World War Z

Aetius wrote:
Puce Moose wrote:

Any other good 'zombie/monster/mutant-pocalypse' books rearing their fearsome heads lately?

Well, it's not exactly new (although there is a sequel on the way in July) but I thoroughly enjoyed Day By Day Armageddon.

That really was a great book. Very well done.

I recently got World War Z in audio book format. Really good production

I'm listening to it now. Mark Hammill did a great job of Todd Wainio. Also enjoyed Alan Alda, I could definately imagine Hawkeye in that role.

Trailer:

Can't really tell how it's based on the book. Though maybe most of the movie follows the aftermath and the trailer is just showing the outbreak. Which looks terrifying. They made running zombies even more scary by having them swarm.

From everything I've read, other than the title and that it covers a zombie outbreak on a world-wide scale, it has nothing to do with the book.

It's a real bummer because the script that leaked back in 2008 followed the format of the book and the people who got to read it said it was great. But it's obviously gone through just a few re-writes since then.

I'll definitely watch it at some point because I like the genre, but any kind of book comparisons will never enter my mind. This is definitely it's own thing. My only concern is that it was supposed to come out Dec 2012 and they ended up pushing it back to June 2013 so they could re-write and re-shoot the last 1/3 of the movie. As far as I know they were filming the re-shoots just last month.

Ugh It basically has NOTHING to do with the book.

It could be that he's experiencing the stories rather than reporting on them via interviews. There's hope for that.

It's nothing like the BBC's Sherlock, either.

I read the book, and it didn't feel like a movie to me anyway. So if they traded on the popularity of the book to greenlight a mega zombie flick, I'm okay with that.

I think it looks hella fun.

I got my wife to see 28 Days Later on the premise that it was a thinking man's zombie movie. That led to her getting to pick the next 28 films we saw. She HATES gore and extreme tension. She was really clear that she particularly hates zombie films. She was not amused after that film. It didn't help that father walked out of the film with his two sons at one point.

I wonder if I can pull it off again with Brad Pitt in the film. She might divorce me, though.

While I agree that it could still be a great film, it's a disappointment if you were hoping for a fictional documentary (which is what the book was).

I'll watch it regardless, but it's a shame they didn't trust enough in the source material.

I'll still watch it anyway, but I am disappointed. I think the book could have worked with a District 9 documentary/action style. It would probably have to be incredibly long to have the same feel and emotional impact as the book did though, so I kind of understand why they didn't.

Farscry wrote:

While I agree that it could still be a great film, it's a disappointment if you were hoping for a fictional documentary (which is what the book was).

I'll watch it regardless, but it's a shame they didn't trust enough in the source material.

This is where I am. This is one of my favorite books. I felt the same way about John Carter. I probably would have liked it more but it is tough to get past the differences with the book when they pimp that aspect so much.

I'll just quote myself from 4 years ago.

Vega wrote:

I still wish this had been done as a HBO or Showtime series with each "interview" being it's own 1 hour episode.

BWAAAAP!

Zombies that can run? How fresh!

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Zombies that can run? How fresh!

No but the sheer volume of them definitely is... that's just f*cking creepy!

Yawn. I still see this as an issue easily solved with the proper application of jersey walls and napalm.

It's like Day After Tomorrow with zombies. This has to be the first zombie flick with actual money behind it. The shot of them piling up on the wall like that? That's freaky.

Probably nothing to do with the book, (WWZ zombies are typical shamblers) but I love big dumb movies and I'll gladly see this.

Entertainment Weekly[/url]]Visual effects supervisor John Nelson (Iron Man) said World War Z’s zombies lean more toward sci-fi transformation victims rather than supernatural resurrection subjects. That led to a lot of research into animal behavior, especially for creatures under the amok-time sway of predator appetite or spawning urge.

“They are like predatory animals that can’t control themselves,” Nelson said. “I worked with tigers [while shooting Gladiator], and if you watch them when a horse goes by they go batty, even if they know they can’t reach it. When Zs see humans they do same thing, they activate. They launch themselves.”

He went on to add: “There are a lot of things in nature we’re mining as references. They move like birds or school of fish, too, in reactive formations, and it’s not because they have a higher level of [shared] thinking or communication – it’s about their nature and the fact that their instinct to infect is so basic, efficient, and overpowering. They will go through anything. If they lose both legs, they will walk on their hands. They lock in and they’re like salmon going upstream or sperm swimming to be the first to egg.”

I think it's an interesting take on zombies, especially at this scale.

Yah, while I think Vega has the right of it - I am excited and enthused for this movie. Can't wait!

Brennil wrote:

This has to be the first zombie flick with actual money behind it.

The scale looks huge compared to anything done previously. Night Of The Living Dead takes place in the country in Pennsylvania with zombies totaling under 100 converging on one farm. Someone tells a story about seeing zombies all over a semi. That's pretty standard zombie genre stuff. Everything has already happened or is happening elsewhere. It'll definitely be novel to see all that stuff that's only been talked about so far.

I couldn’t get past the first few chapters of the book because it gave me nightmares, so I won’t be seeing this movie. It looks interesting, but zombies freak me the f out. We don’t go to Ravenholm for a reason people!

World War Z was interesting because it told human stories and because it wove in a lot of threads from current events. 28 Days Later was interesting because it did such a good job mixing the familiar and comfortable with jarring and alien. Obviously you've got to wait for the full release to make any judgement, but from the preview this looks like a paint by the numbers Hollywood boilerplate. A lot of disaster porn, nothing interesting about or happening to the main characters and a lot of things exploding for no real reason.

Jucofett wrote:

I couldn’t get past the first few chapters of the book because it gave me nightmares, so I won’t be seeing this movie. It looks interesting, but zombies freak me the f out. We don’t go to Ravenholm for a reason people!

Really? I found Monster Island a LOT freakier than WWZ. The only thing I could think of in WWZ was how manageable the situation would have been had a few people actually exercised a little common sense. In Monster Island, the part that creeped me out the most was when the medical student voluntarily turns himself into a zombie so he can retain his higher faculties and avoid a violent end. And that his being both undead and a clever tool user made him that much more frightening.

It wasn’t that the book was hard to read, I was enjoying it. My dreams revolved around if the outbreak was really happening and how to best protect my family.

Brad Pitt does a generally good job of selecting films that transcend the generic blockbuster. I'll grant you that the trailer is targeted to younger and more shallow demographic. But if that was Colin Ferrell, I might be less interested.

Throw in Mireille Enos, and I'm at least going to see what they tried to do.

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Wanted to hear feedback from the people that read the book. Trailer made me want to read the book even more because it's what I'm actually looking towards to; a human story (or many) in a zombie apocalypse, and not a single man saving the world.

I'm a little disappointed in the direction the movie seems to have gone in.

That being said, the book was essentially a summary of various after-action reports so it would have been exceptionally hard to faithfully translate that to the screen. I do hope, however, they work the story of Colonel Christina Eliopolis in somehow. I really liked that one.

Oh it's going to be fine. Don't you remember how well Hollywood was able to translate Jurassic Park to the big screen?

Er, hum, . . .

No wait - I mean "I am Legend"!

uh.

I read the WWZ some time ago but I had no idea the audio book had all those different actors. Maybe I'll have to give it a listen.

(Chances are I'll see this too but just have to keep my expectations W-A-Y down).

Some of the scenes in that trailer are fantastic, like the one with the zombies all piling up trying to climb the wall. I'd really like to have seen an attempt at a movie in the format of the book though. I think it could be done quite effectively, but it would come across more as an indie film than the blockbuster the current one looks to be.

complexmath wrote:

Some of the scenes in that trailer are fantastic, like the one with the zombies all piling up trying to climb the wall. I'd really like to have seen an attempt at a movie in the format of the book though. I think it could be done quite effectively, but it would come across more as an indie film than the blockbuster the current one looks to be.

I think Vega hit on the right idea. If it were a weekly HBO series, it think it work really well.

Wanted to hear feedback from the people that read the book. Trailer made me want to read the book even more because it's what I'm actually looking towards to; a human story (or many) in a zombie apocalypse, and not a single man saving the world.

I saw the trailer and immediately thought "generic man vs nature action film".

The animation reminds me of I am Legend.
Still on the fence on the zombies-as-a-swarm; good eye-candy and food for nightmares, but feels "plastic-y". Can't think of a better term, at least not now.

I think Brennil nails it; it's a "the day after tomorrow/2012". especially because the zombies felt like a "force of nature". The swarm has a "school of fish" feel to it.