In World War Z, Brad Pitt stars as a UN employee racing against time and fate as he travels the world trying to stop the outbreak of the zombie pandemic. The movie based off the hugely popular post-apocalyptic book by Max Brooks.
While I haven’t read the book, a cursory synopsis online reveals a completely different structure than the movie. Rather than an overview or narrative, World War Z is a collection of individual accounts in the form of first-person anecdotes. I understand why the movie version would focus on one person but I personally would have found it more interesting if they featured several, diverse accounts of the outbreak.
The other thing that seems to confuse online commenters is the “zombie” part. In the trailer, it looks like the zombies are fast which goes against the grain of Brooks’ book, which sought to make the outbreak as realistic as possible. In Brooks book, zombies are slow-moving undead humans, devoid of intelligence — rotting corpses.
Terraxos wrote on YouTube: “Way to screw up an adaptation. The book was interesting because it did something new. This looks like an utterly generic disaster movie; replace the zombies with anything else and you would have pretty much the same trailer.”
Based on what I’m reading I’m disappointed at the direction, however, the grand scale of the Marc Forster-directed movie certainly looks visually appealing. Have you read the book? What are your thoughts on the trailer?
Watch the trailer here
It has been confirmed that Brad Pitt will be starring in an adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie novel World War Z. As E! Online reports, Max Brooks made the confirmation at Comic-Con in San Diego.
Though the details are slim at the moment, some key roles have been filled. Brad’s company, Plan B Entertainment, has also secured the rights for the production and any sequels that might follow this picture and Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) is slated to direct.
If you haven’t read the book, the publisher’s website has a short synopsis: “The end was near. Zombies were taking over. They were infiltrating ever corner the world. No neutral ground existed, no nation was secure, and we were in serious danger of becoming extinct – overrun by hordes of the living dead.”
They’re hoping for a 2012 release, so maybe this is what was meant by predicting the end of the world!
