Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman: Ingenious Innovator or Plagarist Hack??
So I watched AMC's 'Walking Dead' TV show the other night. I am a huge Romero fan and do rather enjoy the WD comic series.
But I am struck by exactly how close Kirkman's fare matches (or copies?) Romero's universe. Right down to:
1. Apocalyptic future overrun by re-animated corpses...check!
2. Death and resurrection of people bitten by zombies...check!
3. Destruction of the brain 'kills' the zombie...check!
4. Ambigious origin of zombie plague...check!
Hell, WD's opening montage even copies [SPOILER - highlight to read]: 28 Days Later in that both protagonists come out of a coma in a hospital to discover the world has gone to sh!t
I understand Romero lost the rights to alot of his work (hence the reason why Kirkman hasn't been sued to the hilt?) but are Kirkman's stories original enough to stand on their own?
Is the 'Apocalyptic Zombie World' a generic enough concept (compare to Vampire stuff)? Or is aping Romero's concepts akin to me writing a sci-fi story with soldiers who use laser swords while fighting a galactic empire?
Wasn't all these concepts developed by Romero? To the best of my knowledge before George zombies were created by magic, did not spread by biting others etc.
I wouldn't consider 28 Days Later a Romero ripoff, as there weren't zombies in it...just homicidal humans exposed to a virus (plus they ran around a lot ).
If Romero's name was on the Walking Dead, I would totally believe he was responsible for it. There is no way I would pick up an Anne Rice book and confuse her with Stephanie Meyer.
My impression of the Romero verse is that being bitten by a zombie simply kills you, and that anyone who dies returns as a zombie provided there's enough left to reanimate.
Isn't that a major point about Day of the Dead? That all dead rise in that world because of some vague shift in the way of the Universe?
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
You are correct. For years I was under the mistaken belief it was the bite that actually zombified the person.
The remake of 'Dawn of the Dead' DID have it where the bite was directly responsible, and non-bitten dead people did not rise.
Another strike against Kirkman is that he seems to have copied this from Romero as well (from Wikipedia):
The zombies
To date in the comic book series, every deceased human being has risen as a zombie, as long as they still have a working nervous system. It is unclear how long a person must have been deceased before they are reanimated: Tyreese's daughter "comes back" within a few minutes after death, but Shane's body does not reawaken until well after having been buried. Zombie body fluids getting on a human will not infect them. It is not the bite itself that zombifies a person, all the bite does is cause a serious infection, which kills within days. Promptly removing the limb of a person bitten will ensure survival.
Heh...gather around Galan I will regale you with a tale...
The Scorpion and the Frog
One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"
"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.
"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"
"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"
"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.
"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
Romero is the godfather of zombie movies. He's done so much in that genre, that it is literally impossible to watch a zombie flick he wasn't involved in, without noticing similarities to his work. Lets face it, zombies are a great concept (imo), but they aren't dynamic at all -- you can only do so much with them.
But frankly, I'm glad to see zombies once again being portrayed in the WD franchise as they were in the 'golden age'. ie. they aren't very intelligent, they move slowly, bites can be managed without infection, etc. -- I hate some of these newer zombie films that depict zombies as intellectual equals to humans, having the speed of a cheetah, and being experts in parkour.
__________________
"I am tired of Earth. These people.
I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
Heh...girls emoting copius amounts of teenage angst towards sparkly zombies...you might be onto something here
IMO 28 Days Later is a lot closer to I Am Legend then Romero's stuff.
Is 'Zombie Apocalypse' a genre? Or something unique that many seem to be borrowing liberally from?
I guess I am trying to determine the line between innovation and plagarism. Max Brooks is another one (I read World War Z and give it a big MEH...maybe it didn't float my boat because there were no pictures??? ) who seems to have created his stories almost exclusively through the mythos Romero created.
Oh, Le Parkour! You threw me with the anglicised pronounciation
I liked the running zombies. In reality they would be a lot more effective than Romero's. No way Romero's snail zombies would be able to completely devastate civilization as effectively as they did...
...running zombies? Hell yeah. They'd have me running away, screaming like a little school girl on helium.
Re: Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman: Ingenious Innovator or Plagarist Hack??
Yes, absolutely. The setup is similar, what the characters do is not. It's clearly it's own story.
It's pretty genetic nowadays. I mean, major props to Romero, he is to zombies as movie-Dracula is to vampires, but it's all in what you do with it.
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Related, there's an RPG called All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It's about zombies, and all kinds of variations on the them of 'zombies'. It has literally dozens of 'deadworlds' you can play in with different variations of the theme.
And most other zombie movies are in similar setups. Shaun of the Dead, Biozombie, many more.
Kirkman's got a fairly standard zombie world, but that's well into the category of 'genre default' rather than plagiarism.
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The 'wake up in a hospital' thing's been done in quite a few places too. You mentioned 28 Days Later, but the Resident Evil movie's another, and I'm sure there's more.
Re: Re: Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman: Ingenious Innovator or Plagarist Hack??
Yeah, I think it is pretty much accepted that a lot of these zombie movies, books etc are directly derivative of Romero's work and not new concepts. It's been commented on frequently over the last few decades.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I recall reading somewhere that the only reason why Romero can't sue or do anything about it is because Night of the Living Dead became public domain for some reason, allowing everyone to make derivative works from it.
The first time I know of this sort of plot device was Day of the Triffids from 1951, where he recovers/wakes in hospital to find everyone is blind and society has collapsed (though obviously the monsters involved are flesh eating plants not zombies). It might have been used even earlier than that. so...
- Day of the Triffids - book, movie, tv series, 2nd tv series
- Resident Evil
- 28 Days Later
- Walking Dead
...and probably others
Re: Re: Re: Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman: Ingenious Innovator or Plagarist Hack??
Copyright data was left off or not filed or something, so people can not only make derivative works, but just sell the movie themselves.
Even not counting that, people could still rearrange elements and do their own movie. There's no copywriting a style of setting after all. So there'd still be other zombie movies even without that, and I don't think Romero minds anyway.
KMC Community Forums
Nov 3rd, 2010 04:46 PM
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) who seems to have created his stories almost exclusively through the mythos Romero created.
