The scene where they were stuck in traffic was one of the most tense of the movie, definitely. The kid screaming throughout the scene was awful, though - irritating, not suspenseful or tense.
Quimby said: ‘I just don’t think “Fast Zombies” feel like Zombies. They should call them something else. They are a different kind of monster.’
Can I offer ‘Zoombies’, perhaps, or the ‘Jogging Dead’. They worked a treat in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. Their speed suddenly made every walk from door to door, or across open ground completely fraught with peril.
Don’t misunderstand, I can appreciate Fast Zombies. I liked 28 Days Later, I Am Legend (they were called Vampires at the time but today they would be Fast Zombies), the Dawn of the Dead Remake, and even World War Z. The concept itself isn’t bad; it just, to me, it feels different enough that referring to them as Zombies seems wrong.
What makes Zombies scary is while one or two isn’t much of a concern, they eventually overwhelm you with sheer numbers and tenacity. Fast Zombies are more like wild animals that hunt people. Which is also scary but for different reasons.
BTW Zoombies is pretty hilarious.
We saw it and enjoyed it -
The biggest departure from the book, IMHO, was the resolution itself - but I think the movie producer wanted a less ‘dreary’ war - he wanted to go from ‘outbreak’ to ‘resolution’ in ~2 hours - and lets face it, to project much of the books resolution to the screen would take multiple films.
I think the movie hit the high points of the book
- NK going dark
- more or less patient zero
- Isreals reaction
- the floating cities
and I like that I can re-read and realize they made the movie from ‘this other guys’ story that wasn’t included in the book itself - which says on the onset that its not a complete, but more of the notes that didn’t make it into the official version.
I do wish they had explored the dogs a bit more - they had several opportunities for that lightbulb moment, but didn’t take it.
All in all - a superb ‘zombie’ (or more accurately ‘un-dead’) film that had genuinely tense moments and well played visuals with people pretty much acting exactly as they would IRL in the given situation.
What dogs?
In the book, Dogs end up playing a pivotal role in the eventual defeat of the ‘zeeks’ - detection, distraction, etc. - see - http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Dogs_%28World_War_Z%29
In the movie, they allude to this with the chihuahua on the plane - and I recall a couple of other opportunities, but cant give specifics.
I thought it was a decent enough movie, as long as one knows going in that it has no connection whatsoever with the book.
My favorite scene was after Pitt chopped off the Israeli’s hand. I thought it was a very tense moment. I also liked that they actually used the word “zombies” throughout the film.
I hated the wife in the film. Bitch, don’t call him! He’s in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. He’s kinda busy.
One thing I didn’t get was how the zombie plague spread so quickly. In the book it makes sense: someone could turn after a very long time if, for example, they got a tiny bit of virus in their bloodstream via transplant or something. In the film the latest anyone turned was in 10 minutes or so. If people turned so quickly how were they able to get on planes which would allow it to spread?
I think the movie only dealt with the one type of spread - they did not tell us about initial or other methods, how it spread, etc. IOW, what we have in the book is 10 or more years after the events in the film - so we know more.
In the film, the closer he got to patient zero, the longer it took for the virus to work.
Heh - I like both of those names. 
Actually it wasn’t like that at all. It was Brad Pitt’s production company that won the rights to the movie by out bidding Leo DiCaprios production company. So basically he put himself in the movie.
We saw it yesterday and thought it good entertainment but forgettable. Not sorry to have seen it. I’ve not read the book. I usually dislike reading a book after seeing the movie, but after seeing the comments here, I think it’s safe.
We also saw Man of Steel the same day, and that was such an inferior film that this one may have appeared better just in comparison.
Spoil the origin for me. Did the find out how this resulted in a supernatural plague?
No, not in the movie. They pegged it to someone in India originally, but how it developed, no one still had a clue at the ending. A lot like the Spanish flu of 1918, which was mentioned in the film.
in the earlier ‘background’ noise - they mentioned that something had made the jump from animals to humans - and later ‘rabies’ was mentioned… IIRC in the book, this was just a cover story - I don’t believe in the book its ever ‘discovered’ either, but they believed it to be dealing with a lake over a cemetary in china where the bodies had not all been removed.
THe quote about the Spanish Flu was about
a) never been heard of before it happened
b) killed x percent before it was contained
c) to make the immunologist sound smart
I saw Man of Steel and World War Z on back-to-back weekends and I liked WWZ immensely more. MoS mad me mad that I wasted my money on it - it was like the producers took every superhero/action movie cliché and strung them together to sell popcorn. It even made Amy Adams look wooden.
On the other hand, WWZ was full of surprises. I liked that most of the characters were smart and trying to do the right thing. I liked that Brad Pitt was worried about his family. The visuals were fantastic and creepy. My only minor complaint was the absurdity of Pitt and his Israeli soldier friend being the sole survivors of a plane crash, including surviving being impaled on a two foot piece of shrapnel.
Actually, I had one other complaint; the extreme quick-cuts in the actions scenes that made it hard to tell what was going on. But this is unfortunately the style for Hollywood these days - I’ve had the same complaint about recent Bond, Bourne and Batman movies.
ETA: I should mention I never read the book, which probably helped me enjoy the movie on its own merits.
Warning…mild, un-boxed spoilers of the book and movie below.
In the book it started in China and was due to the 3 Gorges Dam project that had, as you noted, flooded many old Chinese settlements and burial sites. They never did nail it down more than that though, at least not from my own memory.
Saw the movie this weekend, and have to say, it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. After simply disconnecting this movie from the book in my own mind, I was able to just sit back and enjoy it. It was pretty standard Hollywood action fair, but it was pretty GOOD standard Hollywood action fair, IMHO anyway. The only real disconnect I felt was when they took his wife and kids (including the boy they rescued) off the ship and sent them to a refugee camp…I thought that was bullshit. Other than that, the rest was standard action movie themes. Brad survives plane crashes and is able to save the day through figuring out how to camouflage humans from zeeks. I thought an especially nice touch was the random, stupid death of the brilliant doctor in South Korea…it was one of those very unexpected and almost shocking things that could happen and that you (or I at least) never expect. Slips on a ramp with a gun in hand (and his finger on the trigger) and shoots himself in the head.
I thought the movie was mildly entertaining but fell short of expectations. I had high hopes for it because the trailers were pretty dramatic but the story line and the dialog fell flat for me. The part where he survives a plane crash and is hanging from the seat? Sorry… too many miracles make for a bad story.
My opinion no doubt was caused by my exposure to the following:
1). “The Walking Dead” TV show. Although it’s fun to watch their body parts getting blown off, the story lines and dialog (and even the music) do a good job of building up suspense and intrigue. I noticed they panned away from any close up blood and gore in the Z movie, defying the very thing that defines zombie movies in general.
2). “The Walking Dead” computer game by TellTale Games. The graphics are cartoon-ish but that didn’t matter as the game had excellent writing and good voice acting. There was true emotion felt as the game unfolded. Hardly felt any emotion at all watching “Z”.
3). I’m in the middle of “The Last of Us”, a PS3 game. The zombies are most excellent in the way they move, the way they sound and the variety of them - especially the Clickers. The graphics are unparalleled. The voice acting and story line are very high quality therefore the game really sucks you in and you don’t want to stop playing. I went from playing that game in the morning to watching “Z” that afternoon so I had fresh visions in my mind to compare it to. I was thinking that it’s too bad they couldn’t have played “The Last of Us” video game before they made the film, they could have picked up a lot of pointers.
Over all I liked it. It isn’t really World War Z but if it had a different title I’d be generally pleased with it, even if the end is a bit of a muddle. As in, the entire last act of the movie goes away if Brad Pitt just calls back the carrier and says: “Hey, I have this theory based on these observations. Can you put out the word to all the virus labs still in contact and see if anybody can find a way to test it?”
That said, maybe I missed something about Jerusalem.
The walls were built in response to the first rumblings about them fighting the undead in India. So, because they have a policy that if 9 leaders all think the same thing 1 of them is tasked with doing the opposite (an incredibly stupid policy) and so builds 200-foot tall walls around Jerusalem in a few weeks?
Did I understand that correctly or did I completely misunderstand the timeframe between patient zero in India and the events of the movie.
While I’m not a fan of the disease resolution of the movie when it first came up I did have this vision of everybody being intentionally infected with AIDS as a lethal but somewhat slow acting disease that we generally know how to hold in check.
The movie was a good solid movie. However, I was disappointed. Hard to explain why but basically while the movie was solid, it wasn’t the movie I wanted to see.
This is just unfair. It’s like buying a computer game and not liking it because YOU wanted something different.
World War Z was not like the book. This bugs me because if it isn’t based on the book, why is it called World War Z? (I know why - think of the question as rhetorical 
)
Fast Zombies. MY main complaint about zombie movies is that they are extremely unrealistic in what the threat of a zombie outbreak would be. In The Walking Dead, for example, outbreaks would be quickly put down. Zombies are slow and they need to infect humans to ‘breed’…but most humans can kill >1 zombie before they get infected. This means zombie outbreaks die off fast. The ways around this is to have nearly everyone get sick and die/turn to zombies leaving a few survivors - or have fast zombies like in this movie.
The fast zombies would spread fast like in the movie. The problem is that a fast zombie just, well, it ISN’T a ZOMBIE. Yes, yes it is…but it changes the whole ‘character’ of the monster. It isn’t the same anymore. They might as well be werewolves, or vampires or aliens. Fast zombies just don’t seem to be a ZOMBIE movie anymore.
This movie went for action and suspense, not horror. This is fine and makes sense with the fast zombies but, well, to me zombies=horror. Just me maybe.
You never really see the zombies. They move fast and so you see hordes of blurry zombies but no real zombie versus humans until toward the end.
I to wish the Zombie genre would get away from the old saw of “In a zombie apocalypse the greatest threat is other people”. Yawn old and would focus on the global aspect and the real fight of humans versus zombies but this show really isn’t it. It tried but, well, not really.
Solid show but I was disappointed.