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Army Of The Dead 2: What Zack Snyder Can Learn From World War Z
Army of the Dead 2 needs to improve on the mistakes made by the first film. Director Zack Snyder should look to 2013's World War Z for inspiration.

As Army of the Dead 2, recently titled Planet of the Dead, waits for production to begin, Zack Snyder has a chance to improve his formula by drawing inspiration from the zombie movie World War Z. Army of the Dead was released in 2021 to generally favorable reception. The film is fun, stylish, and features an array of impressive visual effects. Taking even the slightest look at its plot, however, reveals the areas where Army of the Dead 2 can improve upon its predecessor.

World War Z was another exciting but flawed zombie movie. The Brad Pitt action-horror adventure was released in 2013 to a response that was surprisingly similar to Army of the Dead‘s more recent reception. While World War Z strived for a riveting real-world narrative, the signs of its troubled production and frequent rewrites overshadowed most of its major story beats. Brad Pitt was expected to return in a sequel until rumors in 2019 teased the probable cancellation of World War Z 2. With or without that sequel, the strengths of World War Z could still be applied to the future of the zombie genre, most notably in Snyder’s Planet of the Dead.

If Zack Snyder wants to avoid retreading the mistakes made by Army of the Dead, he should look to World War Z‘s most impressive feats before taking Planet of the Dead from script to screen. World War Z excelled first and foremost in its scope. From South Korea to Jerusalem, the film provided a glimpse of the world at large as it was terrorized by the zombie virus. Army of the Dead, reasonably, kept its focus on just one city. In a sequel dubbed Planet of the Dead, that narrow focus won’t be enough. If Army of the Dead 2 is going post-apocalyptic, the scale of its conflict will have to be increased; Las Vegas can no longer contain it.

A larger setting ideally translates to a larger zombie horde, as well. One of Army of the Dead‘s biggest criticisms was its refusal to deliver on its promises. The first and most significant of those abandoned narrative instruments was the tease of a sun-dried zombie mass that would reanimate in the rain. It never rained in Army of the Dead and the massive monstrous legion that was foreshadowed was seemingly forgotten by the script’s finale. Planet of the Dead is the franchise’s opportunity to redeem itself and make good on those promises. Even if Snyder’s zombies are uniquely compelling, failing to deliver on this kind of sequence would knock the series from dramatic to disappointing. World War Z, by comparison, features the greatest zombie siege ever put to screen. The attack of the undead upon the walls of Jerusalem is a sequence that continues to influence the genre even if the film itself is largely overlooked.

Unfortunately, the dehydrated horde wasn’t the only tease that Army of the Dead chose to leave in the dust. A range of potential zombie origins, unclear character motivations, and even the existence of “live” zombie offspring all go unanswered. World War Z maintained an engaging structure by focusing on the scientific efforts being made to understand the zombie virus and making those results clear. Even if the ultimate answer to World War Z‘s blight was controversial, it at least established the rules of its setting. Snyder’s film even teases extraterrestrial roots but Army of the Dead doesn’t explain its zombies. While the script’s lack of clarity might be acceptable in the grand scheme of the franchise, it makes Army of the Dead underwhelming on its own. Army of the Dead 2 needs to deliver big on answers.

If Zack Snyder wants Army of the Dead 2 and the franchise as a whole to leave a long-lasting mark on horror, he’ll need to make some changes in the sequel. The first movie’s mistakes can’t be replicated, especially since they hinged on withheld information and dishonest foreshadowing. But Planet of the Dead can find its much-needed remedies in the strengths of 2013’s equally divisive zombie drama, World War Z.