World War Z

[Lembach]

[Trekker4747]

Eh, I liked the movie.

[Darth Geek]

I did enjoy it. Besides, this movie essentially sidesteps the book because it's about the BEGINNING of the zombie appocolypse, not the aftermath of the ending. It kind of reminds me when they make a video game adaptation, and for some reason decide to make it a prequel to the storyline of the game.

[ManUnderMask]

The funny thing is people who think the Battle of Yonkers would ever be filmed. The military will not cooperate on a scene that makes them look bad.

[Darth Geek]

The funny thing is people who think the Battle of Yonkers would ever be filmed. The military will not cooperate on a scene that makes them look bad.

What? They always look incompetant in Michael Bay movies.

[ManUnderMask]

What? They always look incompetant in Michael Bay movies.

Go look it up. The military won't support any film that makes them look evil, incompetent, or any of a whole list of other reasons. The Battle of Yonkers is the epitome of incompetence. No way they'd support that. The Battle of Hope on the other hand...

[Nunyerbiz]

Is there an exact reason why in today's world of eight digit CGI budgets that a movie studio would need 'the military' to cooperate? If I had the money available to push the pixels, couldn't I show the US Marines getting their asses handed to them by the Garbage Pail Kids?

[Relaxing Dragon]

Is there an exact reason why in today's world of eight digit CGI budgets that a movie studio would need 'the military' to cooperate? If I had the money available to push the pixels, couldn't I show the US Marines getting their asses handed to them by the Garbage Pail Kids?

Pentagon cooperation usually assures a great help in the budget department. And as bloated as those budgets gets, Hollywood will still take a break when and where they can.

[Johnny Unusual]

Me and my friend never read the book, but we watched it last night.  I didn't like it very much, but he was REALLY into it.  Over all, it's biggest flaw was it just wasn't that interesting, but here are some of the things that bugged me.


- Listen, the cliche of a guy who doesn't want to be dragged into a conflict again so he can be with his family can work, but I have a hard time sympathizing with him when the situation is "billions of people are dead." "Well, how does that concern me.  I just want to be with my family."  DUDE!  THE WORLD IS KIND OF FUCKED FOR EVERYONE AND YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT QUALITY TIME?
- The zombies running around the sick.  I get not biting them, but they really should have been knocking them over and trampling them, considering how they do that to each other.
- That woman's arm came off VERY easily.
- So that zombie was just sitting quietly in the plane the whole time in that one room?  How did he get in there?
- Though I like the doctor accidentally killing himself, I hated the entirety of the escape from South Korea scene.  That whole aspect felt dumb.
- The scene where the main character realizes the solution seemed really dumb too.  Like the guy having the big speech on how to find the weakness and such.  It was so terribly telegraphed that it just felt ridiculous. It's like when Homer is watching that movie: "Oh, I know how this ends, the code is the nursery rhyme he sang to his daughter."
-This is more aesthetic, so it's more a personal complaint than a movie flaw but... the zombies in this movie didn't do it for me.  I think they had consistent behaviour, but, I don't know, they didn't capture my attention so much.  I feel like there are good aspects to them but all together I don't like the whole.
- Again, more personal than anything, but I was expecting more of a war-horror movie feel.  Not a lot of that.

And finally, this really feels like Left 4 Dead without the super-zombies.

[Darth Geek]

I agree with most of your points. And it is very videogame-ey.
Personally, I liked the look of the zombies. At least, the ones we get to really see, done with practical makeup. The digital ones during the big crowd scenes didn't look like good. But in those scenes the point was the rush of the crowd, rather than the decay.

[Trekker4747]

About the zombie on the plane:

It was in the elevator. That was an intercontinental jumbo-jet (I think a L-1011 but I don't really recall), they usually have a lower deck/galley for food preparation and storage and an elevator to get between the two levels. The zombie was in the lower deck/elevator and didn't come into the main cabin until the stewardess pressed the "call" button for the elevator.

[Darth Geek]

About the zombie on the plane:

It was in the elevator. That was an intercontinental jumbo-jet (I think a L-1011 but I don't really recall), they usually have a lower deck/galley for food preparation and storage and an elevator to get between the two levels. The zombie was in the lower deck/elevator and didn't come into the main cabin until the stewardess pressed the "call" button for the elevator.

I've heard that explanation, and it makes more sense. But I think they should have done something so it didn't look like the zombie was in the bathroom.

[Johnny Unusual]

"ZOMBIES NEED TO POO, TOO!"

[ihavemyreasons]

I thought it was the worst movie I've seen in a long, long time, even by summer blockbuster standards. It was the only movie I've ever seen where I thought a quipping, smirking Will Smith would have been a welcome addition (and I hate Will Smith).

Some of its sins (IMHO):
-I think it was supposed to be an action movie (because it certainly wasn't a horror movie), but the action was boring and it used the "shakey cam" technique that gets used in many sub-million dollar budgeted action flicks in order to hide the cheap effects...but they supposedly spent $200 million on this abomination.

-It was boring.

-I didn't see it in 3D, but the overall look of the film was grey and it almost looked like watching a 3D movie without 3D glasses.

-Nothing really interesting happens.

-It's a zombie movie where zombies don't eat people. I assume part of that was to pull in the PG13 crowd and avoid an R rating, but the film contradicts its own zombie biting logic. After establishing that it takes 13 seconds for a person to turn into a zombie after being bitten, we get a story about how it took 10 minutes for another group of people to turn. I figured for sure that would come into play someplace later when someone would get bit, not turn within 13 seconds but turn later. But it was ignored and never mentioned again.

- A lot of other things happen for no real reasons:

Kid leaves his parents to go with Brad Pitt's family, but we don't see them killed. Kid isn't in the least bit upset about where his parents are. So while it seemed like it was implied that they were killed and the tease seemed to be that maybe they weren't and they'd show up later in the film at some climatic point in time. Nope. Kid and parents don't play any role in the movie other than in their one throw away scene.

It's established early in the film that the daughter of the main character has asthma. They make a point of making a special dangerous stop a pharmacy to get her asthma medication when the zombie mayhem breaks out. So asthma or asthma medication has to play a role in the cure right? Nope. Never brought up again.

Israeli soldier is bitten, has her hand chopped off, and then is brought along with the main character for the rest of the ride. She's gotta have special talents or become the Jackie Chan to Brad Pitt's Chris Tucker and provide some witty banner, right? Nope. There's no witty banner in the whole movie and the soldier is just a set piece that plays no real role other than being on screen the rest of the movie. Can't remember if she even had any dialog the rest of the movie.

-It was boring.

-A Hannibal Lector character is introduced and is immediately the most interesting character in the film. After maybe a 30 second scene, he's never seen again.

-A couple of more minor WTFs:

No one in the movie ever really questions what is going on. It's like this zombie outbreak is just the latest in a long line of zombie outbreaks, so no one is really freaked out by it. The logic seems to be that there is no need to mention what's going on or why it's going on, we're just supposed to be content that something is happening and Brad Pitt is gonna go all over the world until whatever it is that is happening stops happening.

Brad Pitt's character is a retired UN genocide investigator. And for some reason that makes him qualified to investigate a deadly contagious disease and his involvement even though he's retired is so important that the UN risks troops to save him and his family.

They UN sends less troops with Brad Pitt (3 or 4 troops maybe) on a huge C-130 transport plane to Africa than they sent on a helicopter to pick Brad Pitt and his family up off of a rooftop. So a C130 with 3 or 4 troops is apparently enough to deal with a base in Africa where they've lost contact but expect it's where the outbreak started and expect it to be crawling with zombies, but twice that many are needed to pick someone up off a roof in a helicopter.

[Trekker4747]

About the zombie on the plane:

It was in the elevator. That was an intercontinental jumbo-jet (I think a L-1011 but I don't really recall), they usually have a lower deck/galley for food preparation and storage and an elevator to get between the two levels. The zombie was in the lower deck/elevator and didn't come into the main cabin until the stewardess pressed the "call" button for the elevator.

I've heard that explanation, and it makes more sense. But I think they should have done something so it didn't look like the zombie was in the bathroom.

We see the flight attendant pressing the call button for the elevator. It's quick but it's there and I guess you kind of have to know what you're looking for to really notice it and I tend to pick up details like that sometimes.  I can see how some would mistake it for the lav but it wasn't.