Trailer Trashing: World War Z

Hello.  It's been a while, I know.  I'm still sick, and it's rare for me to be sick this long, but here I am, attempting to do something reasonably coherent.

I'm going to take some baby-steps back into blogging by nitpicking a movie trailer, this time World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, and is sort of based on the best-selling novel by Max Brooks.

Here's the trailer...

Here are my thoughts on the obvious points.

1. They spent a shit-load of money on this movie.

2. Brad Pitt is the producer in more than just title, he had more say than usual, because he didn't get a shave or a haircut for the role even though the odds are pretty good that a senior UN employee would probably be clean-shaven.

3. Having a UN employee as the hero shows that the film's makers do not know anything about how the UN really operates. Standard UN procedure for handling any crisis is to appoint a commission of professional bureaucrats, mostly from Europe, to look into it, spend millions of dollars, and all you get is a report condemning Israel, because anything else would get vetoed by the Russians.

4. Judging from the reactions of fans of the original book there is NOTHING from the novel in the movie. No familiar characters, scenes, or even zombies.

5. Which brings me to the zombies themselves. What make them so unsettling is that they were once human, but now are soulless, unthinking, predators who only want to rip you apart and feast upon your innards. Traditional zombies move slowly and awkwardly and are most dangerous in swarms that can overtake you.

Judging from the preview, this movie not only ramps up their speed, but makes them form into huge amorphous masses of computer graphics like The Blob, but made from body parts.

6. I also get a sense of the widely reported problems they had with the script's third act, they didn't have one. There's no sense of a destination, or a target, just a lot of running around with no clear idea where they're supposed to be going.

Verdict: This flick's going to have a hard time competing against the undead drama of The Walking Dead.

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