Everything Wrong with World War Z

If you haven't read the book World War Z by Max Brooks (son of Mel) and have the intellectual capacity of a loofah, the film version of World War Z was probably, in your opinion, a great zombie film. After all, Brad Pitt is in it. He's a huge star so every movie he does is automatically a good movie, right? How can a big budget zombie movie starring Brad Pitt possibly be bad?

cough Troy coughcough

If you haven't read the book World War Z by Max Brooks (son of Mel) and are a hardcore fan of zombie films - from the old days of Romero right up to...well, uh, the new days of Romero, I guess - you're probably going to catch the myriad flaws present in this hastily thrown together mess of a zombified cash cow. But if you can shut your brain off for two hours, maybe you can enjoy the explosions and the panic and the burning skylines and the stampedes of the living dead swarming through city streets like pissed off cockroaches.

However, if you have read the book World War Z by Max Brooks (son of Mel) and loved it, and then watched the film version, you're probably feeling as profoundly ripped off as I felt upon exiting the theater.

And now they're working on a sequel?
Okay Hollywood, you and I need to talk.
Stop fucking up good books. Seriously. I've fucking had it with your shit.

World War Z never should have been a movie. It's better suited to a miniseries format. You could have had a TV show the likes of which could seriously have given both The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones a run for their money. Each chapter could have been an episode, possibly spanning several seasons. Some episodes could have been quite serious and gory: the tale of the Japanese high school student caught in his high rise, the adventure of the downed fighter pilot following a voice that might or might not be real through zombie infested swamplands, etc. Some could have been highly satirical - the whole "phalanx" joke, the accidental reality TV show torn apart by the pissed off poor... So much potential! All of it pissed away just so you could drape a kicky little scarf around Brad Pitt's neck and get as many shots as possible of his manly mane flowing in the wind. Oh, and endless shots of his wife making beds. YAWN! This is the best you could do? Because this sucks. This looks and feels like you didn't give a single shit about the book. Hell, I doubt if anyone involved with the making of this film even fucking read it. This is just a "let's throw a zombie movie together real quick, give it an opening montage not unlike the Dawn of the Dead remake and The Dead Zone title sequence, slam it into the theaters by summer and watch the money roll in" lazy ass, shit-miserable, sloppy pimp job.I know none of you soul sucking assholes gives a shit about artistic integrity, but thankfully I do not get paid to write reviews and therefore owe you nothing. Your movie sucked. I said it, and I'd say it again if I had to.
Like this shot.

Have any of you ever actually been to a retail pharmacy? I work in one, and this bugs the shit out of me. Look at all of those amber vials lying around. The only time an amber vial should be on the stock shelves next to the actual medications is if it's been returned to stock, the patient having failed to pick up their prescriptions. Now I know the pharmacy has been looted, but the majority of amber vials are going to be found in the bags waiting for pickup. Are you telling me that the looters opened the bags, were disappointed when the bottles turned out to be Metformin and Lisinopril and carefully placed them on the shelves before returning to the bags, hoping to find the C2 score? Shit, you have guns, just blow open the narc safe.

That's a petty gripe, I admit. But it still blew the illusion of reality for me.

Stop
Making.
Fucking.
Beds.

Isn't there anything else to do on this ship? An outdated Redbook you could leaf through? Anything? Jeez lady, an hour ago you were kicking ass in the streets of Newark. Now you're the world champion sheet smoother. No wonder they kicked you off the ship.

One thing the movie does have in its favor is this:

That's Daario fucking Naharis, of House Nobody, King of the Badasses and the Mercenaries, Fucker of Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Piss-Taker of Battles, and Motherfucking sexy. Here he plays Elis, the ranger whose bum leg is never explained but is apparently indicative of some terrible disease which make the zombies not to want to munch his ass. I didn't realize that zombies were so persnickety about The Gout.

Ellis doesn't get much screen time but he makes the most of it with some full lines of dialogue. However, we're far too concerned with the fact that Pitt's plane's gas tanks are empty and they need to refuel and get the fuck out of wherever they are. Do you have any idea how long it takes to gas up a military cargo plane? Depending on the size of the plane and its flight plan, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour. However, in WWZ world, it takes approximately 32 seconds. Shit, it takes longer to gas up a fucking lawn mower than it does to gas up this bigass plane.

So anyway, they gas up and take off for Israel, which immediately goes clusterfuck. Of course, Pitt and his scarf make it safely to an airplane which is hastily rerouted to Cardiff, Wales. Now, it's already been established that the zombie virus takes roughly 12 seconds (give or take) to infect a living person. The flight from Israel to Wales takes approximately 4 hours. Yet somehow, this zombie in the linen closet (or the bathroom or whereever the fuck he was) took nearly the full four hours to turn. And nobody knew he was in there? Wouldn't he have been grunting and pounding on the door, making more noise than a monkey in a cupcake shop? How the hell did he manage to evade detection for most of the goddamned flight?

Okay, then why don't the zombies eat the sick people? What do they care? Can zombies die of cancer? Also, how is injecting yourself with a deadly pathogen going to save you if you immediately give yourself the cure? Is it like a flu shot? How can a zombie, even one acting as a carrier, possibly tell the difference between a terminally ill person and a person whose been vaccinated? Are all zombies directly descended from Jenny McCarthy?





Also, was this intentional?

World War Z, 2013

Just wondering.

Demons, 1985