World War Z, June 2013

[Fixer808]

So, THIS happened today. Trailer number 1 (http://zombieresearchsociety.com/archives/12933)! I have to say, it looks pretty decent!

[sentient02970]

Damon Lindelof, screenplay

[thevoid99]

Damn.... this better be good.

[thelastdisciple]

I think it looks like ass to be honest, look at those crappy CGI zombies! good grief!

[aggroculture]

Babel. With Zombies.

[Self.Destructive.Pattern]

Wow, what annoying music throughout that trailer. The whole zombie conjoined zombie wave is throwing me off a bit here, but it doesn't look that bad.

[uroboros]

WWZ only in name. Travesty that this wasn't a mini-series. Despicable. Reprehensible. Suck my toes h*llywood. You done f'd up a great piece of literature again. I am literally ill with rage.

[GibbonBlack]

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAARM d-dun du d-dun.............BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAARM.

I reckon this'll be the start of the downfall of the whole zombie thing

[Frozen Beach]

This looks absolutely fucking stupid. Why bother adapting a book if you're going to make it barely even a shell of what it was? This isn't World War Z. This is something else entirely.

[somethingelse]

So sick of zombies.

[aggroculture]

So sick of zombies.

This. I can't stand the zombie thing, never have. 28 Days Later was such overrated crap. Ooh it's different, they run faster. No: it's the same old nonsense. Zombies want to eat us...whatever. It's always the exact same formula, same monsters. I can't stand watching something I've seen so many times before.

[Reznor2112]

This. I can't stand the zombie thing, never have. 28 Days Later was such overrated crap. Ooh it's different, they run faster. No: it's the same old nonsense. Zombies want to eat us...whatever. It's always the exact same formula, same monsters. I can't stand watching something I've seen so many times before.

Maybe because 28 Days Later wasn't even a zombie movie...but ok we will move on.

And if you keep watching the same old stuff you've seen before than that is your own fault. Quit watching it.

[frankie teardrop]

as overplayed as zombies are, there have been a few notable entries these past few years. there's walking dead (both mediums) for starters. on the film front- both fido and zombieland were a lot of fun, though fresher since they were amed as comedy/satire. world war z was a tremendously fun and thrilling read, but this movie trailer makes it look like absolute dung. really unfortunate. i'm with whoever thinks this would have been handled better as a proper mini-series.

[Corvus T. Cosmonaut]

This looks awful. Like, Roland Emmerich-status awful, and cheaply CGI-laden and totally one-note.

Rez, a movie can be a 'zombie' movie without containing explicitly familiar zombies. 28 Days Later was, essentially, a zombie film. Why would you write-off a movie attempting to do something a bit different with the genre in one line, and then in the very next chastise another poster for not watching enough movies that try to do something a bit different with the genre?

[Magtig]

I was never into zombie anything until I read, WWZ. It was like Band of Brothers, but with the zombie apocalypse. The plausibility the author was able to establish is what really drew me in. This looks like a run of the mill video game.

[PooPooMeowChow]

"only one man can save the world"
Running zombies.....
This isn't the WWZ I read....

Also 28 Days Later wasn't about zombies, go watch it again, it's a brilliant horror/suspense film.

[aggroculture]

How is it not about zombies?
Wikipedia says "28 Days Later is a 2002 British zombie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie) horror film (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film) directed by Danny Boyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Boyle)."
Not watching it again.

[wight rabbit]

How is it not about zombies?
Wikipedia says "28 Days Later is a 2002 British zombie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie) horror film (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film) directed by Danny Boyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Boyle)."
Not watching it again.

You're on Wikipedia... I could easily go on that entry and edit it to say, "28 Days Later was not a 2002 British zombie horror film, but it was directed by Danny Boyle." Would that ease your mind? They weren't zombies, they were people with an infection.

[frankie teardrop]

guys, this is ridiculous. 28 days later is a mere stone's throw away from the preconceived definition of the term 'zombie' to be considered a zombie flick. there are plenty of deviations from today's general definition (romero-esque creatures), including films that preceded night of the living dead and featured TALKING zombies. chew on that. toss in the original defintion of voodoo-magic created zombies (which aren't even dead, for fuck's sake), and god damn i can't even think straight because that movie is close enough so just let it go already.

thank you, and let's continue to discuss world war z, which still looks like a pile to me, but at least we'd be getting the thread back on track.

[orestes]

I know it's a teaser trailer but jesus, at least show one zombie up close.

[Frozen Beach]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVUyQyUWJg
The footage that people have filmed of them filming looks better than what they've actually filmed, if that makes any sense.

[ibanez33]

I think it looks pretty good, but although I haven't read WWZ, what I know of it makes me think it should've been done as a miniseries or as a slow-burning trilogy or something like that.

[Self.Destructive.Pattern]

You're on Wikipedia... I could easily go on that entry and edit it to say, "28 Days Later was not a 2002 British zombie horror film, but it was directed by Danny Boyle." Would that ease your mind? They weren't zombies, they were people with an infection.

The concept as far as them getting infected is the same, but they are infected with RAGE. They are not undead walking moaning zombies like every other movie out there. And yea, Danny Boyle was involved here...

[Zipfinator]

I know it's a teaser trailer but jesus, at least show one zombie up close.

You could see the face of a zombie for like 1 second when he was trying to keep a door closed!

And jeepers... Who gives a fuck on the 28 Days Later zombies/not zombies argument.

[wight rabbit]

What about the guy that was running after Brad on the rooftop?

[Self.Destructive.Pattern]

Yea, that was the only one that I noticed. When they are trying to break the door down you can barely see him. I think the Zombies in this movie is what is intriguing me the most to see this.. it's different.

[PooPooMeowChow]

Just to explain my self. If you take the zombies/infected out of 28 days later and replace it with any other dooms day scenario and it will be the same movie.

[orestes]

What about the guy that was running after Brad on the rooftop?

Looks like Bradley Cooper after a bender.

237

[Reznor2112]

This looks awful. Like, Roland Emmerich-status awful, and cheaply CGI-laden and totally one-note.

Rez, a movie can be a 'zombie' movie without containing explicitly familiar zombies. 28 Days Later was, essentially, a zombie film. Why would you write-off a movie attempting to do something a bit different with the genre in one line, and then in the very next chastise another poster for not watching enough movies that try to do something a bit different with the genre?


28 Days Later was a suspenseful outbreak virus film. It has nothing to do with dead corpses reanimating and eating the living.

The infected in 28 days later simply became engulfed with rage and attacked uninfected. Now explain to me how this entitles 28 days later to be a fucking zombie film?

[Fixer808]

God, can't this town go one day without a riot?? Seriously, let's not get into a fucking semantics war, please. Yes, 28 Days Later featured a "rage virus" and not a zombie infection, let's not dwell on it. And yes, I am well aware of the similarities, "rage virus" proponents.

[aggroculture]

I don't see why we're not allowed to discuss zombies in a more general sense in this thread. Do we need a "controversial opinions about" thread to talk about anything that isn't strictly related to individual thread topics?

My objection to the zombie genre is that each new example deviates to such a tiny degree from the classic idea of the zombie. But when that happens, you get people saying "oh well that isn't a zombie." As a non zombie expert, to me the bad guys in 28DL looked pretty much like the zombies I know and have no time for.

To me the zombie has become like Frankenstein or Dracula: one of those cliches that has moved into parody land and is just stuck there. I don't see why we keep making zombie movies and writing zombie books. I read Colson Whitehead's Zone One because everyone was raving about it. And it was the. Same. Old. Zombie. Story. Not a lick of deviation from the tired old zombified formula. It's like the zombie genre is a mindless corpse itself, trudging forward, cannibalistically devouring itself. On the other hand I enjoyed Crossed: I guess that brought a whole new level of fucked-upness to the genre: Sadistic rapist zombies.

Basically I want new monsters. Not old ones. This can be done: xenomorphs, cenobites, replicants, necromorphs. There's something new going on with these: OK granted, a xenomorph is basically a dragon, and a cenobite, basically a devil. But they feel different. With a zombie it’s so predictable: you always know the zombie wants to eat you/make you into another zombie. I want monsters where I have no idea what they want and what they will do.

But why are zombies so popular again? Is it something to do with them being a criticism of capitalism / economic inequality/ are zombies hordes of the world’s poor? If I recall correctly, the original zombie was a slave, zombified to work on plantations in the Caribbean. In academia right now there’s a lot of interest in zombies, such as this course here: http://thebrooklyninstitute.com/bisr_course/zombi-and-the-politics-of-representation/

[frankie teardrop]

28 Days Later was a suspenseful outbreak virus film. It has nothing to do with dead corpses reanimating and eating the living.

The infected in 28 days later simply became engulfed with rage and attacked uninfected. Now explain to me how this entitles 28 days later to be a fucking zombie film?

what you 'rage virus/infection' people don't seem to understand is that zombies are often the result of viruses, disease, radiation, etc... and they transfer this through bites, regardless of how much of the body is also consumed/torn apart in the process. it's all rather plague-minded. sometimes, the living do not die and the disease is airborne. also worthy of note is that the original zombie had nothing to do with flesh consuming and was just a mind control device in voodoo culture. it was never a rule that they had to be dead.

please stop trying to make it seem like the 28 days later infected are some new and original movie monster. while i understand that they have some new traits and key differences (can run, are not strictly dead, can be killed more generically), it's a very similar premise that owes a great deal to zombie lore of the past. 28 days later, in my opinion, revolutionized the romero zombie and added some new things that have been since adopted into zombie culture. however, there's still the same general themes present in both romero's zombie flicks and 28 days later, and a million other post-apocalyptic, survival horror movies. there are still plenty of zombie cliches to be found in both 28 films.

i might concede that 28 days took things in a new direction in the way that i am legend (the matheson story, obv.), while riffing off vampires AND the plague, inspired romero himself, but to call the two completely unrelated is baffling. it's evolution of a tired genre, doing something new with an idea that's been in circulation for ages.

[frankie teardrop]

cenobites

man, they were awesome for a while. lost all respect for the idea once the cd-tossing cenobite was born. but in general, clive barker is remarkably original.

[Sallos]

If anyone's interested, the original draft from 2007.

http://api.ning.com/files/UKi9OtXhAVLZDeqYND80ZSdaWKU1lIydN9wYGGQvBDyFcdgASr mojACEs1s6KbDepTwOZO9I--3xLFiL7eq9*giGKz3pV*EB/WORLD_WAR_Z__J_Michael_Straczynski1.pdf

[Sallos]

man, they were awesome for a while. lost all respect for the idea once the cd-tossing cenobite was born. but in general, clive barker is remarkably original.

Cenobites are still awesome, can't wait for Tortured Souls. If it's ever going to see the light of the day that is.

[Corvus T. Cosmonaut]

28 Days Later was a suspenseful outbreak virus film. It has nothing to do with dead corpses reanimating and eating the living.

The infected in 28 days later simply became engulfed with rage and attacked uninfected. Now explain to me how this entitles 28 days later to be a fucking zombie film?
"Worst. Episode. Ever. Rest assured that I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."

[Zipfinator]

I came across this poster for 28 days later.

http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/11/MPW-5897

[orestes]

Ugggggghhhhhhh, guys can stop drop the histrionic poses?

[mfte]

Went to see the movie last night. Yes, the crowds of zombies are obvious CGI but its still pretty awesome when there's thousands of them rushing something. Yes, Brad Pitt plays an all around good guy who men wish they were like and women wish they were with. Yes, the movie is repetitive and plays pretty much like the same scene over and over with more grandeur every time. Yes, the 3rd act feels a little rushed. No, I never read the book.

It was worth the $5 CAD.

[Space Suicide]

I heard this got degraded to a PG-13 rating. How's that work out?

[mfte]

I didn't notice until there was a scene where sexy aging Brad Pitt gets a crowbar stuck in a zombie's skull while another zombie is running at him. He tries to get it unstuck and I wondered why they weren't showing the dead zombie head like any other movie or tv show would. After that part is started to see how little (to none) blood/gore there was.