The book does not contain a silver bullet solution to the zombie solution. Humans do win the world back, but they do so through hard work and optimizing their zombie-killing methods over time. There was a shovel/sword thing described in the book as the turning point invention, arising from the men of the ranks. Its absence from the movie was the biggest disappointment to me. Not so much because the shovel was going to be exciting as it told me the movie wasn’t going to do what I most enjoyed about the book. I liked the book’s “these things didn’t work; this technique showed promise” workman-like approach to describing the conflict. The movie had none of that. Everything that was original about the source material was left out.
I would offer in weak defense of the zombies-hate-disease solution that they do at least establish it throughout the film, so it didn’t feel like a third act deus ex machina. It was a kind of dumb I could handle. Really, that being the key to survival was much easier to buy than nobody noticing it until Pitt finally figures it out.
I watched the first act today on Netflix. A nice opening to the movie, from first discovery to their evacuation from New Jersey rooftops.
Nope, not in the book. As Gus notes Brooksian zombies are standard.
Keep going…
-Tom
Don’t. If you quit now, you can just live your life believing the rest of the movie followed suit. It’s for the best.
I was thinking of just leaving it there. It’s a nice self contained little short story I watched. Why spoil it?
You know, actually if you want to finish it out of curiosity, watching it as episodic chunks wouldn’t be a half bad idea. There were several parts in the movie that I thought would’ve been cool if it were a smaller movie about just this new setting or development or whatever.
So maybe just take a break each night when the setting changes. The parts are better than the sum of the whole, or something.
I really would love to see the original ending of this movie, with the crazy battle in Russia.
They should have considered a TV mini-series instead of a film feature.
Netflix has updated with a “Unrated Director’s Cut” type banner for this film. Anyone know what the new material is?
A few blood spurts on a couple of scenes.
I figured as much. I was hoping for a deleted scene or two near the beginning. You know, fun zombie stuff.
I finished the rest of the movie today.
And I liked it. Not the strongest movie, but not too bad either. One thing I liked about the movie is how it skipped over things that weren’t important (like showing the plane land in Korea), but did linger on many little things that were important (like Gerry hugging his wife goodbye, focusing on his hands as he tightened them in his potentially final hug). Good stuff. I even liked the idea of camouflage a lot. A very clever way of setting up the final sequence in the movie.
Yah, I enjoyed it as well when I watched it. I watch a ton of horror…like a ton of A / B / C / college handycam horror and this rates pretty high. Not an all time classic, but an enjoyable high budget zombie flick.
I wonder if the Blu-ray is available in Japan to rent for 86 yen yet. I might be willing to risk it.
What.
World War Z’s sequel has confirmed a release date. The Brad Pitt-produced project (via Plan B) is set to hit theaters on June 9, 2017.
Director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Impossible) will work alongside screenwriter Steven Knight, who will pen the sequel for Paramount and Skydance.
Huh. Well, that should be… a movie with stuff.
Not too surprising given that (according to your article) the original has earned $540 million worldwide to date.
For some real WTF have you heard the original ending of the movie before audience feedback told them it sucked:
original ending
[spoiler]Gerry [Brad Pitt] [ends up in Moscow and] reaches Karin [his wife]. He explains to her that the cold is the way they’ll win battles, which does her no good because it just so happens she and the kids are in a refugee camp in the sweltering heat of the Everglades. They’re in the type of camp where you have to have something to trade to survive, and it just so happens the one thing Karin had to trade was herself. She doesn’t explicitly tell Gerry this, but after she hastily hangs up the phone we see that she’s in some kind of reluctantly consensual relationship with the soldier who rescued them from the rooftop at the beginning of the movie.
…
[The soldier coercing his wife] then calls Gerry back and explains to him that he should just stay wherever he is and start a new life like he and Karin have. Gerry refuses to accept this, though, and he embarks on a rage mission to get back to his wife and daughters. Trouble is the nearest port that won’t be frozen is thousands of miles away, so there’s a montage of Gerry, Simon and Segen crossing various terrain until they ultimately end up on a boat. They’re now off of the Oregon coast and they attack the American shore like it’s D-day. And that’s how the movie ends. Not with Gerry having discovered a cure, but with him storming across the United States of America to get Karin back.[/spoiler]
Some of the scenes from Moscow end up in the movie in the montage of fighting zombies around the world.
Half a billion dollar box office guaranteed a sequel, the surprise is that it’s taking so long. From the sound of it they don’t even have a script yet. What have they been doing all this time?