World War Z is a bad movie, and not in a good way - (SPOILERS INSIDE!)

[hedgehog]

Spoiler alert - I will be talking about specifics -






As a movie, what we have here is your basic Scy-Fy Saturday night disaster movie - brilliant but reluctant hero is called into action to save the world at great personal risk, goes through all sorts of hazards to be re-united with happy family. It does feature a top tier star and the CGI effects are better than usual, but J. Michael Straczynski should have begged to have his name removed from the credits!

So, OK, no resemblance to an excellent book, but a pleasant way to spend a hot summer afternoon, right?

My problem is the racism implicit in scene after scene. One of the leads is a UN official from Africa, but it's all down hill from there. (and of course, we never learn what country he's from, just Africa!)

Hey - there's a black cop - but he's just here to loot the store with everyone else - he's abandoned his post!

A major plot point is that the Israelis have built a wall to keep the zombies out, just in time for the disaster. How did they know? Hmm, maybe the Jews started it!

It turns out that the Israelis just guessed right, but shortly after they are overwhelmed when an Arab girl starts singing over a loud speaker, drawing the zombies over the wall.

In the lab at Cardiff, a black woman who has been turned into a zombie is a focal point, but not just any black woman, but a black woman with very dark skin and with her hair in beaded braids. The rest of the zombies there seem to be English, and we can tell because they all have bad teeth!

Then, take a look at the members of the US armed forces. The only African American among them that I recall is the man in the food line who complained about all the extra people on board the ship. Hardly an accurate picture of the US armed forces today!

Check out the closing montage - lots of shots of third world swarms of people. The Russkies are fighting back with sickles and pitchforks. Got to hand it to those Russkies, they're primitive but tough! And the closing shot? A white man standing guard with his rifle, proof positive that we should all be arming ourselves against the hordes out there.

[cynatnite]

1. Hmm....I didn't view any of this as racist when I watched it...

The Israelis were letting a lot of people in which included Arabs. The other scenes just didn't strike me the same way.

I normally despise Zombie movies and keep away from them. The son loves them so I took him. I enjoyed this somewhat.

[leeroysphitz]

2. You may be reading too much into it but I do agree that the movie was BAD. A major disappointment..

in every way.l

[hedgehog]

5. I'm hoping I didn't see what I think i saw, but when I recall the scenes

in the Navy command center, all i recall are white faces.

BTW - did anyone else have trouble hearing some of the key dialog? The sound quality where I saw the film is usually pretty good, but I couldn't understand what some of the characters were saying, especially in the scenes in Korea.

[closeupready]

13. Good, I'm glad you said that, because I also was confused -

I think the first part of the film was edited poorly, and that's why it didn't make a lot of sense, plus the sound quality made it difficult to understand what they were saying.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

3. i guess you see what you go in looking for... n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Just by way of fact, zombie or no zombie when I meet a black woman in Cardiff, I assume she's

British or Welsh. This idea of saying the others 'seem to be English' and she is black suggests that black people are never British. You the viewer decided that a scene in Wales was about some English zombies and one who was black. A room full of zombies in Britain I assume are British, Her Majesty's Zombies, be they white, black or anything else.

[hedgehog]

6. Point taken! I watch enough shows from the BBC that I should know this!

[naaman fletcher]

7. I thought it was damn good

And you are inventing the racism

[HeroInAHalfShell]

34. I completely agree!!!

[Demonaut]

8. thank you so much for ruining the movie for so many here, there are many ways emphasis your

dissatisfaction with a movie than giving away the story....


yeah

[closeupready]

10. He did state he was going to have spoilers.

[Demonaut]

12. should have beenn in the op headline

[closeupready]

14. Maybe he can edit - Hedgehog?

[hedgehog]

18. Done!

[Goblinmonger]

16. First line of the post indicates spoilers

You could have stopped reading then.

[kenny blankenship]

19. There's no ruining this movie, and if telling someone plot points keeps them from going to see it

then the OP is due, in my opinion, half the price of the ticket from everyone who is so deterred.

[Marrah_G]

26. It was really bad........

And I love all things Zombie

The book and its companion piece are awesome though.

[closeupready]

9. I enjoyed the film - saw it on Saturday afternoon. Didn't see racism

in it - indeed, Brad Pitt co-produced the film, and as most people likely know, his own family is multi-racial. So I'm pretty sure he would have objected to the kinds of racism you are implying were part of the story.

Also, if you paid attention to the plot, the history of the Jewish people as persecuted helped Israeli's to ... do something (I forget exactly what, lol), remember he said that if among 10 Jews, 9 agree, the 10th must disagree, and this was a lesson they learned from the Holocaust.

[Recursion]

11. That's a shame. The book was good

Very well written

[kenny blankenship]

15. It was so bad as entertainment that I stopped responding to its ugly ideological baggage.

[Skidmore]

17. I totally loathe zombie movies.

They are worse than that darned Twilight vampire sludge.

[Goblinmonger]

20. Shun

Are there bad zombie movies? Yes. Are there a good deal that are incredibly written? Hells yes.

To say every single piece of zombie literature is worse than the dreck that was Twilight is just ignorant.

[Skidmore]

29. I loathe zombie movies.

As far as I'm concerned there is not one good zombie movie. It does not appeal to me to watch hordes of undead humans noshing on whatever person they can take down.

[Marrah_G]

23. There are a few really great ones

But most are horribly done. Zombie fiction has grown leaps and bounds in recent years so I'm hoping we will see more of the good ones.

[hedgehog]

25. I think the zombie theme can be a metaphor asking what humans would do today if faced

with a deadly pandemic. Alternatively, the hordes of zombies represent a nightmare where the balance between humans and resources goes critical. The book does an excellent job of asking these questions.

[cynatnite]

35. I hate them, too...

It's a pointless plot. Why kill something that's already dead? How many different ways can you kill something that's already dead?

My son loves them much to my dismay and I took him to see this. He enjoyed it and I didn't hate it as badly as I thought I would. I think it's because I like Brad Pitt so much.

I'll still avoid watching zombie movies.

[Marrah_G]

21. WWZ is one of my favorite books

I have almost every zombie novel in text or audio and I was extremely excited that they made this one into a movie...and omg Brad Pitt. it could have been amazing.

Could have been.

It was awful.

[Dash87]

22. I hate how the movie bad mouths zombies too.

Not all zombies are bad. I got a flat tire once, and a zombie with one eye and half of a face limped over and fixed it for me. He even gave me one of those pine air-freshener things at the end. He didn't try to bite my jugular like in the movies.

What a guy.

[prole_for_peace]

38. <3

[link:|

[Iggo]

24. I didn't notice the other stuff, but I did pick up on the I/P thing.

I thought, "Oh, that's gonna piss some people off."

[GeorgeGist]

27. Zombie shit is so lame.

[Mr Dixon]

28. IMO

saw this Friday it was pretty good, my girls loved it i have no issues with it.

[Marrah_G]

30. As far as the thoughts about anti-semitism............

WWZ is written by Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks.

[Chan790]

32. ...and there is no anti-Semitism in the book that I recall.

This is almost entirely unrelated from the source work though. The book was mostly a social commentary...the movie is an action flick with all the social commentary stripped away.

It's like they had a bad script for a zombie movie and thought "Fuck, I bet we can make millions globally if we tack the WWZ brand name on it since we hold the production rights to the book and people really like the book."

[Marrah_G]

33. I agree- nothing like the book

and your last sentence....EXACTLY what I felt.

If you want to "hear" a great zombie story, WWZ on Audio is amazing and done with a great list of actors.

[Jessy169]

31. I didn't notice any racism in the movie -- I thought it was pretty good

Don't agree with your analysis. I see what you're talking about about, but I just don't interpret it the same way as you.

[razorman]

36. Yeah, but what about the depiction of Zombies? The movies

always seem to show them in a bad light.

[LordGlenconner]

37. You're probably reading too much into it

I thought it was solid. Nobody who has read a book that is turned into a movie is ever happy with the celluloid version so that's no real surprise. It's almost a cliche at this point.

However, I didn't think the 3D added a lot to the production and certainly not enough to warrant the added expense to the ticket. I paid $11 during the middle of a weekday to see it.