Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is dumb. But just because it’s dumb, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Well, come to think of it, Army of the Dead is bad. But it’s bad in all the right ways. It’s just stupid fun and I enjoyed it for what it’s worth: a dumb, turn off your brain action movie. The script is bad, overly long and most of the acting is barely passable but I have to believe Zack Snyder knows it and he didn’t really take to making this the greatest, most emotional zombie movie out there. No, it’s very intentionally action-oriented and you’re just supposed to watch it and enjoy how bonkers the movie is. If you do have Netflix and a little over two hour to spare, I say give it a watch and let the dumb wash over you.

Since the movie is as dumb as a zombie that’s been shot in the head by a shotgun, though, that just means Army of the Dead is riddled with plot holes and loose story threads. And I mean there’s a lot! It would take too much time to list them all but I can spare the time to talk about five of them that’s really nagging me. They may not be the most obvious, but rather, most of them are the most inconsequential in the film.

By the way, as I’ll be talking about specific plot points and scenes from Army of the Dead, I’ll have to put up the obligatory SPOILER WARNING here. So, yeah, SPOILERS incoming!

With that out of the way, let’s go through just five of the more inconsequential questions I have after watching Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead on Netflix!

#1 Who are the mother and daughter who were left behind when they walled up Las Vegas and why should we care?

When you see the opening credits and witness how Las Vegas is overrun by the zombie horde, you kinda get the impression of what you’re in for with Army of the Dead. It’s not to be taken with all seriousness as it’s just supposed to be a cool sequence shot using Zack Snyder’s overabundant reliance of slow-motion shows. You do get to see how the zombies overwhelmed the city and how it had to be abandoned. It’s also a cool way to introduce most of the main characters.

Except for that red herring of the mother who managed to find her daughter in the zombie infested Las Vegas. They kill her off as well as her daughter during the opening credits. Well, what was the point in that and was I supposed to care about them?

I suppose their deaths is supposed to show the horrors of the zombie outbreak and how it affected Dave Batista and the other main characters to a certain extent. But they’re never mentioned ever again, even by Batista and company. You never even find out their names! So, if the movie doesn’t even care for them enough to let us know who they are, why should I care for them if they died? If they appeared later as part of the zombie horde, then I would be more forgiving. But they were just forgotten. I guess Zack Snyder is going to go into more detail with Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, the animated series focused on what happened during the zombie outbreak. Ugh, putting the cart in front of the horse again, Zack Snyder?

Speaking of being forgotten…

#2 What the heck happened to mother Batista’s daughter wanted to rescue?

I’m sorry but I really hated Kate, Batista’s daughter, in the film. She messed up a lot of what should have been a clear cut heist, getting the money out of one of the casino’s vaults by having to run around the zombie infested Las Vegas to find one of the refugees who went into the city to look for money. I blame her for the helicopter pilot’s death as well as Batista’s. If the didn’t run off, they would’ve escaped way before the nuke destroyed the city! Their blood in on Kate’s hands!

What’s even worse is that Kate did manage to find the woman and they all tried to escape on the helicopter. After the crash, well, we don’t really know what happened to the woman because they never show what happened to her! Kate finds the pilot apparently dead and she finds Batista. But she’s never seen looking for the woman she went to save in the first place after the crash! Why didn’t they reveal her ultimate fate?

It’s fair to assume she’s dead and, apparently, the reason why they didn’t show what happened to her after the crash because they had to recast the helicopter pilot but they really didn’t reshoot any scenes! The actress who replaced the original helicopter pilot filmed all of her scenes using a green screen and spliced her into the footage they already shot. This might have resulted in the scene where Kate actually finds the woman’s body laying on the cutting room floor as they couldn’t edit out the original pilot.

But, come on! Zack Snyder couldn’t have done any CGI wizardry to fix this? Or, at the very least, paste in a dead woman’s body near the crashed helicopter so we can infer she died? Very sloppy, Zack Snyder!

Oh, and speaking of the heist…

#3 Why didn’t the casino owner give Batista’s crew the combination to the safe?

The thing that starts off the entire adventure is the casino owner hires Batista to form a crew to get his money out of the vault. Of course, it’s actually all a ruse as the casino owner was hired by the government to get a sample of the zombie Alpha’s blood so they can reproduce the zombies again. But Batista’s crew doesn’t know it so he gets to recruiting a team that consists of a helicopter pilot who can fly them off the casino as well as a safecracker who can open the vault.

Wait, why do they need a safecracker in the first place? Why didn’t the casino owner just give them the combination to the safe?

I mean, he’s the man who owns the casino, right? So it’s safe to assume he knows the exact combination to use to open up his own vault! I mean, it is his money, after all! Even if the safe is on this alternating combination thingamajig mumbo-jumbo, he should, at the very least, know exactly how to get the correct combination at any time and not have some safecracker to bumble around as he tries to figure out the correct sequence.

But let’s go say he’s one of those hands-off types who doesn’t really know how to open the safe. He should know how to get in touch with the people who installed the safe and teach the safecracker how to break open the vault without having to break it! It just seems weird that they needed a safecracker when the guy who should know how to open the vault quickly and easily doesn’t give Batista and crew that piece of super necessary information!

And speaking of the ruse…

#4 Why didn’t they just take out the female Queen and Zeus at the start?

As I said, I know the real purpose was for someone to get zombie Alpha blood. The casino vault heist is just a cover to trick Batista to get a team inside Las Vegas. I guess they thought they needed time for a zombie Alpha to rear their zombie face so they had to think of some complicated scheme to trick people into staying while the bad guy soldier and the coyote lady find and capture a zombie Alpha.

But they really didn’t need any time. In fact, both the zombie Queen and Zeus appears immediately as they entered Las Vegas!

So, if the actual goal was to get some blood from one of the zombie Alphas, why didn’t they do just that right from the very start? In fact, why did they have to hire Batista and his team in the first place? I mean, the coyote lady even expected either one or both of them to show up as they had to present a sacrifice to enter the city proper. Well, if she knew that, then I would think the bad soldier guy also knew that as it’s implied they made contact before.

If that’s the case, why not just send in a ragtag group of actual soldiers to go with the coyote, plant the sacrifice and then rope either one of the zombie Alphas up? Why come up with the elaborate subterfuge to get mercenaries to help them when they know a zombie Alpha or two are going to show up the instant they enter Las Vegas? Heck, they could just rope one of them up and then exit the very same way they came in! It’s not like they lock the door behind them, do they? And, if it just so happens to do so, just have someone stand behind the door to guard it! But because they had to complicate things, this led to only a couple of people surviving and no zombie Alpha blood!

Speaking of survivors…

#5 How long was the guy locked in the vault?

As I said, only two people survived Army of the Dead… kinda. The first one was Batista’s daughter and, well, I kind of hoped she died because I really didn’t like her and, once again, she’s pretty much the reason why everyone died anyway. The second survivor was one of Batista’s compatriots who was saved by the safecracker as he was locked in the vault when the nuclear missile nuked Las Vegas. Apparently, safes are like refrigerators as you can survive a nuclear blast if you’re in one of them.

Okay, suspension of disbelief. I can try to put it out of my mind as, like I said, Army of the Dead is a dumb movie. So I guess a vault can withstand a nuclear explosion. But even if it could and the person who was in it got out relatively unscathed like this guy was, how long was he buried underneath all that rubble? I mean, since the vault was in the basement, that would mean an entire building collapsed on the vault, right? How long did it take him to dig himself out by himself?

Also, since Las Vegas was annihilated by a nuclear bomb, shouldn’t the immediate area be irradiated with radiation? I guess he could survive the radioactive land if he was under there for years while the radiation faded away? And maybe since, by that time, he was on his way to transitioning into becoming a zombie, he didn’t feel the effects of the nuclear radiation? But wouldn’t his body start to, I don’t know, melt because of the radioactivity? Anyway, because of this, it’s very confusing as to how long the guy was buried in the vault. Either he wasn’t in there for very long but the radiation would get to him or he was there long enough for it to dissipate yet he managed to survive for years without realizing it.

BONUS: Is Zack Snyder implying there was gratuitous zombie sex off-screen?

When a mommy zombie and a daddy zombie loves each other so much, they get together and make a zombie baby, right? I know all about the birds and the bees so I know there has to be sexual intercourse for a baby to be formed. Well, since the zombie Queen was pregnant…

Look, I know some people have kinky fetishes but you’re a sick man, Zack Snyder! Sick!

What other inconsequential questions can you think off from Army of the Dead? Let me know in the comment section below!