Does Romero's Dead series depict the same zombie apocalypse?

It seems the common consensus is yes, but I've always argued that at least the first three Dead films are not a true trilogy, but more like a triptych where the films work together as a whole thematically, but actually depict three different zombie apocalypses in separate "universes". This viewpoint has sparked genuine arguments when I've brought it up in the past. I had a guy at a party call me "a fucking ass-clown" for thinking this. Or maybe it was "fucking-ass clown". We were all pretty drunk.

Cut to last year, when I had the good fortune to meet Lori Cardille, star of Day of the Dead, at a benefit in Chicago, and of course I asked her this very question. She said that this was actually a topic of discussion on set. Apparently Romero does not want to stifle fan discussion by coming down on either side of the argument, but like me, she does not believe the films depict the same zombie apocalypse.

Thoughts?

I hadn't realized the common consensus was "yes". I am inclined to agree with you. They work together thematically, and carry the exact same disaster, but the dates are so far apart that I have actually always just assumed they didn't have connected continuity.

In Dawn of the Dead, though it was made ten years after the first film, and the setting of both films reflect the time they were made in, it seems the zombie apocalypse had happened very recently. Though admittedly, Day of the Dead obviously takes place a good deal of time after the outbreak began; I guess it would be reasonable to assume that Dawn and Day share the same zombie apocalypse. Bottom line is that I don't think it really matters. The details of the outbreak were never even a major point of those films, they all drop right into the thick of it and focus on the characters in the situation. The audience is purposefully kept in the dark as much as the characters are, and the details are left vague, because they aren't that important to the story being told or the points being made.

Not to say discussions like this arn't still fun to have.

asterisk8 said:

I had a guy at a party call me "a fucking ass-clown" for thinking this. Or maybe it was "fucking-ass clown". We were all pretty drunk.

LOL

...

I assumed same zombie outbreak.  I can see the other side, but I like the idea of the same outbreak, so that's what I go with.

The first three certainly seem to follow an arc.

A sudden outbreak where the recently dead rise again and look quite fresh, the living still outnumber the undead and the local 'militia' in the locality of the farmhouse eventually get that area cleared but chaos is described in the cities.

People refuse to destroy corpses and the emergency broadcast system (seen in the first film) is inaccurate and sending people into danger zones.

The characters of the second film fly over redneck militias like those in the first film who make sport of shooting the undead but pockets between the cities go missed (like the petrol station). The Mall draws zombies from all around. The zombies seem a bit more decayed and the numbers are definitely on the rise.

In Day Of The Dead the undead are much more decayed and out number the living, there is no visible government and what military does exist is are cut off and is reluctantly following orders given a long time ago.

If Land Of The Dead does fit in it could be between Dawn and Day but to be honest it feels out of place (it certainly feels more like an eighties film than Day does).

Diary Of The Dead in my view can not be made to fit in with the first three films or the fourth.

I haven't seen Survival Of The Dead so I can't comment on it.

I'd never given it much thought, but I believe that Romero intended them, at least loosely, to be one story. I read once that he even has an 'original intent' story that combined the three films.

I think Romero was probably so stoked just to get the money to make "Day" that he didn't waste time thinking "gee, I need to make this a period piece set ten years ago, so as not to confuse continuity."

Remember, this was the 70s. The idea of a 'film franchise' was still a ways off, and no one debated things like continuity.

(I make no claims about "Land" or "Diary" except they sucked)

The trouble with the first three films being set during the same zombie apocalypse is that each takes place roughly 10 years after the other and yet Dawn of the Dead clearly is set at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. If 10 years had passed, there would have been no chaotic televised arguments about what is happening. Things would've appeared much as they do in Day. Complete and total collapse of civilization from fade in. For Dawn of the Dead to be a direct sequel to Night, it would've needed to be a period-piece set no later than 1969, and yet everything about the film - from the costumes, to the sets, to the technology, and even characterizations - tells the audience that it is 1978.

What's more, as CP3S notes, and as I've always argued, each film offers a commentary on the decade in which it is set. Night comments on race relations in the 60s, Dawn on consumerism in the 70s, and Day on the military-industrial complex of the 80s. For that clear and admitted subtext to have relevance, the films must be spread out over a 20-year span of time.

I disagree that intelligent filmmakers were not debating continuity in the 1970s. It's not as if multi-part storytelling had yet to be invented. I totally reject the idea that George Romero thought it didn't matter that his films were each set in different decades. Quite to the contrary, it was of supreme importance.

asterisk8 said:

The trouble with the first three films being set during the same zombie apocalypse is that each takes place roughly 10 years after the other and yet Dawn of the Dead clearly is set at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. If 10 years had passed, there would have been no chaotic televised arguments about what is happening. Things would've appeared much as they do in Day. Complete and total collapse of civilization from fade in. For Dawn of the Dead to be a direct sequel to Night, it would've needed to be a period-piece set no later than 1969, and yet everything about the film - from the costumes, to the sets, to the technology, and even characterizations - tells the audience that it is 1978.

What's more, as CP3S notes, and as I've always argued, each film offers a commentary on the decade in which it is set. Night comments on race relations in the 60s, Dawn on consumerism in the 70s, and Day on the military-industrial complex of the 80s. For that clear and admitted subtext to have relevance, the films must be spread out over a 20-year span of time.

 

 I think the films are set in the decades they're made in, because that's when they were made. I imagine had someone handed Romero a wad of cash to make a sequal in 1969, he would have set it then.

I've always found the 'social commentary' claims about these films a bit thin. Romero's always claimed that Ben in NOTLD wasn't written as black, and the actor who was cast was the one who gave the best audition. Recast him as a white actor and it makes perfect sense, and any percieved racial commentary vanishes.

And was America so much less consumeristic in the late 60s that "Dawn" had to be a creature of the 70s because it was in a mall? Or was the late 70s just when Romero finally decided to go back to the well and do a sequal to his one big movie?

And dramatically, I dont think you start a film about a zombie apocalypse, which in 1978 wasn't a cliche yet, in the middle of the apocalypse, unless you expect the audience to know this is a follow up to a prior (very well known) story.

If "Night" is about race, and "Dawn" is about consumerism, are "Land" "Diary' and "Survival" commentaries on how the 2000s sucked, lacked inspiration, and wasted my time? ;-)

It seems to me we have three films in a series that simply don't fit well together because of the circumstances and time frames in which they were made.

Points well-taken, TheBoost. I don't deny that the social commentary aspect of the films were of secondary concern to Romero, but even eliminating that, we're still talking about a decade between Night and Dawn, and both films show the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. I don't think that this can be ignored or brushed aside as just as product of circumstances or the result of some need to start every zombie film with the outbreak. Romero was more than capable in 1978 of setting his film in 1968 if he intended Dawn to be a direct sequel to Night.

Instead it carries absolutely nothing over from the previous film other than "people attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse". This is where I have trouble accepting this long-held assumption that they depict the same zombie apocalypse. There's zero evidence within the films themselves that this is the same event, but plenty of evidence that they are not, specifically the large gaps in time, the lack of any recurring characters, or even one line of dialogue tying the events of one film to another. There is none. Believing that Dawn is a true sequel - and not just another film in a zombie series - requires far greater leaps in logic and assumption. I've heard the same thing from other fans. "Romero probably..." followed by some sort of speculation as to why the films don't appear directly linked but must be just because people have always assumed that they are. I mean, I've actually heard people try to explain with a straight face how Diary of the Dead, which uses hand-held digital cameras as a device within the film itself, is occurring simultaneously with Night of the Living Dead.  The simplest answer, given the evidence, is that the Dead series is made up of standalone zombie films.

And going back for a minute to film franchises, I think you're forgetting The Planet of the Apes spawned four direct sequels, all made in the 70s, that are directly linked as one giant narrative. In fact, just a little bit of research will reveal the concept of film franchises stretching back to the beginning of film itself.

asterisk8 said:

I've always argued that at least the first three Dead films are not a true trilogy, but more like a triptych where the films work together as a whole thematically, but actually depict three different zombie apocalypses in separate "universes".

I certainly hope that's the case, 'cause everything after Night of the Living Dead is IMHO crap.

Aw man, Dawn of the Dead is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's like a live-action comic book.

asterisk8 said:

The trouble with the first three films being set during the same zombie apocalypse is that each takes place roughly 10 years after the other and yet Dawn of the Dead clearly is set at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. If 10 years had passed, there would have been no chaotic televised arguments about what is happening. Things would've appeared much as they do in Day. 

I think we are supposed to use our imagination there.

NOTLD and Dawn are supposed to be a few days or weeks away from each other and Day something like a year later.

They look like the decades they are filmed in because those are the decades they were filmed in.

Land however looks, feels and is played more like a response to Ronald than George W (it even has a signature vehicle straight out of The A-Team).

Bingowings said:

They look like the decades they are filmed in because those are the decades they were filmed in.

 

I hear this every time I bring up this debate, and it just doesn't make sense to me. There were period films being made in the 70s. Romero could've set the film in 1968 if he wanted to. He didn't.

Aye but we have no indication that NOTLD is set in 1968 specifically (beyond the superficial details).

The Jon Pertwee Doctor Who episodes were meant to be set about six years in the future of the time of transmission but now we can clearly see that The Time Warrior wasn't filmed in 1980 (so much so that annoyingly these were either retconned or mistaken to have taken place in the early seventies by later writers and producers which has caused much a do in Doctor Who fan circles who love to argue about these things).

Also to make Dawn Of The Dead with late sixties details would have pushed the already tight budget to breaking point and robbed the film of it's cost saving and satirically ripe central location.

The mall in the film was only just built and such buildings were practically non existent when NOTD was filmed.

That's why I said we are supposed to use our imaginations when viewing these films.

The aren't set in a specific year but like Max Headroom they are set '20 minutes in the future'.

They follow on from each other pretty much in the manner I described but they begin any minute now (whenever that is).

I still have to ask, why is that sort of convoluted logic easier to believe than just that each film is a unique take on the concept of zombie apocalypse?

It's not that convoluted, it's definitely easier to grasp when you were brought up on a diet of low budget but high concept television where the surface details were always second place to the narrative content.

As I posted earlier there is clear torch passing between each film (well at least for the first three), they are meant to be part of the same narrative but always set 'any minute now".

Television shows like The Changes and Survivors are also set in the near future but made in the early seventies.

When watching it now I have to turn a blind eye to the surface details from the decade that taste forgot and imagine it happening sometime very soon.

That is at least the way I see them and if you want to see them in another way I can see how but I'm not persuaded to change my own interpretation.

asterisk8 said:

I still have to ask, why is that sort of convoluted logic easier to believe than just that each film is a unique take on the concept of zombie apocalypse?

Seriously. Asterisk, you and I are very much on the same page here.

I think that is why Romero hasn't really spoken up on this issue, the continuity doesn't matter and is far from the purpose of the films.

asterisk8 said:

I still have to ask, why is that sort of convoluted logic easier to believe than just that each film is a unique take on the concept of zombie apocalypse?

I don't think it's convoluted at all.

I think "DOTD" both in Romero's intention and the audience's expectations was a sequal to the extremely successful "NOTLD."

I agree with everything you say about the time settings of both films. "Night" is set in 1969, and "Dawn" is plainly set a decade later, but the story implies they happen near eachother. I simply say that at the time, and even now, mostly no one cared about that discrepency.

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

TheBoost said:

no one cared

This.  And why care now?

TV's Frink said:

TheBoost said:

no one cared

This.  And why care now?

Because I once read a "chronology" of the series on a message board that mixed around the order of the entire Dead series to explain how each film depicts the same zombie apocalypse. They put Diary of the Dead taking place congruently with Night of the Living Dead, and I thought that was ludicrous and it got me thinking about the assumption that it's the same event and how there is little or no evidence to support that.

TheBoost said:

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

Again, this was after the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, so I don't know where you get this idea.

asterisk8 said:

TheBoost said:

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

Again, this was after the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, so I don't know where you get this idea.

But the Planet of the Apes was set in the future, the further future, in the past, in the present, and then a different contradictory alternate future. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

TheBoost said:

asterisk8 said:

TheBoost said:

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

Again, this was after the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, so I don't know where you get this idea.

But the Planet of the Apes was set in the future, the further future, in the past, in the present, and then a different contradictory alternate future. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

My point is that is was a film franchise where characters and plot carried over from one film to another in a decade when you suggested that no one had thought of film franchises or debated continuity yet. Also Battle for the Planet of the Apes is not a different contradictory alternate future. I don't know where you got that idea.

TV's Frink said:

TheBoost said:

no one cared

This.  And why care now?

Not to start anything, but here is another example of if it isn't relevant to you, it doesn't need to be talked about at all attitude. I just don't get where this attitude comes from.

There are a ton of threads with discussion I would be hard pressed to care any less about, as such, I just don't click on them. I think people would get more than a little annoyed with me if I jumped into every sports thread and asked "Who cares? Why does this matter?" etc. Asterisk obviously started the thread because it is an interesting topic to him.