Ninety minute premiere at 10pm on AMC. I watched it last week and without putting spoilers in my OP I can safely say you won’t be disappointed. 
I have been looking forward to this for months! I haven’t read the comics, but I’m a big fan of zombie movies and I’ve heard good things about this production.
It took a lot of willpower not to watch the pilot online, but I wanted to save it for Halloween. An hour-and-a-half to go!
Wow. So far, I’m in.
I like it. Been reading the comics since they started and it remains pretty faithful. Even the parts they added to extend the live action version fit in very well. Hopefully they can keep this up for at least a season.
Good acting, great effects. I’m a fan so far.
And another “favorite” goes into my TV Show lineup.
Thought it was outstanding - I love how clearly traumatized most characters are. A couple thoughts, though:
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Poor horsie. I know that’s a traditional zombie-movie death - but not for horses, dammit.
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Are tanks really that spacious and well-lit on the inside? I’d have assumed they’re more cramped. And why did this one have a hatch on the bottom?
One VERY slight nitpick though: in just about every contemporary zombie movie that’s trying to take itself seriously (so not Zombieland), it seems like they try to stay away from the word “zombie.” They call them Walkers, The Infected, or The Undead, or something. But everyone knows what a zombie is, so why don’t they just say it? Like in the scene where the father is telling the sheriff what’s going on, I was just dying for the sheriff to say something like, “You mean they’re zombies?” I guess the creators of the series think that if they actually say it, it’ll hurt the validation of the show or something.
Other than that, great stuff.
I wasn’t paying enough attention, and was wondering what they were eating…
It’s an homage to George Romero (who basically invented the modern idea of zombies as undead flesheating ghouls as opposed to voodoo slaves). Romero tended to avoid using the z-word in dialuoge in his Living Dead films (only 2-3 times in 6 films).
Or you can go with my own personal explanation for genre blindness usually found in zombie films; they take place in an alternate universe where Romero never made NotLD and zombie still means voodoo slave.
So far, it’s good but not great, for my money. Good acting, decent FX, a few creepy, atmospheric scenes (the hospital, riding the horse to Atlanta), but nothing that hasn’t been done a dozen times already. Plus, I thought the storyline lumbered along about as slowly as a zombie.
Having the protagonists’ partner hooking up with his wife & kid was a rather soapy, melodramatic twist that didn’t bode well either. I have dire visions of seeing this quickly descend into “Dallas…wtih Zombies!”
I guess I was slightly biased from just having watched the British “Dead Set” miniseries, which I found to be far more engaging than I thought it would be. This pilot just struck me as a little lackluster in parts.
I’d tune in again, but the storyline had better pick up some momentum and deliver a few novel twists soon though.
Great show, I loved it.
I think the criticism of the pilot for being too “soapy” is wrong. I don’t want this to be an action-fest; I want realistic drama. The affair makes perfect sense psychologically, and it’s not like it’s that major of a part. I haven’t read the comics, but I’d imagine we could go an entire season without him finding out about it. I loved how we see the dad’s troubles with killing what was once his wife. Realistic human reactions FTW!
I’d say that this, too, makes sense. If a zombie apocalypse actually happened, I’m sure that many people would call them zombies. But many others would be in denial. “The Walkers” doesn’t imply the end of the world. “The Infected” keeps everything in context; it’s just a disease, after all. But “Zombies”? That implies all of the things that people don’t want to think about: No cure, end of the world, this isn’t limited to here but is all over the world, etc. And for whatever time the media still works, you can be sure that they won’t be using the term Zombie. Whatever term sticks in the media will probably be used by all. “Infected” makes the most sense, since I can imagine the media referring to zombies as “infected individuals” indefinitely.
In a real life case, I’d expect people to accept the context and for the majority of people to switch to Zombies a few weeks after the media shuts down.
I loved it. Sure, it didn’t break any new ground in the genre, but it kept me interested. It looks great (cinematography, makeup, etc.) and the acting is good. I thought the pacing was good–fairly slow, but with the everpresent threat of a zombie behind the next door. I don’t expect a television show to maintain the same rapid pace that a zombie movie generally has.
When the deputy was in the city and he rides around that corner on the horse and there is a wall of zombies, I was all “Holy crap!” That whole scene–especially as he gets trapped under the tank–had me on the edge of my seat. I knew the showrunners weren’t going to kill him off after spending the whole episode building the background for his character, but I was still very tense as the zombies started crawling under the tank after him.
And then I *knew *that dead soldier in the tank was going to start moving! If I were the deputy, I don’t think I’d have been so cavalier about sitting a few feet away from a xorpse after almost being lunch for a few hundred undead outside the tank.
Can’t wait for next week!
I thought that curl over his forehead was a bullet hole, so it was a shock to me.
I call it a “hold” rather than a “buy” or “sell.” Good enough that I’ll watch at least two or three more episodes, before passing judgment. But so far, I’m liking it.
Quick question: Since when are they allowed to show so much gore on TV?
I liked it and could see growing to love it. AMC has done a phenomenal job of going from B movie reruns to the HBO of basic cable.
Does anybody know if we’ll see the black guy and his son again? (Apologies for not using their names but I’m not sure they were given.) I hope so, if only to fulfill the line from Community the other night: “I want you to be the first black guy to make it to the end [of a zombie outbreak]” (though actually I suppose that honor would go to Ving Rhames).
I have a friend in Atlanta who was an extra in a couple of scenes but no idea if they aired tonight. It’s kind of hard to tell who’s “3rd zombie from the right, 6th row” in a crowd scene.
The usual “damn, son, just damn!” moment was "when you’re going into a huge city like Atlanta (on INTERSTATE [not “highway”] 85) and there’s no traffic and no sign of life, probably a safe bet that you’re not going to find good news.
I haven’t read the graphic novels and am only passingly familiar with them. Do the zombies therein have any sentience at all? It seemed a couple still had some trace vestiges of their former selves (the little girl picking up her stuffed animal, the mother being the one who tried to open the door as if she had some memory in addition to wanting brraaaiiiinnnss). I know this isn’t enough to try to reason with them- blow off their heads first and ask questions never- but I’m curious if some have connections to their past existence.
I think the rules are much different for cable, even basic cable, and especially with a parental advisory. Mad Men uses much fouler language than you’d find on NBC without a parental advisory.
I think you pretty much have to assume this for any non-satirical zombie film. Unlike vampires, or ghosts, or werewolves, Hollywood zombies aren’t a product of folk lore. The modern concept of a zombie is almost entirely the product of the imagination of one guy who’s still alive today. Having a zombie apocalypse occur in a world where there’s a George Romero would be like having the crew of the Nostromo living in a universe where back in the 20th century, Ridley Scott made a movie called Alien. To get around this, you either have to retcon history to create a whole bunch of zombie folklore and actual zombie outbreaks (I believe World War Z did this in some of its EU material) or have the zombies result from someone deliberately trying to replicate Romero-style zombies (which is more or less the case in the Resident Evil movies). The problem with the first approach is that you have to wonder why, with all this history of zombie outbreaks, this is the first zombie apocalypse. The problem with the second is, why the fuck would anyone want to deliberately engineer a Romero-style zombie?
Plus, the genre-blindness adds a lot to the characterization. If it’s wholly unprecedented, you get more of a panicky, desperate “What the fuck is going on?!” vibe from the characters. If they’ve got some frame of reference to put the zombies into (“It’s just like Shaun of the Dead!”) it gives them a handle on the situation and makes it easier to cope with, because it’s in some ways familiar to them.
Kid’s Duane…don’t remember if his old man’s name was given.
I’ve only read bits and pieces, but no, there’s really nothing there.
There’s one character who keeps his zombified daughter (and kills other survivors to feed her), and even though she’s being kept by her father, she’s completely animalistic, and needs to be chained to a wall.
I thought it was ok. It was slow. Not too slow to where I turned it off but I was fucking around on the computer after the first 45 minutes.
Why did they have to have the partner with his wife? I know it may have been in the graphic novel but I really don’t think, with a zombie apocalypse and all, that the love triangle was really needed.
Did they say how long since the zombies have arisen?