Whenever I hear a book I like is being adapted into a film, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm not thrilled years of movie-watching have made me far too jaded for such a thing but whenever something good looks like it's going to take the step up to the big screen, excitement courses through my veins. What if, just this once, they completely nailed it? Hitting the bulls-eye when it comes to an adaptation is notoriously difficult, but we all live in hope. So when it was announced that World War Z was being made into a film, I was pleased. World War Z stands alone in the zombie genre because it tackles the problem at a national level, rather than a few nutcases holed up somewhere trying to ride out the end-times. There's a sense of scale which marks it out as unique, so even when the film ran into production difficulties, I was still optimistic. After all, crafting something of World War Z's scope was going to be difficult, and I was grateful for them trying it. Yet as the plot began to trickle through, I heard the worst possible term 'loose adaptation' and my heart sank. I always realised that they'd need to take some liberties with the film, giving it a main character for the sake of an involving dramatic arc and cutting the gore to achieve a marketable age-rating. But some of the changes here tore the heart and soul out of what the World War Z book was, and I couldn't help but feel slightly gutted as I left the cinema. Please don't misunderstand me I really enjoyed World War Z. It's a good film with excellent set-pieces and a decent central character. But the problem for me is that it isn't a real adaptation of the book it's just a regular zombie film. When taken on those merits, it's fine excellent, even. But taken on the high benchmark it set itself by adapting a genre classic, it falls short by cutting too much. So over the next 10 pages, I hope to explain the most unforgivable cuts from the book. Please note, there are
SPOILERS from here on in.