Daybreakers: Difference between revisions

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[[File:Daybreakers.jpg|frame|At least ''[[The Matrix]]'' [[Lotus Eater Machine|let you dream]] in [[People Jars|your little tube]]...]]

 

In the year 2019, a Vampire plague has overtaken the world. Vampires make up 95% of the population and all of its citizens and their legitimate governments. The humans are outlaws and hide mostly in the wilderness where they're hunted like animals.

 

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* [[Apologetic Attacker]]: {{spoiler|Christopher near the ending when he tries to gun Edward and Audrey down.}}

* [[Automatic Crossbows]]: The humans use pump-action crossbows (with flick-out bow section) against the vampire military.

* [[Berserk Button]]: Bromley gets really touchy about anything involving his estranged daughter. {{spoiler|As intended, Edward's calling him a coward for sending Frankie to bite her instead of doing it himself pushes him over the edge.}}

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: {{spoiler|Yes, our heroes found a cure, but it's not clear whether it'll work on the subsiders, they still face considerable opposition to administering it, and casualties from the worldwide war between humans and vampires will surely continue to mount.}}

* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: {{spoiler|First Frankie, and then Elvis turn up in the lobby just in time to save the heroes.}}

* [[Bloody Hilarious]]: The truly [[Ludicrous Gibs|epic failure]] of {{spoiler|the first test subject for the blood substitute}} is so brutally abrupt, one's reaction may well be a sort of horrified breath of laughter.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Sam Neill's character Charles Bromley is every bit this in his own charming way.

* [[Crucified Hero Shot]]: The last shot of {{spoiler|Frankie is of him lying on the floor, his legs straight and arms outstretched after sacrificing himself holding back his former comrades so that Allison and Edward could get away.}}

* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: Society is running out of a resource that it needs to keep functioning. Those in charge of procuring it insist they can always find new supplies of it somewhere. At the same time, they are searching for an alternative more easily renewable resource, but have no plans to alter the selfish behavior that brought about this shortage in the first place. Society's last hope is a scientist who was never very happy with exploiting this resource in the first place and refuses to consume it himself. This movie certainly uses a lot of the classic tropes one finds in a conservationist movie with a [[Green Aesop]].

** While reminiscent of peak oil and fossil fuel depletion in general, it's also reminiscent of any number of scarcity issues, corporate ethics issues, and the like.

* [[High Concept]]: What if traditional vampires (the kind whose bite always produces another vampire) really did exist, and had all of our modern corporate supply chains and technology to help them survive and keep from going extinct?

* [[Horror Hunger]]: The need for blood doesn't seem so bad until one realizes deprivation is what made the subsiders the way they are.

** In turn, this explains a lot of the vampires' cruelty toward the remaining humans: the vampires are as human as ever in everything except their anatomy.

* [[Human Resources]]: The vampires "farm" the humans as their food supply.

* [[Offscreen Teleportation]]: Put to humorous use at one point when a human pops up behind Edward, spooking him. Occurs from time to time during the rest of the movie, too.

** Later, Frankie manages to sneak up behind Audrey while she's in the middle an open field. Of course, he's a trained soldier, and her being in broad daylight gives her a false sense of security.

* [[Redemption Equals Death]]: {{spoiler|Frankie spends the majority of the film as a lapdog of the government, intent on hunting down humans and reining in his own brother. Towards the end of the film he repents, becomes human, and dies in his very next scene. Also, the cure for vampirism plays with this trope, as in order to become human again both Elvis and Edward have to absorb (in controlled doses) enough sunlight to kill a vampire.}}

* [[Scars Are Forever]]: Almost all vampires have a scar on their neck from when they themselves were turned. It's also how Elvis proves that he ''was'' formerly a vampire.

* [[Terminally Dependent Society]]: This vampire civilization depends on keeping enough humans alive to manufacture its blood. Apparently, most of them don't think to do the math and realize their supply can't last at the rate they're using it.

* [[Vampire Bites Suck]]: See [[Kiss of the Vampire]] above. Even the non-fatal bites look really painful.

* [[Vegetarian Vampire]]: Played with in regards to Edward. {{spoiler|He typically drinks animal blood but still suffers the beginning stages of deprivation and is shown to be developing a subsider's pointy ears. Never clarified is whether this is because the type of blood he was drinking is less effective or simply because of a general shortage, as both human and animal blood are indicated to be getting more difficult to procure. When the human resistance notices his condition, Audrey immediately donates some of her blood to him in a cup and makes him drink it, though he does so against his principles and only very reluctantly.}}

* [[Villain World]]: The setting is basically this from the point of view of the humans. Vampires have taken over the world and are hunting them down to put them in a farm and gradually suck them dry.

* [[The Virus]]: Vampirism, naturally. {{spoiler|To the surprise of many, so is the cure.}}

* [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot]]: The first vampire they test the blood substitute on has a particularly [[Squick|nasty]] one, {{spoiler|right before he explodes, splattering every available surface of the room with his blood}}.

* [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]]: Discussed; Bromley explains that he's actually grateful for the change since he was dying of cancer as a human. However, some characters, including Edward, are rather weary of never being able to grow old.

* [[You Are Who You Eat]]: If a vampire is deprived of blood, he turns into a subsider.

** If a vampire drinks vampire blood, whether others' or her own, she'll mutate much faster.

** As established in an early scene, one tends to lead to the other: deprivation tempts vampires to feed on themselves and each other.

* [[Your Head Asplode]]: The {{spoiler|first}} blood substitute still has some [[Killed Mid-Sentence|kinks]] [[Bloody Hilarious|to]] [[Ludicrous Gibs|work]] [[Gorn|out]].

* [[Zombie Apocalypse]]: Not immediately obvious, but as the blood supply dwindles and the effects of deprivation grow ever more widespread and pronounced, the vampire civilization gradually degenerates into something very much like this as the subsider population begins to grow and blood riots break out at the coffee stands. {{spoiler|Fortunately, the cure is as contagious as the original vampirism was.}}