It’s a fun, enjoyable zombie movie, but the book was never going to transition well to being a movie. It’s a collection of fictional interviews with varied persons’ experiences surviving the zombie apocalypse (from a nuclear submarine captain to a blind man in the Japanese wilderness). Ideally it should be a mini-series with each episode focusing on a different character’s story as they are interviewed.
Can you imagine a mockumentary with photos, reenactments, Redeker interview, military helicopters recording a supply drop following the redeker plan and thankful survivors, a historian explaining the Pakistan India war, live head cam footage of the Battle of Yonkers as that soldier retells his experince. It ends with some Drill Instructor explaining the box formation and taking your time with shots. Cuts to a drone going up and showing survivors in formation and hundreds of zombies in a large circle around them.
When they announced a movie with Brad Pitt, I knew it would be bad. The book reads like a multi épisode TV show without a main character (and it could be a great adaptation).
When I pirated the movie version… It was so bad I regretted wasting bandwidth for that
Loved the book. When I first watched the movie I hated it. as a movie by itself it’s ok, sort of free on me. But then I thought the movie works if you treat it as a prequel
I really liked the audiobook form. The story is basically told through an interviewer asking people what they experienced and the audiobook has different voice actors for all the characters.
The audiobook was good except for the Chinese characters. For some insane reason they decided to have white voice actors do a bad Chinese accent instead of just hiring actual Chinese voice actors.
The movie isn’t very interesting, but it’s not outright bad - unless you were hoping for a faithful adaptation. The book has a MUCH more interesting storyline.
I think they would have gotten away with that movie if it wasn’t for the ending. Like yeah they completely destroyed the source material, but at least it’s possible to have an interesting movie. Except like the last freaking third of the movie is just boring. Crushingly boring.
The book is wonderfully written, and actually fairly insightful from a disaster preparedness and policy standpoint. It’s been a while since a read it so forgive me if the details aren’t exactly correct. Its written from the viewpoint of a journalist traveling the world post zombie apocalypse. He is collecting stories from survivors of various major events that happened during the zombie outbreak. Each chapter details a different event conveyed by a different witness, so it’s not a cohesive single plot story. More like working notes of someone preparing to write a history of a major global disaster. It highlights some of the mistakes made and lessons learned as events unfolded.
Imagine the book as almost a Ken Burns style documentary made after the zombie war, going back and interviewing the people who were there and lived through it collecting their stories.
It’s been a while since I read it, but each chapter is a different person being interviewed telling their story, more or less in chronological order. The stories don’t really overlap directly with each other, but together they paint a great overall picture of the war from start to finish.
And it’s a good cross section of different people, soldiers, scientists, ordinary people, an astronaut who was stranded on the ISS for the duration of the war, etc.
I think everyone who read the book really wants it to be picked up as a mockumentary miniseries in that sort of style with “archival” footage with people being interviewed giving voiceovers and all the other usual documentary trappings.
And the Zombie Survival Guide is also a fantastic companion to it that is basically done as a, well, survival guide, that was distributed during the war, and is referenced once or twice throughout WWZ
vaguely gestures at World War Z
WTF was that movie? Did they buy the rights to the title, but not the content?
Ruined by Zionist propaganda
Pretty much how that stuff happens.
I had no experience of the original book and enjoyed the movie.
It’s a fun, enjoyable zombie movie, but the book was never going to transition well to being a movie. It’s a collection of fictional interviews with varied persons’ experiences surviving the zombie apocalypse (from a nuclear submarine captain to a blind man in the Japanese wilderness). Ideally it should be a mini-series with each episode focusing on a different character’s story as they are interviewed.
yup
And the tenth expert bit!
The best part of that movie is Peter Capaldi being listed as “W.H.O. Doctor” in the credits.
Ah, I missed that. Clever.
It’s unclear if it was intentional or just a coincidence. World War Z was released two months before Capaldi was announced as The Doctor.
Can you imagine a mockumentary with photos, reenactments, Redeker interview, military helicopters recording a supply drop following the redeker plan and thankful survivors, a historian explaining the Pakistan India war, live head cam footage of the Battle of Yonkers as that soldier retells his experince. It ends with some Drill Instructor explaining the box formation and taking your time with shots. Cuts to a drone going up and showing survivors in formation and hundreds of zombies in a large circle around them.
Much like there has been no Dark Tower movie, there has also been no World War Z movie.
They don’t count.
When they announced a movie with Brad Pitt, I knew it would be bad. The book reads like a multi épisode TV show without a main character (and it could be a great adaptation).
When I pirated the movie version… It was so bad I regretted wasting bandwidth for that
Loved the book. When I first watched the movie I hated it. as a movie by itself it’s ok, sort of free on me. But then I thought the movie works if you treat it as a prequel
I thought it was an entertaining movie, but I haven’t read the book. Ima go download it right now.
I really liked the audiobook form. The story is basically told through an interviewer asking people what they experienced and the audiobook has different voice actors for all the characters.
The audiobook was good except for the Chinese characters. For some insane reason they decided to have white voice actors do a bad Chinese accent instead of just hiring actual Chinese voice actors.
You’re right some were a miss. but the concept was cool.
The movie isn’t very interesting, but it’s not outright bad - unless you were hoping for a faithful adaptation. The book has a MUCH more interesting storyline.
I was hoping for a faithful adaptation instead of just another zombie flick.
As was I. It felt like such a generic, by the numbers zombie movie with only some rare nods to the title.
I should reread the book. It was hyped as a good book. It was a good book.
Then I went to see the movie. Came out of the cinema and muttered “well that was a bunch of unrelated nonsense”. Went home.
I think they would have gotten away with that movie if it wasn’t for the ending. Like yeah they completely destroyed the source material, but at least it’s possible to have an interesting movie. Except like the last freaking third of the movie is just boring. Crushingly boring.
Oooo as someone who has seen the movie and never read the book, any sales pitch for me for the book?
The book is wonderfully written, and actually fairly insightful from a disaster preparedness and policy standpoint. It’s been a while since a read it so forgive me if the details aren’t exactly correct. Its written from the viewpoint of a journalist traveling the world post zombie apocalypse. He is collecting stories from survivors of various major events that happened during the zombie outbreak. Each chapter details a different event conveyed by a different witness, so it’s not a cohesive single plot story. More like working notes of someone preparing to write a history of a major global disaster. It highlights some of the mistakes made and lessons learned as events unfolded.
The audiobook is also quite good. It’s fully cast, so each section is voiced by a new actor who writes the letters in the collection.
Imagine the book as almost a Ken Burns style documentary made after the zombie war, going back and interviewing the people who were there and lived through it collecting their stories.
It’s been a while since I read it, but each chapter is a different person being interviewed telling their story, more or less in chronological order. The stories don’t really overlap directly with each other, but together they paint a great overall picture of the war from start to finish.
And it’s a good cross section of different people, soldiers, scientists, ordinary people, an astronaut who was stranded on the ISS for the duration of the war, etc.
I think everyone who read the book really wants it to be picked up as a mockumentary miniseries in that sort of style with “archival” footage with people being interviewed giving voiceovers and all the other usual documentary trappings.
And the Zombie Survival Guide is also a fantastic companion to it that is basically done as a, well, survival guide, that was distributed during the war, and is referenced once or twice throughout WWZ
IIRC: The movie was written long before they slapped the title on it.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
You already got great responses. I’ll add that World War Z is a direct ripoff of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation. And I mean that in a good way.