I must preface this piece with the following, as it is quite well-deserved: Timothy Olyphant, you are amazing. You look so different in every single film, and you get into each part so well that I often don’t even realize you’re playing the (super hot) protagonist until I run to IMDB. You are a fantastic actor, and I applaud you. Oh, and I must reiterate the utter and complete hotness. Seriously. You are unbelievably hot. Call me.
I was looking forward to seeing the Crazies for a long, long time. For those not already aware, this incarnation of the film is actually a remake of a version released in 1973. It’s been moved from Pennsylvania to Iowa, but it is, in fact, a remake.
The Crazies is about how incredibly stupid and incompetent the government can be.
Semi-spoilers may follow.
Politics aside, the government manages to royally screw up the transportation of a biological weapon (for which it apparently royally screwed up the creation of a vaccine or a treatment). It then proceeds to screw up its incredibly stupid transportation fiasco.
For the benefit of humanity, I had a research chemist who actually handles hazardous substances put together a “how-to” manual for secret government programs that unleash diseases on their own populations because they apparently hire complete idiots. I call it “Biowarfare Oopsies for Dummies.”
An Idiots’ Guide to Contain Your Abominable Biological Weapon’s Accidental Release (Podunk Town Edition)
Step 1: If you’re going to set up roadblocks and have a way to tell if people are contaminated, have medical checkpoints at each block. If not, then replace would-be medical stations with (discreetly placed) sniper towers. If you want to be extra paranoid, Torch grassy or woodsy areas at the perimeter and use helicopters and troops all around. Remember, people have the magical ability to travel off-road using a technique called “walking.”
Step 2: If you decide to cut off communication, there area a few key points to keep in mind. No information will be leaked, or gained for that matter, by airing “Deal or No Deal,” “Family Guy,” or “Jersey Shore.” For cell-phones and computers, you have two options. Just hotwire some P.O.S. pick-up trucks and fake some drunk fishermen or high school kids running their trucks into the town’s only cell phone tower and/or phone lines. I mean, Baton Rouge lost power AND cell phone service temporarily just because their were four freaking inches of snow on the ground.
Step 3: DON’T CAUSE A PANIC OR RIOT! Kindly call for a town meeting, and in small towns, word spreads like wildfire. Once everyone is gathered together, tell them that swine flu has mutated and is now “Wombat Flu” or “Platypus Flu.” DON’T SAY IT’S AIRBORNE! People will just go nuts. All residents need to be checked to make sure they don’t spread it to the people around them. If you mention causing a pandemic, people will freak out, but it’ll be a lot more difficult to control them. Set up medical posts with vans around the city. Everyone will want to be checked for the “Wombat Flu” just in case (think of it the way we all respond to tetanus shots). That’s the time to administer your vaccine or cure if for some reason you are not stupid enough to have created a bioweapon without even considering human consequences.
Step 4: . All positive results should be told that they have atleast 1 of 3 symptoms. Tell their families not to worry, and they need to be transported to a proper medical facility for testing. Tell the families where to meet their loved ones after testing (give them a random place and time with a phone number to a voice recording). Use this “step-by-step testing” to eliminate any individuals necessary AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE.
Rule of Thumb: People being shot + Random bystanders = RIOT!
Step 5: Act like door to door salesmen and not SWAT Tactical teams when looking for people. Only shoot people trying to leave the city or if being hostile. If anarchy breaks out in the city, hold the perimeter and they will probably kill themselves off in a few days or be infected. Same results.
Step 6: Sit tight, kick back, and stop any people trying to leave the city for a week. Secret sweeps of the area. Nothing big so people will come outside in plain view. They will think the army has left. The more stress and danger people perceive, the more creative they’ll get in inventing ways to get out of the area.
This is Pearce again. There were way too many logical issues with the film for me to accept the government’s strategy, which is exactly why I can’t let this go. I mean, you don’t tell people to proceed in an orderly fashion and then stick ’em all behind a fence and shoot a few of them. Plus, if you’re going to say it’s airborne, why are you SETTING BODIES ON FIRE? You do that if it’s spread through fluid or rats or whatever. On top of that, if it’s airborne, you don’t have Sergeant Gruff Chewing on a Cigar cruisin’ around town in his humvee with the air conditioning running while not wearing an air mask.
And to all you townsfolk looking to walk out of town because the military blew up your cars, why are you walking down the middle of the one highway that runs through your town….with empty fields on either side in clear weather with visibility of a few miles. They have eyes, you know.
This post has left me confused and frightened. Sci-fi Heaven: please stop gushing about attractive people like a 13 year-old.
It’s not my fault if you didn’t bother to read past the PREFACE.
Have to admit was quite blown away by the fandom of the preface…
But on from that, believe me, if anyone ever makes a mistake with any biological weapons I’ve created, remind me to come to you.
Though I have to admit, If they’re filming it, I’ll let the US do it and enjoy the spectacle.
I am completely entitled to my occasional fandom squee moments. :P ‘sides, the man can act.
I still want to know why the US was all “Gee, let’s stick a deadly biological agent in a plane and fly it around before we’ve even made a working vaccine….and before we have any way to tell who’s infected besides ‘Oh, you have a fever. Clearly you have the crazy.'”
It was a standard movie, but definitely plenty of laughs for the stupidity of both the government and the townspeople. I agree….if for some reason a camera crew wants to film your biological oopsie, just invite Team America, World Police (as if they need an invitation) and be amused by the resulting catastrophe. They royally messed up in the 28 Days Later sequel, too.
Although now whenever I see people in a town in the middle of nowhere, I worry that they’re going to break out pitchforks and come after me. I need to stop re-watching In the Mouth of Madness.
Side note, I will also squee about the awesome of Malcolm McDowell.
Plenty of things end up in multiple categories. And it’s a review, just not in the traditional sense. Lighten up. Or maybe actually take the time to read and comment on a few of my other pieces before you decide you need to complain about a single paragraph.
Men write reviews in which they make nudge-nudge references to the attractiveness of female leads all the time, and female readers roll their eyes and move on. It’s odd that a male readership would be so threatened by the tables being turned. It’s obviously done in a lighthearted way, for humorous effect. I don’t see a problem with it, but then again, I’m not in the demographic likely to feel threatened by someone drooling over Timothy Olyphant. Seems a tempest in the teapot of male insecurity.
I’m with Olivia on this one. If someone opened a post on SFH with the sentence: “Jessica Alba was smokin’ hot in this!”, then no one would comment at all.
@LG: I’m all for embracing styles of writing here, and I think the articles a good one. It is, in essence, a critique of The Crazies, and so slots reasonably well into both categories.
Edited post so that header image appears on main page
I have to admit in some of my reviews I do more than nudge nudge, more open drooling onto the keyboard, but not dedicate a whole paragraph to it. Not a criticism, I just find it amusing!
Team America in the crazies would be an amazing sequel! Bear in mind, these are Americans, federal forces can’t be expected to behave sensibly and not react with grossly unnecessary amounts of force when things go pear shaped.
I actually really enjoyed 28 weeks later, for all the American influence it was a very good film.
Ok… edit didn’t work, I’ll let Chris know