World War Z

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JaySevenZero
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World War Z

Post by JaySevenZero »

The first proper trailer released for the film is generating a fair amount of chatter on the internet so I thought it might be worth a thread.



A lot of the purists damning it, but I don't believe that the book lends itself to an easy adaptation anyway with it consisting of first person accounts of the zombie war. There's some truth in saying that a big budget television series could do it more justice, where it could focus on a single account per episode. But since HBO are currently spending a small fortune making the Game of Thrones adaptations, I'd say there are few production companies left that might be willing to chance that kind of investment.

Regardless of this, I like this trailer, does what it's supposed to do - nice build up at the start and impressive scenes of zombie rampaging at the end.
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RoboticMonk3y
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Re: World War Z

Post by RoboticMonk3y »

I'm not really sure how you would make a direct translation of the book, unless you made a TV series and spread it out over many episodes.
Trailer looks interesting, I'm interested to see where it goes.
Good find Jay.
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JaySevenZero
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Re: World War Z

Post by JaySevenZero »

I think this film can work, reducing the narrative focus on just a handful of characters rather than the myriad of those in the book makes sense given the usual running time of a film and to allow the audience time to empathise with a particular character.

Watching the trailer I can see what looks like referencing several moments from the book (the Yonkers battle and possibly the Israeli border sequence).

Of course, it's troubled production has been well reported and the director Mark Forster has a patchy record when it comes to more action orientated films (Quantum of Solace and Machine Gun Preacher) but where he excels is in delivering stories with an emotional impact such as Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball and The Kite Runner and given that WWZ is all about the human drama rather than big action sequences, this could be a good thing.

However, the director is only part of the equation and unfortunately one of the scriptwriters is Damon Lindelof, the one responsible for the truly dire Prometheus script - the other being Matthew Michael Carnahan, who wrote the political drama Lion for Lambs and the movie adaptation of the Brit TV drama State of Play. I guess depending who wrote the majority of the script could result in whether it'll be a pile of guff or not.
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AndyKurosaki
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Re: World War Z

Post by AndyKurosaki »

I sincerely hope Damon didn't write much, as his work on Prometheus was fucking awful. If he bollocks this up, I'm done with his work to be honest. No pressure there then.

Yeah the book, great as it is, wouldn't really work as a film. I'm willing to give this a chance.Just pray that Damon's "plot-holes, make the audience decide what happens" style is kept to an absolute minimum.
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Re: World War Z

Post by JaySevenZero »

I guess the other thing is that, according to the book WWZ lasted for 10 years, so I'm curious as to if and how this is addressed during the film or whether it's the first part of a possible series (box office willing).
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DomsBeard
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Re: World War Z

Post by DomsBeard »

Cant believe I've never heard of this, going to order the book to read now.
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Re: World War Z

Post by Bakers_12 »

Looks like it will be different to the book , but look good still. A bit like I am Legend good film nothing like the book.
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Combine Hunter
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Re: World War Z

Post by Combine Hunter »

As a fan of the book, I can't see any ideas from the book in there. They are just using the title to sell a random zombie movie.
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Re: World War Z

Post by JaySevenZero »

Combine Hunter wrote:As a fan of the book, I can't see any ideas from the book in there. They are just using the title to sell a random zombie movie.
Since those soldiers appear to be wearing Israeli military uniforms I'd say you can see ideas from the book, such as Saladin Kader's account. The only thing I gathered from the trailer is that they decided not to have multiple perspectives but to reference several points taken from the book through the eyes of a single character which would make sense given the usual running time of a movie. There's no reason that the film couldn't reference certain accounts from the book just within a handful of scenes such as Todd Wainio's and Arthur Sinclair's.

To be fair though, I'm not sure why they have decided to change the undead but that's not something I really that bothered about at this point. I guess from a cinematic point the the faster "zacks" can up the ante with regards to pacing.

To be frank, I enjoyed the book but it's far from perfect - I found several of the accounts (David Allen Forbes, Tomonaga Jiro and Christina Eliopolis) bordered on either caricature or the ridiculous.
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Re: World War Z

Post by FudgeMonkey »

when i first heard they were making a film of World War Z I thought that it would be naff, mainly due to the style of the book. Having been primarily retrospective accounts I felt that converting that into a film just wouldn't work as well at telling the overall story as the book and audio book did. Much in the same way as I feel that we don't need film versions of games as converting the essence of the games into a film will always result in having to pander to the visual only format and kind of defeats the point of the game in the first place.

Watching this trailer i'm actually excited to see what they do with it. From the trailer it looks like a prequel to the book and a bit more of a back story to the books main protagonist. That said speedy "infected" do seem to be on the cards and that does not fit entirely with the original storys of the book as such. I'm not sure why they would go in this direction considering how in-depth the book goes into the details of how Brooks' zombies work. That said, I can see how it may be difficult to present the menace and horror of the slower style zombies in large scale way that a box office movie would pull off.

I've heard that it's possibly going to be a trilogy, in many ways i hope not as i'm a pussy for zombie cliff-hangers. Obviously this is only a trailer and the sections we've seen may only be the more action-based to pull in the views but i'm definately keen to see this even if it does branch away from the style of the book. It certainly looks better than the recent spate of zombie films which seems to be veering more towards the mega-croc versus dino-shark schlock-fest sci-fi channel bound shite. I'm looking at you cockneys Vs zombies....gerrrout of my east end.
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