Possibly the largest budgeted film ever made due to all of the re shoots that it entailed so after all of this and the controversy of the film being in no way shape or form similar to the source material it claims to be based on, was it worth it? Find out.
I will start out by saying that I've never gotten round to reading the book. Although I have heard many good things about it and know the brief structure and narrative that it follows, after watching the film I know it has absolutely zero relevance to the novel. I'm not sure whether the filmmakers have actually come out and said this themselves because seeing the opening credits sure sends the message to me that they are under the influence of what they have produced does in fact stick to the source material. They couldn't be any more wrong. Having not read the book though, it didn't all that bother me until I finally saw the film. I couldn't help but think that it might have stood a chance of actually being a good or at least decent film had it been on a much smaller scale. World War Z was going for the grand scale and this is the reason it dove away from the source material. It transformed into a summer blockbuster, got Marc Forster and Brad Pitt on board and set sail to try and be an epic zombie flick. I think I could be in a small minority when saying this but it just didn't work for me. Based on all of the positive reviews and feedback the film has been getting, I went into it having some hope after seeing the atrocious trailers that were being pumped out and was under the belief that it could end up genuinely surprising me. Boy was I wrong.
Starting out with the plot, where the hell was it?! To call World War Z's plot 'paper thin' would be a sheer understatement. I think it was destined to fail after I was under the assumption that the little hints and details to what was truly going on were revealed to be about as much as we would get. Right from the get go, there is no mention or depth to what is going on, we are just shoehorned into a random family's life and end up experiencing what they are. I'd much rather have it take place a little bit beforehand and there are some tell tale signs or clues to this demise occurring rather than the family being in the car and suddenly mayhem ensues for no apparent reason. It seemed so nonsensical that I couldn't get my head around why this was the approach taken by the writers. It all makes sense when you look at the tone and style of film that they were going for. They wanted a laid back zombie action film that was going to be easily accessible and maybe be a cut above the average summer flicks that are being pumped out nowadays. I wouldn't even say it achieved that status in my eyes. There needs to be some depth and emotion going into this story for me to even care what's going on, let alone be invested in the characters we are scaling across the world with. That comes down to the writing which seems where the problems are lying. Minimal effort comes to mind when describing how the writers approached World War Z. It all seems lazy, bland work on their part and it was more or less the main reason why the film didn't work. Besides all of the rushed introductions and poor character development, there was never any true uncovering of the virus. We know that it came from around South Africa if I remember correctly but that's about the extent that I would tell you.
Before I go off on another tangent I will praise the film by saying that I liked how it didn't just stick to one place. While I have my complaints about it being on a large scale, I appreciated that they sort of put it to good use and had Gerry travelling across the globe in search of a cure and to uncover what was truly going on. It's much bigger than any other zombie flick I've seen before which I both liked and didn't like aspects about it. Like I said, travelling to these different countries gave us an insight into the global scale of this pandemic which allowed the action set pieces to flow nicely into. What it also allowed which was far more interesting was how other civilizations were dealing with this zombie attack. When Gerry was moving from country to country we got glimpses of how different cultures and people were managing to survive and their beliefs on what was happening. I found these little segments to be the most intriguing especially in Jerusalem when Gerry discovers arguably his most vital piece of information.
A minuscule detail that I will touch upon was finally a zombie film has mentioned the word zombie! How simple but effective it felt to finally be heard on screen. Why filmmakers seemingly avoid the use of this word I don't know but it was somewhat refreshing to hear characters reacting to what was going on naturally. If this sort of scenario played out in real life, you would get hordes of people questioning what was going on and they would put 2 + 2 together, realizing that it might well be a zombie apocalypse. It was mentioned a few times and as soon as I heard it I was thankful that finally somebody wasn't afraid to give some life to this situation in the film industry.
Besides the story and the writing for the movie, the biggest problem for me lied within the third act. I was completely uninterested and bored with this extremely outrageous situation that the characters find themselves in (this paragraph could contain spoilers so if you haven't seen the film, skip the rest of this paragraph or be warned). After the plane that Gerry and his newly appointed partner are aboard crashes, they land in the destination they were in fact trying to get to, coincidence? Then after leaving the wreckage more or less unscathed, they turn a couple of corners and BAM, they're suddenly right where they need to be at a research facility, another coincidence? After the people inside discover who Gerry is, they all come together and try to find a cure. A plan is then devised but a swarm of zombies in the West Wing stands in their way of achieving their goal. Instantly I knew that this was the dreaded reshoots that were being heavily discussed. It feels crammed into the film and is no fit to anything that has taken place so far. The event goes from being on a global scale to the protagonist secluded in a small facility in Wales. There was much debate on the ending between the people involved and I even heard Pitt and Forster fell out over the talks for some time. Well I think the final product is just about as bad as what we were previously going to be given, maybe even worse by the sounds of things. It had no place being in the film and it just made a bland, lifeless film even worse in my opinion.
I will end in a more respectable manner than World War Z did as I'm not quite sure what to make of its abrupt finale. Was it setting itself up for a sequel? Even so, a sequel is a completely seperate piece of work from its predecessor so things should have been somewhat wrapped up or concluded with enough to touch upon in later films if this was the case. That was the feeling that I got anyway because we never truly discover whether all is fine and dandy. Not that I care as such to be perfectly honest because at that point I just wanted the film to end but for people that did enjoy the film, I've heard many complaining about this. I understand why they are annoyed as they have every right to be. It seemed like such a half-arsed attempt to quickly wrap things up that it leads me to believe it got caught up in all the reshoot business and was a last minute job to map out how it would all wrap up.
Overall, World War Z was just a lifeless summer blockbuster that I couldn't really sink my teeth into because it had the potential to be so much more. When both an idea and talent like that are put to waste it shames me to think that what these people were doing, they honestly believed was the best possible way to convert the film from the book. The majority of the film I had no care for because nothing was explained or developed which meant my interest was at ground zero and anything taking place was just dull to me. The action sequences weren't bad but it all seemed a little 'been there, done that' especially at a PG-13 rating, there wasn't much they could show. I really get the idea they approached this in the poorest way possible. Of course, they were going for the big bucks option but with the source material and general idea the film followed, a smaller scoped film with an 18 rating would be the clear approach that I would take that's for sure. Well their money making scheme seems to have failed in the midst of everything because it has seen a poor return at the box office so their choice to turn the plot into a much larger scale production has clearly backfired.
No comments:
Post a Comment