SamuraiBeandog

All good.

It's not a big deal but if you're using my idea it would be nice to reply to my comment :]

I was thinking of a scene from a Discworld book but that's also a good example.

You could give them the spirits of the righteous dead, the fallen soldiers and heroes of the realm that continue to fullfill their duty even in death.

Summoning undead is usually an evil act in most fantasy, but you can easily write it to suit this purpose.

I actually just found a quote from Boyle specifically saying that Jimmy's gang are like "a replacement for the family he loses at the beginning", which is how I originally interpreted that scene.

though the real issue seems to be that you’re just unwilling not to consistently give the movie the benefit of the doubt

I've given pretty detailed explanations of why the things you've brought up don't seem unrealistic to me.

The gas station scene is heavily contrived to provide an older-brother or father figure

We just seem to have radically different interpretations of what we saw on the screen. You seem to be very confident about what you think the filmmakers intended and how most audiences will interpret specific scenes, which I dispute. To my mind Erik's main purpose was for world building, to contrast the way the UK had regressed to an older type of civilisation while the rest of the world moved on. Erik's character is petulant and kind of obnoxious and Spike never really takes to him, I don't see him as a familial figure to Spike at all. If anything he presents another type of authority figure that Spike rejects and stands up to, in the scene with the child.

This is not only a big tonal departure from the previous movies, but also within the movie itself. What is this, an action, adventure, horror, buddy, sci fi, drama, comedy movie?

This is probably in line with a lot of the people I've talked to who had issues with the film, it didn't fit into their expectation or categorisation. I don't know why this is a negative for some people but each to their own. Danny Boyle has basically built his career on subverting categorisation and challenging stylistic norms.

For a large part of the movie, her illness just isn’t relevant to what she’s doing.

I find this kind of a baffling statement. Her character is defined by her illness, and it defines the relationships of the whole family to each other. Right from her introductory scene she is her illness, she is no longer in control of herself. Spike travels onto the mainland because of her illness. During her travel she is continually regressing into a childlike mental state, because of her illness, inverting the parental role with Spike. This is central to Spike's character arc, imo, rejecting the expectations and traditions of his society and choosing his own path, taking over the parental role from his mother and eventually taking complete ownership of his own life after she is gone.

And of course her death is central and necessary for the most overt theme in the whole film, the fleeting preciousness of life, whatever shape it takes.

Are you saying it isn’t heavily implied those are the same kids?

When the zombies burst into the room with the kids at the start, there is a very specific shot of blood splattering across the TV screen. To me that was a very intentional message that those kids are dead. There's definitely something going on with the blonde hair, but it seems to somehow be tied into the fact that they're all dressed very similarly to the celebrity and child molester Jimmy Saville, who had the exact hair that Jimmy's group all have. I don't know what's going on there but I don't think they're the same kids. I guess I could be wrong about this, all the kids at the start being blonde is certainly a bit confusing in the context. But if I am I'll wait and see what the explanation is before I decide whether its believable or not.

Isla wandering into the distance to be killed by a morphine blowdart which seconds earlier had only served to make Spike a little woozy - dumb.

He can't have different strength darts? Is that unrealistic? This seems like the key difference between how we've viewed the film. For me this is a minor detail that serves the greater plot, and can easily be explained without jarringly breaking suspension of disbelief, even though it isn't specifically explained. It didn't stand out to me at all. But if that detail jumps out at you and interrupts what the scene is trying to do, I guess that undermines the film for you.

the movie contrives a situation entirely dependent on a character knowing a lot about benzene for no reason

I'm not sure what you're referring to here? That Erik knows that the fumes are benzene? Like, whatever the details are it was a pretty straightforward scene to inject some action into the movie, it's not like it was a major plot point. I admit it was the most suspension of disbelief scene in how it all played out, but it isn't a major plot hole.

Erik’s gun was perfectly fine.

He couldn't initially shoot at the alpha because it was in close proximity to his squad mate that it was attacking. And then he saw a horrific sight completely out of the realm of normal human experience and he froze in terror and then fled. None of this stands out as beyond the reasonable realms of plausibility.

No, that’s an entirely unbelievable way for Isla to behave.

She's in pain every day. Her relationship with her husband and son is completely dysfunctional due to her confused spells and violent outbursts towards them. Her illness has actively ruined those relationships and she ends up saying horrible things to the people she loves because of it. She has cancerous growths spread all through her body, I think that's a pretty reasonable indicator that she doesn't have long to live.

Mark my words, when the sequel to this movie comes out next year it’ll turn out that those are the same kids

You're literally making up things to be mad about. You've got a real axe to grind here and I'm not sure why. It's fine if you didn't like the movie for whatever reason but none of your arguments here hold water.

Kobe's nickname (self assigned) was the Black Mamba. Mamba Mentality was the book he wrote about his mindset. MJ was famously competitive but Kobe kind of took it to another level that bordered on sociopathic.

It's not the same game at all. A single purpose piece of code does not have the same considerations as a large software application. It's more like one is speed chess and the other is actual armies on a battlefield.

The gas station was definitely some suspension of disbelief but almost nobody is aware of the amount of detail you've put here, it's plausible enough to work in the context.

Erik just saw this thing rip his friend's head and spine out of his body, he was terrified and his flight instinct kicked in. Completely plausible reaction.

Isla already suspected she had cancer and the doctor found her breasts and lymph nodes riddled with lumps. She was suffering and in pain every day.

I didn't read Jimmy's crew as being the same kids. They're all blonde because they seem to be dressing like Jimmy Saville and/or he is trying to recreate his childhood group. The blood splatters shown when the infected break into the children's room at the start make it pretty clear that those kids got killed/infected.

Clickbait title. This is in the context of competitive coding, which is a very specific and constrained programming exercise with a time limit. Which is not at all comparable to real world software development.

Wicky.