'Warm Bodies' Reminds Us to Find Humanity in Our Opponents, the Undead, and Beyond
10 years after its release, this poignant zombie film still delivers on its popular themes.
While Hollywood has always blessed us with plenty of scary and scary zombie stories, Warm Bodies turns your average apocalyptic story on its head by reminding us of the power of empathy and human connection, even when it comes. to our enemies. As we watch star-crossed lovers R (Nicholas Hoult) and Julie (Teresa Palmer) bridge the gap between the dead and the living, we can see that even with those seemingly Impossible people are together, and there are more things that connect us than separate us.
‘Warm Bodies’ Turns the Familiar Zombie Story on its Head
In warm bodies, humans and zombies -- or "corpses" as they're called in this film -- are at war all the time, a story we're already familiar with. We're all familiar with the general zombie-biting procedure. Once you've been bitten, it's time to destroy your brain as fast as possible, before you turn into a sanity-hungry, bloodthirsty monster. Your humanity doesn't mean much once you start eating your friends. In Warm Corpses, however, the zombie becomes our protagonist instead, and we're led through the story by R—a clumsy, trinket-obsessed corpse with a kind heart, albeit lifeless. R's stream of consciousness gives us a window Zombie psychology, we can see that in the same way humans feel trapped within walls with corpses and skeletons, corpses feel trapped in their own bodies due to their cannibalistic tendencies and inability to communicate.
In ‘Warm Bodies,’ Love Reawakens our Humanity
When R meets Julie, the reluctantly optimistic daughter of a military leader, and saves her from fellow zombies, his humanity is further awakened as he falls in love with her and realizes that life and the afterlife are more than just It is to die to pass the motion. On the other hand, as Julie and R spend more time together and bond over their love of sports cars and great music, Julie learns that the difference between a human and a corpse is only superficial On, she thought that what she knew about the dead body didn't matter now that she had met R.
Another thing R and Julie have in common is that they both oppose the status quo in their respective communities. Jolie holds out hope that they'll one day find a cure for the undead, while R clings to his humanity, enveloping himself in the artifacts of human life, killing only when necessary, and eating brains - aka Jolie's boyfriend's - -for Vicariously experience the memory of the victim. Through her connection to R, Julie shows us that we can find the connections we crave in unexpected places, as she discovers she has more in common with the Enemy of the People than with many members of her own community.
‘Warm Bodies’ Shows Us the Power of Empathy
While R and Julie represent hope in each of their groups, the other characters show us how the effects of anger and mistrust can poison us, sometimes beyond repair. Jolie's boyfriend, Perry (Dave Franco), is hardened by his father's zombification and the effects of war, and becomes someone Jolie struggles to bond with. When R eats Perry's brain, we get to see Perry grow from a serious but relatively happy teenager to a traumatized stoic with nothing to do but fight through battles. Likewise, Julie's father, Grigio (John Malkovich), has become insensitive to the loss of his wife and his militaristic tendencies, acting primarily out of fear that if humans outnumber corpses, he will will lose her daughter. Perry's sense of duty cost him his life, but Grigio was eventually able to regain his compassion And called off the war after seeing that there might be a life worthy of forgiveness inside his sworn enemy. While he may have shot R for understanding what they have in common, Grigio's character development shows us that even the most stubborn minds can be changed.
Finding Humanity in our Adversaries
Throughout the film, as more and more corpses begin to awaken their humanity and regain their living memories, they develop empathy for the human soldiers, even saving them and fighting alongside them against their common enemy Bone people. Dominating the undead side of extremism, Warm Bodies are haunting bones, screaming, skinless corpses so consumed by fear and indifference that they lose all remnant of their souls. The zombies try to communicate with each other while the skeletons scream, overwhelmed with rage and unable to see things from conflicting perspectives. At the end of the movie, after humans and corpses kill off most of the Skeleton, what remains is overwhelmed by despair and perishes, reminding us that although we can try, there are some people we won't Once got through to.
When we watch Warm Bodies, we can see that the inhabitants of this war-torn dystopia are not very different from the people in our world. We are quick to judge and tend to be opinionated rather than trying to understand viewpoints that differ from ours. A lot of times we don't see this, and in the end we're all just doing the best we can. R and Julie's story teaches us that while we all have anger, fears and shortcomings, the cure for our resentment lies in having the courage to love one another no matter what. A warm body that reminds us to find humanity in our opponents at a time when our differences seem too great to overcome might be the perfect movie to warm our cold, dead hearts.
