The Big Idea

South Korean filmmakers have featured zombies on multiple occasions, as the linked page shows. Yet their newest edition of a zombie story on Netflix, The Kingdom, has some aspects you won't see in a zombie feature produced in the United States. First, it's got an aspect of political intrigue that leaks over into moral commentary that I'll talk about in a bit. Second, it's a period piece, set roughly in the year 1600 in Korea. And third, its take on zombies is different from anything I've seen before. I've only seen the first four episodes of the first season as of the moment of writing this post, so I can't possibly give away how season one ends, nor can I say anything at all about season two, which Netflix recently released. However, if you don't want to know anything at all about this series before watching it, skip this post, because I will talk about some general aspects and background of the story. Different Zombies The origin of the idea of

Twelve Monkeys  (or   12 Monkeys ) is both the title of a 1995 film and also a 47 episode SyFy channel TV series that debuted in January of 2015 and ended in 2018. A caveat to my post here is that I’ve seen the 1995 movie though not the series and will mainly talk about the film, though I’m familiar with the series and will reference how its view of fatalism is different from its source material. Both the film and the series feature a virus that wipes out the vast majority of humanity. And both ponder the issue of whether it’s really possible to change fate. I’ll talk about what I believe the Bible has to say on that topic near the end. By the way, some  spoilers  about the film are in this article–in case you’ve never seen it and were hoping to be surprised. (But that was 25 years ago–surely you’ve seen it by now, right? 🙂 ) Cassandra Both versions of  12 Monkeys  do something all my favorite science fiction does; they use the lives of characters to illustrate ideas,