Troubled doesn’t begin to cover it. The journey that World War Z has made from book to script to screen has been dogged with disaster from the start. The Hollywood Reporter did a good job describing the scene back in June, but the potted version basically involves delays, rewrites, re-shoots, the departure of key crew members, and misery on set.
So with the trailer hitting today we ask if, following such monumental problems, the film has any chance of finding an audience next summer?
First things first, the book was always going to be tough source material to adapt. Written by Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War doesn’t have a simple narrative through-line, nor the kind of linear plot that a Hollywood movie demands.
Instead, it’s a sprawling account of the zombie outbreak, detailing the spread of the zombie infection through the likes of China, South Africa, Israel and the United States. And one that feels more like it should be turned into an ongoing TV series than a standalone movie.
And so screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski and latterly Matthew Michael Carnahan were charged with the task of turning what’s essentially an anecdotal historical tome into a movie for the multiplex masses.
The plot therefore now revolves around Gerald Lane, a United Nations researcher who is sent on a fact-finding mission to discover the origin of the outbreak and to figure out how to stop it.
But while the Hollywood Reporter’s source claimed that the film’s first 45 minutes were terrific, the second half was apparently problematic, with scribes Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard asked to help re-write the finale, leading to re-shoots and the release date being pushed back from December 2012 to June 2013.
Such a process is common practice in Hollywood however, and it's not always the disaster that commentators would have you believe. The Bourne Identity underwent both re-writes and re-shoots late in proceedings and that turned out okay. Same with The Amazing Spider-Man, which grossed more than $750m at the global box office this summer.
So what of the trailer that hit today? It certainly does a good job of building tension and once the zombie apocalypse does hit, it looks epic in terms of size and scale. But fans of the book have already taken to Twitter to not only complain that the story appears to bear only a passing resemblance to the source material, but also to bemoan the fact that the undead are slow shufflers in the book but have been transformed into speedy sprinters for the movie.
The film’s visual effects artist John Nelson told EW the reason for the change: “They are like predatory animals that can’t control themselves. I worked with tigers [while shooting Gladiator], and if you watch them when a horse goes by they go batty, even if they know they can’t reach it. When Zs see humans they do same thing, they activate. They launch themselves.
"There are a lot of things in nature we’re mining as references. They move like birds or school of fish, too, in reactive formations, and it’s not because they have a higher level of [shared] thinking or communication – it’s about their nature and the fact that their instinct to infect is so basic, efficient, and overpowering. They will go through anything. If they lose both legs, they will walk on their hands. They lock in and they’re like salmon going upstream or sperm swimming to be the first to egg.”
Speedy zombies didn’t do the likes of 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake any harm. But Shaun of the Dead himself – Simon Pegg – tweeted this morning, “Zombies everywhere are spinning in their graves,” adding that he’d be prepared to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, but that “Fast zombies are not my bag.”
A bigger worry may be the copious amounts of CGI featured in the trailer. Both fast and slow zombies can be made to look scary, but can you do the same with artificial-looking computer-generated zombies? The effects may not be finished yet at this early stage, but the early evidence isn’t good, particularly in the scenes where the hordes attack.
Indeed, the idea that zombies can scale huge buildings and walls by piling on top of each other is cool, but seeing it in practice as the trailer’s climactic money shot is not, the execution disappointing thanks to yet more ropey CGI.
Another question that has dogged the production from the start is whether or not director Marc Forster can handle the film’s action sequences. Forster is better known for dramas like Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner, and his one foray into the genre – Quantum of Solace – was the most underwhelming of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies, with the action a particular disappointment.
He’s got a fine actor to carry the film in the shape of Brad Pitt; one who can handle both action and drama, but will the actor’s talent and popularity be enough to tempt audiences into theatres next June?
That remains to be seen, but whatever the case, it’s clear that studio Paramount has a lot riding on World War Z, with the film’s budget reportedly approaching the $200m mark. It was also hoped that the film would be the first part in a proposed trilogy. But Hollywood is a fickle place, so if the film doesn’t hit big come the summer, expect Worlds War Z to be both the beginning and the end of this particular brand of big-budget horror.
Chris Tilly is Entertainment Editor for IGN and really hopes World War Z works. His idle chat can be found on both Twitter and MyIGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
