Results 91 to 120 of 135
Thread: World War Z (the film)
-
2012-11-10, 03:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: World War Z (the film)
How's a one hour video about his writing style, realism and all the other stuff we're harping on. That good enough?
And he says he did a lot of research, and I'm quite certain he did, but that doesn't mean that every printed detail is presented as the word of a professional and an expert quoting facts.
It's his attempts to make the world plausible and realistic where his work breaks down and makes reading his books an utterly. His world isn't realistic. And sure, you can say "But it's a Zombie Story! It doesn't need to be Realistic" but ya know, the author disagrees with you. On a lot of points. He hates "Brain Eating Zombies" because it's not realistic. He's gone so far as calling Return of the Living Dead the Song of the South of Zombie movies. Strong words, albeit amusing. But it speaks volumes about the man and his general level of study on the subject. Universities don't just let anyone go and give talks after all.Last edited by Tebryn; 2012-11-10 at 03:52 AM.
-
2012-11-10, 03:47 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Well, the setup, the new variable in the equation, is that zombies don't react as a watermelon, you fire them and obtain little to nothing.
We can reason on the fact that they should be shredded to pieces, but it's a fiction work. Zombies got the powers the author gives them.
The first part of the book is more about the mistakes done while dealing with the situation, and those mistakes are human flaws.Last edited by Killer Angel; 2012-11-10 at 03:49 AM.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
-
2012-11-10, 04:05 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Spoiler: I'm a writer!Spoiler: Check out my fanfiction[URL="https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7493788/Forum-Explorer"here[/URL]
]Fate Stay Nano: Fate Stay Night x Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
I Fell in Love with a Storm: MLP
Procrastination: MLP
Spoiler: Original FictionThe Lost Dragon: A story about a priest who finds a baby dragon in his church and decides to protect them.
-
2012-11-10, 05:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
I can't argue too much with this.
So, I suppose I should consider myself lucky (i'm not sarcastic), for the fact that I'm still considering WWZ a "zombie Story that doesn't need to be realistic", despite the author's intention. My suspension of disbelief was settled with a high level of tolerance, in this specific case.Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
-
2012-11-10, 05:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
-
2012-11-10, 05:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
- Location
- Bendigo, Australia
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Well, saying it once might be helpful.
Seriously, go back over this thread. People said that the US Army losing to a million zombies was absurd; I said it might not be. It was brought up that the zombies' biology doesn't make sense; I summed up the Solanum "rules" to try and help make it clear. And over and over and over again, people said that they disliked the way that Max Brooks "claimed to be an expert" despite the fact that he has "clearly not done any research at all", both of which are complete lies.
At no point in the discussion did anyone put it as simply, or as reasonably as you just did. And you want to know what? I can agree with it, the way you just said it. Max Brooks is a clever man, and he did do a lot of research, and he never proclaimed himself an expert on everything, but he got some stuff wrong when he wrote his story. The difference is that I quite liked the story despite that, and you apparently did not. And that's fine, because as I've been saying this whole time, I can respect a difference of opinion. I just felt the need to defend a story I like, and an author I respect, against some legitimately insulting digs that were being taken at him.
So y'know, sure. You're right, I agree. White flag waving, here, and all it took was for someone to actually say their argument in a way that wasn't nonsense....but of course that's just my opinion.
-
2012-11-10, 06:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
Re: World War Z (the film)
Except that the zombie would cave in much sooner. Pain is a warning sign for damage. Even if the zombie is ignoring the pain, he still suffers the damage. His hand will give in long before the wall and long before the third day
Yes, but he's completely wrong with his assumptions about it
The issue is that even these outdated military tactic would have worked. He not only uses that tactic to make it happen, he also ignoring the results of using that tactic to make it happen. Even if the infanterie flees and the vehicles run out of bullets, zombies are no threat to an IFV or MBT, even if they swarm over the vehicles while they mash zombies underneath them, these zombies who managed to climb all over them couldn't crack them open. After driving over enough zombies they could just drive to somewhere and have the zombies being cleaned off with no danger to the crew at all.
-
2012-11-10, 07:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2011
- Gender
-
2012-11-10, 08:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2011
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
The problem people have is that, well, the thing he got wrong was the story.
It's like doing a jigsaw when you've got the wrong pieces, you can try and force them to join up, but people will notice that the picture looks wrong.
A really clever person would have realised that zombies are too crap to work in an apocalypse scenario (especially in open combat with modern military forces) and not written that, because the jigsaw simply cannot be put together with those pieces, they don't fit together.
That's why Mira Grant's Newsflesh books are probably the cleverest zombie fiction, because the zombies aren't the story, the story just happens in a world where there are zombies (and Kellis-Amberlee zombies had far more advantages than Solanum ones, 100% infection rate of all mammals, fast mutation rate, active conversion in any mammal over 40lbs bodyweight on either death or contact with live state virus, that means that everyone is going to turn when they die, every mammal is a potential vector, and the Rising was still put down in a few months because zombies are crap, but it's ancient history to the characters of the books. Also, zombie bears).
Hell, even Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is better, and that's a book where the joke is basically over when you've read the title, because the book itself is basically just Pride and Prejudice, the zombies are an incidental problem that society just gets on and deals with, just as they should be.
Zombies are rubbish, you can't write a story about them beating modern military and have it work without having the zombies be actively magical or having Romero style spontaneous and arbitrary conversion (Even Highschool of the Dead does better, and that's a zombie pantsu show, as it's arbitrary conversion so the military is instantly composed of 33% zombies because they spontaneously convert, and they still get their **** together and sort things out).
-
2012-11-10, 08:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: World War Z (the film)
They are not plot holes. They are plot PITS. I mean the laws of *physics* get ignored as well as those of biology. He tried to make a real world explanation something that does not work and expects people to buy it. It's really an insult to peoples inteligence. As someone else said if he had not tried to push a BS explaination the story would have been better as it destroyed the needed suspension of belief. The more a story clashes with itself the worse a story will be.
-
2012-11-10, 09:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
- Location
- Finland
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
IN MEMORIAM 1983-2013. Bot as necessary.
Avatar courtesy of Elder Tsofu
Halforums.com - For the love of God, don't ask about the steak.
-
2012-11-10, 09:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
- Location
- Finland
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Okay, first things first. I liked World War Z. Don't start asking me about the Too Dumb to Live generals who thought Yonkers was a good idea, or the biology of Solanum or how feasible that is. For me, the zombie genre has never been about the zombies. It's about people and how they - as persons, as groups, as societies, as a species - function or fail to function in the face of overwhelming odds, in a world where we're no longer the apex predator and the king of the hill.
In that sense, I believe WWZ works, because barring the most obvious too-cool-to-be-real characters (I'm looking at you, blind gardener!), the book introduces the reader to a large variety of human responses. There's those who try to profit from it, those who try to escape it, those who make horrible decisions (both failures and for the greater good), those who fight back... The book lampshades zombie movies and makes fun of various people and pop culture phenomena, suggesting how these things and people might react if the dead started chewing on the living.
It's a book about people and how they lived through World War Z, much as Brooks's inspiration was a book about people living through the Second World War. It touches on desperation, panic, determination and the bittersweet sensation of victory in a world that will never be the same. Does it go over the top at times? Yes. Does that diminish my enjoyment of the book? No. I enjoyed the book's building of atmosphere and the play between different points of view, and that was what I thought the more interesting and important part of the novel. Not graphs on how many ways a zombie couldn't work in the real world.
Which is why I am so goddamn disappointed and frankly pissed off about the trailer. It takes what was a touching and very different take on the zombie genre, and turns it into Just Another Zombie Movie with Nuclear Family Values, Part CLXVIII. I'm even more miffed about this having heard that there was an older script that followed the book more closely, making it more of a documentary-style piece of fiction that would have had a fair chance at the Oscars - but instead we get Just Another Zombie Movie etc. It will probably be about as touching as a piece of head cheese, but it will rake in the cash by the truckload.
Frickin' Hollywood...IN MEMORIAM 1983-2013. Bot as necessary.
Avatar courtesy of Elder Tsofu
Halforums.com - For the love of God, don't ask about the steak.
-
2012-11-10, 10:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2011
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
The thing about zombies is, well, they're zombies. They'll only stop standing around in nice runoverable groups when there aren't enough of them left to. They're not capable of adapting to enemy tactics because they're dead.
That's another element that makes any military vs. zombies story not work except as a crushing defeat of zombies, because they're literally 100% predictable in all situations.
-
2012-11-10, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Spoiler: I'm a writer!Spoiler: Check out my fanfiction[URL="https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7493788/Forum-Explorer"here[/URL]
]Fate Stay Nano: Fate Stay Night x Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
I Fell in Love with a Storm: MLP
Procrastination: MLP
Spoiler: Original FictionThe Lost Dragon: A story about a priest who finds a baby dragon in his church and decides to protect them.
-
2012-11-10, 12:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: World War Z (the film)
I actually CRTL+F'd the entire thread for the word Expert, Master and a few other synonyms and the only person that's used any of the words is you. I hate to do it but it's time to call a spade a spade. You've been straw manning us this entire time. No one has said that Max Brooks has claimed he's an expert.
-
2012-11-10, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2008
Re: World War Z (the film)
By then you have thinned the herd so much that it's just cleaning the leftovers.
300 miles operational range. Just go back to base to load up on fuel every 200 miles of driving over zombies.
If you make the misstake and end up with no fuel, just stay inside the vehicle which the zombies can't breach and wait for extraction.
-
2012-11-10, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: World War Z (the film)
Really you odn't even have to use military equipment. Go to a construction site, put some steel to protect the driver/vital areas and go to town. A steam roller would do great and even a combine harvester might be usefull.
-
2012-11-10, 02:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
Re: World War Z (the film)
I appreciate that the discussion has moved on, but here goes:
I can appreciate the decisions they have made, even if I really enjoyed the original book- I believe that I am going to watch this movie, and may well enjoy it, on it's own merits.
In a so-bad-it's-good kinds of way.
As opposed to the original zombies from the book, I can see the super-fast zombies being a serious threat, if not a world-ending one- while they are easily killed by the sort of weapons described here, the fact that they would be found- and could spread horribly fast- in an urban environment means that even if they would lose a traditional battle, they would cause incalculable loss to the civilian population before a major military campaign could be mounted.
The sheer speed of the things, as well as their ferocity, means that there numbers would climb very quickly- your average joe and jane would simply not be able to cope. Hell, in an urban battle, it would be even odds.
Pity about Brad Pitt. But I can live with that.
If this film manages to be to the zombie theme what 'Battle:LA' was to the alien invasion theme, then I will enjoy the movie, at least the first time around.
-
2012-11-10, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: World War Z (the film)
Having carefully read both sides of the argument here and considered the points that have been eloquently made, I feel I can come to a solid conclusion on my previous statement.
This is incorrect.
The battle of Yonkers goes the way it does because of Magically Immune Zombies AND the military forgetting to bring enough ammunition. Fair enough.
It would have been interesting to see it all played out more closely to the book. I'm not sure it would have translated very favourably, admittedly. There's a good chance it would simply have served to highlight the flaws. Though, the zombie-ooze crowd thing is kind of hilarious, so I'm not sure they've necessarily solved that problem as much as replaced it with a new and entertaining problem.
-
2012-11-10, 08:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2009
- Location
- A nice, sparkly place.
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
I must admit, I have not read World War Z, but I wanted to. I just have to ask one thing. Are the zombies in the book mindless and slow like classical zombies (As opposed to this rage virus part-liquid flowing zombies that were portrayed in the trailer)? The reason I ask because when I saw the book that one of my friends was reading at the time, the zombie had a helmet and was carrying an automatic weapon in his hands and I think my friend said the zombies evolved over time to get intellegence to use weaponry or stuff like that. I may be mixing up my friends who told me this (I have dozens of friends into zombies, so I know alot about the different kinds because of this), but is this what happens in the Book World War Z?
Just curious.
-
2012-11-10, 08:22 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: World War Z (the film)
No, they stay slow shambling and stupid in World War Z by Max Brooks. Whether there are similarly named books with gun-toting zombies, I couldn't begin to guess.
-
2012-11-10, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2005
Re: World War Z (the film)
seems like a typical popcorn movie. why all the hate?
to the discussion of zombie killing. we have an entire arsenal of weapons that are illegal to use on human beings because they cause too much pain and suffering
this is the list populated by flamethrowers, hollow point bullets, white phosphorous, and chemical agents that can literally melt flesh.
there are others, but these are notable for causing excessive tissue damage. zombies without flesh cant move.
blinding lasers are banned by various conventions, but they too would be great against zombies.Last edited by thubby; 2012-11-10 at 08:56 PM.
a tiny space dedicated to a beloved grandpa now passed. may every lunch be peanut butter-banana sandwiches.
i has 2/4 an internets.
old avatarsSpoiler
gnome_4ever:
-
2012-11-10, 09:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2005
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Because it's a waste of an amazing intellectual property. If it was called 'Zombie Assault 2012' or 'New York Vs. Zombies', or 'When Zombies Attack', it'd be a decent popcorn movie. But by calling it 'World War Z: The Movie' and making a generic zombie movie, it means a movie actually faithful to the book will likely never get made.
NOW COMPLETE: Let's Play Starcraft II Trilogy:
Hell, It's About Time: Wings of Liberty
Does This Mutation Make Me Look Fat: Heart of the Swarm
My Life For Aiur? I Barely Know 'Er: Legacy of the Void
-
2012-11-12, 03:11 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
- Location
- the crisper drawer
Re: World War Z (the film)
The movie might look passable if only it had a different name.
I appear to be in the minority in this thread, but I actually liked the book. I thought the vignettes were well done, although some were certainly more interesting than others.
-
2012-11-12, 07:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
All in all, if I had to choose a zombie movie, I would rather see this one.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
-
2012-11-12, 09:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
-
2012-11-12, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2011
- Location
- Where wheels have wings
Re: World War Z (the film)
I really enjoyed Brooks' pieces of fiction meant solely to entertain in spite of itself or what anyone thought of it, with no regard given to his assertions on the genre because I don't care about his assertions on the genre. He made an entertaining, though inconsistent, universe in which an interpretation of zombies exist and pose superficially plausible problems for humanity. I think that's where the buck stops for a lot of people but I could be wrong.
Given that, it is a bummer that this movie has all of the trappings of a bad box office blockbuster with little attention given to the source material. That trailer seriously looked like the trailer to 2012. I suppose I shouldn't have expected more considering the ridiculous production issues that have taken this project off the rails time and time again.Demonlobster.com because we both know that you know that I know that you like fun!
The most intense eight seconds of your life, for real.
-
2012-11-12, 09:47 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
Re: World War Z (the film)
Well the stupid things of the book aside, its a shame that a neat idea was shoved aside for the same old shtick.
-
2012-11-12, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Cippa's River Meadow
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
-
2012-11-13, 01:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2011
- Location
- On the Moon.
- Gender
Re: World War Z (the film)
Well, this is a bit depressing. Not entirely unexpected, though. I heard that WWZ was in production a while ago, and I was somewhat skeptical that it would be true to the book. It looks like my fears were entirely justified.
That said, I actually think the movie looked pretty awesome in the trailer. I love zombie movies, and this one has the potential to be good. But it's not WWZ, and they shouldn't call it that! When I see it, I'll try to think of it as A Zombie Movie, not World War Z. Because otherwise I'll be horribly disappointed.~Sneaky Weasel~
Brilliant American McGee's Alice avatar by the fantastic Paisley
Previous Avatar by the wonderful Strawberries:
Spoiler