the department store. I enjoyed the additions of the new characters (most of them - the racist redneck was a bit of a caricature, one that I did not enjoy).
Fantastic. Sort of.
I’m not a fan of these zombies. They’re not true Romero zombies - I don’t like that they can run, climb fences, use tools and analyze things. I don’t like that they eat non-humans, and I don’t like that rubbing a bunch of guts on myself camouflages me from them. But…Darabont can do what he wants, because the rest of it’s brilliant. The characters are being fleshed out well, the scenarios feel right, and they’re not overreaching (except with the guts - that was a bit much). If Darabont wants to tweak the zombies, that’s fine - but he better stay consistent.
I liked it. Good characterization, genuine suspense, kept me engaged.
The shambling like a zombie routine - I had visions of “Shaun” which kind of put a damper on the suspense for me.
No way the redneck died. That was too obviously a setup for a later episode in which he makes a “stunning surprise” return to get even on the crew that deserted him.
I’d say 4 out of 5 stars.
It’s okay. It’s not* Breaking Bad* or Mad Men, but it’s not terrible. The dialogue can be pretty painful sometimes, and I thought the scene where they chopped the corpse up struck a really strange chord. It was like they were trying to play it off as humorous and serious at the same time and didn’t really achieve either.
I’m consistently impressed by the production values, though. Does anybody know how much this is costing per episode? I’ll be interested to see what the writers come up with when they hit the inevitable bottle episode. I don’t think the writing is strong enough to maintain my interest without the great make-up effects and the empty, debris-ridden streets.
Well, they don’t do any of those things very well. 
Actually the camouflage thing is the only thing Romero’s hasn’tdone in his Living Dead films. Both versions of Night as well as Survival had zombies eating animals onscreen. Crude tool use was been present since the original Night (remember the zombies smashing Ben’s headlights with rocks or Karen going after her mother with a garden trowel). Day had a zombie conditioned to use firearms (& Bub came very close to actually speaking) and Land had them figuring out how to use them on their own (& organizing an invasion of Pittsburgh). Some of the zombies in Night moved pretty fast too. He’s even had zombies appearing to lie in wait for prey.
Well, you could argue that Romero doesn’t use Romero zombies anymore…
Whenever I hear people say this I wonder how long it’s been since they’ve seen the original Night of the Living Dead. The zombie chasing Barbara at the beginning of the movie picks up a rock to bash in the window of the car she’s hiding in. Later in the movie the zombie girl kills her mother with a spade. It doesn’t get much more Romero Zombie than NotLD.
Edit: And I can see that I was already beaten to the punch.
Ok, so redneck bad guy is so obviously a bully, racists, and a danger to the group to where they have to lock him up. If he’s a danger to the point where you have to handcuff him why doesn’t someone just put a bullet through his head? You know it’s just going to bite you in the ass later.
Some dude calls me a nigger and beats my ass no way in hell would I try to keep him alive.
In the scene where the black dude was bringing the hand cuff key back he kicked over a bag full of tools, saws, etc. near the redneck. He gets free for sure.
Optimism.
There are only a few dozen living people left in the state, at least so far as we know, yet - maybe a few thousand nationwide.
They need every hand they can get to survive.
They believe he can learn to act like a civilized person in the face of possibly sabotaging his own chances of survival, as well as everyone else’s, if forced to think about it.
Of course, even before dropping the key into a hole, they chose a bad way to accomplish that.
I actually like that the zombies are not all your typical cloned hordes. The pilot was fantastic with the characterization of the zombies, and there was some of that going on this week when they went out for a stroll. While I would hate it if they somehow get to the point of “pet” zombies —
I haven’t read it, but I hear this may happen to characters that their loved ones can’t bear to kill. That’s a little less objectionable to me; I’m thinking of the comic-relief type of pet. — I don’t want to see the zeds devolve into an undifferentiated mass of enemies. That’s tiresome, and we’d only have the drama of the living characters to go with, which was decent but not great this week.
Regarding Redneck - I predict he becomes Zombie but his hate drives him back to the group in the hills of GA.
For what it’s worth, they seem to be diverging from the Comic already since, while it has been a while since I read it, I am pretty sure in the comic, Rick only met Glenn while in Atlanta and the redneck character did not exist at all which for me is good because I was hoping there would be surprises in store for people who read the source material.