re: #232 Kragar

Zombie movies rely on people doing stupid things.

Look at the Dawn of the Dead remake. A bunch of survivors in a mall across the street from a guy who is trapped in a gun store and is an expert sniper. If they were smart, they could have spent every day culling zombies to the point they could arrange a quick expedition to join up with the guy. Instead, they piss around for weeks while the guy is starving, only to launch a half-assed rescue which gets most of them killed and end up on the run.

It still gets me when soldiers in zombie movies say “THEY’RE NOT GOING DOWN” and blaze away all their ammo on full auto. The zombie genre is firmly embedded in pop culture. The decision to quit wasting ammo on full auto and switch to head shots would kick in after the first couple shots.

I do admit that I’ve probably over thought this topic.

Last night, I decided to indulge in mindless entertainment and watched action movies. Mission to Mars was on, and took me nearly half the film to remember I had seen it before and hated it. It was the slow-as-molasses response the crew had to two “life threatening” 1-cm size leaks in the hull that reminded me how uncommonly silly it is. Four supposedly trained people — one without a helmet — take close to 10 agonizingly slow minutes to locate and plug two leaks that could not possibly have depleted the cabin pressure as fast as depicted in the movie.

Rather than fumble about finding them, a real crew would have all followed protocol, suited up, shut off the air supply and gone about about fixing the leaks without all the “OMG we’re gonna die” drama.

Well, only Gary Sinise’s character McConnell would have died, because he said “there was no time” to put on his helmet, despite their taking 10 long minutes to plug the holes.

Simple technical details like that bug the hell out of me. And it was only just one of many. But, it’s a Brian dePalma film and not one of his best, so it has some redeeming moments.