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 Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:31 am
What does everyone think of this topic?
This subject can take on many different standpoints, and one of those standpoints is whether you think the concept is stereotypical or not. Another is whether one could construct an undead/demonic army and turn it into an original idea.
Let's start shall we?
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Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:03 pm
I think undead armies are a completely plausible, workable concept. There are some spiritual cognates for them, as well as popular media; Hod will know much more about this than I, but technically Odin's gathering an army of the dead (undead?) in Valhalla, gathering heroes who died bravely so they can fight for Odin during Ragnarok. I know there are some movies that have made fun of the concept of an undead or demonic army, but I also feel it should be possible to handle the concept in an original fashion. Maybe a good place to start would be to begin with the stereotype and try to find ways to bust it?
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:33 am
That's what I try to do with stereotypical ideas. Pirates, for example, are amongst them. I've mentioned this in the Writer's Circle before. Undead armies though, are something different entirely and I'm not entirely sure how they could acquire more originality.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:31 pm
*Undead hordes!* ((*coughmummble* now this is a topic!*))
I'm a zombie girl. Vampire girl. Horror girl. And, YES! I have made my "escape / kick some a**" plan for when the undead hordes come parading through my town.
Now - I'm reading an article about George Romero - the Zombie Grandfather.
- - He never even set out to make a zombie movie - he wanted his "flesh eaters" to set about revolutionary change... ((hippie))
YES! The modern idea of zombies is politics... or at least political... I hope I didn't ruin anything for you... They can still be mindless carnal brain eating creatures if you want them to be... (wow - that does sound like Washington D.C.)
Anyway - - I think they are scary and even though I'm prepared.. I don't think I'll ever be ready if this insanity ever does happen.
*hum* I don't really know if the concept is stereotypical?
"They were the walking dead. They're the neighbors. They have some identity. They're us. That's the point I was trying to make -- they're us."
-Romero
~And that's what makes them so freaking scary! Isn't it!!!
"How often have we all said, 'I'm brain dead,' or, 'I'm dead tired?' Zombies are the Nth iteration of these feelings, and can often both scare us and make us laugh at ourselves through identification. To me, if the zombies represent anything, they're just sort of the working Joes," Romero says. "They're the people nobody listens to, and then all of a sudden they're too strong."
Look at the people you work with - your boyfriend / girlfriend... mom... dad...
- Now... imagine them undead...
My own little take...
When I ride the train in the morning - most of those people going to work look pretty damn undead to me... I know they aren't alive!
- - - Maybe if you're not living life to the fullest - your the undead! You aren't living and alive! but I think this is my personal ideda of a zombie....
By the by - -
- My pet zombie hates your guts! But LOVES YOUR BRAINSSSSS!!!
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:51 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:59 am
I kind of got just a LITTLE bit confused there. rolleyes
The stereotypical part of the undead is the fact that they're pretty much always done in the same way. With regards to Vampires, refer to the Vampirism thread.
The zombies you get in Resident Evil are stereotypical, the skeleton armies that have appeared in films as well are stereotypical.
They're always created from some evil son of a b***h who says something along the lines of "Arise!" then "Destroy them!" Something like that anyway. You know the sort of thing I am talking about.
Demon armies can be a bit different as there are a lot of ideas you can play with. The undead have been used in the same ways again and again over the years though.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:04 pm
Loading.Ready.Run presents... A Field Guide to Homo MortuusBeing a guide to all things known of the undead creatures commonly called zombies. Enjoy! Berz.
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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:06 am
Noble and majestic!? rofl
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Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:08 am
I'm gonna really have to think about this as I'm not sure if undead armies could have some kind of original spin or not. I wanted to post yesterday but we had some internet problems and I couldn't.
I'll come back and post later about this. 3nodding
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Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:00 am
I'd say it's safe to call the dudes in Valhalla an Army of the Undead, but if you're busting stereotypes, they're your guys. wink I've seen them portrayed several different ways--but once they're in Valhalla they are normal and "alive" in the Valhalla sense of the word, aware, intelligent, able to party, hang out, spar, fight, die again, and come back to life, rinse and repeat. This is supposed to continue until the end of all things, because the Valkyries are collecting the dead from battlefields specifically to build Odin's army in prep for Ragnarok, the Great Battle. The armies of Valhalla will fight for the gods against the hoards of Darkness.
They are often shown as zombie-like until they arrive in Valhalla--then they go back to "normal" and do their thing to stay in fighting readiness. So they're sort of kinda technically undead, but they don't shuffle, eat brains, or act as if they are under someone else's control.
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Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:41 pm
I see yer point but I'm not sure that's what Mel was asking for.
Hey! I think I saw some of that on the show Charmed. Didn't you Hod? On that show, a human woman could be turned into a Valkyrie, I think... neutral
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:40 pm
I was thinking more along the lines of undead being overused in terms of how they all seem to emerge at the same time and attack in one big group whether or not they're being controlled by some sorcerer.
Resident Evil did it well, but the concept was still a stereotype, and that goes for Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, and pretty much every other zombie film out there.
Different types of zombies and skeletons can be discussed in another topic, but this one's meant to be more about how overused the concept is and whether there are ways of making it more original by perhaps adding new ideas - if there are any to be found.
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:57 pm
*interesting.......*
rofl
cool! Gotta run, but i;ll post when I have time!!!
pirate
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:46 am
There are reasons why undead armies are force to stick to stereotypes. Actually they are all variations of the same reason - undead are too tough!
Variation One - Numbers: The number of undead that can be created is huge. Also, since any undead "killed" in a conventional matter can come back as undead again, they posess a kind of twisted immortality. In order to have such an army be defeatable it must be loaded with some stereotypical balancing weaknesses. A different but comparable situation would be the droid army in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I know these were robots not undead, but the similarity is that they were an essentially nonliving army that could be created easily, quickly, and in large numbers. The necessary balancing point is that this army was essentially stupid, and had to be controlled, and the central controling element presented the fundemental weakness in the army. This will be true for any artificial army, whether they are droids, clay golumns, or undead. Otherwise the army would be unstoppable.
Variation Two - Buffness: An undead could kick the crap out of you. OK, maybe not your average animated skeleton or zombie, but a real tough undead. Even in the first case though, the sheer "lifeless" quality of any undead gives him advantages and immunities that make him tough to beat in combat. This can make an undead army virtually unstoppable. I consider the third Lord of The Rings movie to be a perfect example. At the end of this movie an army of ghosts finished the final battle. I know ghosts aren't exactly the same as undead, but there is another analogy here, so humor me. This is admittedly the only part of any of the three movies I literally hated. In this case the ghosts were on the good side, so the makers of the movie did nothing to balance the superior qualities that the dead status of this army gave it. The army was literally invincible. This is why evil undead armies are balanced by stereotypical weaknesses. In the case of this example itself, I hated this scene because the easy victory the ghost army achieved utterly demeaned the noble, heroic sacrifices of the movie's living characters. They fought and died for nothing!
That in short summarizes why I beleive a break from the stereotypical undead army would be hard to do, and problematic if attempted.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:28 pm
Good analogy all the way SK.
We'll obviously continue the topic, but if anyone has any idea how they might attempt at bringing some originality into such an idea, by all means post it. That is the point of all this after all.
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