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British film "Doomsday" political undertones

DarthTom

DarthTom

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I watched the film Doomsday over the weekend - largely because it was FREE on Comcast on Demand.

I was wondering, especially from some of our British posters if I got the hidden messages correct or not?

In the Film [as described below] Scotland has been quarantined because of a deadly virus. Eventually the virus spreads to Britain and they must send in a team to try to find a cure.

The Scottish people have the magical cure but in the virus ravaged country 30 years later the country has turned into anarachy in parts and in the other back to feudalism.

It occurs to me there are a lot of political undertones in this film. But I couldn't tell if this was defamation against Scotland or Britain or both?

Anyone seen the film and where some of the message political?

BTW, Alexander Siddig plays in the film as the British PM.


Doomsday is a 2008 British science fiction film written and directed by Neil Marshall. The film takes place in the future. Scotland has been quarantined because of a deadly virus. When the virus is found in London, political leaders send a team led by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) to Scotland to find a possible cure. Sinclair's team runs into two types of survivors: marauders and medieval knights. Doomsday was conceived by Marshall based the idea of futuristic soldiers facing medieval knights. In producing the film, he drew from various cinema, including Mad Max and Escape from New York.
Marshall had a budget three times the size of his previous two films, The Descent and Dog Soldiers, and the director filmed the larger-scale Doomsday in Scotland and South Africa. The film was released on 14 March 2008 in the United States and Canada and in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2008. Doomsday did not perform well at the box office, and critics gave the film mixed reviews.
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Neil Marshall isn't known for making political statements in his films, so I highly doubt it.
 
Servo said:
Neil Marshall isn't known for making political statements in his films, so I highly doubt it.
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Humm, interesting. Have you seen the film? There is a scene in the film where all of the anarchists have gathered to actually cook and eat a member of the extraction team and several of the anarchists have painted their faces the color of the Scottish flag.

Perhaps I read too much into it but the film seemed right out of the gate a political statement about the subverted rights of the Scottish people by the British. [quarantine Scotland to save Britain but they end up being the saviors]
 
DarthTom said:
Servo said:
Neil Marshall isn't known for making political statements in his films, so I highly doubt it.
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Humm, interesting. Have you seen the film? There is a scene in the film where all of the anarchists have gathered to actually cook and eat a member of the extraction team and several of the anarchists have painted their faces the color of the Scottish flag.

Perhaps I read too much into it but the film seemed right out of the gate a political statement about the subverted rights of the Scottish people by the British. [quarantine Scotland to save Britain but they end up being the saviors]
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Or, you know, it could just be about people doing desperate and distasteful things because the world is fucked, regardless of nationality.
 
Count Zero said:
Would you recommend it? And is Sean Pertwee in this one?
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It's definitely worth a watch. It's not amazing, and isn't one of Neil Marshall's best efforts, but it's entertaining enough. I tend to think Marshall works better when he has a limited budget. This was his first big-budget outing (at least compared to his previous films), and while there are some great scenes and ideas in it, it doesn't flow as well as Dog Soldiers or The Descent.

And yes, Sean Pertwee is in it. :techman:
 
I saw this film in theaters when it first came out (largely based on the fact that I got a great Mad Max vibe from the trailers), and I loved the hell out of it. Sure it could have been better, but hey, it was entertaining.

And if you can get a hold of the unrated version, it makes the movie even better (not much is really changed though).
 
DarthTom said:
I watched the film Doomsday over the weekend - largely because it was FREE on Comcast on Demand.

I was wondering, especially from some of our British posters if I got the hidden messages correct or not?

In the Film [as described below] Scotland has been quarantined because of a deadly virus. Eventually the virus spreads to Britain and they must send in a team to try to find a cure.

The Scottish people have the magical cure but in the virus ravaged country 30 years later the country has turned into anarachy in parts and in the other back to feudalism.

It occurs to me there are a lot of political undertones in this film. But I couldn't tell if this was defamation against Scotland or Britain or both?

Anyone seen the film and where some of the message political?

BTW, Alexander Siddig plays in the film as the British PM.


Doomsday is a 2008 British science fiction film written and directed by Neil Marshall. The film takes place in the future. Scotland has been quarantined because of a deadly virus. When the virus is found in London, political leaders send a team led by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) to Scotland to find a possible cure. Sinclair's team runs into two types of survivors: marauders and medieval knights. Doomsday was conceived by Marshall based the idea of futuristic soldiers facing medieval knights. In producing the film, he drew from various cinema, including Mad Max and Escape from New York.
Marshall had a budget three times the size of his previous two films, The Descent and Dog Soldiers, and the director filmed the larger-scale Doomsday in Scotland and South Africa. The film was released on 14 March 2008 in the United States and Canada and in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2008. Doomsday did not perform well at the box office, and critics gave the film mixed reviews.
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It's pretty much known by everyone that Scotland would become a failed state if devolution ever occurs. I'm not sure about the cannibalism, but it's a strong possibility once the regional government collapses and the periphery political actors are left to their own devices. Just as likely is the possibility of the people going back to piracy as a means of livelihood. A model of a future Scotland can be seen in current day Somalia. It would probably be in the best interests of the EU and the world to stop the creation of a failed Scottish state.
 
There's not much to distinguish this film in term of concept, plot or style, it is really just a mash-up of a bunch of other post apocalyptic movies. But what stood out for me was the quality of the gore effects, which is saying something because very little impresses me anymore, it's all been done to death.

The unrated version of this film is seriously gruesome, and gleefully so.
 
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a subtle metaphor for the struggle of the Māori people to maintain their cultural identity amidst the dominant white socio-political power structure of New Zealand in a postmodern world... with orcs.

I think the underlying message of Doomsday was that it sucked.
 
Hound of UIster said:
It's pretty much known by everyone that Scotland would become a failed state if devolution ever occurs. I'm not sure about the cannibalism, but it's a strong possibility once the regional government collapses and the periphery political actors are left to their own devices. Just as likely is the possibility of the people going back to piracy as a means of livelihood. A model of a future Scotland can be seen in current day Somalia. It would probably be in the best interests of the EU and the world to stop the creation of a failed Scottish state.
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See, that's the type of contentious nationalism that I had hoped for. ;) Just kidding.

Seriously, I'm not even a citizen of the UK but the undertones of nationalism and the bitterness between Scotland and Britain smacks the viewer of this film over the head even though this was a gory sci-fi flick.

District 9 was a gory Sci-fi flick too but the parallels with apartheid were in that film as apparent as the divisions between Scotland and Britain are in Doomsday.
 
DarthTom said:
Seriously, I'm not even a citizen of the UK but the undertones of nationalism and the bitterness between Scotland and Britain smacks the viewer of this film over the head even though this was a gory sci-fi flick.

District 9 was a gory Sci-fi flick too but the parallels with apartheid were in that film as apparent as the divisions between Scotland and Britain are in Doomsday.
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What a load of tosh, it was just a stupid action movie.

For a start, District 9 was alluding to something very real and very serious, there is no such division between the Scottish and the English to allude to.
 
DarthTom said:
Seriously, I'm not even a citizen of the UK but the undertones of nationalism and the bitterness between Scotland and Britain smacks the viewer of this film over the head even though this was a gory sci-fi flick.
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I think you see what you want to see. There's no validity to anything you've posted here.
 
Undertones, schmundertones. It has a buffed-up, sweaty Rhona Mitra running around in a tank top and kicking ass. That's all I need to know.
 
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