Small Details You Missed In The Army Of The Dead Teaser Trailer
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It's been 17 years since Zack Snyder's big-budget directorial debut, a surprisingly successful remake of the George Romero zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. Since then, Snyder has covered everything from Spartans to superheroes, but it's hardly a surprise that he eventually found his way back to the shambling undead.
While many of us are still on tenterhooks awaiting the Snyder Cut of Justice League on HBO Max, Snyder does have another movie coming out this year through Netflix — his zombie homecoming, Army of the Dead. The heist movie set in a Las Vegas overrun by the zombie horde is absolutely brimming with big-name talent including Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy, Blade Runner 2049), Tig Notaro (Star Trek: Discovery, Transparent), and a host of others.
The first full trailer finally dropped and, while people are already enjoying all the zombies-in-a-casino action, there are a few more subtle details in the trailer you may have missed — and, yes, there are more Easter eggs than just the film canisters of the Snyder Cut this time. Don't worry — we've scoured every inch of this one-minute trailer so you don't have to.
Here are the details from the Army of the Dead trailer you probably missed.
Three very significant colors
There are three colors that recur in Army of the Dead: pink, purple, and blue. You may not have realized it, but you've been seeing these colors quite a lot in movies, TV shows, and music videos in recent years. Blade Runner 2049, Atomic Blonde, the Black Mirror episode "San Junipero," and Janelle Monae's music video for "Make Me Feel" all use these three colors heavily. There's a term for this: bisexual lighting.
Yes, some of the examples we've named here include characters and performers from the LGBTQIA+ community, but the other reason people refer to this aesthetic as "bisexual lighting" is pretty simple: The bisexual flag, created in 1998, is comprised of three horizontal stripes colored pink, purple, and blue.
Now, whether or not the use of these colors in the Army of the Dead trailer means that we'll see any queer characters is unknown, but the movie does star Tig Notaro, so the odds are pretty good! It's also noteworthy that among the classic Vegas figures we see in the trailer (including Elvis) is Liberace, one of the queer community's most well-known icons.
One other famous film that uses pink, purple, and blue is the DCEU's Birds of Prey, which is a nice transition since – no surprise here — Snyder makes a number of homages in this trailer to comic book superheroes.
The surprising nods to Marvel and DC
The Dawn of the Dead remake wasn't just directed by Zack Snyder; it was also written by Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn. If you pay close attention, there's a very specific nod to Gunn's Marvel movies in the trailer for Army of the Dead.
One of the people on the heist team is Ludwig Dieter as played by Matthias Schweighöfer. Dieter has a very important accessory — headphones. These aren't just any headphones, but classic, orange-foam-at-the-ears, 1980s-style headphones, which look virtually identical to the ones that Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) wears in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. That could be a coincidence, but we sincerely doubt it.
It would be strange if there were a Marvel reference but nothing beyond film canisters nodding toward the world of DC. Fear not, because we caught an image we're almost positive is a DC deep cut. One of the Vegas casinos in Army of the Dead is called "The Olympus." Outside of the casino is a statue of a man who could be Zeus, but happens to bear a striking resemblance to the Batman: The Animated Series incarnation of a DC villain named Maxie Zeus. The animated series version of Maxie is a former CEO who has a mental breakdown and becomes convinced he's the real Zeus. And let's be honest, that sounds very Vegas!
The references don't stop there. Obviously, a zombie movie from a fanboy like Zack Snyder is going to make nods to other zombie movies that came before.
A different kind of bat man, a party, and a bus on fire
The original Dawn of the Dead normalized a way of humorously humanizing zombies — with costumes. Notably, in the 1978 classic, one of the zombies is dressed up like a Hare Krishna. In Army of the Dead, we get a very different amusing set of zombies: an undead bachelorette party.
There's also a much more direct nod to Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. In the Army of the Dead trailer, we see a bus on fire, surrounded by a zombie horde. We see that exact imagery in Dawn of the Dead when the humans in that film try to escape the mall. And there's one other nod to classic zombie media in the form of a very specific weapon — a baseball bat covered in nails. If you've ever played a zombie video game, you have most certainly used a weapon like this to fight off the shambling undead. Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, The Last of Us, and many other zombie games have all made a nail-covered baseball bat a weapon of choice for gamers.
Army of the Dead arrives on Netflix May 21, 2021.