Saw the movie today. Read the book a few years back. My review: largely pretty good, so long as you recognize and accept that the movie has almost nothing to do with the book. The book takes place, IIRC, about 20 years after the zombie apocalypse started, ten years after mankind finally got things under control. The book is a collection of recollections from a wide range of people all over the planet; there is not single narrative, normal “hero” in the normal sense, just as a history of any big war would not be the story of one guy. The movie, on the other hand, is the story of one guy who travels the world in a few days at the beginning of the war, learns some stuff, and basically saves the world. Sorta.
The first 2/3 of the movie was really quite good and effective. Our Hero starts off in Philadelphia, goes to Newark, goes to a ship in the Atlantic, hops a US Air Force Antonov AN-12 (Yeah, figure *that* out) to South Korea, flies from there to Jerusalem and then to Wales. The zombies are quite terrifying; they are of the “sprinter” variety. Oddly, there’s almost no gore… virtually all the killin’ takes place just off screen. The effects are good, and range from the whack-you-upside-the-head to the somewhat subtle… my favorite shot in the movie occurs somewhere on the flight from Korea to Israel, when the French pilot of the USAF AN-12 (yeah…) and Our Hero witness a nuclear explosion in the distance.
There are a lot of strange differences between the trailers and the movie… not only lines from the trailer that weren’t in the movie, but also apparently makeup that was changed (the guy seen in the cage has big buck teeth in the trailer… *no* teeth in the movie) and lines that were greatly altered (“Russia is a black hole” is now “India is a black hole”). This may be because WWZ famously underwent major revisions after the studio saw a first cut, with the last 40 minutes of the movie reshot. I wonder if originally Our Hero went to Russia rather than Wales…
If you are desperate to see the book World War Z made into a faithful movie…this ain’t it. Not even remotely close. But if you like a good End Of The World flick, this ain’t half bad.
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If you haven’t read World War Z, I highly recommend it. While there are satirical elements, it’s nevertheless a remarkable book.
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