I was "lucky" enough to attend a press screening of the hugely-anticipated zombie blockbuster World War Z last night - and you can read my review
here - yet despite some strong initial reviews, I would advise audiences to expect the film's Rotten Tomatoes score to plummet in the coming days, as the reality hits home that, indeed, this film is really not very good at all. The project was notoriously plagued with production issues last year, when the cast and crew spent 7 weeks re-shooting the third act of the film, with Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard being drafted in to re-write a troublesome climax. However, watching the full film, it's tough to believe they did anything at all; it's still an utterly wretched film, and it almost makes me curious to see what shape the film was in before the re-shoots. Here are 10 reasons World War Z is an absolute disaster, and will hopefully bomb at the box office...
10. It Doesn't Do The Novel Justice
Max Brooks' novel on which the movie is based unfolds over a number of interviews and accounts of the zombie apocalypse, meaning that it's not the easiest material in the world to adapt into a film. Marc Forster and his writers decided to try and capture the spirit of the novel within a new narrative, but little of the core elements remain; the origins in China were cut out so as not to alienate the Chinese market (who opted not to release the film in the end anyway), nor does it explore the Pakistan-Iran war, or America's over-confidence in attempting to stem the plague. Any political satire or currency the source material had has been duly stripped out to make way for a witless, overly serious zombie film. Wouldn't it have been more entertaining to just craft an anthology film that depicts the various events of the novel?