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#625 - World War Z
Marc Forster, 2013
When a worldwide pandemic starts turning people into zombies, a specialist is brought in to trace the origins of the virus and find a cure.
I really liked Max Brooks' World War Z, which offered an interesting variation on the premise of a worldwide zombie apocalypse by depicting the whole crisis through the eyes of dozens of survivors located all over the world. By examining how zombies were dealt with on an international scale, Brooks' novel offered a complex and fascinating tale that went above and beyond the usual narrative conventions of the zombie sub-genre. As a result, enough acclaim and popularity followed that there was interest in making a live-action adaptation. Though the variety of stories taking place in many different countries could theoretically have worked as a television series, the adaptation instead took the form of a stand-alone feature film (albeit one that might promise sequels). Other factors such as a troubled production, a PG-13 rating, and the fact that the film was directed by the same man who did Quantum of Solace only served to make the prospect of World War Z being brought on-screen less and less promising. As such, I put off watching it for ages, only just getting around to watching it all the way through after recording it off free-to-air television the other day. It was basically a film that I felt obligated to check out no matter what.
While I can understand that a two-hour film wouldn't be able to contain even a small fraction of the events depicted in the source novel, World War Z drops everything except the core premise. Rather than depict multiple narratives, the film instead sticks to one: that of a former United Nations specialist (Brad Pitt), whose quiet life as a stay-at-home dad is threatened when he and his family are caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak in downtown New York. Before too long, Pitt is called upon by his former colleagues because he possesses a particular set of skills that make him important to the U.N.'s attempts to deal with the zombies. As a result, he is made to go on a mission where he travels around the world in order to trace the virus's origins in the hopes of finding either a cure or a vaccine. Deviating this far from the plot of the source material does not automatically guarantee that the resulting film will be terrible, but the sheer number of writers credited with writing and re-writing the film definitely does not bode well and serves to make the film's episodic nature come across as patchy. This becomes especially noticeable when the film indulges some all-too-familiar disaster movie clichés in terms of its plot and characterisation, with Pitt playing the everyman expert doing his best to not just save the world but also his family.
In addition to throwing out the plot of the book, World War Z changes up the nature of the zombies from the classic shuffling undead to the 28 Days Later... type of quickly-infected runners. While that's not the biggest deal-breaker, it does drag one out of the film at times when the bloodless carnage becomes especially distracting (such as one instance of Pitt being made to amputate a sidekick's infected hand, which compromises far too much between on-screen depiction and off-screen implication). It's not helped by the film's grating use of current trends in thrill-seeking filmmaking such as rapid editing and shaky camerawork (which also plagued Quantum of Solace). The globe-trotting narrative that shows how various nations have chosen to deal with the pandemic also leads to some questionable lapses in logic, such as Israel's decision to repel the menace using large walls (and, well, just look at that header image). Both these factors serve to undermine any possible tension and also any weight that the novel's sociopolitical commentary might have had (with the possible exception of David Morse's imprisoned spy revealing what he'd seen in North Korea, which deviates from the novel but provides a decent alternative). While abandoning pretty much everything about the source novel results in the cinematic version of World War Z promising a somewhat unpredictable experience, that also means that it tries to overcompensate for its over-budget production by being far too dependent on running every play in the disaster movie book. Pitt makes for a tolerable protagonist and the film has a few notable actors scattered throughout it (hey, it's Peter Capaldi!), but that can't wave away the air of wasted potential that hangs over its various international set-pieces.
Marc Forster, 2013
When a worldwide pandemic starts turning people into zombies, a specialist is brought in to trace the origins of the virus and find a cure.
I really liked Max Brooks' World War Z, which offered an interesting variation on the premise of a worldwide zombie apocalypse by depicting the whole crisis through the eyes of dozens of survivors located all over the world. By examining how zombies were dealt with on an international scale, Brooks' novel offered a complex and fascinating tale that went above and beyond the usual narrative conventions of the zombie sub-genre. As a result, enough acclaim and popularity followed that there was interest in making a live-action adaptation. Though the variety of stories taking place in many different countries could theoretically have worked as a television series, the adaptation instead took the form of a stand-alone feature film (albeit one that might promise sequels). Other factors such as a troubled production, a PG-13 rating, and the fact that the film was directed by the same man who did Quantum of Solace only served to make the prospect of World War Z being brought on-screen less and less promising. As such, I put off watching it for ages, only just getting around to watching it all the way through after recording it off free-to-air television the other day. It was basically a film that I felt obligated to check out no matter what.
While I can understand that a two-hour film wouldn't be able to contain even a small fraction of the events depicted in the source novel, World War Z drops everything except the core premise. Rather than depict multiple narratives, the film instead sticks to one: that of a former United Nations specialist (Brad Pitt), whose quiet life as a stay-at-home dad is threatened when he and his family are caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak in downtown New York. Before too long, Pitt is called upon by his former colleagues because he possesses a particular set of skills that make him important to the U.N.'s attempts to deal with the zombies. As a result, he is made to go on a mission where he travels around the world in order to trace the virus's origins in the hopes of finding either a cure or a vaccine. Deviating this far from the plot of the source material does not automatically guarantee that the resulting film will be terrible, but the sheer number of writers credited with writing and re-writing the film definitely does not bode well and serves to make the film's episodic nature come across as patchy. This becomes especially noticeable when the film indulges some all-too-familiar disaster movie clichés in terms of its plot and characterisation, with Pitt playing the everyman expert doing his best to not just save the world but also his family.
In addition to throwing out the plot of the book, World War Z changes up the nature of the zombies from the classic shuffling undead to the 28 Days Later... type of quickly-infected runners. While that's not the biggest deal-breaker, it does drag one out of the film at times when the bloodless carnage becomes especially distracting (such as one instance of Pitt being made to amputate a sidekick's infected hand, which compromises far too much between on-screen depiction and off-screen implication). It's not helped by the film's grating use of current trends in thrill-seeking filmmaking such as rapid editing and shaky camerawork (which also plagued Quantum of Solace). The globe-trotting narrative that shows how various nations have chosen to deal with the pandemic also leads to some questionable lapses in logic, such as Israel's decision to repel the menace using large walls (and, well, just look at that header image). Both these factors serve to undermine any possible tension and also any weight that the novel's sociopolitical commentary might have had (with the possible exception of David Morse's imprisoned spy revealing what he'd seen in North Korea, which deviates from the novel but provides a decent alternative). While abandoning pretty much everything about the source novel results in the cinematic version of World War Z promising a somewhat unpredictable experience, that also means that it tries to overcompensate for its over-budget production by being far too dependent on running every play in the disaster movie book. Pitt makes for a tolerable protagonist and the film has a few notable actors scattered throughout it (hey, it's Peter Capaldi!), but that can't wave away the air of wasted potential that hangs over its various international set-pieces.