Ok, so Army Of Thieves is a prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army Of The Dead. Taking place 6 years before Scott Ward and his crew tried to steal $200 million from a Casino in Las Vegas we watch the origin story for Ludwig Dieter or as we learn he’s really called Sebastian… Sebastian unpronounceable last name.
Now I am just gonna be calling him Dieter in the review as it might get confusing just jumping back and forth but it’s safe to say that he came out of Army Of The Dead as one of its most popular characters.
In this origin story, we learn that he grew up interested in safe cracking and that he used to break Ludwig models in his own time. He created a comic book character named Ludwig Dieter and that’s where the name originated from.
Zack Snyder is pretty much creating a brand new Snyderverse centred around the characters that we saw in Army Of The Dead and it’s great that Netflix gave him this opportunity. Warner Bros really dropped the ball in my opinion by shutting his vision down with the DC characters and I’m glad he’s getting free reign to basically do what he wants with a brand new IP.
Because these characters aren’t really established names, there’s no studio execs or parts of a fanbase that say they should be a certain way and it means that the director can tell the story that he wants to without people saying he got it wrong, forcing reshoots and basically getting into a position where they have to CGI out Brad Cage’s moustache.
Now in this video we’re gonna be going over the plot of the film, how it ties into Army Of The Dead and also discussing what could be happening later on in the universe.
Full Spoilers ahead so if you haven’t had a chance to watch it and go beyond this point then it’s gonna be too late to switch sides. Please hit the thumbs up with your best Dieter punch impression, if you enjoy the video and make sure you subscribe as you’re always safe with me.
With that out the way, thanks for clicking this, now let’s get into Army Of Thieves.
Wagners Masterpiece
Ok so as mentioned earlier, the movie takes place 6 years before the major events of Army Of The Dead. This actually aligns with the opening of that film which showed the undead overtaking Vegas and we then got a big time jump. So everything is kinda happening concurrently to the events of that film and throughout it, we get news reports of Zeus rampage as well as little easter eggs for what’s to come in the timeline.
Not only are there key objects that appear throughout but we also see images of Tanaka who ended up hiring Ward to break into his Vegas casino in order to take his money back before the city was destroyed.
In the first news report at the bank just before the camera cuts you can also see the news reporter who’s killed later on running through what I believe is a casino.
Behind the zombie Dieter focuses on we can also see what looks like a Bride and the Bride zombie was of course a big antagonist in Army Of The Dead.
Now we open with Dieter making a Youtube Video about a locksmith named Hans Wagner. After his wife and child died Wagner ended up creating a series of safes that were all based on Richard Wagner’s legendary ring cycle. In case you don’t know these pieces are all based on Nordic legends and this is why they’re named after characters like the Valkyrie and so on.
Wagner created these safes as his magnum opus and after building the four he made one final uncrackable safe that he locked himself into. This was to contain his anguish and grief and the true meaning behind it is that he wanted to be trapped in there with his family and all the memories that he had with them. Unable to free him from it, the safe was dropped into the ocean with Wagner’s body still in it, never to be seen again. Now throughout the movie, we watched as Dieter is recruited to crack three of these four safes and the final what he breaks into during Army Of The Dead. Throughout the film, he’s plagued by visions of Zombies killing him and at one point he dreams of being grabbed from behind from an undead version of Wagner after he infiltrates his masterpiece.
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Though this doesn’t happen in Army Of The Dead Dieter is apparently killed after being grabbed from behind by Zeus.
Now I say apparently because Snyder has been doing interviews to tease the next film and we now know it’ll be called Planet Of The Dead. He teased that Dieter is still alive and that it may or may not involve Dieter meeting back up with Gwendoline.
Now it’s said in the movie that the constant dreams might be prophecies and it could lend itself to the time-loop theory that exists around Army Of The Dead.
Anyway, he seemingly dies whilst sacrificing himself to lock Vanderohe in the safe and much in the same way that a character in this movie sacrifices themselves to save him, he does the same.
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We’ll get into it later on but Dieter ends up joining an underground safe cracking tournament with the first code being that you don’t talk about Safe Club. Keep your secrets safe otherwise you’ll be locked out.
Ey.
What’s a thiefs favourite fruit. Strobberies.
Love at First Heist
Now it’s at this point that he meets Gwendoline, a career criminal who introduces him to her crew. This is made up of Korina, a master hacker that leaked Pirates Of The Caribean 2. Now in real life whilst 2 didn’t leak, the fifth instalment did.
10 days before its release, Hackers stole a copy of the movie from a production company in LA and they held it to ransom. The group demanded $80,000 dollars from Disney and threatened to release it online if the house of mouse didn’t pay up.
Mickey doesn’t negotiate with hackers though and the company never paid up, however, this is a nice little nod to that real-life story.
In the flashback to her past, we see her with her little brother and we learn that he’s probably in jail which is used as leverage on Korina later on.
There’s also the getaway driver Rolph and real-life action hero Brad Cage. Brad…or rather real name Alexis was bullied at school and he changed himself into an American movie character whose name is based on Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage.
Together they set out on the Ring Cycle quest and throughout Gwendoline very much puts the idea in Dieter’s head that she’d love to break into the fourth safe. She even mentions going to Vegas to crack it which of course sets up why Dieter is so happy to be doing the job in Army Of The Dead.
The two promised to break it together so he’s very much carrying out the promise by going on this seemingly suicidal mission.
There’s also a bit after he cracks the first safe where Dieter shouts I’m invincible several times which I kinda think might be a nod to when Boris did it in Goldeneye.
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Boris said it just before dying and Dieter would also seemingly die right after cracking the final safe in Goldeneye.
There’s also the final safe Siegfried which basically tells the story of Dieter’s journey. When cracking it Dieter says that Siegfried faced his fear and after his darkest trial he met his love, Brunhilde. The two fell in love but in Gotterdammerung, Sigfried died. The safe in Army Of The Dead is called Gotterdammerung and this speech very much foreshadows the character facing his fear of zombies before he apparently dies at the safe.
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Gotterdammerung was also about a war between mortals, various beings and the Gods and this somewhat also ties into Army Of The Dead. There was of course the human team attempting to enter Vegas, the zombies, and Zeus was named after the king of the Gods.
Now Brad believes he’s Gwendolines boyfriend even though there’s nothing between the two and when she and Dieter get close he ditches him during a job. Brad becomes the bad guy and after they rob the final safe he catches up to the pair and holds them at gunpoint. However, we learn that the firing pin has been removed but if you’re paying attention to the movie then you’ll have already known this.
During the first job when they’re in the van, Dieter panics that Brad has a gun but Gwendoline points out that she removed the ammo and just lets him have it because he looks cool. This is because he previously shot an interpol agent named Delacroix who only survived because he had a hipflask that blocked the bullet.
Korina is captured by Interpol who’ve been on the hunt for the thieves for years and she gives up their plan after her brother is used as leverage.
Delacroix arrests Brad and Rolph, he then heads after Gwendoline and Dieter. The pair finally kiss and they almost ride off into the sunset together.
However, just as they’re about to escape Delacroix catches up with them and both he and Gwen have a standoff at gunpoint. Because Dieter is the newest member of the crew and he just wants her, Brad, Korina and Rolph, she negotiates his escape.
She promises to get out and find him and that the pair can crack the Gotterdammerung together but as we know he does it himself.
On the boat, Dieter finds a passport with his comic book name put in place and also a ticket to the same place that Gwen was going. It broke his heart thinking of all the adventures they could’ve had and shared together. He knew that of all the people in the world that he wanted to be with her the most and states that they’ll be reunited in the vault of the Gotterdammerung. This very much mirrors Wagner who locked himself away in a safe to be with his family.
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Though Dieter says that they’ll be together we of course know from Army Of The Dead that they don’t meet up before that movie.
The film ends with an extension of the scene from that movie in which Dieter is presented with the job for the safe. Though we know he goes to this and seemingly dies, there are a lot of metaphors for it.
The Gotterdammerung was seen as Wagner’s final chapter and he describes it as a doorway to another realm. I kinda take this as being heaven for the character and should Dieter definitely be dead then when Gwen dies the pair will be reunited in the afterlife together at this location.
There’s also a weird code laced throughout the movie and shoutouts to Aaron S Bailey for sending me through some screenshots of it. I’m not sure exactly what this entails, whether it’s a watermark or whether it’s something more but it is quite strange. It appears in the scene in which Dieter says goodbye to Gwen and also the one where he’s recruited for the safe so maybe it ties into their relationship somehow.
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Time-Loop Theories
They missed out on so many things by getting caught but as we know Army Of The Dead has a lot of things going on with it.
It is possible that the film somewhat ties into the time-loop theory and that explains how Dieter is able to see his death ahead of time.
Now, in case you need a refresher on that, at the midpoint of Army Of The Dead, we watch as the group head into the casino and here they find another crew that have all been killed. As they head to the vault they find dead corpses which all carry the same clothing as they do and something suspicious seems like it’s going on. Vanderohe theorists that they’re stuck in a time-loop and Snyder teased that the version we watched was the one where they got the furthest.
Due to radiation within the Nuke, it was thought that the entire thing was looper with the Alpha Zeus leading to Vanderohe who had an Omega tattoo.
He would then go spread the disease and potentially the whole thing could start again.
I dunno how much weight there is to it but Snyder has discussed it so I think it’s worth bringing up.
Potentially the time-loop could go beyond that and what we could see in the film and then loop back around. All of the characters in this film outside of Dieter seemingly survive past Army Of The Dead so it is possible that they might end up popping up in future sequels too.
Now as for the sequels and prequels that are coming, we know that we are getting an anime show called Army Of The Dead: Lost Vegas which will take place during the outbreak.
It will tell the story of how Cruz and Scott Ward met and what they went through in escaping.
It’s also gonna explore aspects like the UFOs and also the Robot Zombies.
Now in July of this year, it was also confirmed that there will be a sequel to Army Of The Dead. Snyder is gonna finish up his next project titled Rebel Moon and then he’ll come back and continue working on this.
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Planet Of The Dead
On Wednesday it was announced that this will be called Planet Of The Dead and it’ll chronicle the zombie outbreak destroying the whole planet.
It’s gonna continue past the events of Army Of The Dead and will show what happens to Vanderohe after the events of the first film.
Potentially he landed at an airport, and this spread the disease across the planet and that would explain why Earth ends up being overrun. There were also UFOs in the opening of the movie so the planet might not even be Earth and it could be somewhere in space that’s completely covered in zombies.
We don’t know yet but there are lots of things to look forward to.
As for my thoughts on the movie, I’m still kinda weighing up whether I preferred it over Army Of The Dead but in all honesty, they’re two completely different types of movies.
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This is a sort of deconstruction of the heist genre whereas that is a gory zombie film.
There are even moments in this where they talk about heist movies and what typically tends to happen and they poke a lot of fun at the conventions whilst also having a blast with the story.
It’s not exactly the most original heist movie I’ve seen but they keep things fresh with the characters and different locations.
It’s kinda sad knowing the Dieter dies but we do have the six years in between this movie and Army Of The Dead that we could explore at some point. I hope we get origin stories for all the characters and it would be great to see more stuff in this universe which Netflix seems to be really enthusiastic about.
Overall Army Of Thieves was a blast and it scores a solid…
8/10
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With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace
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