Top 10 Things to Remember Before Zombieland 2
Top 10 Things to Remember Before Zombieland 2
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When the dead rise, it’s important to be well informed! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Things to Remember Before Seeing “Zombieland: Double Tap”. For this list, we’re looking at key facts and background info about this long-anticipated sequel, as well as providing a refresher in case you’ve forgotten details about the first film.
#10: Ten Years Have Gone By
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As any “Zombieland” fan will tell you, it’s been a long wait for a sequel. Right after the first film’s release back in 2009, director Ruben Fleischer expressed his hopes for a sequel; sadly however, the project languished in development hell. A TV pilot starring a new cast aired in 2013, but wasn’t picked up as a series. During the intervening years, the actors involved have noticeably aged - especially Abigail Breslin, who’s gone from precocious child actor to a woman in her 20s. Rather than try to gloss over this fact, the screenwriters decided to work with the real-world changes and establish that 10 years have passed since the events of the first film.
#9: Zombie Kill of the Week
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A post-apocalyptic world in which the dead rise and eat the living doesn’t exactly sound like an environment that encourages fun. And so survivors have to make their own! Killing zombies is inherently risky, but in the first film, Tallahassee, Columbus, Little Rock and Wichita manage to imbue this messy business with a dash of levity by making a game out of it. “Zombie Kill of the Week” is just what it sounds like - a competition for the most epic and creative zombie kill! Now, the rules aren’t clearly defined, but it also includes people beyond the core group. Here’s hoping we see even more contenders in the sequel!
#8: Is Bill Murray Still Alive?
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The 2009 film gives this actor a fairly definitive demise. First, he gets a bullet to the chest courtesy of Columbus, and then our intrepid group of heroes wrap up his corpse and ceremoniously chuck it off the roof. But then again, he’s fooled us before! When we first meet Murray, he’s posing as a zombie so that real zombies will leave him alone. Unfortunately, when he uses the disguise to prank other survivors, it brings him a world of pain and an untimely death. And yet, sure enough, there he is in the trailer! It could be a flashback, but with a Dan Aykroyd confirmed to make a cameo appearance, who knows, maybe we’ll be getting an undead Ghostbusters reunion!
#7: Wichita & Columbus
At the end of the first film, it seemed as if Emma Stone’s Wichita and Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus had found love in the most unlikely of places - an amusement park littered with bloody corpses! The romantic tension had been building for much of the film, and in this moment, it really seemed that these two had earned themselves a happily ever after. Unfortunately, young love rarely lasts, and we can only imagine that the stress of a zombie apocalypse would take its toll - so it remains to be seen how their relationship has since progressed. With the introduction of Zoey Deutch’s Madison as the bubbly but seemingly not so bright new addition to the group, there could be a love triangle in the works.
#6: We Only Know Wichita’s Real Name
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Another one of the original film’s endearing quirks is that the characters don’t go by their real names, but rather names of places they come from or that are important to them. This isn’t limited to just our four core characters, either. Columbus’ old neighbor (and the first zombie he killed) is referred to only as 406, and she calls him 408. In this world, almost all relationships are doomed to end in heartache - probably sooner rather than later. Using codenames helps diminish attachment. At the end of the first film however, Wichita revealed her real name to be Krista, signaling that she’d formed a bond with Columbus. In the sequel, we’ll also be meeting new codenamed-characters like Albuquerque, Nevada, Flagstaff and Berkeley.
#5: Twinkies!!!
Rule #32 of Zombieland states that you need to “enjoy the little things”. In Tallahassee’s case, there’s one little thing in particular that he longs to enjoy more than anything else - a twinkie. When they come across a crashed Hostess delivery truck in the 2009 film, the discovery that it only contains a mountain of “snowballs” nearly breaks the man. In the film’s climax however, Little Rock finally finds the snack that Tallahassee has been searching for - a gesture that clearly means the world to him. Now that ten years have passed, we fear that Tallahassee’s nightmare has come true and that the world’s Twinkie supply has gone bad; here’s hoping he’s found a solution to satisfy his cravings!
#4: Tallahassee's “Puppy”
Woody Harrelson’s character Tallahassee is a tough-as-nails kind of guy who - with the exception of his aforementioned weakness for twinkies - is usually pretty unflappable. In this undead world, as he tells Columbus, he’s arguably found his true calling. But for all his bluster and apparent love of the apocalypse, Tallahassee actually has a big heart; and as we learn about three-quarters of the way through the film, the zombie apocalypse broke it in the worst possible way. Earlier in the movie, Tallahassee talked to Columbus about the puppy he lost, Buck. As he talks about “Buck” however, and the flashbacks begin to play, we realize that Buck wasn’t a dog, but rather Tallahassee’s toddler son. Talk about heartbreaking!
#3: These Zombies Are FAST
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Filmmaker George A. Romero is credited with having first popularized the zombie genre as we know it today. And the way he envisioned them, zombies were strong but slow-moving. With “The Walking Dead” comic book series and TV show having helped zombies reach unprecedented heights of popularity, and creator Robert Kirkman largely having followed the Romero model, “slow” is generally the default setting that people expect from zombies. That being said, we’ve gotten zombies of all shapes, sizes and speeds over the last few decades, and the speedy undead population of Zombieland make it necessary for survivors to keep up their cardio. And as Wichita teases in the trailer, it seems that the zombies are getting even faster and deadlier.
#2: The Group Has Become a Family
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When we first met Columbus, he made it very clear that he had no interest in playing the hero. Survival, for him, was a solitary endeavor. Forming bonds with other people meant unnecessary risks, and he’s not alone in feeling this way. Tallahassee seems thoroughly disinterested in getting attached, while sisters Wichita and Little Rock are straight up con artists who, even after getting to know Columbus and Tallahassee, abandon them. However, when you save each other and kill countless zombies together, you can’t help but bond! And so by the time the credits roll, this disparate group of survivors has found something actually worth living for - family. Considering they’re still together 10 years later, that concept clearly means a lot to them.
#1: The Rules of Zombieland
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Throughout this list, we’ve made reference to a couple different rules for survival, including “don’t be a hero”, “enjoying the little things” and the importance of good cardio. These rules come courtesy of Columbus, who, being a bit detail-oriented and paranoid, believes that they’re essential to staying alive in this dangerous new world. As he drops these tidbits throughout the original film, it quickly becomes clear that he has a LOT of them, and as we learn in the trailers for the sequel, he’s seemingly only been adding to that list in the years since we last saw him [75 rules]. The sequel’s title is actually a reference to his second rule, after cardio: always “double tap”.
