The best I Am Legend adaptation is the radio version.
I was going to say that I actually liked the idea of a faster than normal zombie flood that breaks over the walls and devours everything in site, but you brought up a very good point that swayed me the other way.
It is the ponderous inevitability that makes zombies scary. Take one down and another is there to take its place.
It doesn’t look right and it doesn’t make sense. These zombies are stronger and more athletic than living humans. Even something like 28 Days Later(technically not zombies) doesn’t give them extra powers.
And that flowing look, that’s the kind of thing that works for non-human creatures, since their movement rules can be fudged. But we, being human, know all too well what human movement looks like, and that ain’t it.
Then again, you could argue that the military should have no problem in destroying slow-moving zombies.
I find myself a bit annoyed when a movie is being slammed before it is even out. So what if it deviates from the book? It might still be a good movie.
Then again, you could argue that the military should have no problem in destroying slow-moving zombies.
Max did a pretty good job in explaining why the modern military wasn’t so hot in killing zombies in WWZ, at least until the military got back to it’s 9th-Century melee roots.
I don’t find everything in the book all that great and wouldn’t mind a deviation or two. Heck, I’m not even opposed to the change from slow to fast zombies.
Those zombie wave effects are atrocious. I won’t be able to take this movie seriously when zombies are depicted as a goofy CG flood of limbs puring over obstacles.
That, and the fact that no matter what the zombie virus does to change human behavior (somehow making humans not move like humans), these zombies physically act like liquid. The only way zombies could move in tidal waves like that is if they could somehow move through each other. The stairway clip in particular shows this happening. This looks dreadful.
To be fair, I can completely understand folks being disappointed that the movie is called World War Z and yet appears to have very little in common with the source material. I know I sound like an apologist since I actually found the trailer clip interesting, but I can certainly see the reason for complaints.
He did a terrible job. I know I keep beating this, but either he was willing to sacrifice reality to tell an entertaining story (which is fine and perfectly valid), or he has little idea how military weapons really work.
It’s all about in how how infection passes, and in how quickly the army mobilizes to handle the threat. I don’t remember how it works in World War Z, but if it plays by Romero/Walking Dead rules, then anyone who dies turns. Not only does that mean that anyone is a potential zombie, it also means you’ve effectively got an endless supply of zombies - as long as there are people, there are zombies. That’s a war of attrition that not even the best trained and supplied army can counter.
But if it doesn’t work that way, if zombie infection is by being bitten or contact with an open wound, then it’s just a matter of containment. If the army is ready and pushes back soon enough, yeah they should be able to handle a zombie outbreak.
Yeah, I’m with you on this, Hugin. WWZ is decent but not great, and Brooks’ take on why the militaries of the world fail is one of the weakest parts of the book. He should have used the tried and true “taken out by infection from within” routine–it’s tried and true because it works.
Looks really weird. And fun.
I think the Max Brooks zombie shit is contrived rules lawyering so I’m happy they’re trying to do something else. Watching the military get wiped out by a bunch of shamblers in a big battle would look really silly on screen. You’d have this young lieutenant who’s all “but they’re zombies”, but then the dumb general is like, “use the napalm!”. God damn it would be awful. Give me a weird zombie summer superspectacle instead.
In WWZ’s world, you need to be bitten to be turned. He does a rather solid job explaining how the infection was able to spread unchecked, how it could/should have been stopped, and how it was still stopable until “The Great Panic”.
This wasn’t one of those “overnight there are suddenly millions of zombies”. Instead it was “there are zombies, the governments are covering it up, unaware public is getting swept up in it without knowing what to do, now there are a billion zombies and the world is overwhelmed”
And yes, there has to be a suspension of disbelief for some parts of the book. But also, look at what has happened in some areas. Take Hurricane Katrina; total disarray, government overwhelmed, people dying needlessly. Or the earthquakes in Indonesia and Turkey. Now make it zombies instead.
Well geez, if you only become a zombie by being bitten in WWZ then I’m even less impressed by the outbreak. That’s not even as communicable as ebola, for god’s sake.
And this is why WWZ didn’t work at all for me past about the halfway point. Even if the leaders of the military were so stupid as to not even attempt to understand the enemy they’re fighting, the soldiers on the ground are not stupid. A competent, highly trained fighting force will adapt to unforeseen situations far more fluidly that what is depicted in the book. Any believability is thrown out the window in favor of some kind of weird “haha we sure rely on technology too much, too bad we didn’t give them all badass SHAOLIN SPADES!!!” theme.
The real strength of WWZ was one of the best initial outbreak buildups in the history of the genre. It completely failed to deliver when it came to the actual war part. The filmmakers should go ahead and change whatever they like, it’s hardly a sacred text.
It’s mainly the Battle of Yonkers that’s silly. There’s a whole range of huge construction vehicles that could quite happily drive up and down that column of a million zombies all day, and that’s even before someone designs a big anti-zombie steamroller/combine harvester.
After that, the main military problems are based around logistics, manufacturing and resources, and that’s not unreasonable if the outbreak is global.
Did you ever look at his zombie survival guide? It had a section on weapons. It talked about HMGs, and why they weren’t useful against zombies. Apparently it’s too hard to get headshots, which okay, whatever, fine. Also, since you can’t get headshots the things are useless because being shot doesn’t meaningfully inhibit a zombie. Of course, if we’re actually talking about HMGs*, they do horrific things do the human body and the actual damage inflicted would for damn sure matter.
*He wasn’t talking about HMGs. He was talking about SAWs and similar. Actual HMGs were never mentioned.
Anyway, that’s the quality of research and thought that went into the military stuff.
Humans, including the military, DO win in WWZ. It’s just it’s takes a while, and some improvising.
Also, the point of being overwhelmed is you’re overwhelmed. It does not matter how many bombs you drop or how much AP ammo you fire, you’re overwhelmed. There’s more of them than ammo and bombs in your stockpile. Even if you scored kills for every bullet, it’s not enough.
That’s why it would have worked in a movie to do it the book way. Imagine the most awesome battle ever, with the military unleashing an unprecedented barrage of everything, and after the smoke clears there’s a huge pile of dismembered and burnt zombies…with a even more huge line of still approaching zombies stretching as far away as the eye can see. How is that not an epic, and very cinematic, visual?
The zombies flow like a river of limbs up and over the walls.
That’s how it could look dumb.
link???