Posted on 06/21/2013 3:03:29 PM PDT by dennisw
So, after all the hype and rumours of disaster, what’s World War Z like? Well, even though it’s directed by Marc Forster, it reminded me of the action films made by Roland Emmerich, which range from the nearly sublime (Independence Day) to the totally ridiculous (10,000 BC).
It’s slap-bang in the middle of that quality spectrum, round about the level of Godzilla.
Movies don’t come bigger than this, and zombie flicks usually come a lot smaller. In Shaun Of The Dead, the undead had to content themselves with snacking on a handful of British actors in a deserted pub. Here it’s the future of humanity that’s at stake. This time, instead of Simon Pegg, Brad Pitt is available to save us, and the skies are soon full of crashing helicopters, screaming jets and stunt people being sucked out of aircraft.
The film is impressive in its big set pieces. The initial panic on the streets of Philadelphia is thrilling, as is the fall of Jerusalem to the undead horde and an airborne sequence that might easily have been called Zombies On A Plane.
But the film is horrifyingly feeble when it comes to characterisation. All we know about Pitt’s Gerry is that he loves his family, but no one has given this hero any exceptional qualities. The same goes for the other characters: as uninteresting a lot as I’ve seen in a disaster movie.
We never know why the powers-that-be at the United Nations think so highly of Gerry. He’s resourceful, but doesn’t seem particularly brave, bright or knowledgeable. It is a central weakness that, without any particular expertise, he solves the mystery of how to fight the zombies before anyone else.
Negative reaction: The last 40 minutes of the film where rewritten and reshot
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I couldn’t wait for it to come out - so that I could boycott it!
Independence Day was the last movie I saw on the massive screens they had outside Woodfield Mall (Chicago area) before they tore them down. Haven’t enjoyed a movie so much since....
Now that's zombie of a different blood type.......me too.
They will consider it a success if it makes 70 million over it’s run per boxofficemojo.com. I cannot imagine it not making that much. I don’t find the movie very interesting so I won’t be going, but I still think it will make money. This spring as been a boon for Hollywood. They are making so much money that even if World War Z bombs, it won’t matter.
Christ Tookey hated Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto:
Was it any good?
Oh cooome on! That was awesome! His foot took up an entire block! i saw it in the theater as well. I don’t know, maybe because I was living in New York city at the time and I liked to see it destroyed, but that Godzilla was the best out of all of them. That blond chick was completely moronic, but Godzillla crashing through the Pan Am building was EPIIIIC!
Oh are you kidding me? What?? What didn’t you like about it? I thought is was the best! How can you not like that huge battle at the end with Gen. Zod? That was crazy!
The best movie I have seen in awhile is Now You See It.....Go see that movie. You will NOT be sorry!
You mean this one?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1670345/
Alright I’ll check it out! I LOVE movies and I’ve never heard of this one. Sounds like a sleeper hit.
If that is Olympus has Fallen then wait until it turns up in the bargain bin. The plot had holes you could drive a truck through.
I loved it! It was a great movie!!! I think you should tell people to see it and make their own mind up on the movie. You are the first that has not loved it.
I like your attitude. I’m going to be going as well. Brad did the film for his kids. He didn’t want to offer them up complexity. He wanted to feed ‘em fun with Dad in it. Gotta respect a guy who’d make a film for his kids to enjoy. People can get to complicated with films. Hell give me a big bucket of popcorn and my man and I’m all in!! :-D
You are 100 percent right! Yes it was a sleeper hit. It actually came in first place (I think two weeks in a row before Superman arrived). It is still in the theater. The thing I liked about it, is that it is very different and not really done before in the manner it was. I think you will enjoy it.
Good one.
I liked it! You had the black democrat, Morgan Freeman, buckling like a belt to terrorism, the heroic FBI agent saving the kid, the kid not being stupid, Ashley Judd dying 5 minutes in, the Secretary of state being taken to be executed, and the whole time she was shouting the Pledge of Allegiance, it was great. And the bad guys were foreign commies.
Much better than the upcoming Crap fest with Jamie Foxx as the brave President fighting terrorists. And I bet the terrorists in it are Tea Party types.
It did have two out of the three things I demand in a movie this badly written, guns and explosions. It lacked the spaceships.
It did have a certain flag waving patriotism in it that I did like but in the end was not enough to save it.
And I like this type of movie normally. It was just bad.
And kids in movies are always smarter then the adults.
Much better than the upcoming Crap fest with Jamie Foxx as the brave President fighting terrorists.
Well yes, I will give you that. But that is like saying drinking mud is better then drinking fertilizer. Neither one is pleasant although only one is deadly.
Oh and the President was a democrat too. In case you missed it.
Fair enough. I guess I just enjoyed it. We have another opportunity when White House Down comes out in a week or so. Hopefully you will enjoy that one better.
But there are other movies to see this summer and my town has a second run theater that is cheap so if I see the occasional stinker that is ok.
You can't beat a movie and dinner date where you only drop twenty bucks.
I am a fan of the Walking Dead too. In fact, I am on the WD ping list. :-) That said, I plan on seeing WWZ this weekend. I am not crazy about all the cgi that they appear to be using in the movie, but I will know if it worked after seeing it.
The one thing I would like to see more of in zombie movies is the initial outbreak. In most movies, you only see a few survivors after almost every else is dead. WWZ will spend a lot of time on the outbreak, so that will be interesting to me. The panic and mayhem when zombies first appear will be most entertaining. People lose their minds when their cable is not working. Imagine the reaction if thousands of Miami-type man-eating lunatics were running around. It would be positively apocalyptical.
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