Too Much of a Good Thing?
Zombies are popular, but can there be too much of a good thing? Michael Rundle poses this question in an article for the New York-based Metro paper. He writes specifically about an excess of zombie-themed comic books but it certainly applies to zombie movies and other areas of pop-culture as well.
What do you think? Is there a glut of zombie material out there now? Or is it just a natural growth in line with its popularity? Is the problem really too much zombie stuff or too much BAD zombie stuff? Is it all just a fad?
I’d be interested to know what our readers think – leave us a comment and voice your opinion!
Comments(8)
Is there an excess of super hero themed comic books then? Cuz when I try to find zombie themed comics, I really have to sift through a ton of those. I just think that while there are a lot of zombie title that I’ve seen, there aren’t any more than any other genre. I’ll tell you this, there aren’t enough for this zombie enthusiast.
A point I feel important to quibble from the article, I Am Legend is about vampires. While still undead, it’s just not the same thing.
I have seen a flux of bad zombie movies in the video store. It would seem that people find it easy to make their first movie a zombie movie. It seems so easy. If you wanna make a splatter film, what better way then to necessitate brains to be blown out to defeat the enemy? But all in all it just makes for bad video fodder. People pay to much attention to making the special effects and almost none to the fact that there’s no story and no acting skill.
Now if we’re talkin’ big time hollywood releases, what have we got? 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead. 3 zombie movies in the past 5 years. How many romantic comedies have been released in the last year? Action movies? Adventure? Actual comedies? Zombie flicks, I’d say, fall into the horror category, which is a shrinking category. If all the horror movies that have been made were zombie flicks, or even a large portion, then I’d could say there was a point, but they’re not. I think that since a few actually good zombie flicks have been made, it’s been more prevalent.
I think there’s an obvious logic to the release of the afore mentioned films. 28 Days Later seemed to inspire the idea that zombies could be scary again which lead to the Dawn of the Dead remake. And Zack Snyders take on zombies seemed to goad Romero into proving that he still had it with Land of the Dead.
All in all, the popularity of certain things usually comes in waves. Zombie are no different. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fad. It seems obvious that more interest in zombies would come after the successful release of a popular zombie flick, but to dismiss it as a passing fad would be foolish. This shit was started in 1968, yet here we are reading the Zombie Reporting Center blog.
Very insightful comments Jef – you put it better than I could have myself.
The only possible danger that I can see is if zombies rise for real. With all the fake zombies around, people might not notice the real ones until it’s too late.
I’m glad that zombies are infiltrating all mass media. Brad Pitt’s film company is producing a zombie movie. I’m glad. One of the most popular independent comics is a zombie comic. I’m ecstatic. Zombie films are being re-issued on DVD in mass amounts (and a lot of these are good and great movies). I’m loving it. Trust me, as a zombie enthusiast, I’m far from feeling bloated by zombie entertainment. Lastly, if zombies are a fad, then tell that to the million dollar skateboard industry. They were a fad too…
[...] Zombie Reporting Center » Blog Archive » Too Much of a Good Thing?: “Zombies are popular, but can there be too much of a good thing? Michael Rundle poses this question in an article for the New York-based Metro paper. “ [...]
I think it’s clear that the zombie books are an offshoot of a resurrection (heh) of zombies in popular culture, so I’d prefer to address the popularity of zombies across all media rather than comic book zombies alone.
I don’t care to speculate on how long this phenomenon will last (in other words, if it’s a fad or not) until I have a working theory of why the phenomenon came about now. Or, indeed, when it really began to take off. What marks the beginning? The release of Resident Evil in 1996? 28 Days Later in 2002? Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide?
Or maybe we’re just seeing a new cycle. The 70s saw the Italian Cycle, the 80s saw the Splatstick Cycle, the 90s…weren’t all that great for zombies, at least outside of Asia.
I suspect this all has something to do with the current ubiquity of the Internet. Ideas and memes can now spread faster and farther than ever before, and as a result, the formerly cult phenomenon of zombies has gone mainstream. It’s like a boat from Matul winding up adrift in New York Harbor. Pretty soon your bridges are clogged up with shamblers.
If I’m right, and widespread Internet access is responsible for allowing zombies to go mainstream, then the phenomenon is totally new, and therefore we have no precedent to determine how long it will last. Hopefully it isn’t going away any time soon.
Don-
The 90’s were a slow time for good zombie flicks, but we did get Bride of the Re-Animator, Army of Darkness, Dead Alive and Dellamorte Dellamore at least, and, like you mentioned, a handful of good Asian zombie movies, like Junk.
It’s clearly a fad. These things come in spikes. In the mid-90s it was the natural disaster movies with Twister, Volcano, Armageddon, Deep Impact, Dante’s Peak, etc.
Do they still make those movies? Of course, but back then you saw two production companies coming out with near identical movies because the premise was hot.
There are hardcore zombie fans who will stick with the genre no matter what, but the general public won’t. The concept of the living dead just happens to heavily fit in with the direction that the world is moving towards with technology, new weapons, cloning.
There’s little more frightening than the dead coming back to life. It happens to resonate right now. It may be vampires again in a few years, or giant monsters or killer clowns from outer space!