Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)/Wall Banger

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Wall Bangers from Dawn of the Dead (2004 film) include:

  • The survivors want to leave their safe, fully-stocked mall - which would have canned food, supplies, medical kits, radios, everything they could possibly need - to go to an island in Lake Michigan. They do not know if Steve's boat is still in the marina, if the island exists, if the island is uninfected, if they could even survive on the island, or if they're capable of driving across the city through thousands of zombies. They try anyway. Why? According to the nurse, "I don't wanna die here." Yes, they're leaving a perfect place to survive because the zombies freak them out. The island does exist, but this plan was shown to be flawed...
  • They all nearly die on the boat because they run out of water and gas. They have hardly any idea how to use a boat. If they had stayed in the mall, then they all could have survived a lot longer. Nice one, morons.
  • The mall was compromised by some bad decisions. To be fair, the survivors were acutely aware that they couldn't stay in the mall forever, hence their preparations for leaving. Rushing out to rescue one Too Dumb to Live survivor, perhaps. Trusting the Jerkass to keep watch on a critical door that kept the mall secure...
  • It stated in the commentary and effects featurette that the zombies were demonstrably falling apart. The longer the people remained in the mall, the more the zombies began to collapse on themselves. Before the attempt to reach Andy's gun shop, there hadn't been any security breaches in the mall proper; the only zombies they had to mop up were stragglers in the mall at the start of the incident. Why breach this security because you're disturbed by something that's over? The mall seemed to be well-stocked with food and supplies; why leave this when clearly you're leaving whatever necessities you need and already have in hopes that you'll find somewhere without zombies, without any proof? If the zombies are falling apart, then that is foolhardy; you could just wait till they fall apart completely and then strike out looking for somewhere else.
  • The scene with the blonde chick, Nicole, and the dog, "Chips". The dog gets out of the mall and proceeds to wander around in the crowd of zombies, who take no notice of it because, apparently, these zombies only attack living humans, as opposed to all living creatures. Chips is not in danger. But Nicole, Chips's adopted owner, steals the getaway truck, crashes it into the gun shop opposite, and has to be rescued by the awesome chess-playing gun shop owner—who is zombified as a result. Nice going, moron.
    • They released the dog because they strapped food packs onto the dog in order to feed the starving gun shop owner, Andy. Nicole flips out because the zombies enter the gun shop the same way the dog does.
    • She goes alone, with no plan and no weapon.
  • Andy is stuck in his weapon store, which is undoubtedly chock-full of weapons and ammunition. We've seen that he's a skilled marksman. Using his skills and supplies, he should be able to if not get rid of all the zombies in the city, then at least considerably trim down their numbers. Why didn't they try to do that, instead of a game of chess and Kill Waldo?
    • This is addressed in a bonus feature on the DVD. Andy mentions attempting to kill all the zombies that gathered but "for every one that died, two more showed up, like that hobbit dragon thing.
      • Which is itself a Wall Banger, given that it either a) requires intelligent swarming behavior from allegedly mindless zombies in that they can distinguish meaningful sounds from irrelevant ones or b) means that zombies will mindlessly flock to any noisemakers, which suggests an obvious way to decoy any amount of zombies away from places you want to go -- that the protagonists entirely missed using.
      • It also ignores that the number of zombies within hearing distance is not an infinite number, because the radius of sound is not infinitely large. It might take him longer to kill all the zombies that show up if the gunshots draw in zombies by the sound, but all that means is once he's finally finished they not only have clear sailing right out the door, but in the surrounding blocks as well.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Dawn_of_the_Dead_(2004_film)/Wall_Banger?oldid=1987064"