World War Z ratings/spoilers

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by DarthTom, Jun 19, 2013.

  1. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2001
    Location:
    On the run.
    What the what? Really?
     
  2. trekkiebaggio

    trekkiebaggio Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2004
    Location:
    Dancing to the Jailhouse Rock
    I assume it's not a conscious decision on their part, it's more of an automatic, survival instinct thing.
     
  3. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2004
    Location:
    Hiding with the Water Tribe
    Yes. The scene in the trailer where all the zombies are streaming past the little bald kid in Jerusalem as he kneels to the ground; that was because the kid had cancer. They also go around an elderly man who had an unspecified illness as well.

    That "camouflage" of having a deadly illness is what the whole last act of the film hinges upon, and is the surviving humans first really successful weapon against the zombies. It allows them to infect soldiers with a fatal but curable virus before sending them into combat against the zombies, essentially "cloaked." So, if this is a dealbreaker for you, you're going to be really disappointed by the last part of the film.

    How the zombies or the virus are instantly able to diagnose that illness while they're streaming by someone at high speed is beyond me, but then, being zombified gives them all kinds of superpowers in this movie that normal humans don't have (other than the usual undead thing). They're able to instantly stack up like the little magnetic ball bearing sculptures, they seemingly run 50mph, they jump and lift things better than Olympic athletes on a cocktail of 'roids, they cooperate like an ant colony, and through the magic of being PG-13, even whilst being trampled by hundreds of their own kind in a tidal wave of zombies, they don't seem to get injured in the slightest. Not a crushed skull or ribcage to be found.
     
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2013
  4. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    At this point it's looking rather likely that the 'virus' IS indeed some form of intelligence, a collective / possibly alien consciousness that is using the zombies as hosts.
     
  5. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2004
    Location:
    Hiding with the Water Tribe
    There's no indication of anything like that in the film, and I highly doubt they'll go that way in the sequels. It's implied to just be a instinctual thing, which is silly, but whatever. I'd chalk it up to silly pseudoscience on the part of the writers before I start concluding that that was all part of an elaborate plan to show that the zombie virus is some kind of super-intelligent malevolent entity.
     
  6. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    Guess there's still hope that the sequels actually will feature scenes and characters that were IN the book.
     
  7. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2008
    Location:
    Just around the bend.
    Well, that pretty much rips the heart out fo the book right there. In the book it was all about the long, slow fight to retake the world. There was no "magic answer" on how to fight the zombies. Of course, that's the corner the screen writers got themselves into when they gave the zombies all these super abilities.
     
  8. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    I didn't know until just recently that Max Brooks (who wrote the novel) is Mel Brooks' son...
     
  9. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2008
    Location:
    Just around the bend.
    Yep, which makes you wonder, when is the broadway musical version coming?
     
  10. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    We're zombies. Zombies in tights.
    We roam around your cities looking for fights.
    We're zombies. Zombies in tights.
    We'll give you a bug and eat all your brains, that's right!
    We may look like sissies,
    But watch what you say, or Solanum will put out your lights!
    We're zombies. Zombies in tights.
    Just be on guard, the Zombie Survival Guide!
     
  11. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2009
    The trailers look so incredibly stupid, this is a film I will skip over til I'm gone. What is it with that Zombie craze anyway? And then they are piling up like ants. Silly shit.
     
  12. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    I think with Zombies they're pretty much the only supernatural/monster trope left to make scary. Vampires have been pussified/neutered by Twilight along with them Werewolves. Ghosts are over done and/or hard to do right. Probably largely because there's no established consistency on how to portray them what their "abilities" are and so forth. So that pretty much leaves zombies. Zombies are easy to do (they're dead bodies, reanimated, that come after you without stopping and spread disease/infection; unlike ghosts which are intangible spirits that sort of follow you around and make a nuisance) and they've not been romanticized by other works (like vampires and werewolves)
     
  13. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2008
    Location:
    Just around the bend.
    ^You haven't seen Warm Bodies have you? Or the BBC miniseries In the Flesh?
     
  14. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    No.

    I actually have a synopsis written somewhere on an idea I had for a ghost movie that treated ghosts with a degree or two of eeriness while also a bit of a "romance" plot between one of the character and a female spirit (even had a love scene in it.)

    Anyway, it seems with ghost movies it's usually the more stricter scary/horror avenue. But not quite the same as, say, vampires, zombies or werewolves when it comes to using them as the scary antagonists in a movie. Normally they go to straight-up horror rather than the popcorn movie monster villain like we have with zombies.
     
  15. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2004
    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    I was already kind of nervous about this from the trailers, and now after hearing what you guys have said has killed any interest I had in seeing this in theaters. I might check it out once it's on Netflix, but I definitely to see it in theaters. After playing The Last of US, I was in the mood for something else along those lines, and this definitely does not sound like it.
    I'm not usually one that goes for tons of gore, but a PG-13 zombie movie sounds like a weird idea to me. For me the scariest and most disturbing part of the zombies has been the violence and gore in the scenes where they attack people.
     
  16. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2008
    Location:
    Just around the bend.
    Both of the above I mentioned are zombie movies/series.
     
  17. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    Ah. Gotcha.

    Anyway, with this movie I did have to chuckle a bit with all of the production company logos before the movie including, humorously given this movie's history, one called "Plan B."

    All the same, I still was pleasantly surprised by this movie though there are still some story plot problems in it but I guess when your movie is made by half-a-dozen different companies that mutilates the source material book that's going to happen.

    Here's a question, though: In Jerusalem they had built the tall wall supposedly to keep out the zombie hordes and to contain the potential for rebuilding a society. Brad Pitt's character figures out pretty quickly that noise attracts the zombies... Soooo why hadn't the Israelis? Why allow the singing/clapping thing over the loud speaker to go on? Did they not realize that would attract the hordes of zombies just on the other side of the wall?!
     
  18. Goji

    Goji Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    May 6, 2006
    I went with friends and liked the movie more than I expected to (I probably wouldn't have seen it on my own). I thought the zombies looked frankly ridiculous when they were running and jumping and flailing their arms about en mass. They worked a lot better in the second half of the movie when Brad & co. had to sneak past them in dimly lit hallways.

    Early on I had bad flashbacks to Spielberg's "War of the Worlds". I'm glad this film had the sense to leave the kids behind after the first 20 minutes or so.
     
  19. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    Yeah, a lot of the times when they're running and such they were handled good but when they were climbing over one another enmasse to get over the Jerusalem wall looked a bit silly. The skywalk/WHO wing scene(s) were really done though.
     
  20. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2004
    Location:
    Hiding with the Water Tribe
    Regardless of the sound issue, I don't think they predicted that the zombies could combine to form Voltron and climb over a 100 foot tall wall.