World War Z Trailer

I've been sitting on the WORLD WAR Z trailer and watching it every other day or so to see if I could get a little more excited about the project as a whole. Turns out I can, but just a bit.

The World War Z novel was fantastic. The story was rich and powerful and was based in a reality that sold it 100% for me. It was a disaster novel more than a zombie novel. It happened to have zombies instead of nuclear war or plague as it's base. It was a "people over trauma" story that did a fantastic job speaking to humanity pulling together to overcome. We got to hear stories from all over the world. We got to see what happened in various areas and how they made it through. We got to hear personal stories about individuals taking on the worst natural disaster since the dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the Earth.

Unfortunately, the trailer makes this look like Brad Pitt overcoming being away from his family.

Now, the only reason I choose to do a little WWZ bashing here is that trailers usually make things - even the worst drivel to shame the silver screen - look like it has promise. The DAY OF THE DEAD remake trailer sold me on the chance that it might be watchable without wanting to spit at the TV every five to ten minutes. But the WWZ trailer managed to make me less excited about this movie than the news of it being a big train wreck of a project already had. How did that happen?

Now, I have not made a movie. Not even close. I manage to hack out these little articles that a handful of people read at best, so I'm not going to sit and do the classic "well, this film is going to COMPLETELY SUCK! I would have done..." thing. That's silly. Armchair critique is not my forté. :)

However I will say this - forgive me in advance.

I can take the Pitt-centric nature of the trailer. The drama. The family stuff. All of it. But, I wish the zombies didn't look like ants. They scramble around and fleet foot it down streets and up in piles and it's so distracting! It's just a personal thing. It reminded me of 3D in video games from years ago. We were wowed back then, but now it seems juvenile. It was a funny choice to make.

That being said, I think that the trailer looks beautiful overall. There are subtle things within it (if you look carefully between the cuts of Pitt :)  )   where you can see great stuff like explosions that send zombies flying in a ripple wave and the sheer scope of numbers of them on mass. That seemed to match what was said in the book.

I can only hope that this is one of those rush trailers with effects footage that is not 100%. I still remember a large cable attached to Batman as he swoops down into the museum in the Burton BATMAN trailer that was missing in the final film.

Maybe the zombies will slow down a bit and look a little more human and a little less insect-like in the final product.

Either way...I'll still see this on the big screen. :)


This fan made trailer seems to have hit the mark more than this Pitt Epic, however. Nice job finding and chopping scenes from various zombie films into one, WORLD WAR Z trailer.