No I disagree. Fast v. slow zombies lead to different types of movies. It’s about slow inevitability and the futility of the situation, it’s a completely different type of tension with slow v. fast zombies. In a way you could even look at Godzilla '54 v. Godzilla '98 for another comparison.
Sure, it’s different. But it doesn’t automatically mean FAIL or WIN.
As always, it comes down to Story!
Fair enough, but I feel fairly confident when I say that this movie will suck. I’m not talking about my personal feelings but sum of all of the movie reviews. I could be wrong but I don’t think so.
As someone who didn’t read WWZ, is a nerd, knows his weapons, and is very sensitive to the CGI uncanny valley, the trailer looked pretty good. Pitt can act his way out of a lot of things, and the zombie waves didn’t look any worse than the goblin waves in LotR.
The Lord of the Rings movies came out a decade ago. This movie cost $200M in 2012, where photorealistic CGI is the disaster movie standard.
I greatly disliked the book so I’m not upset by any of the changes, but wow. That the trailer focused on Pitt’s kids and whatever unique skill he apparently possesses(???)…
I got an overwhelming “2012” vibe from that trailer.
Realy? I can’t see how you are Cgi sensitive if you didn’t have a problem with the trailer. Not only the zombies but the helicopters were pretty obvious.
Well, yeah. The CGI in LotR was obvious too. I’m just saying for a movie like this where CGI is the only option, considering the shots, it seemed pretty standard. I would much prefer near-seamless CGI like District 9 but you can’t always get that. I understand “not like the book” hate, I have it for so many movies, but the trailer didn’t really seem that bad.
Hey, there’s a small chance in hell this might not suck. But! In this particular case the changes to what is basically the only villain seem so extreme that it really could be a terrible thing.
It instantly changes the tone from a crushing, depressing siege to the equivalent of a two minute stickup of a liquor store. That’s no small thing.
So in that regard it’s almost depressing that they took years and god knows how many script rewrites to end up here. It seemingly ends up being “fuck it, we paid for the rights and we’re using the name”.
Good or bad, it’s still already less than it could have been. I think that’s where people are coming from. I know that’s my own feeling.
Sure, but like I said, I didn’t read the book. I’m coming in blind with a snap judgement vs. other movies only.
I feel like I’ve seen that zombie piling against the wall scene before, like in an old issue of 90s Deadworld maybe.
Take a look at this Sony PS2 commercial with crowds of CG people climbing over one another.
Why does this look better? Bonus points for the people moving pretty slowly.
For me it comes down to naming it after the book and then dumping the book and making it a star vehicle. If it was just another zombie movie, I would watch it as another zombie movie.
But it jettisons all the things that made the book a gripping read. As such it’s DVD list for me.
BTW, Houngan, read the fucking book already. I think you’ll like it.
Edit: They could have made a great movie by using the various scenes in the book to showcase stars in each country. One person in Africa. One person in the army in NYC. One person in China, etc. That’s worked before. But I suppose it would be more expensive to produce. And these days that’s frowned upon?
In this case I’m surprised that Max Brooks didn’t demand that his name in the credits be changed to Cordwainer Bird.
There’s a difference between obvious CGI that still looks ok and the stupid awful zombie fountain at the end of the trailer I saw. Not only did it look worse than anything I saw in LotR ten years ago, but instead of zombies piling on top of each other in a landslide of undead they formed a fucking fountain! You cannot be sensitive to bad CGI and think that was ok!
Yeah, that’s how I feel, too. I’m mostly disappointed because, since this movie is using the right to WWZ, it’s unlikely that a proper version will be made anytime soon, and I’d really hoped for that.
That said, I’ll obviously have to watch this one anyway.
Here’s the old Simon Pegg article on why Zombies shouldn’t run
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set
I’m with mixuk. That Simon Pegg article deserves more discussion than “betrayed fan of the source material” routine. (Which is still preferable to zombie apocalypse logistics.) I think the “too flowy” ascendance of the fast zombie isn’t something new for the sake of it, but an evolution of the monster. Pegg claims zombies embody death, but I say zombie stories exploit our horror of other people in large numbers. If you buy that, then the flood of zombies makes sense. It’s not about being inevitably pulled under by the slow tide, quicksand style, but the individual being smashed to bits under a tsunami of these brainless others.
Hmm, doesn’t Left 4 Dead contain hordes of running zombies? Didn’t hear many complaints about that.
— Alan
Plus satisfying our murder fantasies towards the unknown others. Zombie movies make killing everyone in the out-group okay, and while I get that sort of escapism the current escalation of it into the real world is alarming to me.
That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that someone in the out-group would say.
That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that someone in the out-group would say.