Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Army of Thieves.
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Army of Thieves is the second entry in Zack Snyder's Netflix universe, serving as a prequel to set up Army of the Dead, but also functioning as its own stand-along story about the safe-cracker Dieter (played by director Matthias Schweighöfer). Army of Thieves sets up Dieter's character and explains how and why he ended up in Las Vegas prior to the events of Army of the Dead, why he's obsessed with Hans Wagner's uncrackable safes, and teases a number of other themes hidden under the surface.
Zack Snyder's presence on Netflix is set to explode, with two Army of the Dead movies released in 2021, the Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas anime series set to arrive soon along with his Norse mythology anime, Twilight of the Gods, two more movies, Planet of the Dead and Rebel Moon, about to start production, and even more in the pipeline. While not all of those movies will be in the same universe, Army of Thieves shows there's a lot more opportunity to explore that world, especially with Snyder teasing a future for Dieter beyond Army of the Dead.
From Dieter's origin and introduction to the Hans Wagner safes, which eventually factor into Army of the Dead, to the zombie outbreak happening in the background, Dieter's emotional journey, and some additional teases to the time loop theory spawned from Army of the Dead, there's a lot to break down with Army of Thieves, although on the surface it's just a simple heist movie with a little bit of romantic comedy thrown in the mix.
Army of Thieves Reveals Dieter's REAL Name and Backstory
When Dieter first appears in Army of the Dead, he seems to be the least mysterious character, portrayed as a quirky fish-out-of-water, and one of the only team members with no zombie-killing experience. After Army of Thieves, it now looks like he may have an even more personal connection to the mission than anyone else on the team. Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) may have had encounters with the Alpha zombies and Zeus (Richard Cetrone) in the past, but Dieter had been obsessed with cracking the Hans Wagner safes for even longer and had been working in a locksmith shop near Las Vegas waiting for Gwendolin (Nathalie Emmanuel) to get out of prison and find him or for a chance to crack the final Wagner safe: the Götterdämmerung.
Not only does Dieter have more familiarity with the Wagner safes than he lets on, but he's already cracked three of them, all of which belonged to Army of the Dead antagonist Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada); however, back when those heists occurred, he went by a different name, Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhmert, taking the name Ludwig Dieter (based on own his childhood comic book hero creation) as a part of his cover after cracking the other Wagner safes. This radically recontextualizes Dieter from a simply quirky German locksmith who hadn't seen much action to an under-cover seasoned Wagner safe cracker who was in Vegas explicitly because he was looking for an opportunity to crack the Götterdämmerung long before Bly Tanaka recruited the Las Vengeance team to crack his safe.
In addition to his relationship with the Wagner safes, Dieter also has multiple dreams, visions, and potentially prophetic dialogue across both films. From the start of Army of Thieves, set in Europe during the initial zombie outbreak in Las Vegas (six years before the heist in Army of the Dead), Dieter is drawn to TV broadcasts about the zombie war and has multiple dreams about being killed by zombies, including one dream where he stands in front of an open Wagner safe in what appears to be Las Vegas as zombies overtake him, seemingly predicting his final scene (but not necessarily his death) in Army of the Dead.
Sebastian's name change to Dieter at the end of Army of the Dead is more than a superficial setup for Army of the Dead, but also represents a sort of death and rebirth, following the arc of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, with the "death" of the skittish, ordinary nobody version of the character, Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhmert, and the birth of criminal safe-cracker extraordinaire, Ludwig Dieter. In many ways, Dieter ends up in the same place Sebastian started, a seeming nobody with no notable friends or family to speak of, but unlike Sebastian, Dieter has a purpose. When Gwendolin first approached Sebastian for her team, he was awkward and didn't know how to behave or where he fit in this new world, but when Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) and Mara Cruz (Ana de la Reguera) go to his locksmith in Nevada to recruit him to join Army of the Dead's heist team, he's still a little awkward (it's his key character trait, after all), but he also shows more ambition and sense of destiny taking control of the situation and telling them "Providence has brought you to me."
The Hans Wagner Safes, the Ring Cycle, and Time Loops
Army of the Dead hits on the significance of the Götterdämmerung, but the full story of the Wagner safes is laid out in the opening scene of Army of Thieves as Dieter's voiceover explains Hans Wagner created the safes following the tragic loss of his wife and child. Inspired by the four parts of Richard Wagner's epic Ring Cycle opera, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the Siegfried, and the Götterdämmerung. The safes were a personal work of expression for Wagner, but also functioned as "puzzles that could only be solved by those truly worthy of the secrets they guarded." Wagner locked himself in a fourth safe, his true life's work, "capable of containing all his anguish and misery." After he locked himself away in this final safe, nobody was able to open it to get him out, and it served as his tomb, dropped to the bottom of the ocean.
The safes don't only serve as the movie's MacGuffin, but also a metaphor on multiple levels. It should be noted there are four members on the Army of Thieves heist team, excluding Dieter, and each of them ends up getting locked away, with Dieter being the sole member to escape at the end, disappearing himself, carrying the pain of losing his found family and budding romance with Gwendolin. Wagner's Ring Cycle is also the story of the Twilight of the Gods, a German version of the story of Ragnarök, a story about the cycle of death and rebirth of the Norse gods. Army of Thieves is the story of the death of Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhmert and his rebirth as Ludwig Dieter. When we find Dieter again in Army of the Dead, he describes the Götterdämmerung as "a doorway to another realm."
After his final dream in Army of Thieves, which almost perfectly predicts Dieter being overrun by zombies in front of the open Götterdämmerung in Army of the Dead, he relays his dreams to Gwendolin and Korina, the latter of whom says "Maybe they're prophesies, not dreams. Maybe you saw your own death. Or maybe simply your psyche's manifestations of your own self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. You know you should be that big tough man. Be able to fight them. And yet, again and again, they just destroy you," echoing (or foreshadowing, since this is a prequel) Vanderohe's words in Army of the Dead “...we're caught in some infinite loop of fighting and dying, fighting and dying, fighting and dying." Both characters highlight the key theme of an endless loop of fighting, dying, and being reborn to fight and die again.
Army of Thieves Sets Up Dieter's Death, Rebirth, and "Time Loops" in Army of the Dead and Beyond
Before cracking the Siegfried, Dieter comes to a realization about Wagner and his safes. He says nobody ever really appreciated Wagner's work, "because in order to understand a work, you must engage with it." By cracking the safes, Dieter says he "finally understands." Fittingly, as with Wagner's safes, Army of Thieves appears to be a pretty straightforward heist on the surface and functions perfectly well as such on its own, but there's more meaning to be unlocked as the audience engages with its plot and themes.
Whether or not there's a literal prophecy or time loop at work as (jokingly?) teased by Vanderohe and Korina in their respective films, Army of Thieves sets up Wagner's Ring Cycle and tells the story of the first death and rebirth for Dieter, and Army of the Dead shows yet another loop in this cycle for Dieter and potentially other characters like Vanderohe. While Army of the Dead sees Dieter's "prophecy" come true, as in his dream, we don't actually see confirmation of his death on screen, but in that moment we do see another evolution for his character as he overcomes his own "self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy," putting himself in harm's way and potentially sacrificing himself to save his new friend, Vanderohe, by locking him away in the Götterdämmerung as the OG Alpha zombie, Zeus, approaches.
Once again we see a character locked away in a Wagner safe after losing those close to them, with Vanderohe emerging as something new, having been bitten by Zeus. Meanwhile Snyder has teased a potential future for Dieter in Army of the Dead's sequel, Planet of the Dead, or another spin-off: "there’s a chance Dieter survives. And there’s a chance that brush with death would have caused him to want to find a jailed Gwendoline." If this is indeed Dieter's arc, it would be a true continuation of his journey along Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, seeing his journey go from a nobody swept up into a larger world in Army of Thieves to an active participant in the Götterdämmerung heist in Army of the Dead, to a hero initiating his own quest to crack another lock to rescue Gwendoline and become whole.
Ultimately, Army of Thieves functions as a simple genre-busting heist movie with a romance component, but some deeper examination and contextualization of its place alongside Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead and Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle reveals there's a lot more to this story. How deep that rabbit hole truly goes will depend on what Snyder has yet to reveal about these characters and universe as he continues to expand his Army of the Dead franchise on Netflix.