World War Z (film): It made tons of money despite many problems
I think one of the first things that irritated me about this movie is the fact that it is yet another zombie apocalypse movie. This has seriously been done too much. By 2013 we had been through so many zombie movies that there were actually spoof zombie films poking fun at the fact that there are too many zombie films. So the studio execs get together one day and say "you know what we definitely haven't done way too much of? Zombie films - here's $125 million, get it done."
I'm not saying this movie isn't entertaining because it is. It is pretty much non-stop action from start to finish. However, there are just so many eye-rolling moments in the movie that kind of ticked me off and made it difficult to try to focus on the story. Here are a few of them.
POTENTIAL MILD SPOILERS - but it's a zombie movie, what is there to spoil really?
- in the usual rush to leave the city after a zombie outbreak, there is a police officer who pulls up next to Brad Pitt's car, the establishing shot of the cup pulling up next to him it is clearly gridlocked traffic, yet in the very next scene a massive truck plows through and kills the cop, magically appearing out of nowhere and somehow having enough momentum despite the traffic jam.
- Remember that gridlocked traffic? Well in the mass panic that ensues later Brad's family are somehow able to commandeer an RV (mobile home) that is conveniently not blocked by any traffic at all. Why would the owners abandon such an obviously great thing to have during a zombie apocalypse?
- Jerry (Brad Pitt) is engaged at one point in a mission where it is absolutely critical that the team be completely quiet. At no point does it occur to anyone that their cell phones might make sounds if someone calls them. Of course someone calls.
- In the age of information it seems that everyone gets caught off guard by this outbreak and only Israel seems to have it all figured out. It's the only safe place to be anymore - would they not share the information that they have learned with other countries?
- Since this zombie outbreak was meant to have caught everyone by surprise this is why Israel's wall is so effective. However, some idiots with microphones start singing in the street and apparently this noise infuriates the zombies into making a zombie pyramid to crawl over the wall. In the very same scene there are trucks and helicopters running all around. Both of these things are considerably louder than the singing.
- once again the military is all but useless in handing this situation. The entire world's military gets overrun by an uncoordinated mob of zombies who don't use weapons? This is a problem that i have not just with this zombie movie but pretty much all of them.
There are many more such things that negatively contribute to the story that doesn't make sense and just made me roll my eyes throughout the film but i'll let you find the rest of them on your own.
I like my films to have consistency and while a zombie outbreak isn't realistic anyway, I prefer that their be some level of realism in the movies and magic things happening don't really do it for me. Yes, the special effects are good but the story isn't. For me anyway, i like there to be some sort of coherent story rather than "oooh, we almost got away, no we didn't" over and over again.
Apparently this movie was based on a rather successful book. People have said the movie is so different from the book it may as well not even share the same name.
This movie made a crap-ton of money but just like Mark Hammell says "it doesn't matter if it is any good, only that it makes money." I can't rate this movie highly because the story isn't good and the inconsistencies got on my nerves. However, it is entertaining if you can get past that.
The story of how World War Z was made is a lot more harrowing and suspenseful than the film itself. After going way over-budget and enduing a complete revision and reshoot of the final act, WWZ wasn't exactly set up for success. Ultimately the movie is completely forgettable and uneven, but not offensively bad or objectively terrible in any sense. What struck me about it was how much of a wasted opportunity it was, given how interesting and entertaining the source material is.
Having read the book World War Z, I could tell from the trailers for this movie that it wouldn't exactly be a faithful adaptation. I thought that the most interesting aspects of the book were its exploration of how the Zombie plague affected social and political structures across the world. Anything like that is completely ignored in the film, but I can at least understand how the filmmakers thought that those aspects wouldn't work in a single feature length movie. What I can't understand is how the filmmakers seemingly ignored the book's most obviously cinematic content. The book features a lot of setpiece action scenes, and to be fair, many of these involve world cities falling to zombie infestation and the movie does do enough to cover this. However, the book's immense battle scenes - the meat of the titular Zombie War, such as the Battle of Yonkers, nuclear war between Pakistan and Iran, Chinese civil war and massive formation combat against zombies - are completely absent. I was very surprised that they did not cover these, especially the Yonkers scene, because they would obviously fit so well into a film and the script, even as it is now, could easily be tweaked to include or at least mention them. The action that did make it into this film is very unsatisfying and obscure thanks to the restrictions of the PG-13 rating, and the narrative around is not engaging enough to really get me invested in it.
I was also surprised at how cheap this movie looked. This film cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, but it's hard to see where it all went on the screen. Swarms of zombies look very fake and nonthreatening, and in some cases individual zombies are computer animated, which gave me bad flashbacks to I Am Legend's awful CGI overload. Again, while there was nothing all that terrible about WWZ, I didn't think it was anything to get excited about. In other words, a perfect 6/10 movie. I wish they were more aware of the source material's potential because without the best and most cinematic aspects of the book, WWZ (the film)and WWZ (the book) only share a title and the central premise of a zombie plague, which is not an original idea in itself.
This film was good just for me there was two things I did not like ... the actor is good, but if he was not there, then the film would have failed badly...
And I did not like this start...how this film start on the street... not good.
And the another one thing I did not like... when the the plane fell down, this was very bad Idea :))) Why? It was difficult to make the plane able to land properly and they would quietly escape from the airplane... not this that it fell down and just this two did not die :))) Funny .
But All rest was ok and fun look.
Hiii...gooddream
Great Post with perfect review.
I also see this movie.
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Well it's a zombie movie, there's no much to expect from it. I found it entertaining though!