It's good! It's really good! Grim and violent and shocking, yet not much gore. Terrific Brad Pitt performance. Spectacular visuals. Whatever the problems were with rewriting and reshooting the final reel have been worked out. I'll post my review on Friday.

I liked the film as well. Not as much as Ed (but, he's a sucker for anything with explosions and action). I enjoyed it. It's nothing great, but, decent B-movie fun - albeit, a B-movie that cost $250M! The script owes more than a bit to I AM LEGEND by the recently departed Richard Matheson. I liked that the PG-13 kept it low key and intense, emphasizing suspense and character over show-stopping effects showcases, the Israel sequence notwithstanding.

Here is Director Marc Forster on the original ending and why it was changed - and, why we'll probably never see it.

Spoilers,natch:

http://www.movies.com/movie-news/marc-forster-world-war-z-original-ending/13541

L.A. Connection wrote on Sep 17^th, 2013 at 1:33pm:

The script owes more than a bit to I AM LEGEND by the recently departed Richard Matheson. I liked that the PG-13 kept it low key and intense, emphasizing suspense and character over show-stopping effects showcases, the Israel sequence notwithstanding.

(1) The script certainly didn't owe much to Max Brooks's novel, that's for sure.  Sure, some of the same events happened, but giving the audience one viewpoint character and linearizing it killed the most exciting thing about the novel:  The feeling of a global calamity that was dealt with differently everywhere, in parallel.

(2) The PG-13 rating didn't force them to keep it low-key and intense, but just forced the gore and violence off-screen.  And, you know, a zombie film needs that.  You need to see that these were once human beings who have been twisted and mutilated, and killing someone who was your friend just moments ago but is now no more than a rabid animal should be viscerally awful.

Sure, the deleted ending looks like it was legitimately terrible, and the new one isn't a bad piece of filmmaking, but it certainly goes alongside Man of Steel in a summer "missing the point by a mile" double feature.

While I did not hate the film I was disappointed that it was not the big action film promised by the trailer and TV ads.
But the very worse thing about the film was that because of it there will likely never be a movie adaption of the book which is a heck of a read.

It's definitely a shame that more elements of the novel don't come through in the movie, but it did finish up as an intense thriller. Not sure how they'll get on with the sequel.

da_Bunnyman wrote on Sep 20^th, 2013 at 11:05pm:

While I did not hate the film I was disappointed that it was not the big action film promised by the trailer and TV ads. But the very worse thing about the film was that because of it there will likely never be a movie adaption of the book which is a heck of a read.

I concur.

I was fine with the movie. Nothing great, but a decent PG-13 zombie flick. Of course, I hadn't read the book, so I wasn't "disappointed" in what was left out.

The book would probably do best as a mini-series?

L.A. Connection wrote on May 15^th, 2014 at 9:58pm:

a decent PG-13 zombie flick.

Oxymoron. :)


L.A. Connection wrote on May 15^th, 2014 at 9:58pm:

The book would probably do best as a mini-series?

Well, I'm guessing it does best as a book, although it might be a nifty audio drama if someone put the right effort into it.  I suppose a miniseries might be the best way to translate the experience of the book, although it would be of the type that's more an anthology than the "long movie" or "short television series" that we usually see, to the point of having different writers & directors adapting the parts that happened in their corner of the world.

Jay Seaver wrote on May 16^th, 2014 at 12:09am:

L.A. Connection wrote on May 15th, 2014 at 9:58pm: a decent PG-13 zombie flick. Oxymoron. :)

WHITE ZOMBIE would be rated PG-13 or less, today. Very good Zombie movie.

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE as well. Perhaps the finest Zombie movie ever made.

:P