The most zombies ever: World War Z

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yeah for some reason I didn't notice the pg13, but cmon seriously what is even the point of that

Mr Veg and I were talking about the movie last night, and we both agreed it's not that is SO horrible that you would walk out, or come out feeling annoyed that you'd wasted 2 hours on it. It's just more of a, "well that was a thing that happened that was dumb."

I want to hear more about pterodactyl zombies

they clack their teeth!

actually I just realized what they remind me of: Skeksis, in the Dark Crystal.

you don't really get a sense of the pterodactyl-ness early on, it's not til later when they feature a few isolated zombies that it becomes noticeable

it's really stupid

Skeksis? Now I'm suddenly MORE interested.

Do the zombies merger with the Ur-Ru at the end to become Ur-Zoms y/n?

crossed this off my list of things to do this weekend thanks to you, vg

lol look if you're going to pay attention to anything I say, more fool you :)

in other news Mr Veg got the unabridged audiobook of World War Z, which in Max Brooks' own words IS the movie version of the book. so I'm looking forward to enjoying that on our next car trip.

It's a great audiobook.

I listened to it ages ago and loved it. I didn't know there was an unabridged version. 15 hours! wee :D

Unabridged version just came out.

After I saw Warm Bodies and thought it was a dece-enough film until it went off the rails at the midway point, ain't no way in hell I'm seeing this. It looks like Day After Tomorrow but replace floods with mountains of smelly mobile dead people

Yeah, Max Brooks has said that the audiobook is his version of making the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8aDakPtUco

anyone see the ad for this on the new york times homepage? i drops down and covers the screen when you first get there, and is made to look like news headlines that say "Population Loss to Exceed 4.7 billion" and "Martial Law Declared Across Eastern Seaboard." on first glance, for a microsecond, it's not unconvincing.

do we feel this is responsible advertising?

fyi this is not the responsible advertising thread, this is the pterodactyl zombies thread

I feel like all of the zombie movies coming out now are being geared to people who like making stupid jokes like "Easter = Zombie Jesus Day" and who frequently work the phrase "zombie apocalypse" into every day conversation.

Someone needs to breathe new life into the genre (SEE WHAT I DID THERE...god I suck)

Oh, a vampire. Wrong thread.

once i didn't get hired for a job at a publishing house because i mentioned something about zombies and the editor mostly worked on vampire fiction and actively disliked zombie fiction. or at least, that's when the interview took a turn for the worse...

lol

wow, this was ... not good at all

is the conclusion that Brad Pitt reasons with the zombies and they are given the state of North Dakota to settle in?

the zombies get so bored with Brad Pitt they collectively throw themselves off a cliff into the ocean to make the movie stop

nice to see Congo rightfully influencing 21st century cinema

Wasn't looking forward to this but ended up not minding it all that much. Kind of a reverse of most high concept blockbusters in that rather than opening with an idea and then quickly descending into non-stop action, this one begins with a lot of violence and chaos before developing some ideas in the latter half. Best I can say for it really is that, especially after Man of Steel, I was neither bored nor irritated, and that at least when this movie is stupid (as with the whole sequence involving a commercial airliner and its immediate aftermath), it is audaciously stupid (I half expected the movie to end with Pitt, now just a head, fighting off zombies with a knife between his teeth). Also, was relieved when the movie found something to do with Pitt's wife and children fairly early on and thus didn't consist of him constantly looking for them or rescuing them from harm.

Still have to wonder (potential spoliers ahead why anyone would bother going to the trouble of constructing a supposedly impenetrable wall around a city only to leave it unguarded and rather easily vulnerable to attack. Or how exactly Brad Pitt gets from his final Point A to Point B. Or how zombies, though undead, are invulnerable to broken bones. Also, Marc Forster (director of everyone's least favourite Bond since at least A View to a Kill) is still a crap action director who can't even pull off one of the film's numerous attempts at jump scares. I'm also tired of all movie scientists since Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park speaking in these kind of would-be profound catch phrases ("sometimes the greatest strength is the greatest weakness" or whatever the fuck).

I thought this was kinda fun, but not enough to fight about it.

Weirdest thing was seeing Matthew Fox in what was basically a featured extra role - he never gets a close-up, or even a straight-ahead shot of his face. You only catch it if you recognize his voice or body language in a couple wider shots. He doesn't even have a character name - he's "Parajumper" in the credits!

(I mean, presumably he had a big part that ended up chopped after the re-shoots and edits, but it's just weird how you see & hear JUST enough of him to go "whoa, Jack Shephard?"

Mr Veg was telling me that apparently they are, or were, planning on a trilogy

u_u

i liked man of steel a lot better than this

When I was reading the book I remember being very conscious that "this would make a great movie" :(

if I don't give a fuck by the end of that movie then it's a stretch to think that I would have TWO MORE fucks to give

when I read the book I was thinking this would make the greatest and most expensive hbo series of all time

we're listening to the new extended audiobook of WWZ on car trips now --- fking great imo

forget that stupid boring movie

When I was reading the book I remember being very conscious that "this would make a great movie" :(

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, June 26, 2013 11:09 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? seemed like it could be a good theoretical tv series but infilmable as is, to me

the most interesting parts of it are about, like, bureaucratic reorganization

I don't know why I thought that. Basically because it's pure action, I guess. It's very practical and very visual. I don't remember the bureaucracy parts at all :/

well it's probably my taste! long passages of a dude explaining how the reconstituted US army learned to supply and fight more like a civil war conscript rifle force was way more interesting than, idk, the japanese guy who turned himself into a ninja in the woods

As we were leaving the theater, my one friend lamented the lack of "character development," which I thought was a strange criticism to make about an action movie about zombies. Thinking back on it, though, I kinda get what he means: no one here does anything especially noble or especially awful and there is no reason to feel anything one way or another for any of the characters involved. They could be anyone, which I suppose makes a point of its own, but that's not a point that I think the film was ever trying to make, and it certainly doesn't make for very compelling drama either.

your friend otm

yeah that's a good take.

it's a shame this is so inert because I think you could really argue that it does something interesting with the genre. if zombie narratives are often on some level about immunity--about securing safe places against contamination by "others", building walls, boarding up doors, etc--then this movie seems to suggest that approach is flawed and that "weakness" is what really defeats the zombie. which is to say turning away from a destructive search for greater purity or homogeneity. not sure the movie can really support that these but it's a thought it raises.

I'm trying to read the book now for a book club. 100 pages or so in, I can't get into it at all. (Haven't seen the movie.) Telling a story as an oral history from multiple eyewitnesses' perspectives is an interesting idea but I just don't see much reason to care about anyone or anything in this story when everyone's there so briefly. The political stuff is most interesting to me but not enough time has been spent on it imo. The popularity of this book honestly surprises me because it doesn't seem very immediate or gripping (and it would have never occurred to me to make a movie of this!).

oh dude. dude.

just...look, just keep reading. if you still don't like it by the end fine, but don't quit 100 pages in.

I thought the book was pretty good, save a blind samurai zombie killer or two.

You might be asking: was that a spoiler? Could that really have been a spoiler? Well, I'm not telling.

like the individual stories are good as nutshells in and of themselves - snapshots, I guess -- and then as you get more and more stories you get a much bigger picture of the global impact, political ramifications, military ramifications, as well as how it affects individuals on a personal level.

i love the hell out of it imo

Loved this book so much, and also love the super-nerdy books it owes a heavy debt to: 'The Third World War: August 1985' and 'Red Storm Rising'.

The audiobook was a lot more engaging than the print. Perhaps the best cast ever assembled for an audiobook.

spencer don't forget "warday"