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Major West's statue has symbolic meaning
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The mansion of Major West (Christopher Eccleston) is decorated with the famous sculpture "Laocoön and His Sons," and this is no coincidence. Roman history expert Penelope Goodman explained on her blog that the statue depicts a myth in which the gods sent serpents to punish Laocoön for disobeying their will. Since the film begins with scientists "playing God" by experimenting on chimpanzees, it could be argued that the Rage Virus is also a form of divine punishment. Others have speculated that Laocoön is meant to embody human endurance, since Laocoön is entangled in serpents that are just as deadly as the zombies, yet is still fighting to the bitter end.
According to some versions of the myth, the serpents killed Laocoön for trying to warn the Trojans that a certain wooden horse was not what it seemed. In fact, Laocoön is famous for saying, "I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts." So the statue is a fitting choice. Major West's mansion, which seems like the last stronghold against the zombies, may call to mind the siege of Troy, observes Goodman, and we all know how that ended. Alternatively, this setting could be viewed as the Trojan Horse, since the mansion lulls the protagonists into a false sense of security — but of course, it's too good to be true. Some fans have suggested that the statue foreshadows the twist about Major West. That's a pretty elaborate literary reference for a zombie movie.
The filmmakers shot two alternate endings
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The ending of "28 Days Later" concludes the story on an upbeat note, but it wasn't always this way. In one unused alternate finale, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Hannah (Megan Burns) rush Jim to an abandoned hospital after he rescues them from the soldiers. (Brief fragments of this sequence actually appear in the final film, as flashbacks that explain how Jim ended up in the farmhouse.) Unlike in the theatrical version, however, Selena is unable to save Jim.
Once Selena finally accepts that Jim is gone, she tells Hannah that there's nothing else they can do but keep moving. In this version, Jim comes full circle, landing in a hospital bed once more. This alternate ending was actually attached to the film when it played on certain TV channels; it was included as a post-credit sequence, introduced by a title card that read "What If?"
Meanwhile, a second alternate ending plays out almost exactly like the final film, with the characters stitching together sheets to catch the attention of a passing jet. Yet there is one key difference: Jim is nowhere to be found. Instead, it's just Selena and Hannah; the implication is that Jim died from his wounds offscreen. In place of Selena's dialogue with Jim, we see Selena talking to a chicken. In the audio commentary accompanying this bonus feature, Danny Boyle joked, "The chicken did the shot in one take," adding that he didn't know "how many times Cillian could claim that."
Danny Boyle storyboarded a radically different alternate ending
Fox Searchlight Pictures
There was actually a third alternate ending to "28 Days Later," but Danny Boyle never got a chance to film it. He did, however, storyboard the sequence and create an animatic for it.
This alternate ending would have changed the last 45 minutes of the movie, everything after Frank (Brendan Gleeson) gets infected. Rather than killing Frank in this version, Jim ties Frank up and keeps him alive, because he still hopes that the people who sent out the broadcast might know a way to cure him. The heroes discover that the broadcast had been sent by Major West and his soldiers, but the men were all killed by zombies. The only survivor is a cynical man who has locked himself away in a bunker. He knows how to cure Frank, though he warns the heroes that there's a catch: they must give Frank a blood transfusion — not just a pint, but enough blood to replace every drop in Frank's body.
As Danny Boyle explained, this made no sense, since the film had already established that you could get infected with a single drop of blood. "What do you do," said Boyle, "clean out every capillary and vein with bleach before making the transfusion?" Nevertheless, the filmmakers still storyboarded the rest of that ending, with Jim sacrificing himself to successfully save Frank. Funnily enough, this would have been the second alternate version to end with Jim in a hospital bed.
Selena's story continues in a comic book sequel
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The sequel "28 Weeks Later" does not continue the story of Jim and Selena, instead following an entirely new cast of characters. Luckily, for fans who want to know Jim and Selena's fates, there is a comic book series that answers this question: "28 Days Later" by Michael Alan Nelson and Declan Shalvey.
Taking place between "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later," the comic follows Selena after the events of the first movie. Jim has been arrested for killing Major West, while Hannah has been placed in foster care by her rescuers. Meanwhile, Selena ends up in a Norwegian refugee camp. With the outbreak contained in the British Isles, a journalist named Clint asks Selena to be his guide when he ventures into the quarantine zone. Selena is incredulous that anybody would want to return to the place she just barely escaped, yet the alternative is to let Clint walk into certain death, so she agrees to return. Naturally, things go horribly wrong.
Along the way, the comic fleshes out Selena's backstory, exploring her relationship with her boyfriend before the outbreak and revealing where she got her trusty machete. In an interview with Comic Vine, Nelson shared that it was exciting trying to expand the world of "28 Days Later" while still adhering to the canon established in the movies. "I'm playing in someone else's sandbox," he said, "but I'm still building my own sand castle."