Last updated: May 12, 2021
Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead introduces a new post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world for viewers to enjoy. However, it has some major differences to what audiences are accustomed to from watching traditional zombie stories like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and AMC’s The Walking Dead.
The director behind Justice League, 300, Man of Steel, and the Dawn of the Dead remake is writing and helming Netflix’s Army of the Dead, which is described as a heist movie set in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Army of the Dead, which will release on the streaming service on May 21, will see a team of mercenaries, led by Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward, undergo a dangerous mission in Las Vegas, which is crawling with zombies. A heist gone wrong will result in Ward and his allies getting caught in a battle with the hordes. To survive the zombified humans (and animals), they’ll have to use teamwork and an arsenal of weapons to kill the creatures, who appear to be more formidable than the traditionally slow, brainless zombies.
The world that’s established in Snyder’s Army of the Dead story is already confirmed to appear in more than just one movie. It’ll also be the focus of a prequel film titled Army of Thieves and an anime series titled Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which will serve as a spinoff of the first movie. Depending on the success of these projects, more stories set in its world could be told in the future, and be built around the events that occurred in its timeline. Here’s everything you need to know about the history Snyder has created for Army of the Dead and its version of the zombie apocalypse.
The details of how Army of the Dead’s zombies were created aren’t known as of yet, but it has been confirmed by Snyder himself that the outbreak of zombies begins in Area 51, the highly secretive government facility in Nevada. What this suggests is that it may be the product of scientific experiments. Either way, it’s currently regarded as a mystery. It’s possible that someone at Area 51 engineered the zombie virus and then it spread in the aftermath. A chain reaction could have resulted in the creation of a multitude of undead creatures. What is known is the first zombie, know as Zeus and patient zero, escaped the facility and began infecting others and building an army as the Alpha.
Somehow, the zombies connected to Army of the Dead’s virus are deadlier than the shambling, mindless, flesh-eaters that appear in most zombie movies and shows. With their enhanced reflexes, they possess the capability to dodge and anticipate attacks. Plus, they can communicate with each other. Zombies can call out to others, and may even be driven by a pack mentality. Zombies in the trailer can be seen rallying each other to fight the humans and relying on their numbers to prevail. There is also a chain of command of some sort, as the zombies answer to leaders known as Alphas like Zeus, who can create Alphas with a bite. However, other Alphas who create zombies merely create the shambler, weaker versions. Making this army of undead even more difficult to deal with is the fact that some among them are animals; horses and tigers can be counted among their numbers.
According to Snyder, the origin of Army of the Dead’s unique zombies will be explored in the movie’s opening scene, so it seems unlikely that the Netflix film will spend much time on this mystery before moving on. That being said, the origin of the virus at Area 51 will be revisited later. It’s expected to be at the heart of the story for Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which will take place during the early days of the zombie apocalypse. Presumably, the show will explore the lives of characters who were there when it all started. Many characters in Army of the Dead’s main cast, such as Bautista’s Ward, Ella Purnell’s Kate Ward, Omari Hardwick’s Vanderohe, and Ana de la Reguera’s Cruz, are also in the anime prequel series.
In the Army of the Dead trailer, Ward’s team gets past a barricade and lays eyes on a city overrun with zombies. There are hundreds if not thousands of them overrunning Vegas. So many are packed into one enclosed area because the government managed to contain the outbreak there in Las Vegas. They’ve been there so long that they’ve been able to turn the city into a desolate ruin. One way the United States succeeded in locking it down was through its military firepower. Airstrikes were launched on the zombies and, at some point, shipping containers were used to close off the city and keep the zombies from getting out and spreading the virus to anywhere else in the country. The surprise some characters express when seeing them leaves the impression that the containment of the outbreak has been mostly successful. The public may not even be aware of what’s happened within the city or how serious the outbreak was.
Fans shouldn't expect the film to take place in the days immediately following the outbreak. In fact, he main plot of the film revolves around what happens six years after the zombie outbreak was first contained in Las Vegas, with walls keeping the zombies out while the rest of the world went back to some normalcy. The characters returned to living normal lives but ended up being lured back to where it all started. Hiroyuki Sanada’s Hunter Bly sits down for a meeting with Ward at the diner where he now works, and making him a hard-to-refuse offer. Bly explains that he’s willing to pay Ward’s team $50 million to break into a vault beneath the Las Vegas strip where the zombie horde is located. To get to this vault, they’ll have to bypass the U.S. military and find their way into a casino. After pondering over the job, Ward unites several of his former associates and convinces them to assist him in completing the heist and coming face-to-face with zombies. Of course, they'll be doing the heist around the same time the president decides to nuke Las Vegas to get rid of the zombies for good. Whether or not the team succeeds, and how many of them (if any) have a future in Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead universe, remains to be seen.
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