Blockbusting by numbers

The Great Hollywood Movie Making Machine is a calculator. In wildly over-simplified terms, a good producer needs to be in command of one formula above all: does the amount of money this script is likely to make exceed the amount of money needed to make it into a film? If the answer is yes, it gets made. There is a fairly high degree of almost clairvoyance involved and it's always a risk, but it all comes back to that formula. The music industry is exactly the same: it isn't about how good the film or music is, it's about how popular and profitable it is and predominantly the latter. You might have thought that would reduce the abundance of dross on our collective screens but I think that's wishful thinking. 

I have no clue how Netflix judges the success of their original movies, because that formula doesn't apply in the same way. There is no traditional box office receipt for a direct to streaming movie, and views don't equate directly to dollar signs. Even with new subscriptions, there no way to tally them to the new release directly so there must be some sort of arcane magic involved. It does go some way to answer the question of why Netflix original movies are by and large toss.

All this mathematical posturing aside, this weekend I discovered that there is another formula at play within the wheels of the Hollywood machine and it seems to be employed exclusively by Zack Snyder to create his movies.

Army of the Dead crept on to small screens this week after having been ditched spectacularly from Warner Brothers' slate and picked up by Netflix in order to save it from development hell. I can't substantiate whether or not the Snyder Cut had any bearing on it, but people appear to be lapping that up like idiots despite its bloated run time and horrible sense of self-importance so I guess Netflix assumed anything with ZS stamped on it would have the same somnambulist effect on the masses and they'd shamble into subscriptions in their droves, trampling common sense and good taste underfoot as they went.

I'll admit, that isn't probably that fair. I genuinely like most of Snyder's stuff; his Dawn of the Dead remake was very decent, 300 was watchable cartoonish action drivel, Watchmen and Suckerpunch were the same. I didn't even hate Man of Steel and I regularly wake up in a foul mood wanting to punch the creators of Superman in their throats for unleashing the physical manifestation of tedium on the world. I did draw the line at Batman vs Superman and Justice League, but otherwise, there's a place in the world of cinema for the type of visual storytelling Snyder is actually pretty good at. Trouble here is that he's either slipping a touch or I'm getting savvy in my old age; Army of the Dead is literally (figuratively) a Snyder movie by the numbers. There's a formula.

• Pre-opening credit scene
• Montage of historical events set to either a tedious acoustic cover of a classic 70's tune or something by Richard Cheese (in this case unfathomably both) 
• Hero doing ordinary job 
• Decides to do hero things again
• 90 minutes of action (roughly 60% of which will be in glorious Slo-Mo)
• Some sort of double cross/betrayal  
• All's well that ends well. 
• Or does it? Oh ho ho!

Seriously, go back over most of his back catalogue and most, if not all of those pieces are there; all those flashy visuals and green screen tomfoolery can only cover so much buddy.

Army of the Dead has been rattling around Snyder's brain for over a decade, so it isn't an enormous surprise that it's a bit derivative. The problem is really that all the interesting story beats are lifted directly from other, infinitely better movies. Zombie type animals? Done in Annihilation. Fast, organised Zombies? I am Legend got you covered. Racing against an impending nuclear strike? Geez, take your pick, but within the genre, I'm fairly sure Resident Evil did that at least once. The entire final act of the movie? Try and tell me Zack Snyder hasn't seen Aliens and that it's all some sort of terrible coincidence. Try it, I dare you. The Female Hispanic character with the instantly forgettable name is even dressed exactly like Vasquez, down to the red bandana. It's so brazen I'm surprised there haven't been lawsuits. 

In essence, Army of the Dead is a heist movie. Sort of. It's definitely a movie with a heist in it, but it thankfully isn't as convoluted as an Ocean's 11. It relies heavily on those heist tropes though, the mysterious benefactor, the assembly of a rag-tag teams of specialists, the planning session with "flash-forwards" and then everything obviously goes to shit at some point along he way.  There's even a shady character with an ulterior motive/secret mission in there as well because of course there is. Trouble is, these tropes are so well trodden by now that nothing is a surprise. Everything is so predictable it removes any tension and drama from proceedings and the result is a very dry, very ordinary heist movie with some zombies in it. There are the odd attempts at breaking new ground, but it's all a bit clumsy; the desiccated zombie horde near the way into the infected zone teases the possibility of a heart-stopping race though re-animating corpses for freedom, but then doesn't deliver on all the fore-shadowing. What should have been a breath-holding and fingernail-biting crawl though hibernating zombies pans out almost exactly how you'd expect it would if you thought about it for even a few seconds. It even throws in a "can zombies get pregnant?" subplot which just fizzles out and goes exactly nowhere. No shock, no awe.

The characters themselves are not universally stupid in the conventional horror movie sense and for the most part don't do anything too idiotic to get themselves killed. They're either painted in standard broad strokes or groan-inducing juxtapositions; the opening montage has these weird school photo type shots of the heroes holding photos of their former lives; soccer mom turned hardened zombie killer, family man turned hardened zombie killer, philosophy graduate turned... you get the idea. It's clearly meant to be stylistic but it's just odd. Dieter the annoying locksmith is annoying, megalomaniac cop is a douche, estranged daughter is wilful and idiotic, YouTube zombie killer is surprisingly adept at military strategy for a gang-banger stereotype. I like Dave Bautista, he seems like a nice guy and for a former wrestler his acting isn't completely dreadful. He handles the action and dry comedy parts of the script pretty well actually, but most of the heart-felt chats with his daughter are just a bit cringey. He passed on James Gunn's Suicide Squad for this so let's hope it pans out.

It's not all doom and gloom. The effects are pretty good, including Valentine the zombie Tiger and there are plenty of things exploding, heads being twisted off and spouts of claret to keep your average zombie fan going. They are clearly angling for some sort of sequel/saga/extended universe like almost every movie released since the MCU proved to the money men it was possible but the real question left is where do you go from here? Surely you'd want to break at least some new ground, but how do you do that with a sub genre so over-saturated that all the good ideas have been done? Hell, even the half decent, mediocre and plain shit ones have been done, we're running on fumes at this point.

So the Netflix Original curse claims another victim. It's not on the absolute bottom of the pile, and if you're after a mindless action flick to have on in the background while you practice card tricks or compose that letter to your MP about the lack of bus service to your area of late then it's fine. It's been formulaically crafted to be exactly that.

 You're good people, indulging my whims as you do; you all get a thumbs up emoji, a smiley face emoji and a random Tengu mask emoji.