hapgilmore

Which one did everyone think was better? I thought DAWN was a more entertaining and better film overall. LAND seemed stale to me.

Jackskeleton

Seems like two way different beast. I mean, one had the running zombies which works better with todays audiance while the other was a social commentary with the good ol' shambling zombies.

I liked both about the same really.

Thrush

The Dawn remake had a good opening and a great 3rd act. However, Everything in between was bad. Aside from maybe Ving you don't really care about any of the characters. So when they die its like, "meh". And when you compare it to the original Dawn which IMO is the greatest Zombie flick ever, it fairs even worse.

LOTD is easily better than the Dawn remake IMO. Though its not as good as the Original NOTLD or Dawn. I'd put it above Day of the dead and below NOTLD.

Giantrobo

Down 04 for me baby.

Land simply reminded me that Romero needs to let someone else do Zombie movies because he's lost what little talent he had for Zombie flicks after Dawn 77.

But just to show some "props" to Romero I'll still buy the Land dvd when it comes out.

JHosk

Another vote for Dawn. A great take on an old classic. The action/suspense scenes were choreographed better, and the story overall was better. Land just seemed like a great premise by a legendary director, which missed the mark.

The comment above about the bad character development in the dawn remake. Sure it can't touch the original, but at least it attempted some type of development. The Characters interacted with each other and had different reactions when confronted with adverse situations. Land of the Dead just seemed like a bunch of zombie action sequences clipped together, with NO attention to character development and interaction. Add to that some cheese set designs (ie. Dead Rechoning), and you have one disappointed romero fan (me).

I agree with GiantRobo though, as I'll still be buying the dvd

Cheers,
Jas

harosa

My vote is for Dawn, I cant understand how people who love Romero's originals can diss Dawn's supposed lack of character development whereas Land had NONE. All Land's leads had were one or two lines and that was it, and was Hopper that bad a villain, he didnt seem liek a total asshole to me, in DAy, when the baddies got it, the film made you cheer for it.

ianholm

Yep, they could've just pulled the cast out of Resident Evil Apocalypse and drop them into Land and you wouldn't know the difference. Dawn 04 for me.

Mr. Cinema

Well, in Land, you don't care about ANY characters. They are all hollow.

Dawn is an easy choice here. Good actors in this one, not some second-rate group. Also, I don't like my zombies being geniuses either. But the best thing about Dawn '04 is: there is no character named Big Daddy.

Land has its moments, but it had too much wrong with it.

Adam Tyner

I agree. Dawn... also often managed to build tension, something Land... completely botched.

matome

Dawn 04 by far. More exciting, better characters and no need to teach me anything. I will still pick up the Land DVD, for the nice gore and Asia (even though she was totally wasted in the film).

This should've had a poll on it.

Charlie Goose

Let's see...Running Zombies vs. Thinking Zombies.

Why, in MY day zombies shuffled stupidly! That wuz the way it wuz and we LIKED it!

Giantrobo

You know, Running thinking zombies that spoke worked well in Return of the Living dead.

Groucho

Send more cops!

scott shelton

LAND all the way.

Crocker Jarmen

I was very diasppointed with Land of the Dead, so I pick Dawn by default. Overall I didn't like the re-make, but it had one of the most fantastic openings I've ever seen. The credit sequence with the news clips while When The Man Comes Around plays is probabely one of my favorite movie scenes every.

I was thinking about Land the other day, and I think my main problem with it is that I'm more interested in the Tribulation than post-Tribulation. It's very exciting to me to see the world coming to an end and people suddenly having to deal with a horrific event by improvising. By the time Land is taking place, zombies are old hat to all the characters, alot of them have probabley grown up knowing the world this way. Without the confusion and the choas, there wasn't a whole lot to interest me.

sracer

They're two different type of films.

DAWN04 wasn't a zombie film... it was an infection film ala 28 Days Later. Only those who were infected became superhuman. Some will argue that they died... maybe they did... maybe the characters only THOUGHT they did.

DAWN04 had a style that was strikingly similar to 28 Days Later. DAWN 04 was more like 29 Days Later.

LAND OF THE DEAD was a true zombie film. Romero took what he had built up in the previous 3 films and took it to the next stage. My only criticisms are (A) the casting of John Leguizamo... sheesh, couldn't they use an unknown actor that can actually ACT? and (B) too much action... more character development/interraction would be preferrable.

Oh, and on the gore level... there was far more gore in the theatrical release of LAND than the UNCUT DAWN04 on DVD. I thought that was interesting.

sracer

ah, but ROTLD is a perfect blend of horror and comedy. I can't think of any films that come close (Army of Darkness comes in 2nd... but there's a bit too much silliness to make it perfect.)

Adam Tyner

The obvious point of reference would be Evil Dead II. I don't think of Army of Darkness as a horror-comedy so much as an adventure flick.

DVDHO

Land,Dawn was Romero's vision with speedy Zombie's and a botched ending,there all good though imo.

freudguy

I like them both equally. I thought DOTD 04 was a little more fun but I also enjoyed LOTD as another chapter in a bigger story. The "evolution" of the zombies was picked up seamlessly from Day of the Dead as well as was the apparent breakdown of society that has been shown in the previous films.

DRG

Suspense > Dawn04
Dawn04 at least had some tense scenes. I never really felt any sense of tension or danger in Land. Contrast this even to the maligned Day, where there was a definite sense of dread and hopelessness when characters were surrounded by zombies and you knew there was a horrible fate for them.

Characters > Dawn04
Perhaps the lack of tension for me was because I didn't care about the characters at all. Not one. While Dawn04's characters weren't perfect, at least there was enough there to get me into it.

Creativity > Land
One thing Land gets right is taking chances with story ideas. The imagining of the zombified civilization was easily the most interesting part of the movie. In fact, I wish they had focused completely on that instead of the action subplot about Cholo and Dead Reckoning.

Zombies > Draw
I'm not a big fan of running zombies, but it works for what Dawn04 was trying to do. But generally the zombies are pretty unmemorable in the movie, except for the fat lady and the baby. Land has many more memorable zombie moments, but this is both good (preacher zombie) and bad (firestarter Big Daddy, machine gun zombie).

Intangibles > Land
Land gets a few bonus points for being a piece of a bigger puzzle. It works better as part of the evolving series than as a free standing work.

Venom

DAWN.

only a little bit of character devlopement, but so what? i can never truely grasp the extreme want for greatly rounded out characters in horror movies... if you want delevopement watch a drama. certainly a ok or good horror movie can be made much better if there is some good characters/devlopement but it isn't required. give us the gist and we'll provide it. Land also had some pretty piss poor characters. but i cared alot more about the DAWN guys.

runnning zombies vs. learning tactic using zombies. this one cracks me up. imagine the cries of outrage had DAWN made zombies smart but slow. the fast zombies worked. it helped created tension and they still had the numbers. since the outbreak just occured you could say that is why they are fast... plenty of food or fuel so to speak.

DAWN had it all, good cast, nice clean gore, a sense of humor. and the ending i thought was great. perfectly dark and hopeless. i walked out the theater amazed. this was the zombie flick i had been waiting for.

LAND was obviously going for different things. i think it's time period hindered it for comparing against DAWN. much more to work with when shit is hitting the fan than the cleaning up aftermath. i think land just skipped over an important element, the building of the society. i would of found that much more interesting. i said before in the LAND thread, it felt like the second movie of a triliogy.

jaeufraser

I have to agree. There's something interesting about the coming to terms with the situation, over already being there.

But truthfully, perhaps my main reason for liking Dawn 04 better, has to do with Dawn actually feeling like a horror movie. Land for most of the film didn't. Quite frankly, all your main characters never really seemed to be in much danger. The Dead Reckoning vehicle honestly was too much. It was this very well protected beast of a machine that our protagnists spend most of their time in. And well, they never really seemed to be in much danger. I always loved the survival aspect of the Dead films, even in Day, but Land didn't quite go there for me.

I'll have to watch Land again though...I know I didn't care much for Day, but on repeat viewings grew quite fond of it. And Dawn hasn't really grown on me as I watch it more (proabbly cause it is an effective horror/action film, but not much else). I may like Land better later on, depends (for all the complaints about running zombies, I prefer them over thinking zombies at least to the level of Big Daddy...never liked the idea of zombies evolving). But for now, Dawn.

natevines

Wow, I just realized this was more or less my problem with it. The settings in the first two films were real world settings. The third one changes it a bit, making it an underground base, but it's believable. This one just makes it a lot more like a post-apocalypic sci-fi dystopia sort of film, which I didn't want to see. Humans at this point had settled that island and made their own little society. Not nearly as interesting as the others.
Another vote for Dawn, too. Not a great film, but better than the highly dissapointing Land.

Giantrobo

Yeah "Land" almost seemed like a Sci Fi Channel series based on the Romero's Living Dead Universe/movies.