Like Hitchcock's Birds meets Jurassic Park meets Plant of the Apes! I think the Emu was quite a good choice of bird - of animal in general - cos it's large and imposing, can inflict real damage if it actually goes mental, and is I guess the closest thing we have to a real dinosaur - actually, the first time I saw one (it was an ostrich, strictly speaking), I immediately thought of it as a descendant of dinosaurs. The body, the speed, the claws... I don't know why the birds-come-from-dinos theory took so long to become mainstream. But then again I don't know why it took so long to come up with Natural Selection, given how humans had already, for thousands of years, bred animals to give them new traits. Was it such a leap of imagination to think that Nature could do the same?
Anyway....I think if it were a movie, seeing Emus with guns would be rather funny! So maybe a kind of comedy-action thing. Like Howard the Duck.
I agree with you re: the apparent obviousness of the relationship, especially when it comes to these giant sort of birds - emus, ostriches. I mean they look like dinosaurs, plain and simple - like terrifying, feathered, idiot raptors.
Funny thing about this story is that it is roughly based on a real life event, or struggle, of sorts, The Australian Emu War
No joke! There was an emu war in Australia involving the military and citizens fighting hordes of emus with weapons in order to break the tide of emu forces on the continent. Fucking emus!
That is astonishing!