31 Days of Horror--Day 30 Alternate Endings and 28 DAYS LATER (2002)

Naomie Harris as Selena in 28 Days Later (2002)

In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, since re-posted everywhere, Naomie Harris, one of the stars of the most recent Bond film Skyfall suggested that Idris Elba would make a fantastic James Bond.  Anyone who has seen the utterly fantastic Luther, or even Ridley's Scott's lame-o Prometheus might heartily agree.  I would like to suggest, though, that Naomie Harris would actually make a great Bond, or at least an action hero in her own right, rather than some sidekick.  I have come to realize that I live on a different PLANET than many other people, and that what I'd like to see in cinema is not embraced by everyone else.  This realization is drilled into my skull when I think about her transformation in a film such as Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002) from fierce fighter to a more romantic, even maternal figure over the course of the film.  She starts out like this:

with Cillian Murphy's Jim begging her to wait for him as he hurls his weak, soft male body up the stairs after her.  She has managed to survive the fast moving rage zombie apocalypse so far, and has done so with a willingness to kill even her infected "friends" in the name of survival. 

Running Zombies, not Walkers

She's a cool cucumber in a crisis, where Jim is little more than a mewling infant, tying her down.  She helps him, because she's a hero through and through.  The problem is that in this world, Selena cannot stay rational, tough, and fierce.  She must be softened.  So Boyle gives her another "girl" of which to take care, Hannah, and the threat of rape looming over them by a bunch of creepy soldiers who haven't seen a woman in a long time.

Waiting for sexual assault, Selena loses her fighting spirit

Oh, and Jim evolves from dopey, helpless ex-bike messenger in need of rescue to male rescuer and love interest, because in apocalyptic times, women like Selena cannot be too picky??  Her days are numbered, you know.

I like the fact that Hannah bashes him over the head because she think Jim is biting Selena, but that idea is quickly dispelled.  Jim comes back and saves the women from a pretty horrible fate.  What's fascinating about these tales of lawlessness is that instead of a zombie apocalypse creating a world where gender roles are leveled into an even playing field, once civilization deserts us, we resort to the most hackneyed gender expectations.  While I understand that these films are about humans being as, or more, monstrous than the monsters, I really believe that these ideas highlight a failure of the imagination on the part of the male-dominated film industry (and its pandering to stereotype-hungry audiences). 

One of 28 Days Later's most striking qualities is the film's portrayal of a rather soft and mushy male hero.  Cillian Murphy is a fine actor, but he's very pretty and delicate, a true damsel in distress in the film's first moments. 

His transformation into a hard and angry man, little different from the raping, ruthless soldiers and rage-filled zombies that surround him, occurs at the expense of Selena's strength.  Now Boyle had a shot at undermining this rather sad and expected shift with the ending he initially proposed for his film.  **Spoilers Ahead.

In his original ending, Boyle kills off Jim, who may have been moderately transformed into a bit of a tough guy, but realistically dies from a series of fatal injuries.  Selena and Hannah try to save him, but in the end, the two women are left to face the zombie menace alone, dresses on and guns in hand.  And these two were going to make it!  I felt rather thrilled by this ending, which one could see if one waited around after the film's theatrical ending occurred.

In the film's theatrical ending, which Boyle went with after test audiences complained about his original decision, Jim, Hannah, and Selena are living as a happy little family in some bucolic farmhouse in the countryside.  Selena employs her sewing skills in crafting a big sign for airplanes to notice when flying overhead, and the three jump up and down like happy little monkeys, smiling and grinning as they attempt to get the attention of the plane.  Awwww.  Isn't that nice?  It looks like they might be saved.

Well, that ending makes me feel kind of like this: effing Pissed OFF.  So test audiences are only satisfied when everyone fits neatly into their tight little gender niches, where men are MEN, and women get back to sewing.  In an interview, Boyle stated that audiences were worried as to how these "girls" are going to survive on their own?  Here I cry bullshit, since the "Final Girl" in horror cinema, despite all her problematic representations, always manages to do JUST THAT.

I have only recently started to watch AMC's The Walking Dead again, primarily because Michonne is going to be a focus of this season, and because I had some real problems with the pregnancy storyline and the reification of traditional gender roles the season before.  My concern is that these fierce, fighting black women are touched by some kind of exotic primitivism that contains and dampens their strengths, stripping them of a heroism richly imagined and rightly deserved.  We'll see.