I'm trying to say that up to the point where he abandoned his men when the lift was lowering, Captain Rhodes seemed to be spot on with most of his frustration. The men didn't understand what the scientists were doing, and the scientists weren't exactly convincing themselves. Frankenstein even wanted to "make them behave" and they all laughed, rightfully so because even if it worked, the question is how would they apply said treatment to the rest of the zombies? It seems like Captain Rhodes wanted to know what the heck he was doing and nobody could really explain that.
One of the things George likes to do in his
Dead films is show what happens when the status quo is upset and how different groups of people react to the situation.
Despite the fact that Rhodes may have had some good ideas in the beginning, by the time Miguel decides to commit mass suicide Rhodes has pretty much jumped his trolley, mentally speaking. Being faced with possible imminent death while being completely defenseless just exposed his core self to the fore. That of being a loud-mouthed coward with delusions of grandeur. He cut and ran and left his men to die. Enough said.
In the case of Sarah and Fisher, they were trying to maintain this ideal that things could still be fixed. The Holy Grail of Zombiedom was somewhere under the microscope and if they just kept plugging at it they'd find it and everything could go back to the way it was. Dr. Logan was the extreme of this group. While he did realize the futility of their situation, he was pushing as hard as he could for what he thought, (Being by this point well on his way to the Land of Insanity), was the next best thing - Making them "behave".
And yes, that was a lunatic idea. #1. Bub was an exception to the rule as far as aggressive behavior goes. #2. Even if Bub's type wasn't so rare, (As was more implied in Romero's earlier versions of
Day), it would still take generations to achieve and at the cost of probably a great deal of life.
It seems like everyone was losing it and I'm just surprised that Romero chose the side of the scientists to "live" simply because Sarah was a woman. If I had a say in the story, I would have kept Rhodes same behavior up to the scene where the lift was dropping. Instead of abandoning his men, Captain Rhodes rally them and fight back.
That's just Romero. George is a self-admitted pacifist who hates guns and doesn't really have a lot of nice things to say about the military or government in general. Sarah is actually an "uncomfortable" character for me. In Romero's original script there were two female leads, a Ripley style commando named Sarah who's group had been living "on the road" since the outbreak, (5 years earlier!), and Dr. Mary Henried, a female scientist who was a member of the underground staff at the island base where most of the film was set. When Romero was forced to cut his script back he took those two characters, put them in a blender and created the Sarah we know. And to me she at times comes off as a "Mary-Sue" who's had a little horsesh!t thrown on her. She's a clumsy and often ham-fistedly written character who just doesn't translate for me. Franny in
Dawn was much more believable and relatable.
At the time
Day of the Dead was made there was a lot of discussion and debate going between the scientific community and the military complex about the folly of a full scale nuclear war, fostering a kind of Us vs. Them mentality, (This is about when Carl Sagan made his famous "waist deep in gasoline" analogy about nuclear war on TV). This was in part due do to the Reagan Administration beginning a military build up against the Soviet Union. At this time there were several other films such as
Threads and
The Day After that dealt with the subject head-on. And on the Anchor Bay copy of the DVD I have Romero even mentions in the commentary that this was on his mind when he was rewriting the script. Also,
Day is a watered-down version of it's original form. In the original script there was a great deal more to do with classism and again people who've had/ have power doing all they can not only to hang onto that power but exploit it for their own pleasure at every turn. And you can still kinda see that classism/ hierarchy/ caste system with the scientists/ army guys/ "oddballs" (John and Billy).
Lastly, in the original script Rhodes did actually have a "rally the troops" moment towards the end but he still ended up getting gunned down by Bub.
Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day.
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