28 Years Later released worldwide last Friday, June 20, and has already sparked numerous controversies.
Between the bizarre Jimmy Savile ending leaving fans split and the lack of Cillian Murphy after rumours he would be featuring in the film, the movie has sparked discourse left and right.
That being said, one aspect that had many running to social media in shock was the numerous full-frontal scenes in the movie.
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28 Years Later follows Spike, played by Alfie Williams, and his father Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The pair live on Holy Island, a real area of North East England only accessible at low tide. Early on in the film, the pair go on Spike’s first trip to the zombie-filled mainland.
Whilst there the pair encounter zombies, leading to Spike’s first kill, and end up encountering another group led by one massive zombie - The Alpha.
He is far larger than the regular zombies and commands a pack of smaller, faster infected, which then give chase to Jamie and Spike.
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One aspect of 28 Years Later that many have been shocked by however is that the Alpha and his pack are all fully naked – and there is no camera trickery to try and hide their private areas.
The Alpha specifically has sparked conversation online about his sizeable genitalia, with many even jokingly suggesting it was distracting at times.
This is true for both of the Alphas shown in the film, leading one fan to take to X to ask the burning question: “Why do all the Alphas have big d**ks in 28 YEARS LATER??? I’m not complaining. It’s just crazy.”
Whilst unfortunately we don’t have an exact answer for that yet, the answer of whether the genitalia shown were genuine or not has been.
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Director Danny Boyle has confirmed in multiple interviews that, due to child labour laws, the naked infected were all wearing prosthetics. This is due to Alfie Williams being just 13 when they filmed the movie.
He told ComicBook.com: "This was a salutory moment via our intimacy coordinator that when you have a child of 12 present, all genitals, male and female, have to be fake. They can’t be real.
"[The] Child Sex Offenses Act would put me in prison if I allowed him [Alfie] to see real genitals [laughs]. So he has to look at absolutely false photo-real genitals, created by a prosthetics company.
Chi Lewis-Parry, who played the Alpha known as Samson, said of this in an interview with Variety: “Yeah, they were prosthetics.
"There’s a law that states, I think, because he’s a child, you’re allowed to have nudity but it has to be fake nudity.
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“It was to protect him. And, as well, I’m really friendly and am always hugging people. I wouldn’t have been doing that if I was fully in the nip!”
Lewis-Parry was actually wildly asked if the prosthetic was proportional, leading him to say: “Well, I’m 6′ 8″. I’ll say no more!”
While cinema goers in the UK will see everything, the film’s naked scenes seem to have actually been blurred in certain countries, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in addition to a sexual scene shown in the film.
One comment on Reddit about the prosthetics read: “Watched in Dubai, completely censored haha - blurred out genitalia.”
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They then asked what happened during one scene, where Spike sees his father with another woman which showed sexual content, was totally blacked out for them.
In 2021, it was announced by the UAE's Media Regulatory Office on Twitter that film censorship would be changing, instead allowing films rated for 21 years and above would be allowed to have the uncensored version in cinemas with 'an emphasis on the strict following of age classification standards for audience entry' (via Variety).
LADbible Group have contacted Sony and the UAE Media Council for comment regarding claims the film has been censored in Dubai.
Topics: 28 Years Later, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Film, TV and Film
Michael Slavin