George A. Romero, Horror Movie Legend, Passes Away at 77

[Tani Coyote]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/16/media/george-a-romero-obit/index.html

After a brief battle with lung cancer, filmmaker George A. Romero has passed away at the age of 77.

Romero first gained fame with the independent film Night of the Living Dead, a film often credited with creating the modern film genre, and has since been an enormous subject of parody. He would go on to make 5 more zombie films in the Living Dead series (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead), while his co-director went on to create the Return of the Living Dead series. His work has spawned numerous remakes, parodies, spinoffs, and has given rise to the careers of individuals like special effects legend Tom Savini.

Rather than straight up horror films, his films often had social commentary. Night referenced racial tensions and the mystery of the Space Age, Dawn satirized mass consumerism, Day highlighted tensions between civilians and the military at the height of the Cold War, Land emphasized a growing wealth gap between the rich and poor, while Diary satirized the rise of social media. Above all else, all of his zombie films have a central theme: even in the face of undead hordes, it is human beings who are their own worst enemy, as it is the actions of humans that cause everything to fall apart in each film.

Besides his flagship films and his role in the creation of the modern zombie genre (amusingly, Romero was critical of the other heavy hitting zombie franchise, The Walking Dead), Romero made many other films and TV series, such as Creepshow.

Social media is abuzz with fans paying homage to Romero (sometimes with a joke about reanimation due to his most famous works, but let's not do that here), and I thought I should make a post here about him as well. The film industry has lost a legend.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Aww. That sucks.
RIP.

[Polkadi~☆]

George has done so much for modern entertainment, for the horror genre, even for the zombie genre as we know it.

Zombies used to be mindless slaves. Doesn't sound like a zombie to you, does it? Well, Romero came up with and popularised the idea of undead, flesh-eating zombies. That's the zombie everyone knows and thinks of today. If it wasn't for him, there would be no zombie genre.

People die, but legends don't. George will be remembered for the things he's done to film.