Spoilers below, but who cares.
Ok,
I saw it yesterday, right before I saw The Way, Way Back. If I had to sum up my feelings about WWZ in one sentence it'd: "Don't see it, see something else".
I realized that I was all over the subconscious disdain I had for this film for shitting all over the book. That's good. Two minutes into the film, once we see the first zombie and Brad Pitt counts to "twelve" (a nice touch, by the way, but really stupid, like the rest of the film) I had come to a second revelation: I hate these zombies. These zombies are lame, and they suck and they fucking pounce like they're feline predators. This is so stupid, I thought. But I decided to put that behind me. "Ok", I thought, "So let's see if I can just enjoy this as a movie, rather than as a zombie movie. Let the zombie fan boy in me take a back seat".
Well, turns out this this is not only an affront to the book, it's also one of the dumbest films I've seen in the cinema since Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith. I could say Avatar, which was also grade A Moron-stuff, but this is on a different level of dumb.
Apart from the fact that I'm probably growing too old for these stupid, fucking, piece of shit Hollywood 200 million budget family friendly rollercoasters, this film was also really just fucking stupid. But let's deal with the pace first. Ok, so the zombies invade in the second scene. All the sudden, they're on top of everyone, messing up their shit. The film makes it look like downtown Philly is overrun in a matter of five minutes. This is ridiculous. I laughed so hard at this, because there's like an overhead shot of Philadelphia panning backwards to leave us with that "OH MY GOD" feeling, but all it makes is makes the film feel like a parody of Michael Bay films. This is ridiculous, I wanted to shout. Who the fuck wrote this?
So they escape into an Apartment block. It gets overrun by zombies pretty soon after they arrive. So Brad Pitt goes to a military base in South Korea. It gets overrun by zombies pretty soon after he arrives. So Brad Pitt goes to Israel. It gets overrun by zombies pretty soon after Brad Pitt arrives. So Brad Pitt goes on a plane. Guess what happens? It gets overrun by zombies pretty soon after he gets on that plane. Cut the shit, people, let us see something new. You've show the exact same stuff three or four times now. WE GET IT. It's all over the place. But these scenes are all fucking boring, because it's just a bunch of shaky camera shots, a shot into a crowd where you can't tell who's a zombie and who's just a panicked whatever and the occasional (yet way to frequent) CGI animated landscape with a PIXAR-quality wave of zombies running across it. This film never, ever settles down. Name one good film. Ok, so you probably thought of Terminator 2, I know I did. How much action IS there in Terminator 2? Well, there's plenty, but there's way more character moments. There's plenty of scenes that let the characters just interact. We remember the action scenes because of good pacing. There's NONE of that here. It's all action amped up to 11 from the second scene, and boy at the end I was so fucking tired of it. None of them, not a single one, of the action scenes is even any good. There's no scene where you go "oh, that was cool" or "Clever and interesting move on the part of the scriptwriters!" because the scenes mostly just consist of Brad Pitt running and CG-zombies chasing.
Ok, so the pacing is way off. But you can only partly blame that on the movie. This is the way big budget films are heading, and they're not going away soon. But today, it's quantity over quality. "More scenes. More plots. More stuff. Just throw more locations in there! Make it feel epic! Who cares if it's good?"
So there are so many things in this film that just don't make any sense whatsoever. This script is, in my mind, Asylum worthy. It's as stupid as that Sharknado trailer being thrown around.
The zombies in this film turn in 10 seconds. Some character said an earlier strain of the virus clocked in at 5-10 minutes, but we never see that. But Ok, let's say 10 minutes, just for arguments sake. Another character said that the infection spread fast "Thanks to Air travel". Really? Air travel? Most air routes take no less than an hour. Most international flights way more. If you, by any chance, happen to get a zombie on your plane (which is unlikely, considering they turn so fast that nobody would want to bring one to begin with). During the time that it takes to fly a plane from A to B, the zombies would've infected them ten times over. Yet somehow, we're supposed to believe that the planes then land, safe and sound, and spew out zombies that just, simultaneously all over the world, start turning people into zombies? Isn't that a little bit far-fetched? No, strike that, but isnt' that just a little bit retarded? What is this, Nightmare City 2: Electric Boogaloo?
And don't get me started on that whole Israel scene. A minute after Brad Pitt arrives, some asshole starts singing and the zombies hear it and start climbing. Oh. How convenient. Or is it just your bad luck charm you keep bringing with you, Brad Pitt? Or should I say Brad Dick, cause that what you are. You probably started this whole apocalypse, considering the kind of shit you keep getting people into.
So the zombies climb the walls, and we're supposed to think "Oh shit! They're going over the wall!". All I'm thinking is, "Oh, this could be interesting. That wall is 50 meter high maybe, when the zombies fall down on the other side they are going to break their legs, necks, spines, whatever and maybe we could get a nice, slow zombie invasion here". Nope, don't think so. Those zombies, or should I call them Superzombies from Krypton, hit the ground running. That's when I just stood up and yelled "Come on!". That's so stupid! Who the fuck wrote this travesty!?
Think this film couldn't get any dumber? Think again, ding ding, next stop, Surpriseville! In 5 minutes, tops, Jerusalem is turned from the only safe haven on Earth (except for picturesque Wales) into a city overrun by zombies. This is so stupid! Even the writers of Nightmare City, which is the only film that comes close to how ridiculous this shitfest is, had more sense than to have the zombies overrun a city that fast. And those zombies could shoot AND drive cars!
Ok, so then they get on a plane, and I think "Ok, maybe the film's gonna give us that breather from either action or exposition that we need right now". Nope, turns out Surpriseville has two stops. Our characters sit down and bond and talk about shit nobody cares about. Stuff like "Do you have a family?" or "You really should let your hair grow out, cause you look like shit". So we get about five minutes of this. Remember, five minutes. Then suddenly, zombies.
Wait a minute. Five minutes on a plane? But it's been clearly established at this point that it takes 12 seconds for somebody to turn. So it's not as if somebody got on board, settled in and then turned. That's impossible, we know that, cause Brad Pitt has been on that plane longer than 12 seconds. But there's a zombie in a cabinet. What the actual fuck? So was it there the entire time? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What - so -fucking -ever. Who cares, we left Surpriseville long ago, we're in Retardtown now!
So the plane crashes and the only survivors are Brad Pitt and the useless Israeli girl who we don't really give a shit about (convenient, I know). What's her deal anyway? Stop looking so mopey. You lost your hand, everybody else just lost everybody else. We saw a graphic earlier in the film that clearly established that 3,5 billion people died within the first day of the outbreak and you're whining about your hand? Get real, bitch. 'Murrica.
The final act of the film, set in Wales, is the one I assume they had to re-shoot. Thank god. I read on IMDb about what the original ending was, and apparently they go to Russia, they're depicted as evil, soulless people who kill the sick and old, and then Brad Pitt is drafted into the Russian army and starts pondering on the finer philosophies of zombieism right before he leads an invasion of the US, Omaha beach-style. Yeah, that's right, more or less, the original third act was more of the same.
So they're at the WHO center in Wales. And the final act, by far the most sensible one yet, is about finding a disease to infect everyone with so that the zombies won't chase them, because the zombies just chase healthy people. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but at this point I just don't care. I can feel the end of the movie around the corner and like a zombie craving it's meat, I want to get there as soon as possible. But the final act, while still pretty dumb, is still the best of the film. This is not saying much, and it truth it's kinda boring. But boring is better than a sensory overload of shit and loud pixar-effects. There's this one scientist girl who Brad Pitt has a conversation with about his idea of getting a disease, and the dialoge we're treated to is on such an elementary level that you have no trouble buying the fact that this was written in a short matter of time where no time for research was allowed. Bravo.
Anyway, then Brad Pitt finds a disease, or shall we call it a cure, because that's what they start calling it (or a vaccine, rather), which still doesn't make any sense and they inject the world with it. For whatever reason, at this point, Brad Pitt starts having a monolog. He never had one before. Why now? And he starts to talk about how we together can fight this threat to humanity. Who are you talking to Brad? Some fictional audience in this fictional universe of yours? We're talking about fighting zombies here! They don't exist! Stop talking about them in that "If everyone chips in, we can create a better future for our children"-voice that you hear in documentaries with George Clooney about Darfur. This is not Darfur! It's World War Z! AND IT'S SHIT!!!
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by Christopher Jon
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