World War Z

[Numtini]

On the whole "slow zombies aren't a threat" thing. That's part of the point. A slow zombie isn't a threat, but there's never one slow zombie, there's dozens, and they just keep coming, and they never stop. They're easy to kill and you can rack up a body count in the hundreds or thousands, but it just takes one mistake, one time you don't look behind you, one time you trip over a root, and that's it. The slowness, the ease of escaping one or two--that just adds to the tension of the inevitability that eventually, we always fuck up just that once.

[Evildrider]

I laughed when I saw how the zombies were moving in the trailer.  It's like the zombie virus came from being bitten by rabid lemmings.

[pxib]

The only good part of the War of the Worlds remake that Cruise did was the part when things get out of hand in the crowd of people and other people started taking their car.

I dunno, I also liked the body in the stream... and the bit with the train.

[Ratman_tf]

Zombie tidal wave looked comical. I was reminded of that Indian Robot movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysbbPStfWw

[Ironwood]

The only good part of the War of the Worlds remake that Cruise did was the part when things get out of hand in the crowd of people and other people started taking their car.

I dunno, I also liked the body in the stream... and the bit with the train.

The actual fighting machines were exactly as Wells imagined too :  They were great and genuinely scary.  The film itself was twisted shite though.

[Draegan]

I thought the trailer looked good.  Never read the book, so I don't have built up nerd rage.

[Samwise]

I was hoping the movie would be something in a sort of mockumentary style, assembling clips and interviews and footage from all around the world, rather than doing the standard narrative thing of following a single protagonist.

But I didn't think the odds were great that anyone would make a movie that was that different from a standard zombie movie, so I'm not as disappointed by that trailer as I might have been if I'd actually set high expectations.  It looks like a cookie-cutter dumb zombie action movie.  I generally like those.  Ehh.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Zombie discussion aside, my co-worker pointed out that they just look fake.  As though some bad cgi cartoon swarm that could at any moment turn into a giant fist or arrow.

[Numtini]

Zombie discussion aside, my co-worker pointed out that they just look fake.  As though some bad cgi cartoon swarm that could at any moment turn into a giant fist or arrow.

It reminded me of the first mummy movie. CGI gone too far.

[Ragnoros]

I'll just leave this here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un56JUEJ5lw

(Cracked video on why zombies make a shite villain.)

[Samwise]

I'll just leave this here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un56JUEJ5lw

(Cracked video on why zombies make a shite villain.)

Rabies has a very long incubation period, and does not make you immortal.

[Ironwood]

No, being a Highlander does that.

 

[Threash]

Fast zombies are just scary monsters like werewolves or aliens, it is a completely different kind of horror.  Slow zombies are not scary, they are dumb slow mechanical easily avoided or dispatched, but they are everywhere.  You might escape from your house but the house next door is full of zombies too, make it out of the city and the next city is just as packed, go on a trek to another country and the next country is worse off than where you left.  Zombies are not supposed to be individually scary monsters, a world full of the fuckers is what is scary.  Fast zombies don't give you the feeling of dread and despair and hopelessness  of real zombies, they are just run of the mill scary monsters that chase and eat you.  Just look at that trailer, you could replace those zombies with giant ants or the aliens from starship troopers and it would be the same exact story.

[Rendakor]

I'll just leave this here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un56JUEJ5lw

(Cracked video on why zombies make a shite villain.)

Rabies has a very long incubation period, and does not make you immortal.

You've clearly never read Chuck Palahniuk's Rant.

[lamaros]

The book wasn't about zombies being slow or fast. It's almost entirely irrelevant.

It also wasn't a thriller, so whatever the film is its way off base, no matter the details.

[Signe]

I don't want to read the book, but I kinda want to see that film.  I thought rolling zombie snowball thing looked fun.

[calapine]

I thought rolling zombie snowball thing looked fun.

You meant to say looked dumb. I'll assume your posting from an Iphone and the autocorrect feature is being a bitch again. 

[Teleku]

I read the book, and think the zombie snowball looks fun.   

Look, sad as it is, acknowledge that this movie is a zombie movie that just happens to share the same name as a book, and they have nothing to do with each other (like Starship Troopers).

Looks fun to me.  Seems they took a Left 4 Dead approach to the zombies, which I approve.  Could be horrible, but I'm always down for a big budget zombie film.

[NowhereMan]

I would have sort of liked to have had film version of WWZ which always seemed to be more an interesting look at how we might actually react to a zombie apocalypse on a large scale told through individual lenses. There's a taste of that in 28 weeks later but it's a topic I think worked well in the book and isn't something anything really does tackle that's out. This looks like it approaches that sort of take in the same way the later Resident Evil films do and they really, really aren't what I'd think of as zombie films. Actually as people said, the zombies in this are a stand in for a force of nature and I get much more of a 'The Day After Tomorrow' or 2012 vibe from this than a zombie one. Which I guess does take the larger, global view of such an even but they've also followed the modern trend of disaster movies to make the film all about the visual spectacle. Of course maybe I'm misjudging it from the trailer but I'll be surprised if turns out very different.

[Phildo]

All I got from this trailer is that zombies fall off of stuff a lot.

[Special J]

Phew! Totally relieved that Brad's family escaped NY.  Because we wouldn't want to have any kind of tension there.

[Ironwood]

It wasn't New York, it was George Square and, frankly, they'll probably go down to a heart attack at some point in the film merely from visiting.

 

[Surlyboi]

They just want a decent cheesesteak.

[Venkman]

Yea doesn't look like the book, but that's ok to me. After I, Robot and Starship Troopers, hard to hold Hollywood to any kind of account. And besides, for I, Robot, it's understandable. That was actually kind of a boring story, really for early sci-fi geeks. Flipside, Starship Troopers was actually a pretty good source for what could have been the actual Robocop-meets-Aliens2 kinda movie I had hoped to get. But regardless, both movies are forgetable and hopefully the decision makers felt the pain.

And you know what? I want a different kind of zombie movie. It's all the same shit going for horror in all the normal ways. Shambling zombies easy to take out at 80 yards while the real story is about a bunch of survivalists in a desicated land? The horror actually being about other people or stupid poor-planning situations? Been there and so very done that I can live the rest of my life never needing to see it again.

The wave of zombies toppling the barrier? THAT was scary. The growing mound of zombies exhibiting hive mind behavior climbing that wall? THAT was scary. Those appear to try and capture the "the old ways just ain't gonna work no more" feel the military went through.

I also have no idea the time span of the trailer.

Finally, I can appreciate that to make a summer blockbuster sellable they need to attach a big name to it, so being a montage of different individual accounts in a documentary format, well, you call Ken Burns for that

[Ratman_tf]

You know what would be even scarier? If they were dinosaur zombies. That shot littler dinosaur zombies out of their mouths.

[Ironwood]

I'm going to chip in once again with the surprise shock that I liked I Robot.  Despite the fact that I probably shouldn't have.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm going to chip in once again with the surprise shock that I liked I Robot.  Despite the fact that I probably shouldn't have.

I liked it on it's own merits, and it didn't take a smelly shit on the book, like Starship Troopers did.

[Venkman]

Yea, to be clear, I really didn't hate I, Robot. I just think it's a great example of something that had no business using the same name as the book, because except for the throwaway Three Laws line, there was really no similarity. Even Starship Troopers was closer to source, even if it missed almost everything good about how the story was told. These are far more "offenders to source" than LoTR movies for example. Sure there were some tweaks, but it was far closer than it needed by Hollywood standards.

You know what would be even scarier? If they were dinosaur zombies. That shot littler dinosaur zombies out of their mouths.

I almost want to try and make that 

[Hawkbit]

I'm going to chip in once again with the surprise shock that I liked I Robot.  Despite the fact that I probably shouldn't have.

I liked it on it's own merits, and it didn't take a smelly shit on the book, like Starship Troopers did.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the fucking Converse that were placed into every shot of the movie.  Brand placement can suck my balls, and it's one of the multitude of reasons that movies suck today.

[lamaros]

Starship Troopers is great.

[Ratman_tf]

Yea, to be clear, I really didn't hate I, Robot. I just think it's a great example of something that had no business using the same name as the book, because except for the throwaway Three Laws line, there was really no similarity. Even Starship Troopers was closer to source, even if it missed almost everything good about how the story was told. These are far more "offenders to source" than LoTR movies for example. Sure there were some tweaks, but it was far closer than it needed by Hollywood standards.

I dunno. There was the plot where the computer wanted to control humanity for it's own good, that's out of the book, the conflict between obeying the laws and not reacting as a human would, like when the robot saved Wil Smith's character instead of the girl, and the part where he tested the runaway robot by giving a command and then damaging the robots in the crowd, a rather simplified version of a test out of the books. There was lots of stuff about the laws in there. The biggest difference (IMO) is that the book was a series of short stories featuring logic puzzles that arose from the 3 laws setup, while the movie was an action story. So instead of constructing an elaborate robot-testing-contraption, Wil Smith's character would just pull out a gun and shoot a robot to see if they would flinch.  
But at least the core concept is there. Not so in Starship Troopers which was Paul Verhoeeven bitching about how facist and mean the military is, while the book was more realistic   in it's portrayal of the mentality of military life. And LOTR was just too silly at times for me to consider it a decent adaptation of the books.

[Teleku]

Anybody who didn't like the starship troopers movie is a BAD PERSON!

[Ironwood]

I'm going to chip in once again with the surprise shock that I liked I Robot.  Despite the fact that I probably shouldn't have.

I liked it on it's own merits, and it didn't take a smelly shit on the book, like Starship Troopers did.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the fucking Converse that were placed into every shot of the movie.  Brand placement can suck my balls, and it's one of the multitude of reasons that movies suck today.

And you're singling out I Robot for that ?

Name me a single movie in the last 10 years that didn't have that shit.

[calapine]

Seriously, I can't understand those dissing the film and praising the book (Troopers).

The film is enjoyable and watchable, and no matter how blunt or shallow its political message, it is better than the book's one.

The novel is a rather thin pamphlet (supposedly written within two weeks, to be used in an argument) and reads like a manifesto. It literally consists of 1 chapter action and story (quite entertaining) follow by a chapter of political background on how in a post-war society government broke down and some returning ex-veterans started stringing people up. And that’s how the military government came to begin. Followed by another chapter of story and action. Follow by more blah about how civilians don't really have any 'teeth in the game' in a society and don't 'get it' like military dudes too. Hilarious that part were military government gets justified by saying the civilians one all failed, of course all that in the made up alternative history of the novel.

[Venkman]

Ok, so I really need to know: What do people actually like about the Starship Troopers movie? Put aside the book for a sec. I thought the movie was bad as a movie itself. Things were too convenient, everything was just too damned clean (I hate that from all early CGI movies, but here everything was too clean, looked like Halo level of clean), it was all b-level performances, and all of the fun Verhoeven schtick from Robocop felt too pat and antiseptic/clean here. I saw this movie all of once and still crinch when I hear "would you like to learn more".

Is there some pulp appeal I'm missing?

Back on the book, I did enjoy the story. But part of that might be that it was the only Heinlein book I ever managed to finish.