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Warm Bodies · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. There's a lot of ways to get to know a person. Eating her dead boyfriend's brains is one of the more unorthodox methods. It's Warm bodies and this film is Lit. Foreign. Welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We got plenty to talk about this week with Warm Bodies. No. Guess who. Are we getting rid of that segment?
• 1:16
  Speaker B: No, I just. I was reading and I forgot to note the descriptions and this book doesn't have chapters and I was listening to the audiobook for a big chunk of it, so I didn't have page numbers and I didn't really feel like trying to go back and find.
• 1:37
  Speaker A: It's fine.
• 1:38
  Speaker B: So we're not doing it this week.
• 1:40
  Speaker A: Okay, I've done that before too, where I forgot to write them down and I'm like, crap. But yeah, okay. But we do have every single other segment and lots of stuff to talk about, so we'll jump right in. If you have not read or watched Warm Bodies, we're going to give you a summary of the film right now. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. About eight years after a zombie apocalypse, R, a zombie who cannot recall his name but believes it began with an R, spends his days wandering around an airport which is now filled with his fellow undead, including M, who is his best friend. R and M achieve rudimentary communication with grunts and moans and occasional near words. As a zombie, R does not have a heartbeat and constantly craves human flesh, especially brains, because he is able to feel alive through experiencing the victim's memories when he eats them. While R and a pack of zombies are hunting for food, they encounter Julie Grigio.
• 2:35
  Speaker B: Grigio, like the wine.
• 2:37
  Speaker A: Ah. Okay. Julie Grigio and a group of her friends who are sent by Julie's father from a walled off human enclave to recover medical supplies. R sees Julie and is drawn to her. His heart beats for the first time after being shot in the chest by Julie's boyfriend Perry, R kills him and eats his brain. While Julie is distracted, Perry's memories increase R's attraction to Julie. He rescues her from the rest of the pack by wiping some zombie blood on her face, masking her scent, and takes her to an airplane he resides in to keep her safe. Julie is terrified of R and suspicious of his intentions. She starts trusting him after he rescues her during a failed escape attempt and finds food for her. R insists that Julie stay with him for a few days until he deems it safe enough for her to leave. The two bond listening to LP records and playing games to kill time, causing R to begin to become to life. His heart starts beating and he is slowly able to communicate with more words. After a few days, Julie gets restless and tries to return home, yet attracts swarms of zombies. After fending off a group including M, who is confused by R's action, R decides to return her to the human enclave. On the way, R reveals to Julie that he killed Perry, prompting her to abandon him and return home alone. R begins making his way back to the airport. Heartbroken, he discovers that M and the other zombies are also showing signs of life, making them targets for the Bonies skeletal zombies who, having lost their humanity, have shed their flesh and prey on anything with a heartbeat. R and M lead a group to the human enclave where R sneaks inside the wall. R finds Julie and meets her friend Nora, who is shocked to see R in the territory and notices R's growing humanity. When R reveals that the other corpses are also coming back to life, the three of them attempt to tell Colonel Grigio, Julie's father and the leader of the survivors. Colonel Grigio dismisses them and threatens to kill R, stopping only when Nora pulls a gun on him. Julie and R escape to a baseball stadium where the rest of R's group is waiting, but finds themselves under attack by Boneys. While M and his gang of zombies square off against the Boneys, Julie and R run but find themselves trapped. Taking the only escape route, R jumps with Julie into a pool far below, shielding her from the impact. After Julie pulls R from the bottom of the pool, they kiss. Colonel Grigio arrives and shoots R in the shoulder without warning. Julie attempts to persuade him that R has changed when she notices that he is bleeding from his wound, revealing that he has completely revived and is human once more. The humans and zombies combine forces and kill most of the Boneys, while the rest perish from starvation as the zombies slowly come back to life and assimilate into human society. Later, a fully human R and Julie watch the wall surrounding the city being demolished, signifying the end of the apocalypse. All right, that was a summary of the film. I have a lot of questions. Let's get into them in. Was that in the book?
• 5:10
  Speaker B: Gaston, may I have my book, please?
• 5:12
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 5:14
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 5:17
  Speaker A: So, movie opens up, we're introduced to R, our main character, played by Nicholas Hoult, and we, straight off the bat, get a voiceover narration from his character. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, like, if we're in his head in the book. Because his internal monologue is like. Sounds like he sounds like a normal human and is completely eloquent in a way that you would not expect a zombie to be, which I thought was interesting. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because. Yeah, we'll talk more about it. But is that how he talks in the book, in his head?
• 5:51
  Speaker B: Yes. The whole book is from AR's perspective. And he does express frustration, like specifically in the book, about having normal internal thoughts but not being able to communicate those thoughts externally.
• 6:06
  Speaker A: So, yeah, I guess that was because it seems strange to me that he's that normal. Like his thoughts, internal thoughts are that eloquent and normal, but when he speaks, he just like, grunts and occasionally says, like, a word. But so the book is. And obviously the movie is doing the same thing. There's some sort of disconnect, I guess, going on between his thoughts and his ability to speak, I guess, or something. Yeah, I mean, again, it's representative of his humanity or whatever, but. Okay, we'll get into that more, I guess, later. But yeah, I was a little initially like, okay, so he just can. He can think in full thoughts, but he can't express them for whatever reason?
• 6:52
  Speaker B: Basically, yes.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Okay. And I guess that's just kind of like the. The gimme for this universe of what we're doing here, because I found that a little confusing. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Again, it's integral to the premise of the movie, I guess. But I thought it was a little strange that he just had.
• 7:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, because, I mean, kind of the premise is that they're zombies, but they're also not.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, right. Well, the premise, it seemed like, was that they were like zombies, but they become less of zombies as they. As their humanity grows, as their connection Grows and stuff like that. But yeah, I just thought it was. I just wasn't expecting. I guess I was. I don't know, because I'd watched the trailer and he has a voiceover in the trailer. I just. There was. There was a little bit of a disconnect in the logic to me of like, okay, why can he think this way? But he. I guess he can't express it. And that's just something to do with the zombie ness or whatever. The infection, I guess, which is. Sure, fair enough. Again, it's what the whole movie is predicated on. So we are also then, at the very beginning, introduced to Boneys, which are these super evil zombies that look. They're like way more deteriorated and they look kind of like skeletons. It's why they're called bonies, is they're way more emaciated. And they're also like super fast. And they don't even have eyeballs and stuff anymore. They just look like they kind of look a little bit. No, they don't. Cause those have eyes. I was gonna say the creatures from I Am Legend, but they don't really look like that. Anyways, do the Boneys come from the book? And are they like further along zombies who no longer have any sort of conscience or anything like that because they just will eat? They, like, are completely ravenous and.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, they're like. Like completely animalistic.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: Yes, completely animalistic would be a good way to describe them. Yeah.
• 8:52
  Speaker B: So the Boneys are from the book, but the way that they're portrayed is different in the movie. They're. I mean, they're kind of just actual mindless zombies in the movie.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:05
  Speaker B: Like, albeit fast ones.
• 9:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:08
  Speaker B: But in the book they're implied to be some kind of supernatural entity, like a physical manifestation of death and decay. In my opinion, they function mostly as a metaphor in the book. But more on that later. I have lots of thoughts on that. R does initially say that the Boneys are the undead who have rotted down to just being skeletons.
• 9:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, because that's what it is. In the movie. You see, like one of the zombies, like, ripping his flesh off.
• 9:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:41
  Speaker A: Like becoming a bony.
• 9:43
  Speaker B: But then during the final battle in the book, he observes that there are more Bonies than there possibly could have been. If that were the case. Like, if they were just. Yeah, people had brought it all the way down, there wouldn't be that many of them. Okay, so it's not 100% clear in the book exactly what they are. It's like one of the mysteries of the Story.
• 10:07
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. The movie does not allude to that mystery at all. They're just very explicitly, like, really too far gone zombies.
• 10:15
  Speaker B: Too far gone zombies, essentially.
• 10:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. We are then introduced to Julie's character, Julie Grigio. I didn't realize that was her last name. I don't know if they ever say her last name in the movie. But there. And there we get. We see a recording. They're like, her and her friends are watching this recording because I believe they're getting ready to go out on their first, like, maybe it's not their first out mission, but they're.
• 10:38
  Speaker B: They're going out.
• 10:39
  Speaker A: They're going out on a supply.
• 10:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:40
  Speaker A: And so they're watching this, like, briefing video that her father is doing, and he says he's, like, preparing them for the zombie threat. And he says they have no feelings, no emotions. And Julie responds to this, which is where we're introduced to the idea, the fact that he is her father, by saying, sound like anyone? You know, dad? And also establishing that the relationship between her and her father is maybe not great and that he is maybe not a super warm and, like, compassionate father. But that line, I want to know if it came from the book, but also is our main character or one of our main characters Julie, the daughter of, like, the new president. He's not a president, but he runs this city that the humans are in.
• 11:26
  Speaker B: So I don't know if that specific line is from the book. I don't think it is. I don't recall it.
• 11:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 11:35
  Speaker B: But the basic, like, relationship dynamic that we have going on here between Julie and her father is the same.
• 11:42
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: And he is also, in the book, the military leader of this particular human enclave. And I don't remember if they ever say this in the movie, but according to the book, there are, like, other humans enclaves.
• 11:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't remember if they. There might be one line about it towards the end, but I can't recall. Yeah. I don't know if they ever address it because it doesn't matter for this specific story. So they don't really go into it. So as I said, Julie and her group of friends go out on a supply run, and while they're out, they encounter R and a pack of zombies who are also out on a supply run to feed. I wanted. And during this, R sees Julie and immediately is infatuated with her and her big gun. And I wanted to know if R falls for a human girl in the middle of a feeding.
• 12:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, that all plays out pretty much exactly how it happens in the book, R pulls Perry off the table and then he starts chowing down on his brain and gets blasted with memories of Julie. I did appreciate that the movie had that little moment before R eats his brain where he was clearly attracted to Julie. I thought that was a nice change.
• 12:57
  Speaker A: So in the book he just, he becomes attracted to her from eating Perry's.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: Brains and getting like memory blasted.
• 13:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I think that makes that feels better to have him initially have that attraction to her before he eats Perry's brains because it feels like he has a little more agency then maybe or something.
• 13:17
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 13:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well that answered my next question then, which is that are the zombies able to see the memories of the humans they eat if they eat their brains? And is this what causes Julie and. Or. And does he see Julie and Dave Franco's Perry's relationship and is this kind of like what elevates his attraction to her is that he is like reliving, falling in love with her as Perry?
• 13:43
  Speaker B: Basically, yes and yes. Yeah, that's the impetus for like the main meat of the story.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: Okay, so then as I said in the summary, he. I think most of the humans die and he is there with Julie. And then again because he's attracted to her, he doesn't want the other zombies to eat her. So he smears zombie blood on her face. Or zombie. I guess it's not blood or it is blood, but it's zombie.
• 14:06
  Speaker B: Zombie fluid, whatever.
• 14:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, some sort of zombie stuff because yeah, it can't be normal blood because that's a whole thing at the end when he's bleeding that it's like a big thing. But he smears zombie junk all over her face and to mask her. And I wanted to know if that came from the blood book.
• 14:26
  Speaker B: Yes, the idea is that it, yeah, it masks her smell. Although I agree that this is a bit of a gimme.
• 14:32
  Speaker A: It's cuz he literally rubs like a tiny little like couple he like finger paints on her face with it and it's not that much. And even later there's another scene where he does it again, which I feel like it's even less of it then. And it does feel a little like it's fine. It's whatever. It's because zombies, plenty of other zombie properties have done stuff like that. But like when they did it in the Walking Dead, they had to like.
• 14:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, they had to like coat themselves.
• 15:00
  Speaker A: In it and like, like fill it into like their clothing and stuff to like completely drown out their scent. Whereas in this it's like, well, okay, sure, whatever. Fine. Like. Yeah, but. Yeah, it's a little silly, but again, it's. For what the book is doing. It's fine. Then we get another scene. This is later. I think this is. Oh, I forgot to ask about this. Yeah, I skipped a question.
• 15:21
  Speaker B: I thought you were reversing them on purpose.
• 15:22
  Speaker A: No. Well, because it happens twice. So I. Yeah, but. So after he does it the first time, he gets her out and then he takes her back to his hideout. And in the movie, his hideout, he lives at an old airport and with a bunch of other zombies. But his. He specifically has a hideout that is in an old plane that he has, like, decked out the inside of with all this stuff that he has collected. And I wanted to know if he has a sick hideout in the book.
• 15:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, the movie nails this. R lives in an old 747 that he fills with stuff he likes. Like the Little Mermaid.
• 15:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:58
  Speaker B: Most notably his record collection and record player.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: There you go. Yeah. So then after she tries to run away. So she tries to run away. He takes her back there, she tries to run away, but she gets kind of surrounded by zombies. And he finds her again and he smears the blood on her face again. And this time he's like, hey, you gotta pretend this was a little clunky script. Cause they had already done this once.
• 16:21
  Speaker B: Mm.
• 16:22
  Speaker A: So, like, when they got to get her back to his base, he like, smears blood on her and she walks with a bunch of zombies for like hours or something. I don't know however long it took him to get back to the airport. But then they go this time and they do it. And then this time he's like, now you have to walk like a zombie. But he didn't explain that to her. It's not a big thing. It's just a little. But whatever. They have the scene that is in Shaun of the Dead. And I'm sure plenty of other zombie movies where she has to walk like a zombie, but in this one, it's. It's. It's. There's an extra wrinkle, which is that is a zombie is teaching her how to walk like a zombie instead of a bunch of humans trying to figure out. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, there is a scene in the book where she has to pretend to be a zombie to move around the airport. And R thinks to himself that she's being really hammy with it and seems to be enjoying herself as she's doing the zombie Walk and groan. Yeah, But I liked that the movie had him grunt too much at her. I thought that was a good comedy beat.
• 17:23
  Speaker A: No, it's a funny beat. I just. I was surprised. It felt like it should have been the first time when they were like. But I guess at that point, whatever, it doesn't matter.
• 17:33
  Speaker B: It's honestly also a little unclear in the book because that first time, when he initially takes her back to the airport, it seems like he's hiding her from the other zombies because he does the whole thing where he, like, puts the zombie blood on her or whatever. But then when they get to the airport, it seems like the other zombies realize that she's human and are, like, mildly confused by what he's doing, but are like, whatever, do what you want, I guess. But then later, the. The equivalent to this scene that we're talking about right now is actually that he takes her out and, like, into the airport to find food.
• 18:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker B: And that's when she has to pretend to be a zombie to, like, walk around the airport to get to, like, the food court.
• 18:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, okay, sure.
• 18:27
  Speaker B: So it's a little back and forth.
• 18:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. It's fine. While they're. So they start spending some time, and he tells her, like, hey, you got to stay here for a couple days. Because, you know, until the heat, this was also. It's fine again, this movie got better and better as it went. I thought it started a little weak because it felt like there was a fair number of kind of strange, these little, like, plot contrivances that felt a little clunky to me. But then as it got going, I thought it, like, got better and better over the course of the film because it needed less and less of that stuff. And I really liked it by the end. But this beginning part, it just felt like I was like, okay. He tells her, like, oh, you gotta stay here. Like, when she tries to escape that time, he's like, no, no, no. You need to stay here for a couple days and then you can leave. Which, again, from his point of view, it's more. So he just wants her to stay there. So, like. Cause he wants to be around her, but she's like, sure, okay. And I was like, but it's obviously, you realize, like, what would change in two days? Like, nothing would change. I don't know. It's. Whatever. It's fine.
• 19:26
  Speaker B: So in the book, the. The reason that he gives is that the other zombies know that he, like, brought her back there and that she's a human.
• 19:38
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 19:39
  Speaker B: So he tells her. That she has to wait a couple days because they'll forget about her.
• 19:45
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. So in that instance, it's that the other zombies are aware.
• 19:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:50
  Speaker A: That she's a human who's there. I guess they tried to communicate in the movie, but I didn't. Maybe they do. I don't know. I didn't get in the movie. Like, they're gonna. He's like. Because I think he does say something about them forgetting or something. But I'm like.
• 20:03
  Speaker B: But still, it's a little, like, garbled. It's, like, similarly garbled in both the book and the movie because initially it seems like they don't know that she's human. Then they do know that she's human. But I. I think. I think the author was kind of contriving as he went.
• 20:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's why. That's what I'm saying is that this first part felt like there was some of the. The narrative stuff just felt like a little bit contrived and clunky in order to make the story work. But then once we get past, like, this first act, I think it smooths out in a way that works really well. It was just this first part, I was like, okay, so they'll For. Okay, so they'll forget that she's human. Which I wasn't clear in the movie, to me, whether or not, like, why that would be the case.
• 20:46
  Speaker B: The idea is that they'll forget she's there entirely. So they'll be able to sneak her out.
• 20:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, well. Because then it gets even. This is the next part that I thought was kind of confusing. Is that. Okay, so they forget that she's there. And so he. She needs to stay there. But then while she's there, they start, like, hanging out and doing stuff. And one of the things they do is go out of the plane and drive a car around on the tarmac. And I'm like, would that not. Why would she not be like, oh, well, I could just drive this back?
• 21:15
  Speaker B: I don't.
• 21:16
  Speaker A: Again, it doesn't really. Like, it's whatever. I just thought this opening act was kind of clunky and, like, why? Because. Yeah, because she teaches them how to drive. They go out in this car that he. They get into, and he's dry. Or she's dry, knows how to drive. And they have this fun little scene where she teaches him how to drive. Again, I thought it was fun, but I did not understand why her, as a character in that moment would not be like, well, I can just Leave now I'm in a car. Yeah, I could just drive away. Like, I just made no sense to me. Again, it doesn't really matter, but it is kind of one of those, like.
• 21:46
  Speaker B: Okay, sure, they do play around with driving a red Mercedes around the tarmac in the book. The book does not give a reason for why she wouldn't just. I don't know if maybe the idea is, like, that she can't get out for some reason. Like, maybe there's enough, like, destruction that she can't drive out of the tarmac or whatever.
• 22:07
  Speaker A: They do eventually drive that car away later. So I'm like, I don't know. Okay, sure. Again, it just felt a little clunky at the beginning of, like, we have to get her there to spend time with him. How we do that be damned. We'll just. We just have to make it happen. So don't think too hard about how we're making this happen. Yeah, okay. I guess. Fine.
• 22:26
  Speaker B: I mean, that is kind of the vibe in the book too. I think there was maybe more interest in the second half of the story, and that's fine.
• 22:34
  Speaker A: Like I said, it does get better. And my brain stopped thinking about those things as the story went on and as it started working more and more for me. But, yeah, just the beginning. It really did. It was. It was a slow slog at the beginning of, like, okay, why are we doing. Why would you do that? Okay. So then moving forward, they. Then she. She decides she finally needs to leave. She's like, I gotta get out of here.
• 22:57
  Speaker B: She.
• 22:57
  Speaker A: She runs to leave. She decides that she actually needs to leave. And so she. She tries to run away again. I think at this point, she encounters some zombies and is fighting them off with a weed whacker. And then R finds her and is like, all right, yeah, let's get out of here. And they start to leave, but then they run into some boneys that are, like, outside on the tarmac. And as they're getting ready to escape or as they're potentially about to get eaten by these bonies at the last second, M arrives. Who M is. Rs, like, best friend. He is Mercutio in this. I assume that's what the M would stand for.
• 23:33
  Speaker B: I would think so.
• 23:33
  Speaker A: In this Romeo and Juliet riff, he actually saw them interacting a few seconds ago in the scene where she was fighting off the zombies. He was one of the zombies that was trying to eat her or whatever. And then he saw her and R run off together. And he was like, what's going on? Here. And then this is kind of the moment that triggers him. His humanity coming back is seeing them together. And so he decides to help and he comes flying in and runs over the Boneys with a luggage cart. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, if he decides to rescue them or. Sorry, if he rescues them and then decides to help them in this moment.
• 24:12
  Speaker B: This plays out really similarly. The main difference is that Em doesn't mow the bonies down with a. With a baggage cart. He just like full body tackles.
• 24:22
  Speaker A: Oh, just drifts up and tackles them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then as we. They leave and then we see through M, we see him looking at like a poster of like a couple holding hands or something like that in the airport and we see like his reflection in it. And then we see other zombies next to him also looking at this poster. And this is. They start to become more human. They start to. Their. Their zombie whatever illness or whatever starts to slowly melt away and their humanity starts to come back. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because along with that the Boneys then start to get more and more suspicious of and like violent towards, threatening towards the zombies who they call. Well, the humans call corpses in the movie, right? Yeah, they generally just call them corpses instead of. They don't. They do occasionally call them zombies, but they usually call them corpses and then they call the bonies bonies or whatever. But does that come from the book? Does the other zombies, do they start becoming more human right after this all goes down?
• 25:25
  Speaker B: Yes. We don't see this happen. Like the scene where they're looking at the poster in the airport, we don't see. Because we're in R's perspective. And the movie can obviously leave R's perspective briefly, whereas the book really cannot. But we do find out later that Em and the other zombies have. Due to this interaction with R and Julie, or at least that's what we think has caused it. Yeah, they're starting to become more human also.
• 25:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, we'll talk more about that later because I had a note about that that I wanted to get to in a later segment. So as they start to spend more time together and they are they. While they're trying to get back to the city, they end up having to stop and like sleep over, spend the night in this suburb, in a house, basically. They need somewhere to crash and so they. They spend the night in the suburb. And as they've been spending more and more time together, we're seeing that R is becoming less and Less zombie. Like, he is getting less pale and he's getting more color in his skin. He's starting to speak more words, which actually happens really quick with a slight little. There was an element to me in the beginning of the movie, again, where I thought the movie was the weakest, where he felt like he gained his language ability really quick. Felt like he was able to communicate pretty complex thoughts pretty quickly in a way that I felt like there maybe was an opportunity to have their communication be way more disjointed than it was at the start, whereas it felt like the movie very quickly. He's able to say exactly what he needs to. He can only say a couple words, but he's able to pick very specific, astute words in given situations very quickly that make him able to, like, communicate with her. But as they spend more and more time together, does he start speaking more? And eventually he even starts dreaming. We see in the. In the movie, he has a dream at one point, and I wanted to know if all that came from the book.
• 27:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, all of that is book accurate. As we kind of move along through the story, he starts to look a little less like a zombie, starts speaking more. He does eventually start having dreams. The book, I think, does a little bit of a better job being gradual with that.
• 27:50
  Speaker A: The movie does an okay job. I don't want to oversell it. Like, there's definitely a noticeable. I just thought it went a little too quick at the beginning. Like, we went from, like. If the scale of, like, how well he can talk is like a 0 to 10. 10. He starts at, like, a 1 or a 2, and by the end, obviously, he's human again, we'll say that's a 10. I felt like he jumped from like a 1 or a 2 to like a 5 and then went from like a 5 to a 7 over the course of the rest of the move or something like that, you know, Whereas I felt like there's. He kind of skipped, like, going from 1 to 2 to 3. He just went from, like, 1 to 4. And I was like, okay. Which, again, doesn't really matter. But the movie still has some of that. Yeah. Gradual growth. But, yeah, I could imagine the book does a better job of that.
• 28:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. There's kind of a running thing in the book where he counts the number of syllables he's able to get out at once. So he's moving from, like. You know, he can get out one or two words at a time and moves up to, like, three or four words at a time. And then eventually he can get out, like, whole sentence fragments.
• 28:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker B: Another thing that the book does that I don't believe the movie utilized is that part of the time they're on the airplane, he actually uses the record player to communicate with Julie occasionally.
• 29:08
  Speaker A: I don't think so. That would have been fun. That's what I'm talking about. More of that at the beginning, which I understand that they had to really truncate stuff to move through it. But that was that initial phase where they're first learning to communicate. Felt like it went pretty easy and quick. Like he was able to just. Yeah. Whereas that would have been. Yeah. Like, if he's using music and stuff. I don't think that happens.
• 29:27
  Speaker B: I don't remember. I don't remember. Cause, like, in the book, he was specifically, like, will pick up the needle and put it down in a particular spot.
• 29:33
  Speaker A: That definitely doesn't happen. What I. Yeah, to, like, like, a certain phrase. Right. What I think does happen in the movie is that at one point, I think he puts on a song to express, like, an emotion or a feeling. And he does.
• 29:45
  Speaker B: He does that as well in the book.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Right. Which is fine, but I. I don't think he's, like, using it like a speak and spell, which. Yeah. So as they're spending time in this home, as they're waiting to get back or to take her back to the city, they're spending some time together. And as he's becoming more human and he has this dream about what happened between him and Perry and everything, he decides. He feels like his conscience has grown enough. I think that he needs to confess and tell her that he's the one who murdered Perry, that he ate Perry, her boyfriend. And he does apologize for it as well. And I wanted to know if that all played out like that in the book.
• 30:22
  Speaker B: He does eventually do this in the book, but the movie moves it further up. In the book, he confesses this after he's been in the human enclave with Julian Nora for, like, a day.
• 30:36
  Speaker A: So. Yeah, that would be. I guess it would depend. I don't know how the book's necessarily structured, but. Yeah, in the structure of the film, that would definitely be too late. I feel like for where it happens and the way the rest of the film plays out, that needs to happen. The.
• 30:52
  Speaker B: The part of the section of the book where they're, like, in the human enclave is way longer than it is in the movie and a little more meandering.
• 31:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. Because you don't have to. The books are Pretty. Or the movie's a pretty tight three act structure of.
• 31:09
  Speaker B: And it's not very long either.
• 31:10
  Speaker A: No, not a long time. Yeah, it's like 90 minutes or maybe 100 minutes or something. But it's. Yeah, it's not super long. She leaves. She. He wakes up, he tell. He confesses this to her and she doesn't say anything, rolls over, goes to bed. And then the next morning he wakes up and. Or he doesn't wake up, I guess. Cause he didn't. No, he does sleep because he has a dream.
• 31:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, he has a dream.
• 31:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, he sleeps for like the first time ever. But he wakes up that next morning and she's gone. And he's like, okay, well she clearly not thrilled about me eating her boyfriend. So he goes back to the airport and he gets back and I just didn't even know if this line came from the book. Cause it was maybe the worst line in the movie just. Cause it was so dated and like, just not even a funny joke, problematicness aside or whatever, it's just not funny. Is that he gets back and he's like. He's not. I say he's talking to Em. He's not talking to Em, but he's like looking at em or whatever and he expresses something. He says something about her like leaving or whatever and about how they're like not together anymore or like how she left him and Em, in an attempt to, you know, comfort him, like puts his hand on his shoulder and goes, man. And I was just like, oh God. Is that in the book?
• 32:24
  Speaker B: This is not from the book. Although it ironically does feel kind of in character for Em in the book. Because he's kind of a creep. Yeah, in the book.
• 32:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's not. I would not say he's a creeper. No, he's just a guy. We don't learn a whole lot about.
• 32:37
  Speaker B: Him in the book. He has a lot of like sexual references, I want to say. Like, there's a bit early on where they say that he like watches adult movies. Even though it doesn't do anything for him. He just like does.
• 32:55
  Speaker A: Okay, so he's like. It's like Patrick Bateman.
• 32:58
  Speaker B: He's.
• 32:58
  Speaker A: Well, no, I'm just. I mean like, he's like watching porn.
• 33:01
  Speaker B: But not like, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker A: R. Then decides that he needs to tell. I can't remember why he. Why is he going back here? What is. What is his motivation? He changes his mind and goes, no, I have to go find Julie. And I don't remember why. I think it's that they realize they need help fighting the Boneys, maybe, or something. Or that they. That they're becoming more human and that they need to go, like, petition the humans, basically, and be like, hey, we're not zombies anymore.
• 33:32
  Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So his motivation for going back in the book is that when he meets up with Em and the others, they're, like, coming towards.
• 33:45
  Speaker A: Yes, that's what. That's what happens in the movie too. Yes. He's, like, walking back and sees him on the road and.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: And then also, like, simultaneously as he's walking back, he has these, like, realization, like, I'm cold. I shouldn't be cold. Which I think the movie does.
• 34:00
  Speaker A: Yes, the movie does that too.
• 34:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. So then he meets up with Em and the others, and they're like, we're changing too.
• 34:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:07
  Speaker B: So the decision is basically like, okay, we need to go back and find her, because clearly something is happening that is outside of our understand.
• 34:15
  Speaker A: That's definitely what happens in the movie. I do recall that now. Yeah. So they decide to go back to the city. When they get back to the city, they need to get inside. Or R needs to get inside so that he can talk to Julie because he knows that she can potentially. You know, she's the only person who could. Who had. Knows what's going on and is, like, potentially a potential ally.
• 34:36
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 34:36
  Speaker A: And will listen to him. So he needs to sneak into the city. So in order to do this, he's able to use the memories that he had got from eating Perry's brains, which in the movie, one of the scenes early on we see when he eats his brains is he sees them, like, sneaking out of the city together, I think.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. There's, like, an unguarded spot, some sort.
• 34:56
  Speaker A: Of, like, underground, like, tunnel that leads out of the city that they know about. And then since he has Perry's memories, he's able to use in reverse to get into the city. And I wanted to know if that can. From the book.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: No, it doesn't. I totally understand why the movie chooses to do this. I think it makes perfect sense that he would, like, use an old memory. And it's also an additional reminder of where that unguarded entrance is, because they have to go back to it later to get Em and everybody else. Like, that's where they're hiding out.
• 35:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:28
  Speaker B: But I really liked how he broke into the human enclave in the book. So in the book, as this whole group of zombies is moving towards. It's an old stadium. In the book, it's not Like a whole portion of a city.
• 35:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Cause the stadium is involved in the movie, but it's just part of the enclave. Whereas it sounds like the whole.
• 35:52
  Speaker B: The whole enclave is the stadium in the book. So they're coming up to it, and what they do is that M and the other zombies pretend to be chasing R. And he runs up to the entrance yelling, right behind me. And the guard lets him inside because he thinks he, like, he looks kind of passably human enough at this point. Yeah. And so the guard just, like, lets him in and then he manages to slip away before they can look at him too closely.
• 36:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's fun.
• 36:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, I thought it was fun.
• 36:25
  Speaker A: It is fun. I think you have to change it in the movie, too, because the movie has made the human settlement even more. Like, maybe not more militarized. I don't know what it is like in the book, but they seem more paranoid and on edge in the movie.
• 36:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:40
  Speaker A: To where, like, as soon as. Even when Julie shows back up, they, like, won't let her in.
• 36:44
  Speaker B: And they show they have a little scanner thing, which they don't have in the book.
• 36:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, they, like, scan her eyeball, but, like, initially, like, she comes up to the city and they're, like, holding her at gunpoint. And she's like, it's me. I'm the daughter of the guy who runs the city and I'm talking to you. And they're like, nope, we gotta. So, like that. I don't think their little ploy.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: No, it wouldn't work, unbelievably work in the world of the movie. But I did really enjoy it.
• 37:09
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So he gets back into the city and then he finds Julie, who lives in this house in the city. And he comes out to the side of her balcony and we get the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene. And I wanted to know. Well, it's not really, but we get a play on the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 37:30
  Speaker B: It does. Although I'm going to give this one to the movie.
• 37:35
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 37:35
  Speaker B: The movie did it better. First off, I think it was a good idea to drop the. There's a whole bit in the book where Julie's trying to do, like, an audio journal with a cassette tape recorder. And it felt really shoehorned in as a reason for her to be talking out loud to herself as he's coming up under the balcony. Whereas I think what the movie does works just fine, where she's kind of talking to herself, but also kind of talking to her friend.
• 38:03
  Speaker A: Yes, because Nora is there in the room.
• 38:05
  Speaker B: I also think it makes more sense for an actual house to have a balcony. Whereas in the book she lives in this makeshift home that they built inside the stadium. And there's not really a reason for it to have a balcony. Something that the text is aware of and points out.
• 38:24
  Speaker A: Oh, really?
• 38:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:25
  Speaker A: I could believe. I could. I could believe you could have a. Depending on where it was supposed to have taken place. I'm imagining like a baseball stadium or really any stadium. You could have a kind of something resembling a balcony. If they were. Which would make sense too, for like a living space. If they were like living in one of the suites. Because the sweet. Like a. If you think about the suites at.
• 38:47
  Speaker B: Like a baseball stadium.
• 38:48
  Speaker A: Okay, okay. Well, I was thinking like. Cause the suites at a baseball stadium have like the inner inside part where there's like TVs and stuff. And then.
• 38:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:55
  Speaker A: And then the outside part is usually like seating that like overlooks the field. So you could kind of play the outside area as like a balcony if that's what they were doing. But you're saying that's not what they're doing?
• 39:07
  Speaker B: No, the. The makeshift buildings inside the stadium are described as like very small, but like tall houses.
• 39:18
  Speaker A: Oh, so they've like built up.
• 39:20
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 39:20
  Speaker A: Oh, they've built things. They're not like using the pre exist infrastructure of the stadium.
• 39:25
  Speaker B: I mean, I think they probably are.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: But they've also built.
• 39:28
  Speaker B: They have also built like small.
• 39:30
  Speaker A: Gotcha.
• 39:31
  Speaker B: Homes.
• 39:32
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 39:33
  Speaker B: And like, literally, like, as he's walking up to it, he's thinking like, oh, there's a small balcony on the outside of this one. That doesn't really make sense, but.
• 39:41
  Speaker A: Oh, well. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's funny because I like, I don't think it doesn't make sense. Like, it's weird that they would call that out because if you're building. You're already building these like homes inside the stadium to begin with. What's so weird about maybe putting a little balcony on it?
• 39:58
  Speaker B: Probably could have not called it out and it would have been fine.
• 40:01
  Speaker A: I think the book was just trying to like, they're lampshading it. It's a little tongue in cheek of like. It's a little weird that it has a balcony. So we'll just lampshade it that way. It's not.
• 40:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:13
  Speaker A: You know, you can't criticize me about it. Cause I called it out.
• 40:17
  Speaker B: And yet here we are.
• 40:20
  Speaker A: So after he meets. Reunites with Julie, he. He meets Nora and they Decide. Okay. Yeah. Nope, he's definitely human. We got to figure out how to convince your dad to not, you know, murder all those zombies, because something's going on here. But they need to help him blend in while they're taking him to go see her dad. And in order to do this, we get a zombie makeover scene, which was fun, and I wanted to know if that happens in the book.
• 40:45
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. Julie and Nora use makeup to make our look a little more alive.
• 40:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which, again, at this point in the movie, he was already looking fairly.
• 40:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, he was not looking that bad.
• 40:57
  Speaker A: Not looking that bad, all things considered. But they do. Yeah, they give him a little more color in his cheeks and stuff and give him, like, normal clothes and, you know, clean clothes and stuff. So they then take our two. Julie's dad. And Julie first kind of talks to him and is explaining like, hey, so guess what I found out. What if. What if zombies aren't just mindless killing machines, but actually they're kind of like becoming human again? There's something going on there. And her dad's like, what are you talking about? That's insane. And R is like, all right, well, I'll just explain it to him. He comes because he's, like, hiding around the corner, and he's like, nah, I need to explain it to him. And he comes around the corner and is like. And they have this big confrontation, and basically his. Her dad is like, yeah, no, fuck this. You're a zombie still, and I'm going to murder you, and pulls out a gun. And I wanted to know if that's how it all played out in the book, because that's kind of like the big moment here at the end was that kicks off the final bit of the movie.
• 41:54
  Speaker B: Okay, so the end of the book is pretty different from the end of the movie. They don't go straight to Julie's dad in the book. They hang out with R, and they, like, give him a tour of the stadium. And he does briefly meet Julie's dad during this, but they say that he's visiting from another human enclave that exists elsewhere. And her dad, at least in the moment, seems to buy this.
• 42:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 42:24
  Speaker B: So then these three go to a pub and get a drink, at which point, R discovers that he can get drunk and that his urinary system works again.
• 42:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 42:36
  Speaker B: R then gets separated from the girls while drunk and panics and kills a guard because he thinks he's going to be discovered, which then sends the community into lockdown.
• 42:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's okay.
• 42:47
  Speaker B: He Manages to get back to Julie's house, and they're all trying to figure out what to do when Julie's dad comes back and, like, immediately figures out that R is a zombie. Then he points a gun at R and Nora points a gun back at him.
• 43:01
  Speaker A: Which is what happens in the movie.
• 43:02
  Speaker B: Yes. To buy R and Julie time to run.
• 43:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Nora pulls her gun and is like, hey, let them leave. Yeah.
• 43:08
  Speaker B: And I may as well say this now because I'm not really sure which section I would put these changes in. I like that the movie shortened and simplified the end. This was the part of the book that dragged the most for me. A lot happens and not all of it feels important. Particularly, I think it was a good idea to drop R killing the guard. I totally understand what the book was going for, but it ends up feeling kind of unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
• 43:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. I would have to see how that got resolved too, because that feels like it really throws a weird.
• 43:44
  Speaker B: It threw a weird wrench into it, and it doesn't really resolve.
• 43:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I would. I would need to know how that all played out, because it's like. Okay, well, so when he killed him, like, did he. Was he overtaken by zombie rage or was he just, like.
• 43:56
  Speaker B: No, he was, like, scared that he was gonna get discovered.
• 44:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. And does he, like, eat him or does he.
• 44:04
  Speaker B: Well, that's the other wrench in it, because then once he kills him, then he gets, like, a zombie urge and, like, chomps him.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah. It's messy. It was messy in a way that.
• 44:15
  Speaker B: Was messy in a way that didn't feel like it worked.
• 44:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. Cause it's like, I felt like the point is that we've already gotten to the point where he's mostly human enough, I guess. Again, I guess I could get the idea that, like, it's. It's. He's not fully human yet. And so in, like, a super heightened emotional moment, you know, he could still have, like, zombie impulses or whatever or something. I don't know. It does feel kind of weird and like.
• 44:36
  Speaker B: And again, I get what the book is trying to do because we're doing a riff on Romeo and Juliet.
• 44:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 44:44
  Speaker B: And in Romeo and Juliet, the thing that kicks off the chaos in the last act is Romeo killing. Fucking. What's his name? The guy who's supposed to marry Juliet. Which in this book has already happened.
• 45:02
  Speaker A: Yes. That's, like, the first thing. Yeah.
• 45:04
  Speaker B: But we have to have another thing that then kicks off the chaos of the last act.
• 45:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. Whereas the movie just has that be the bonies are attacking or something. Or something like that.
• 45:17
  Speaker B: I just don't think it needed to happen.
• 45:19
  Speaker A: Yes. No, I agree. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker B: He's already a zombie in the human enclave. We could have created some other kind of chaos.
• 45:26
  Speaker A: Oh, sorry. What the movie does is it just has the confrontation where he realizes he's a zombie. And that's what kicks off all the. The drama because. Because her dad is like, hey, that's a zombie. And then he gets held at gunpoint. They escape.
• 45:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 45:38
  Speaker A: Whole city goes on lockdown because he's like, hey, a zombie has my daughter. That's all you need. You don't need.
• 45:42
  Speaker B: We absolutely did not need him killing the guard.
• 45:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:47
  Speaker B: However, there are some elements of the book's ending that really worked for me, which I'll talk about more and better in the book.
• 45:56
  Speaker A: All right, so then as we get to the end, all of the. The humans are out looking for Julie and are in the city. I say out. They're still, I think, in the city walls, like, but they're specifically, they're. At one point, they're in the stadium, the baseball stadium or whatever that we see them go through several times. Which, again, in the book, you're saying is like, where the whole human enclave is. It's just one of the elements in the book or in the movie. And as they're out there, they start encountering bonies. And the humans are fighting off the bonies. They also start encountering some zomb. And initially they're like, well, we gotta fight the zombies too, because that's what they normally do. But then they start to realize that the zombies are helping them, that the zombies are also fighting the Boneys. And I wanted to know if that's how it went down in the book.
• 46:50
  Speaker B: It happens in a more kind of roundabout way in the book, but that is basically the gist of it, that humans and zombies are both having to fight the bonies.
• 47:00
  Speaker A: Okay. Well, during this whole interaction, there was a great little exchange that I thought was a lot of fun, where the. Like, a. A group of the humans walks up with all their guns, and there's a big pile of. A big scrum in front of them of zombies fighting bonies. And the humans are all standing there with their guns, and one of them's like, who the hell do we shoot? Because they're like, they don't know what to do. They've never seen anything like this. And then I think it's M. But one of the zombies. I'M pretty sure it's M. Grabs one of the bonies and throws it and it like skids to a stop in front of the. The humans. And the zombie turns to him and goes this asshole. And they all shoot him. Which I thought was fun. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book.
• 47:44
  Speaker B: That does not happen in the book.
• 47:45
  Speaker A: Good. That was fun. So R and Julie are running. They're getting chased by boneys through the baseball stadium. They wind up in like some weird upper level of the baseball stadium that's like this big empty. I don't know what that was supposed to be.
• 47:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
• 47:59
  Speaker A: Attic of the baseball stadium.
• 48:00
  Speaker B: I don't.
• 48:02
  Speaker A: Because like we saw them earlier down like on the baseball field part, but now they've gotten up to something. But it's also this big empty space that I was like, I don't know what this is. Anyways, they're running around up there and they're getting chased by the bonies. And they get to this door and they kick open the door, hoping to make their escape. But then they realize, oh shit, we're like on a balcony, like four stories in the air on top of this baseball stadium. And the bonies are running at them and they have nowhere to go. They have no escape. But R is like, ah, actually we got a way out of this. He grabs her, pulls her off. There is a small like reflecting pool, kind of like a three foot deep, you know, like little fountain below them. And he pulls her off and they fall and he. He turns and uses his body to cushion the landing as they fall into this little pool so that she does not take the brunt of the impact. He does. But then as he. He's falling down in the water, his head like bumps against the bottom of the pool. Maybe, quote, unquote, kills him, maybe, I don't know, like if he's supposed to have died in that moment. Kind of. It kind of seems like it because he's just like drifting there. She grabs them and pulls him up out of the water. And then he like comes to and he is now human. His eyes have, yeah, changed, Changed. And they change even more. But his eyes have mostly changed and he is a human. And I wanted to know if that is how that big moment happens in the book. Does he save her like that and does he become a human because of it?
• 49:30
  Speaker B: So, okay, there is a similar thing that happens in the book, but it makes way more sense in the movie. Okay, so in the book they jump. My hand to God this is what the text says. Eight stories to the ground, no water.
• 49:56
  Speaker A: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 49:58
  Speaker B: And R uses his body similarly to cushion Julie's fall or, like, impact. Now, the book has built up to this point that the zombies are kind of invincible. Ish.
• 50:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:15
  Speaker B: Like, they can sustain damage, but it doesn't take them out unless it's like a headshot.
• 50:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. In the movie, they seem to be classic zombies where basically nothing kills them. But if you destroy their brain or cut off their head or whatever, that kills them.
• 50:30
  Speaker B: But even for a zombie.
• 50:33
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 50:33
  Speaker B: 100% eight stories to the hard ground.
• 50:37
  Speaker A: It feels unlikely because his head would have been vaporized. It would have been pulverized. It would have been smushed into little pieces. Is. And so he would be dead. Yes. Like, regardless of whether or not. And on top of that, it's also that thing of, like, I think another way you could kill a zombie even in the. Hey, you have to destroy their brain to kill them. You could kind of kill a zombie if he fell off a building and his body, like, smushed into little piece. Like, it might not kill him. Kill him necessarily. Like, if his brain survived, but, like, his body is not gonna be. They don't regenerate, like.
• 51:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:14
  Speaker A: So, like, he.
• 51:15
  Speaker B: Well, and I. The book is like, this was something that was really unclear about the lore in the book, because there's a point pretty early in the book where R punches another one of the zombies and says that he feels all the bones in his hand break. But this does not seem to be detrimental to him in any way. And I'm not really sure what kind of a gimme that's supposed to be. Like, if I'm supposed to think, maybe he doesn't need bones to use his hand.
• 51:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a classic zombie gimme. You just have to, like. Yeah, like. Yeah, their bodies still work somehow, despite the fact that they're dead. And they wouldn't work, obviously. So, like. Yeah.
• 52:00
  Speaker B: But then. So then after this happens in the book, he is not vaporized by this fall. He feels some of his bones break. But then as he's getting up, he says that he can feel himself healing and thinks that this is.
• 52:13
  Speaker A: They do have some sort. Oh, well, he's related to the human thing.
• 52:16
  Speaker B: He thinks that this is part of his coming back to full human strength. So the movie, I think, did this better by keeping the spirit of the moment, but making it far more believable.
• 52:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. Cause I think they Definitely. I get what the movie. I guess the book was going for is that he needs to. I think the idea is that he needs to, like, die.
• 52:40
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 52:40
  Speaker A: In order to be reborn as a human. Kind of. Kind of like, it seems like kind of what it's going for there. If you're saying, like, well, he falls because. Or something like that. Because. Yeah, no, I completely agree that that doesn't make any sense. I was even a little bit skeptical in the movie of, like.
• 52:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:56
  Speaker A: How much that would actually help her. Like, not even I like him. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. I think it's zombie falling into. Into a pool from that height. Like, in. If you're taking the zombie magic physics of it all, I could buy that that wouldn't, like, kill a zombie. Like, they would survive. I wasn't entirely sure how the physics worked in terms of, like, how much him falling underneath her would help her. I think it would help. I just don't know if it would be enough to really matter. Maybe it would. I genuinely do not know.
• 53:27
  Speaker B: I don't know. If we have listeners who are good at physics, you're going to have to tell us.
• 53:31
  Speaker A: I think the mythbusters did something like that one time very similar to that of, like, a body. I can't remember, but I think they.
• 53:42
  Speaker B: Did something very similar because I'm honestly not even really sure how much jumping.
• 53:46
  Speaker A: Into water it would help, but it doesn't help.
• 53:50
  Speaker B: It just, like, obviously that would be better than flinging yourself onto the pavement. To the pavement.
• 53:56
  Speaker A: But yeah. And yeah, you would want to land the way they do, which is like, belly flop, basically. Well, he lands on his back. But, like, because the especially. Cause the water is so shallow, obviously if you fell feet first or head, you're just gonna hit the. You're gonna go straight through the water and hit the concrete anyways. And it might as well. But there is a point where when you fall from a far enough height, water is not much better than hitting hard stuff because of the way it compresses. That I know they did on Mythbusters. Cause they did the thing where they did the myth of if you're falling off of a bridge or something, like a worker falls off a bridge. If his hammer falls into the water before him and, like, breaks the surface tension, will that break the surface tension enough that him hitting right after will actually, like, he would make the fall survivable when it otherwise wouldn't be. And I can't remember how. What the conclusion they came to on that, but that's a similar thing. Ish of like, okay, so the zombie's body is. But she's still decelerating an absurd amount in a very short amount of distance, you know, like, so I don't know it. Point being, but it is more believable than falling eight stories onto pavement. 100 is way more believable because that. You're like, yeah, no, 100. That's obviously, again, eight stories. At that point, he's just gonna be mush. Like, this is gonna be mush.
• 55:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, like, I'm sorry you're not getting up from that.
• 55:18
  Speaker A: Not to mention 100. It's not helping her at all. Like, that. That's doing nothing for her. The combination of the water with his body underneath her makes the movie one. Like, I can squint and go, maybe, maybe. I don't know. Maybe, maybe. Yeah.
• 55:34
  Speaker B: And also the scene in the movie that made me think of the last Maze Runner movie where they jump off of the building in the city into the reflecting pool.
• 55:46
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is right. They do that. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, we did talk about that in that. Oh, God. Forgot everything about those movies. So he is now human again. Jumps up, they kiss. They have their big moment where they kiss and his eyes fully. His pupils dilate and he fully becomes human again. Just in time to get shot in the shoulder by Julie's dad, who is just the evil asshole in the state. He's not really. He's not evil. He's just like the super practical cold, like, we have to survive and that means blah, blah, blah. But he shoots him and is gonna kill him. But Julie is like, no. And she won't move. And then she notices that the bullet that he shot him, the bullet wound is bleeding like fresh red blood. And she's like, look, see, he's clearly human. He's bleeding. And they're like, this works. They see that. Everybody sees this. And all of the men, all the other soldiers around him are like, oh, shit. Yeah. And then he relents as well and was like, oh, wow. Okay. And I wanted to know if that is kind of like how that is all diffused is like they see the blood from his bullet wound and are like, oh, he is human.
• 56:55
  Speaker B: So this doesn't happen in the book. There is a moment where Julie notices that R is bleeding fresh blood from a previous smaller wound that he had sustained earlier. But it's not the same big moment that diffuses everything as what we get in the movie. The book is pretty nebulous about exactly what happens in the end, especially compared to the movie. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what exactly happens at the end of this book. Julia and R Do kiss and that seems to trigger something. It makes all of the Boneys stop fighting and then they later just retreat back to wherever they came from.
• 57:44
  Speaker A: So when you say trigger something, you don't mean in R, you mean in the world.
• 57:47
  Speaker B: In the world? Yes, in the universe.
• 57:50
  Speaker A: Okay, yeah, interesting.
• 57:53
  Speaker B: The. The. The book is like way more supernatural.
• 57:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. So like literally the book, the ending is like, well, look, love conquered.
• 57:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:00
  Speaker A: The day conquered the world.
• 58:01
  Speaker B: Conquered whatever this.
• 58:03
  Speaker A: So it broke the evil spell. Basically.
• 58:05
  Speaker B: Like.
• 58:05
  Speaker A: Okay, yeah, that isn't. Yeah, that is not at all what happens in the movie. Okay.
• 58:10
  Speaker B: The bony stop fighting. Retreat back to wherever they came from. The book is also less clear cut about AR and the others just being right back to fully human.
• 58:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 58:23
  Speaker B: So again, a little more nebulous.
• 58:26
  Speaker A: Like in what way? What do you mean?
• 58:27
  Speaker B: We don't get that moment with AR where his eyes change, like snap back to being blue. I think there's still zombie gray at the end. I guess it is more similar with the others because it seems to be a continuing progression.
• 58:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because there is a scene we get with M where he's like in the park where he says, like, oh, zombie hand. Like his hand is still not like. Yeah, his hand is not working properly. And he attributes that to having been a zombie or whatever.
• 58:59
  Speaker B: But okay, yeah, so the movie is pretty clear cut, which I do appreciate. But I also appreciated the kind of messy, uncertain ending of the book. The final message basically sums up to we're going to keep working at this until everything is fixed. Which I thought was really nice.
• 59:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it sounds like in the book their kiss like breaks whatever this weird zombie curse thing going on with the bonies and everything is. It kind of ends the zombie apocalypse. But the already zombies, the people who are already zombies are not just like instantly not zombies. They're still kind of like.
• 59:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, working through work to do to fix everything.
• 59:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. And there's obviously still work to do in the movie, but it's more so like rebuilding society. Everybody basically seems to be just human again, other than maybe some little lingering like their hands don't work fully properly or whatever. But like, generally speaking, they're all like just back to being fully human, it would seem.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker A: Okay, my final question is. At the very end of the movie, it is revealed that R we M meets another lady in the park and tells her that his name is Marcus, I think, or something like that. But R, we didn't have a conversation. The final kind of scene, Julie and R sitting there. They're watching the wal get demolished and come down and they're talking about how she asked him like, hey, did you ever remember your name? Because the whole thing is that he went by R because he knew his name started with an R, but he didn't. Couldn't remember what his name was. She's like, hey, did you ever, like, remember your name now that you're, you know, you're human again? He goes, no, not really. And he says, like. And he basically says that he's just not interested in remembering because he's, you know, he's worried about his life now and he doesn't care about his previous life. And I wanted to know if that was how it ends, if he just sticks with R in the book.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker B: Yep, that's all book accurate.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker A: Sweet. Those are all my questions for that. I do have some way more interesting questions that we're going to talk about in Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker B: Out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker A: Yes, yes.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlocked as soon as possible.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker A: So I kind of alluded to this at the beginning, but one of the things I was kind of confused about early on is that it seemed like R specifically was like. Like when the story of the movie starts, already seemed significantly more conscious than the rest of the zombies. Again, we're only in his head, but it seemed like he was more conscious than the rest of the zombies. And I wanted to know if that was the case and if there, if so, if there's any, like, explanation of why he seems to have a head start on becoming human compared to the rest of the zombies.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker B: So there's no explanation for it. But. And you kind of allude to this. There's also no real reason to believe that he is any more conscious than the rest of them because we aren't privy to their inner monologues like we are to his.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker A: True. I feel like the movie implies that he is by his description of the other zombies as, like, it seems like he's the only person who ever says any words. And then occasionally M kind of maybe says a word I think he says. But, like, the implication I got was that he has never heard any other zombie ever, like, even attempt to say a word.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker B: That's not the case in the book.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. So, so then, so then. So the idea is just that they are basically all on the same playing field.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker B: Probably.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker A: Probably.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker B: I think they're like, the implication kind of like what I got out of it was that he probably doesn't know and is just, like, assuming that he is a little more with it than some of the rest of them.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah. But also because they're not able to communicate, so he can't. Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker B: I mean, yeah, they're not really able to communicate with each other. But also, I think you could read it as, like, just differences in, like, the same way there are differences between people.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker B: Like, some people have very rich internal lives and, like, think about things, and other people are maybe not as much as much.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. It depends, though, because I think. I also wonder sometimes. I think sometimes that. And maybe it is a reference to that. I. I do often, because I. I fight myself on that all the time, where there's sometimes I'm like, there's definitely people that are not as internally aware and, like, introspective seem sometimes. But then you're also like. But that can't be the case. Right. Because we're all just people. And, like, everybody probably just thinks that about everybody else. Right, Probably. And so, like, I do kind of constantly bounce back and forth on that.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker B: But I do think that you could read it as, like, a reflection of that same thing where he feels like, oh, I have this rich internal life that none of the other zombies have. But maybe that is the case and maybe that's not the case.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker A: Right. Okay. Okay. And then my final question here, or. Sorry, it's not my final question, but a big thing that I wanted to talk about is that does it feel like the book is about anything specific? And I have about. In air quotes here or scare quotes here specifically, what I'm. It's obviously about stuff. But what I'm specifically asking is, in the book, do the zombies feel like an allegory for anything specific or any specific group of people? Because in the movies, they did not feel that way to me, which I thought was a terrific decision. The movie ends up being more about the power of love and hope and empathy and understanding and stuff like that, which are all tangential to the ideas of what I'm talking about. But it's not specifically an allegory for racism or bigotry in some specific way. Like, the zombies in the book or in the movie are not an allegory for. Or people of color or some sort of specific oppressed minority, which I thought was a very intelligent decision, because that kind of thing so quickly and easily gets bogged down in the messiness of the allegory in a world like this. And so I really appreciated that the movie did not at any point seem to imply, like, don't you notice this is kind of like how we treat X group of people or whatever minority here. Yes. And I wanted to know if the book felt similar or if the book maybe did have more of a direct allegory that the movie removed. You know what I mean? Like, what do you think?
• 1:05:47
  Speaker B: So I. I don't think that the zombies in the book are meant to be a metaphor for a group of people.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker B: That was never an implication that I got while I was reading. I think the condition of being a zombie is meant to be a metaphor for humanity having whittled itself down to almost nothing and lost its collective soul.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker A: Yes. Cause I would agree that the movie, especially at the beginning, it feels like the zombies. The closest thing the zombies are an allegory for or a metaphor for would be kind of like the mundanity of life. We see R and M go to the bar and grunt at each other without understanding or really, it seems. Seems like more of a direct metaphor, if anything, which not. If anything, I think it is for this. Of a life. Life that has become surface level and stagnated and is not kind of meaningless and meaningless. Yes. That is lost meaning because we're not engaging with, like, passion anymore, basically. It's going through the motions, essentially.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker B: I think that is precisely what the book is commenting on.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: Now, I mentioned earlier that I felt like the Boneys in the book functioned mainly as a metaphor.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker B: Personally, I was a little inclined to read them as a metaphor for conservatism.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker B: Or whatever you'd like to call the idea that we shouldn't try to change or make things better.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. I would call that conservatism because this.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker B: Is how it's always been and this is how it always will be. So we shouldn't bother trying to change.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker A: Kind of pretty pivotal to what conservatism is.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker B: Because the Boneys I mentioned that they're like, more kind of supernatural. They almost seem to function as like, a religious source in the book.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker B: They're actively antagonistic to anyone trying to disrupt the status quo. And the movie kind of tweaks that and makes it into. They'll eat anything that has a heartbeat.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker B: So that's why they go after the zombies when they start to change.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's not so much that they're trying to stop the zombies from Becoming human. It's just that once they become kind of human, they're now food, basically, is how the movie is.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker B: But. Yeah, but in the book, it is very much that they don't want the zombies to go back to being human. They are committed to this passionless, surface level mode of being.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker A: That's really interesting. Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker B: Now, I think you can definitely also read the Boneys as a metaphor for death, obviously, in this case, like, more specifically, I think the death of the soul.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker A: And this is what the movie is mostly doing.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker B: And this idea of it being this inevitability. So, like, why should we bother doing anything? Because we're all gonna end up Dustin Bones.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker B: Which works really well with the kind of medieval imagery that they invoke in the book. Something that I thought was really interesting was that the Boneys, especially at the end when they all are, like, coming out as this, almost like an army, AR talks about how when they're marching and he can hear trumpets, it's very, like an End of Days Book of Revelations kind of a thing. But the thing that really solidified my reading of the Boneys was the final scene with Julie's dad in the book. So he's depicted in the book pretty similarly to the movie, but I would say worse.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker B: He has a very rigid and militaristic worldview.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker B: At the end of the book, he goes completely off the rails. He's telling his colleague to shoot and kill both Art and Julie.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Cause in the movie, he, like. He puts down his gun and, like, comes to his senses and goes. Oh, no.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker B: Okay. And during this scene, he's described as looking like a bony himself. Like thin skin stretched too tight over a skeletal body. And there's no redemption moment for him because he was unable to envision or believe in the world that AR and Julie were trying to create. And he ultimately, like, lets the Boneys take him and kill him.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker B: So the movie completely nixes all of that. And I totally understand why, because it would have been a nightmare to depict and explain this, like, extended metaphor of supernatural death of the soul.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. And desire to maintain this soulless status.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker B: Quo and keep everything as it is.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker A: As it is, and keep these two groups from integrating, essentially. And. Yes. Yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker B: But there was something that was so weird and archaic and interesting about what the book was doing.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, that sounds really cool.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker B: Even though it was really messy and I didn't feel like everything panned out maybe as well as the author wanted it to. It was deeply compelling.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, it sounds really Cool. Yeah, for sure. My last question here, and this isn't really a question, but I guess I put it here because I thought maybe there's more in the book that explains why this. This happens. But I alluded to this earlier, which is that I think maybe my main complaint about the movie, other than some clunky, yeah, plot contrivances early on in the film, my main complaint is that the motivation for the rest of the zombies to start humanizing felt a bit weak in the film. Again, we have that moment where MCS R and Julie together and that, like, kicks him off. And then we see him, like, staring at like that poster of like, humans holding hands in the airport or whatever. And then we see other zombies around him, like, gathering, staring at that poster. But that felt a little like. Like, why would the other zombies be staring at that poster in that moment? Like, it just felt clunky. And I was. I was left wishing there was a bigger moment. Like, not. I don't want to rewrite the movie because I. But I was like, man, I think it could have been really compelling. And if there was a moment where, like, what helped kick off this other group of zombies at the airport, like, making this change, was if. If R had like played his music over like the speakers in the airport or something. And so you get this moment of like all of a Zomb Zombies, like, hearing music for the first time in years. And that's kind of like, what. Or something like that. I don't know, just some moment that felt a little more intentional. And like, not even intentional necessarily, but just a bigger, like, aha. Moment that really like, makes me go, oh, that's why they've started. Like their humanity is coming back. Whereas again in the movie, it just feels like they're staring at a poster. But I don't even understand, like, they've walked by that poster a million times. Why now are they staring at. I get why M is staring at that poster. I don't get why the rest of the. You know what I mean? It just felt little under baked. And I wanted to know. I guess my question is if there's anything more in the book that kind of explains why they.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker B: There's really not. The book is able to, like, stretch it out more, which I think helps the progression feel a little better without a big moment like that. But I do think that the movie definitely needed something a little more.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker A: I mean, they clearly knew they needed something because that scene you're talking about, that's not in the book, right? With the poster. It's not in the book. So they knew they needed something. I just felt like that scene didn't feel like enough. It just felt. Again, I just didn't feel like I understood M's motivation in that scene. I just didn't get why the rest of the zombies in that scene would be there. But.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker B: And, like, by the end of the book when they kiss and it kind of breaks the whole spell. I think we're supposed to gather that what happened earlier was that it was like the start of the spell kind.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker A: Of like undoing itself in the book. In the world of the book, it's much more magical where, again. Yes. So them falling in love has started to disintegrate the bounds of the spell or whatever. Whereas in the movie, there's not really any illusion to that being the case. It feels like a much harder kind of sci fi. Not hard sci fi, but it's going for a more kind of straightforward sci fi.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker B: It's going for, I think, more of a traditional, ish explanation for it. Yeah. Whereas. And honestly, like, the book never explicitly confirms that it's a spell quote, unquote, but there are several times where characters theorize that, like it's some kind of.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker A: Weird curse, like, magical thing. Yeah. All right, those are all my questions. Time now to find out what Katie thought was better in the book.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker B: You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. So I wasn't really expecting the movie to be able to pull off literal walking skeletons for the bonies, but I thought what the movie did looked more like aliens a little bit. Yeah, they reminded me of the aliens from Signs.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker B: Or kind of like the silence from.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker A: Doctor who a little bit. Yeah. The aliens from Signs, especially the way they move. From my memory, it's been a while since I've seen signs, but yeah, they. Yeah, I don't disagree. I thought they were fine. I remember seeing a review that was, like, not a big fan of them and that wishes they were, like, practical. I thought they worked pretty well.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker A: Considering they're fully cgi, they're fine. They're not, like, amazing, but they weren't.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. I just, again, like, the imagery in the book is very, like, danse macabre, medieval, literal grinning skeletons walking around, which I thought was really interesting. So I personally found them to be a little bit of a disappointment in the movie. Fair zombies have civilization in the book. Kind of. It's mostly orchestrated by the Boneys, but there's like, there's zombie school where they teach child zombies, like, how to hunt. There's zombie church where they all congregate and, like, wave their arms around. There are also zombie marriages. They have a civilization.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker B: Kinda of sorts.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker B: There's a little moment in the book where R and M sit in a hallway and pass a piece of brain back and forth like it's a joint, which I thought was kind of funny. This movie whitewashed Nora.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker A: Oh, really?
• 1:16:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker A: That's a tough one.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker B: Unfortunately.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't. There's. It's like, all white people in this movie.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker A: That's weird. Yeah.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker B: I thought Perry's dad's death was better. In the book, we see a couple memories with him before we find out that he died in the book, which I thought made his death, like, more effective. I also kind of liked that in the book he wasn't turned into a zombie. Because we see in the movie they go to find him and, oh, no, he's been turned into a zombie.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker A: And then Julie has to shoot him.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I totally understand why the movie does that, but I thought there was something compelling about in the book. It's just a workplace accident that could have happened at any point during history. Like, it doesn't even matter that it's the zombie apocalypse.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker B: This kind of goes back to your issues with the way that the movie, I guess, structured the zombies coming back to their humanity. Yeah. Because I thought that the part where M mows the bonies down with the luggage tram and then.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, this was one of those.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And then he looks over and says, come with me. I thought that was way too coherent.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker B: It just sounded normal.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker A: Yes. Yes, it does. And I think it's literally just there because it's for the comedy beat of, like, come with me if you want to live kind of thing. So they needed to have him. They thought it would be really funny for him to be like, come with me as he saves the day or whatever. But I agree, that was one of those moments where I'm like, well, he literally just. This is like, the first moment.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker B: It sounds like a dude.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker A: Yes. And this is the first moment where, like, the scene before this was him trying to eat Julie.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker A: Because she was running through. You know, there was a human there, so he was, like, gonna eat her. And then in this scene, all, like, he does see them run away together, and it starts to trigger a little bit of his brain going like, oh, wait a second. And his humanity start to return. But then, like, five seconds later. Yeah, he's saying like a whole sentence and you're like, oh, okay. Well, that was. That was easy.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker B: I thought that the human civilization being inside a stadium instead of a literal walled in city.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker B: Was better.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker B: I thought that felt much closer to something could actually happen. Plus I thought the descriptions of how they tried to build inside the stadium were interesting.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker A: That would be super cool. I would have loved that. I thought that would be way more. I think that would be way more interesting. Also. The. It's one of those things. The walls they have built are like absurdly large.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker B: And like, where did that infrastructure come.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker A: From as the world was falling apart? They're like tall walls and they like.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker B: It just makes way more sense to me that you would gather a bunch of people because people already go to places like stadiums.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker A: Yeah. During.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker B: Like, during disasters.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker A: Emergencies and disasters and stuff. Yeah.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker B: So yeah, you would have a bunch of people there and you'd be like, okay, well this is safe. We're just gonna. We're gonna make it work here.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Cause yeah, the walls they have built are. Which we'll get to, like, I have a note about it later. We'll talk about. But yeah, the walls they have built are absurdly large in a way where you're like, well, that's. How in the world could you possibly have pulled that off on your very seemingly relatively limited amount of, like, resources? And ST built these like 200 foot tall steel walls around a city.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker B: Like, okay, I mentioned that in the zombie civilization in the airport, they have zombie school where they teach the zombie children how to hunt humans. And I thought this parallel was really interesting because then as R is walking around in the stadium, he sees that there is also human school where they're teaching the human children how to kill zombies.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker B: I mentioned that. I was generally fine with the movie shortening the part of the story where AR is in the human enclave. I still think that. But there were a couple, like, character and relationship beats that I missed in that part particularly. I liked the scene where Julie shows AR her mother's grave and they talk about that. I thought it was a really good moment for Julie. Later on, ARR and Nora have a conversation about trying to be better despite what you've done in the past, which I thought was really nice. And then there's also a scene where ARR uses Perry's memories to find a story that he had written for her while he was still alive and give that to her. Oh, yeah, that would be really nice.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker B: Was, I think, helpful for Julie in Like giving closure to that plotline.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker B: And my last note here. The scene where R gives Julie flowers the image that is on the movie poster.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker A: Yes. And on the COVID of your book.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker B: On the COVID of the book is from the book, but correct me if I'm wrong, does not actually happen in the movie.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker A: Yes, it does. Not in the movie. And I think I read that when I was doing research for the prequel, like the trivia or something that it was. They filmed it, and then it just.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker B: For whatever reason, ended up on the cutting room floor.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker A: On the cutting room floor. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker B: Hugo, and not the one I thought it would.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker A: Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker B: I thought that introducing our little intrepid group of humans and also Julie's relationship with her dad had, at the beginning of the movie, before R even meets any of them, made a lot of sense. I was glad that the movie got rid of R's zombie wife and children. Okay, so there's a part in the beginning of the book where he is riding on, like, the moving sidewalk in the airport, which we'd see him do in the movie, but then also coming the opposite way is a zombie woman, and they grunt at each other. And ours says, oh, we're in love, because we grunted at each other. And then they end up getting married. The Boneys marry them in a zombie wedding ceremony and then also give them children to take care of. And that plot point kind of fizzles out.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Did we ever find out what happened to them? Or they show up at the end or anything?
• 1:23:12
  Speaker B: Or his wife hooks up with another zombie guy, like, after he brings Julie back. And I think we do briefly see his wife again at the end because it's mentioned at the beginning that she has, like, a name tag that he can't read because he can no longer read. And then there's a brief mention of a zombie woman and looking down and realizing she has a name tag on at the end of the book. So I think that's supposed to be the same zombie. I don't know if his kids ever come back, though.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a good.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker B: The whole thing just kind of fizzled for me. And I felt like it messed up the first part where we were, like, trying to build relationship between R and Julie a little bit.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker A: Well, and not to mention, it seems like the whole point. Unless the idea. So the whole point of the is like. And at least in the movie. The whole point at the beginning is like, well, there's. Everybody here has. They're kind of soulless, they've lost, you know, they no longer. They're going through the motions of life. They're. They're replicating the, the idea of life, but they're not actually, you know, they're not actually alive. Yeah. And so like having, I guess you could still have that work in the idea of like, he ends up in this like weird loveless marriage.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker B: But it does still works that they're like, like replicating the idea of a relationship without the actual feelings behind it.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that could work. Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker B: But to me it just felt unnecessary and it definitely.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker A: In the movie, you need to spend way too long explaining that. Yeah, it's just like way easier to just cut all of that for sure.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker B: I really liked the moment after he gets Julie in the airplane in the movie where he's thinking to himself, don't be creepy, don't be creepy, don't be creepy. But obviously is failing at night not being creepy. I also liked the moment where he puts a blanket over her. I thought that was cute. I also thought Julie trying to teach him to play that hand slapping game was pretty good.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker B: Julie does try to leave at one point and gets cornered by zombies, which we see in the movie. But I appreciated the small change from chainsaw to weed whacker. Weed whacker is so much funnier.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, it is much funnier.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker B: I like that we see some of Em's memories start coming back. Like the scene where they're looking at the poster and he like has a flash of memory. I thought that was good. The movie nixes Julie's random last name change. So her last name is Grigio.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker B: But then there's a whole bit in the book where her friends call her Cabernet, which, like, fine, sure. But also, why.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker A: Wait, you say. But you say name change. Is it a nickname or is it.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker B: Yes, but also no, because the book also says that she like wanted to actually change her last name and be Julie Cabernet instead of Julie Grigio.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker B: I don't know, man. It was just kind of confusing. Yeah, I really like, also, she should have.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker A: It should have been Noir. Noir.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker A: Because Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir. Those are the two different.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker B: I. I wonder.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker A: But I guess Julie Noir would be too weird. But not that Julie Cabernet is any better. So I don't know.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker B: I think the idea was that we were trying to get something close To Juliet Capulet. Oh. But if that's the case, I don't know why you wouldn't just make her last name something close to that to begin with.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Unless maybe it's some super clever reference to Romeo and Juliet that we're unaware. That could be that it's maybe some super deep cut, like, reference.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker B: Maybe it is, but if it is, I don't know. I don't know what that reference is. It has been a hot minute since I read Romeo and Juliet. But I really liked when R is in. I think this is when they're going to see Julie's dad.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker A: Yes, it is.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker B: And he's thinking to himself, say something human.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker A: Well, they're going past a guard or whatever.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker B: Yes. Going past the guard. And he's like, say something human. And he goes, how are you? And then he's like, nailed it.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker A: Nailed it. Yeah.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker B: My last note here. I thought the book's writing was generally pretty good. There were a lot of single lines that I really, really liked. My reading notes are full of them. But Isaac Marion, author of the book, did in fact do that male author TM thing where he kept referencing how tiny and petite Julie is just constantly. Oh, she's so. She's so tiny. She's so petite and dainty and fragile. Like, can we not, man? Can we not?
• 1:28:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker B: Practically perfect in every. The line. I don't like hurting people, but this is the world Now.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker A: It's arth. Right.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker B: Things that.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker A: To himself early on.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. As he's, like, eating somebody. I don't like hurting people. But this is the world now feels very timely.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker B: Julie does say that she misses airplanes. Like, she misses seeing airplanes in the sky. R does bring a chunk of Perry's brain with him to continue eating it.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. He keeps pulling it out of his pocket. Pocket throughout the course of the movie.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker B: So that he can get, like, a little snack.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Kind of like drugs, too. Like in the movie, the way they show it is it's almost like he's, like, tripping when he goes into these. Has these memories.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker B: The line. Dad's idea of saving the world is to build a big concrete box and put everyone in it.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker B: R is a vinyl snob.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker B: It's storming when they're driving in the convertible and they're just, like, filling up with water because they don't know how to put the roof up.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker B: We still got the Polaroid camera. Julie has, like, a Polaroid camera. When they get to the house, she says it was in the house. Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker A: They just find it.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. In the book, she takes it from the Bonies. Like, the Bonies have a Polaroid camera. Yeah. But we still got that, so that's nice. They do stop at that abandoned house. And Julie invites Art to sleep in the bedroom with her. And also takes off her clothes. Clothes. And when it starts raining again, R realizes that he's cold. And I think we talked about a lot of other stuff that was.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, there was quite a few other things, but. Yeah. All right, let's get to a handful of odds and ends before the final verdict. So before this movie started, I was like, I wonder if Theresa Palmer plays an American in this, and if so, how her American accent is still so rough if she's been doing it for this long. So we alluded to this in the prequel episode. I meant to mention this earlier in the episode, but we'll just got to it now. We've been watching A Discovery of Witches. We're almost done with the second season. I think it's only three seasons, which is based on a book, but it's a BBC TV series. And Theresa Palmer, the actress who plays Julie in this, is one of the main characters with Matthew Gilbert Good in A Discovery of Witches.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker B: The female lead.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker A: Yes. She's the. The witch. The main witch in the story. And I'd never seen her in anything before. And we started watching that show and I was like. For the first, like, two episodes, I was like, what? I was very confused going on with.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker B: Her voice where she was supposed to be. Because the show is set in England.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker A: Yes. That's what made it so confusing. The show is set in England and she's like. Goes to Oxford or whatever. She's like a grad student at Oxford or something like that. Like that. But then she seems to have an American accent. But then at times when she would say things, I would be like, but it sound. That word sounded weird. Why did that sound so weird? Is she. What is she? So then I looked up and I looked it up, and in the. In the Discovery of which is. She is American, she's from America and she's living in England at Oxford or whatever. But the actress, Teresa Palmer is Australian doing an American accent. And the thing that was crazy. So in this movie she's doing an American accent. This movie came out in 2013. This is like 12 years before. Maybe not 12 years. Like 10 years before discovery of Witches came out. And I swear her American accent is better in this movie than it is.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker B: Well, I didn't really have an issue with it.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker A: No, I didn't notice it at all. All it was. So now, to be fair, she talks less in true a little bit in this movie than she does in A Discovery of Witches. But I don't know if I noticed a single time in this movie where I was like, oh, I can hear Australian accent coming out. Whereas in Discovery of Witches, especially in the first season, it's gotten better as it's gone on. But in that first couple episodes, I was like, every other sentence I could hear Arnar. Like, I could hear her Australian accent coming out. And I was like, what is. It's. I just thought that was very funny that she's seemingly gotten worsted.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker B: And I think the Discovery of Witches, it's not helped by the fact, I think that the world building is not particularly good.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker A: Yes. And that's part of it.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker B: When the series started, they were like, she goes to Oxford and her friend is like, oh, you're back. But then they don't say where she's actually from for a long time. So we were just sitting there confused. This is not a review of the Discovery of Witches, which is. We just have thoughts.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker A: A great combination of awesome and awful. Yeah, it's kind of peak trash. I highly recommend. But know what you're getting into. Yeah, we. We might have to do a discussion of that one day because I. That is a. That is a fascinating show. So far. It is just the, the type of quality and like what it is. It was not at all what I was expecting. And it's. It's way more like Twilight than I ever thought it was going to be, which I thought was funny. Which actually, I'll just bring that up now. We joked about, about while we were watching A Discovery of Witches, how much Teresa Palmer reminds us of Kristen Stewart. Like, her character is just.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker B: She's just Bella.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker A: Bella kind of like a different version of Bella. Like obvious, but she's very similar to Bella. She falls in love with a vampire, blah, blah, blah. And their dynamic is similar in a lot of ways. But on top of that, she has like a look. Something about her reminded us a lot of love. I think it's her eyes, specifically. Something with her eyes. But boy, it was even more obvious here that she was cast as like Kristen Stewart Teemu version.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker B: The movie specifically is very clearly coasting off of the success of things like Twilight.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker A: The, like paranormal came out right in the wake of all of the Paranormal Team romance. And yeah, so it feels very intentional that they cast a girl who kind of looks like Kristen Steele and is doing like a similar turn type of thing, which I thought was really funny. But yeah, it's like the main roles she does, I guess, is paranormal love. I guess she's not bad. I'm not even criticiz. I think she's pretty good generally. And when she's. I think her acting is actually fine, especially when she's not trying to butchering American. Like anytime she's not talking in A Discovery of Witches. Totally great performance. And even now, most of the time when she's talking, it's fine. It's just every now and then the.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, the big Australian accent was rough.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker A: Would sneak out. Boy, Dave Franco was in this movie for five minutes.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, right.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker A: He actually had more than I thought because he gets eaten, like, immediately in the movie. And I was like, oh, well, that's. That's the end of Dave Franco. But now we get the flashbacks where.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker B: We see he's in a little bit more. But I do feel not much like they had Dave Franco on set for exactly one day.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, they did the raid scene and then they did the flashback scenes and like, somewhere down the street and then he was. He was done. Yeah, he must not have been on set for all that. That long, but yeah, that was funny.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker B: This movie did not diminish my opinion of Nicholas Holt.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker A: No, I think it's his least impressive role.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's not as good as the other stuff we've seen him in.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker A: It's just not as demanding as the other boy.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker B: Was he built to yearn?
• 1:35:55
  Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker B: He just. He yearns so well.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker A: Absolutely yearns so well. Yeah, I. Yeah, I thought his performance was good. Like, it's perfectly what you need it to be. It just wasn't anything where it's like blowing your socks off as opposed to, like, the great. I think is legitimately incredible and other stuff like that.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker B: I particularly thought he did a good job with some of the physicality, like, the physical acting. Like, I thought his zombie run was pretty good. Like, it was a good mix of running and lurching.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I think he does a good job. I just. To me. Me, I feel like everything he does in this feels a lot easier than. Yeah, like, everything I see him do in this movie, I'm like, yeah, I could see lots of actors being able to do that. I don't think there's a lot of actors who could pull off his performance in, like, the Great. Or that other movie we just watched the favorite. It's a similar type of role, but like that, those. I think he just has so much more. Like there's a lot more to work with nuance to his character. Whereas this, I think it's a very, very serviceable and good performance. I think it works great. I just wasn't super impressed by it. I was like, yeah, I've seen this before. I've seen plenty of other actors do this. But yeah, he's always good. I kind of alluded to this earlier, but I love that the bad guy in this story is obsessed with building a big wall. Cause that's just a timeless signifier of a heartless moron.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker A: Now, to be fair, in this universe of the movie, I want to give it a little bit of credit. The movie does imply that the wall was necessary at some point to keep out a raving horde of zombies. Zombie, like flesh eating bonies or whatever. But it is also not, not allegorical in the sense of like the wall coming down at the end is representative of society healing, you know, and like, we don't need this wall anymore. We've realized we don't need this wall anymore. And yeah, I just love that that's. Again, this movie came out in 2013, so it's not. This isn't a response to anything direct or, you know, in current event events of any sort.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker B: But yeah, speaking of Twilight, his line in the movie, I wish I could sleep. It must be nice to dream. I was like, okay, Edward Cullen.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker B: Because I think. I'm pretty sure. And obviously this would not be a reference to that because it was not published, but I think he has almost literally that line in Midnight Son. Oh, yeah. Like where he's like, oh, if only I could sleep, then I could dream.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker A: I do. Yeah.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker B: That does dream of Bella.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker A: I was cracking up that when they give him the makeover, like, they're like putting the makeup and stuff on him. One of the things he does is take a long hot shower and we get like a lot of lingering shots of him like showering. And I was like, boy, if there's anything that was going to bring back your humanity, a nice long hot shower has to be very high on that.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker A: That has to be one of those things that, yeah, if, you know, the music helps grow. Falling in love with a beautiful woman, taking a long hot shower. Those are like very peak human experiences, I feel like. Yeah.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker B: I will say I thought they did his zombie to human makeup progression. I thought that was Pretty good. Yeah.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's subtle and it looks good. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it looked, thought it was good. Also, I was, I mentioned it earlier, but I thought it was a good call to just go with Marcus instead of Mercury. That when M is like at the end, he's like, my name's Marcus. I was like really worried he was going to be like, my name is Mercutio. I'm like, wait a second. What? Yeah, it is going Marcus. I was like, that makes sense. Before we hit the final verdict, we wanted to remind you you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, threads, bluesky, Goodreads, any of those places. We'd love to hear what you had to say about about Warm bodies. You can let us know, we'll talk about that on the next prequel episode. You can also drop us a nice little five star rating or write us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you listen to our show, we would really appreciate that and you can Support us@patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit we just put out our February bonus episode where we discussed the animated film Megamind. If you want to hear us talk about Megamind and talk a little bit about Coyote Ugly, you can listen to to that episode, but mostly about Megamind. Yeah, that just came out. I just put that out the other day. So that's at the $5 level and at the $15 level you get access to priority recommendations where if there's something you would really love for us to talk about, you can Support us for 15 bucks a month and request it and we will add it to our queue as soon as humanly possible. But now, Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker B: Sentence fast. Verdict after that's skill Page Warm Bodies is a story about overcoming apathy and cynicism. It's a story about not just believing in hope and in a better future, but about working and fighting to make that future possible. The movie is a truncated version of the book with a simpler, more clear cut ending, but it still managed to mostly communicate the book's message. Message. I appreciate the movie for that. I genuinely enjoyed watching it and I would recommend it and I wouldn't fault anyone for preferring it. In many ways, the movie's storytelling is tighter. The book's storytelling was a little messier. It had a lot of ideas and not all of them made perfect sense or panned out. But that mess. It was interesting and thought provoking and compelling. It was written in 2010 without an inkling of the issues we'd be facing in 2026. But I still found it relevant. I found it resonant. This exchange between Julie and her dad hit me like a kick directly to the gut. The world is over. It can't be cured. It can't be salvaged. It can't be saved. Yes, it can. Can. Who decided life has to be a nightmare? Who wrote that fucking rule? We can fix it. We've just never tried before. We've always been too busy and selfish and scared. Relevant, resonant and hopeful in a way that I think we need. I'm giving this one to the book.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker A: Katie, what's next?
• 1:42:23
  Speaker B: Up next, we are talking about lightening things up. Yeah, lightening things up a little. We're talking about Malcolm X. Yeah. 1992 film based on the autobiography of.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker A: Malcolm X. Yeah, can't wait. That'll be fun. So I. We'll talk about it in the prequel. But I have seen this movie.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker B: I have also seen this movie.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah, I watched it. Did you watch it in a high school history class?
• 1:42:46
  Speaker B: High school history class?
• 1:42:48
  Speaker A: Yep. Our cool woke high school history teacher. Yep.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker B: With absolutely the wokest teacher I've ever had.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker A: Yep, yep. Exact same. Our woke heisel history teacher who was also our film like taught a film couple film classes. I can't remember if we watched it in history class or filmed one of the two, but he, he showed us to this to us. And I remember liking it when I saw it in high school, but it's been a long time. So.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker B: Liking it.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. All right, that'll be our next episode in two weeks time. But in one week's time we'll be previewing Malcolm X and hearing what you all had to say about warm bodies. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker B: Pals and everybody else, keep reading books.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker A: Keep watching movies and keep keep being awes.