Not even half a year after the release of the long-awaited Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the 300 director returned with another movie: Army Of The Dead. Snyder’s return to the zombie genre was met with great excitement, and it seems to have gone over well with viewers.
Due to it being another Snyder zombie movie, his fans couldn’t help but compare it to his earlier zombie movie: the 2004 remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead. The two have lots of similar pros and cons, but only one can truly be Snyder’s undead masterpiece.
10 ARMY: It Introduced A Zombie Society
Zombies are generally mindless cannibals that devour anything in their path, but Army subverts this by giving them an entire hierarchy. Las Vegas is now a zombie kingdom, where the Alpha zombie Zeus and his chosen Alphas (i.e. intelligent zombies) command the undead. The zombies even retain human emotions, seen in Zeus’ romance with The Queen.
In a way, this is an expansion on the ideas introduced in the likes of Land Of The Dead, where the zombies developed sentience and community. While smart zombies and undead societies aren’t exactly new (see: Warm Bodies), Army is possibly the first to explore it through a platform as mainstream as Netflix. Expect more to follow and develop on Army’s ideas in the future.
9 DAWN: It Improved The Classic Living Dead
Like 28 Days Later before it, Snyder’s remake is best known for introducing the running zombie. Despite their more feral nature and unstoppable onslaughts, these runners are little more than an update of the classic shambling corpses. That’s not a bad thing, though, as Dawn was instrumental in modernizing the undead for the 2000s and beyond.
Before the New Millennium, zombies were a rotting punchline and aging social commentary on conformity and consumerism. But thanks to Dawn, zombies were literally and thematically brought up to speed. Cases in point: running zombies in overwhelming numbers are now mandatory in zombie media, while horror legend Stephen King praised Dawn’s agile undead as representations of post-9/11 fears.
8 ARMY: It’s An Ambitious Blend Of Genres & More
It’s debatable if Army succeeded in pulling off its mix of zombies and heists, but it still gets points for trying. That’s not the end of it, since Army hinted at a larger, grander undead world. Weird world-building inconsistencies like aliens, robot zombies, and a possible Purgatorial time loop gave this specific zombie apocalypse lots of potential that’s now waiting to be unleashed.
Dawn, in contrast, is as by-the-numbers as a zombie movie gets. Besides being a decent remake, Dawn’s only focus was telling a survivors’ tale set in a Milwaukee mall. Dawn succeeds both in being its own thing and a successor to Romero’s undead legacy, but it lacks the creative imagination and madness of Army.
7 DAWN: It’s A Modernized Old-School Zombie Movie
In their prime, the zombie movie was basically an invasion thriller: a group of unlikely survivors banded together in an isolated location and fended off an onslaught of zombies. Romero’s original Living Dead trilogy cemented this formula, and later movies tried to spice things up. Case in point, Army stages a break-in into a zombie-overrun Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Dawn sticks to the formula, with its only subversion being the vehicular escape at the end. This isn’t a negative, and it may very well be exactly what some zombie fans are looking for. There’s a place for zombie reinventions (ex. Army) and deconstructions (ex. Zombieland), but traditionalists like Snyder’s remake do a better job at championing the genre.
6 ARMY: It Has More Compelling Human Drama
Something different and even admirable about Army is that it slows down to humanize its deceptively one-dimensional characters. Main characters like the mercenaries’ leader/atoning father Scott and even Zeus get a moment to reveal what motivates them, giving an otherwise schlocky movie more layers than expected.
As for Dawn, the mall survivors only get the bare minimum of characterization because survival is their top priority. Even though they get some downtime in between zombie attacks, they understandably don’t have much time to socialize given the gravity of their situation. While compelling, they’re not as developed as Army’s core cast.
5 DAWN: It’s A Tighter, Real-Time Survival Movie
At its worst, Army has so many ideas that it can’t choose which ones to properly develop and expand, leaving many interesting but undercooked concepts in its wake. On the other hand, Dawn’s minimalist and laser-focused approach to the zombie apocalypse is one of its biggest strengths.
Dawn traps viewers in the claustrophobic and overbearing atmosphere of its survivors’ desperation, best seen in its now iconic prologue. Where Army briskly moves from one shootout to the next, Dawn methodically shows how its ragtag survivors turn the mall into a sanctuary. To some, this is more compelling than seeing veteran fighters mow down a horde with machine guns.
4 ARMY: The Cast Is Pure Greatness
From the posters alone, Army’s cast oozed unfiltered badass energy. Scott’s team of zombie killers is the right mix of eccentric conmen and old-school heroes from B-grade action movies, making them the perfect avatars of wish-fulfillment that an over-the-top action romp like Army thrives on.
From the buzzsaw-wielding Vanderohe to the sardonic pilot Marianne Peters, everyone in Scott’s team has one specific role to play out in the movie and they fulfill them perfectly. Granted, they can feel more like action figures than actual people and are prone to predictably dumb decisions. That said, Army’s hired guns are here to slaughter zombies and get paid, and they deliver.
3 DAWN: The Cast Is More Down-To-Earth & Relatable
Dawn’s cast is the direct opposite of Army’s. Where the latter stars gunmen who are almost indistinguishable from each other, Dawn is populated by normal people who led the most normal and mundane lives imaginable before the dead began to walk the Earth. This works to the remake’s advantage since its characters are more grounded and relatable as a result.
Led by the nurse Ana and cop Kenneth, Dawn’s survivor group is easy to sympathize with because of just how familiar they all are. Though there are way too many of them to properly develop them and even if they don’t say everything about themselves, the mall survivors reveal enough through their present actions, choices, and moments of silence.
2 ARMY: It’s Zack Snyder’s Triumphant Return
By now, it’s no secret that Snyder had a rough time. His time with DCEU polarized audiences, his vision of Justice League was heavily compromised and, worst of all, a devastating family tragedy struck while he was filming the latter. After a five-year break, Snyder triumphantly returned in 2021 with the highly-anticipated uncut Justice League and Netflix’s smash zombie hit.
Meanwhile, Dawn was Snyder’s feature film debut. While definitely a landmark in his career, it doesn’t have the same emotional resonance and catharsis that Army does. Where Dawn represented the start of things to come, Army symbolized Snyder’s personal victory over the five hardest years of his life.
1 DAWN: It Helped Usher The Modern Zombie Wave
Regardless of its reception, Army is yet another zombie movie in an already over-saturated subgenre. Ever since their early 2000’s resurrection and especially after The Walking Dead took television by storm, zombies have become so stale that even zombie parodies and deconstructions have become clichés.
That said, Army wouldn’t even exist if not for Dawn, which was there at the very beginning. Alongside 28 Days Later, Snyder’s remake helped legitimize the return of the living dead in the pop culture zeitgeist. If Army is a topical zombie movie with some cool subversions, Dawn is the kind of genre trailblazer most directors only wish they could make.
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