World War Z

[grkpektis 3]

I haven't read the book but I fucking hate this POS train wreck I am suprised no one mentioned it on the forum (I searched if I missed it please tell me). The only redeeming quality it has are the Doctor Who references, everything else is awful, the story makes makes no sense and the shaky cam makes it hard to tell WTH is happening. It is honestly the worst zombie movie I have ever seen, the moron who thought making a PG-13 zombie movie was a good idea must have brain damage.

[RyanSz 3140]

Yeah I believe there was a thread already made for this.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

I have to disagree with the "worst zombie movie ever" claim, as this gentleman certainly must not have Netflix. I believe that Danny Trejo has been in like 10 shittier zombie movies in the last two years alone.

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

I felt it was just mediocre. You could tell there were a ton of cut shots to get the PG-13 rating. All the mayhem scenes are full of shots that feel like they cut early.

 

The movie blows its load in the first New York outbreak scene, everything else just goes downhill. The Israel scene is less exciting because it's all CGI. Then the "climax" is just two dozen zombies. The makers needed to watch a great zombie movie like Dawn of the Dead (2004) to learn how to properly crank up the action.

 

Things I noted about the movie:

 

-How did Brad Pitt get such a bland looking wife?

 

-Say what you want about North Korea, but they come up with creative problem solving solutions.

 

-Enough with Brad Pitt's family! Why do they think we want to see them instead of more zombies? His wife and kid's stupidity gets tons of people killed.

 

-No way in hell does a C-130 plane have that kind of range. (Atlantic to Korea, then Korea to Israel??)

 

-The "fend off zombies who are drawn to the noise of a tanker truck refueling a C-130" is ripped off straight from the Left 4 Dead video game!

 

-Every single character in the movie knows that sound attracts zombies, but nobody but Brad Pitt figures out to use this to create diversions, and only at the very end.

 

-Again, Brad Pitt is the only one to figure out something basic like using duct tape and padding to protect against zombie bites. You'd think at least one mainstream zombie movie would have someone think to get decked up in protective sports gear. Special forces soldiers who have been fighting the zombies for a week never even figured it out.

 

-Brad Pitt is the only smart character in the movie, except when he suddenly turns stupid at the end. He has to inject himself with something but doesn't know what the different vials are and the wrong one will instantly kill him. Doctors are watching him on the security camera with a bright red power light, frustrated that he can't hear them to tell him which vial is the right one. Brad gets the idea to grab a notebook and write something for them to read. This turns out to be "Tell my family I love them", not "Turn the camera off when I point to the right vial" before taking a blind guess.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

-Enough with Brad Pitt's family! Why do they think we want to see them instead of more zombies? His wife and kid's stupidity gets tons of people killed.

 

One of my biggest problems with the movie was that I never felt that the main character or his family were in any danger AT ALL, which is strange, because the truly terrible shit always seems to happen RIGHT as Brad Pitt gets there. It's almost like everyone would have been better off if he would have never shown up.

 

Also, what the fuck was with NOTHING happening to Pitt's family when they cut them loose after thinking he was dead? Oh shit, there's going to be some danger there, right? NOPE. After Pitt saves the day, he's reunited with his family, who have just been chilling out in some safe place, not having to fight for their lives or anything. Fucking lame.

[Johnny Unusual 525]

Thing is, I don't think this is a great movie, but it is not really HDTGM level of bad/crazy. It's just sort of blah. Not really enough for this show.

[seanotron 2307]

'Meh' sums this movie up pretty well. It's really not outright bad, it just fails to do anything new or interesting with the premise. It's basically a mostly-competent zombie movie that shows us a bunch of stuff we've seen a million times before.

[BenjaminW.Piehler 12]

I honestly didn't even find the book that great.

[RyanSz 3140]

One of my biggest problems with the movie was that I never felt that the main character or his family were in any danger AT ALL, which is strange, because the truly terrible shit always seems to happen RIGHT as Brad Pitt gets there. It's almost like everyone would have been better off if he would have never shown up.

 

Also, what the fuck was with NOTHING happening to Pitt's family when they cut them loose after thinking he was dead? Oh shit, there's going to be some danger there, right? NOPE. After Pitt saves the day, he's reunited with his family, who have just been chilling out in some safe place, not having to fight for their lives or anything. Fucking lame.

 

Apparently they were going to get into some shit in the original, longer ending. Rather than Pitt and the one handed soldier going to the CDC type place after the plane crash, they are in Russia and get forcibly drafted into fighting the zombies there while his family is removed from the ship. It then goes along with some of the stuff in the movie where they find out severe cold dramatically slows down the zombies, making them much more manageable to combat. It is sometime later that he gets a hold of a sat phone and is able to get into contact with his family who are in a government camp in the south. He then finds out that his wife has shacked up with the helicopter pilot who rescued them in the beginning of the film, who is basically now extorting sex out of her for protection for the family within the camp. Then he goes on a long journey back to the US to get his family back after the pilot basically tells him to forget his family.

 

This was supposed to be the original ending and was basically cut due to being too dark and a lot longer and more expensive to film and it's why they had cast Matthew Fox as the pilot but he has one line in the final cut of the film.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

Apparently they were going to get into some shit in the original, longer ending. Rather than Pitt and the one handed soldier going to the CDC type place after the plane crash, they are in Russia and get forcibly drafted into fighting the zombies there while his family is removed from the ship. It then goes along with some of the stuff in the movie where they find out severe cold dramatically slows down the zombies, making them much more manageable to combat. It is sometime later that he gets a hold of a sat phone and is able to get into contact with his family who are in a government camp in the south. He then finds out that his wife has shacked up with the helicopter pilot who rescued them in the beginning of the film, who is basically now extorting sex out of her for protection for the family within the camp. Then he goes on a long journey back to the US to get his family back after the pilot basically tells him to forget his family.

 

This was supposed to be the original ending and was basically cut due to being too dark and a lot longer and more expensive to film and it's why they had cast Matthew Fox as the pilot but he has one line in the final cut of the film.

I was pretty aware of all that, and Matthew Fox still got something like fourth or fifth billing despite being almost completely missing from the film. But yeah, my God, something dark and disturbing happening to the only characters worth remembering in a movie about the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? Those first two acts were really setting it up to be the feel-good hit of the year before that, right? Seriously though, I can understand things getting cut for budgetary reasons, or endings being changed to make things more sequel-friendly, but it's almost like the cut we got had the opposite effect. I wonder if it really WAS more a case of it being too dark and/or expensive, or if it was more a case of the studio not having faith in the film and wanting something more self-contained or "uplifting" in case they had to put the brakes on the franchise in a hurry? Its success was kind of unexpected, and they're talking about possible sequels now, but man, with that original idea for an ending, they could have really hit the ground running with the next one.

[RyanSz 3140]

I was pretty aware of all that, and Matthew Fox still got something like fourth or fifth billing despite being almost completely missing from the film. But yeah, my God, something dark and disturbing happening to the only characters worth remembering in a movie about the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? Those first two acts were really setting it up to be the feel-good hit of the year before that, right? Seriously though, I can understand things getting cut for budgetary reasons, or endings being changed to make things more sequel-friendly, but it's almost like the cut we got had the opposite effect. I wonder if it really WAS more a case of it being too dark and/or expensive, or if it was more a case of the studio not having faith in the film and wanting something more self-contained or "uplifting" in case they had to put the brakes on the franchise in a hurry? Its success was kind of unexpected, and they're talking about possible sequels now, but man, with that original idea for an ending, they could have really hit the ground running with the next one.

It's a case of it being a TRUE alternate ending that got changed for whatever reason. Nowadays when they mention an alternate ending, it's some minute change or add on that added nothing new to the film, or was completely batshit insane like the propeller plane alternate ending to Independance Day (Youtube it if you haven't seen that clusterfuck). This would have been a very interesting thing to watch and would have placated fans of the book with a lot of nods to the source material, but they changed it for being too dark or whatever. It reminds me of the alternate ending to the Paul Walker horror flick Joy Ride. That DVD had an alternate ending which was a 29 minutes long and really was an alternate take on the film and made it worth watching.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

It's a case of it being a TRUE alternate ending that got changed for whatever reason. Nowadays when they mention an alternate ending, it's some minute change or add on that added nothing new to the film, or was completely batshit insane like the propeller plane alternate ending to Independance Day (Youtube it if you haven't seen that clusterfuck). This would have been a very interesting thing to watch and would have placated fans of the book with a lot of nods to the source material, but they changed it for being too dark or whatever. It reminds me of the alternate ending to the Paul Walker horror flick Joy Ride. That DVD had an alternate ending which was a 29 minutes long and really was an alternate take on the film and made it worth watching.

An alternate MOVIE is what it is, really. It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book or something. "All hell is breaking loose. Do you get on the first plane, or do you decide to board the second plane?". We got the shitty third act that had him crashing in England and trying to be really quiet in a hospital instead of the more action-packed finale in Russia. Just another classic case of the behind-the-scenes workings being infinitely more interesting (for better or worse) than what we actually got. That's about the only thing keeping "World War Z" from being completely generic.

[RyanSz 3140]

Courtesy of the Oatmeal: