Sign of the times. People want movies they can watch on their phones - the sweeping vista shot is on its way out. 
C+ Thought the family arc went nowhere. I would have liked to see more of the actual world war, rather than Brad Pitt’s adventures. I got annoyed at the very end when we saw the various anti zombie strategies while Brad Pitt was narrating. That was the movie I wanted to see. Still some of it was cool, the nuke going off, the early scenes in Philly.
We may yet get our wish, though they’ll probably screw it up too. There’s apparently already a sequel planned
I was terribly disappointed with how this movie turned out. Going in I already knew that it wasn’t going to be following the book at all, and I was ok with as long as it showed the zombie apocalypse on a global scale instead of just following a small group of survivors as usual.
Instead of a global movie, we got Philadelphia, New Jersey, a single airstrip in Korea (and in the dark no less), a stop over in Israel and Wales.
Ok, that was a bummer, but surely they are at least going to give us a large scale army Vs zombies battle like Yonkers in the book, right? Right? Nope, none of that. In fact there was very little zombie fighting at all for what was supposed to be a global outbreak. The battle of Moscow would have been great on the big screen, but instead we just get a couple of clips and a little expository voice-over at the end.
Pitt’s character was just plain dull and not set up very well. Is he a soldier of some sort? He seemed pretty confident with the rifle found in the RV, improvised some armor and a bayonet for himself and gave gun advice to the scientist. But after the scientist dies (one of the stupidest movie deaths ever, just let him get eaten) he just kind of takes over the science end of things too.
The family storyline really should have been dropped after Pitt leaves for Korea. The only purpose it served was to have his wife call him at a very inconvenient time. We get it, he has a family he loves.
They saw the mushroom cloud from the plane, were even close enough for it to disrupt communications. Was that the opening shots of Iran and Pakistan taking each other out? I dunno, because no one even mentioned it after that. At least give us a throwaway line once they get to Israel about what happened. Speaking of Israel, that whole part of the movie was stupid beyond belief. Some singing over a loudspeaker is what gets the zombies all riled up, not the thousands of people behind the walls and the ones getting in through the protected walkways? As someone else already mentioned, no one was watching what was happening on the other side of the wall?
Everything after Israel was just dumb. The pointless airplane crash (oh no! he’s hurt! wait no, he’s good now), The Israeli soldier thats there for some reason, the ridiculous “camouflage” solution. The only bright spot was seeing Nikki from Misfits again.
I know the movie had problems during production but that was just plain bad. I got a better sense of the global impact of a zombie uprising with the newscasts in the Dawn Of The Dead dvd extras.
But you need those sweeping vista shots so you can place objects in the foregound and showcase your 3D effects!
Here’s hoping the sequel will a) follow more of the book and b) choose to feature Yonkers and the desert, but leave out Russia. There’s absolutely no way they’ll detail the Decimation*, and that was, for me at least, the most interesting thing about that part.
*Book spoiler: In order to drive home to the drafted army of every able-bodied person in Russia that the government meant Serious Business, they split the army up into squads of 10 people each, and each squad drew straws - the loser of which had to be killed by the remaining 9. This literal decimation was to instill loyalty to the cause.
That was one of my favorite parts of the book as well, in a chilling sort of way. They could easily include it in a movie. Pitt goes to Russia to see whats up, ends up with the squad from the book and things proceed the same way they do in the book. It could even be rolled together with the other Russian part of the book where…
The priest begins performing mercy killings for infected soldiers before they turn.
Heh - I’ve been pronouncing the book “World War Zed” since I found out about it, and I pronounce the movie the same way. 
That really does make me sad. I want to see the whole scene, not just close-ups of three-quarters of an actor’s face.
That was indeed chilling - both the reason for it (to break the will of insurgents) and the execution of it (no pun intended).
I dunno. This movie went well out its way to avoid showing any gore, I’m not sure the studios would have the balls to do it. If they can’t, I’d rather they focus on Yonkers, the desert, and maybe northern refugee camps. The Japanese gardener seems a little far-fetched for film (it certainly was in the book).
The PG-13 rating/lack of gore really hurt the movie in my opinion. The decimation scene could be done Hunger Games style, with the violence implied rather than outright shown on screen.
I do agree about the gardener, that always felt a little far fetched and out of place compared to the rest of the story.
It’s been a little while since I read the book, what are you referring to when you say “the desert”?
It was the first major successful battle. I believe they set up in the desert (Arizona, maybe?). Set up a line miles wide, had speakers blaring, attracting the Midwest horde. Maybe it wasn’t the desert…
Ah, that would be the battle at Hope, New Mexico. I’m pretty sure that you’re correct about the desert part.
How did they win in the book?
For example, when they attracted what you called the “Midwest Horde”, how did they kill it?
Also, btw, does the book have descriptions of these hordes that make them out to be moving almost like an intelligent fluid, or was that made up for the movie?
MASSIVE BOOK SPOILERS
The army sets up in a flat area so they can see everything coming their way. They arrange the soldiers into a square with two rows. The first row starts shooting when the first Z’s cross markers they already set up. When someone in the front row needs a break, they get up and their spot is taken over by someone in the second row, as to keep up the fire. In the book they talk about how the soldiers have been training with metronomes on the firing range, one shot per second per zombie.
They end up killing so many that it starts forming a wall of bodies and the soldiers just wait for one to climb over to shoot it The battle goes on like this through the night until the zombies stop coming and they have to use bulldozers to make a path through the corpse pile so the army can move on.
Thats the quick & dirty version. The book goes into more detail about everything of course.
I dunno. I think the Tomonaga character served a good purpose.
Brooks made the point throughout the book that the zombie threat was beatable. There was no miracle cure discovered that defeated them. People just needed to face the problem, put down any sense of panic, and get to work on the job.
Tomonaga was an earlier foreshadowing of this. When other Japanese were panicking he stayed calm and looked at the actual abilities of the zombies. He figured out that he could survive even though he was blind and only armed with simple hand tools.
You are forgetting the whole “Sacrifice a percentage of the population for the good of the rest” aspect.
Yeah. Not just sacrifice, but actively use pockets of resistance as bait to give them time to build up.
Which, I thought, brought up an interesting question: those areas that the government abandoned, do they have loyalty to the U.S. once the government came to re-exert control?
And while this part was likely the most intersting of the entire book - its not something I think they could actively ‘promote’ in a film to current audiences -
The postscript note:
Quote:
(Note: The film’s title is pronounced World War “Zee.” World War “Zed” would be a Canadian film about a zombie attack of Tim Hortons, where we fight back with snow shovels.)
this would be a very fun and interesting movie!
Snow shovels would be almost completely useless for fighting zombies - you need something with an edge, or something you can stab with. 
As for how they won in the book, I’m trying to remember - I think it was a case of focusing resources on areas where you had a chance of winning, and a central committee (that was one of the interviews - the guy who ended up running that committee) sending resources to where they needed to go. For the US, anyway; other countries responded in other ways. As others have mentioned, winter was a huge boon to the human side of the war, since zombies stopped moving in cold temperatures and could be dispatched much easier then.