"Daddy, what's martial law?"
I went to see this film earlier in the year and was pleasantly surprised at it. I wasn't sure how it would rate to other zombie thrillers but it wasn't that bad. Brad Pitt play Gerry Lane, a United Nations officers trying to help find a cure to the disease that has infected nearly everywhere across the world. Unlike traditional zombie thrillers these guys can run at terrifying speeds - which does make them more scary as they are more likely to catch you but I'm not sure whether I liked this or not. To me zombies are very slow, have limbs missing and are sometimes a bit stupid. For these zombies to run at very good speeds is something you have to get used to as it is weird to see them swarming and running over each other to catch up to what they are hunting.
The general storyline of the film is very textbook during a zombie invasion. Find a cure to protect your family. Its very obvious to use this, as this is what most thrillers are based on, so it was then again very obvious how the ending was going to turn out. After seeing thrillers like I Am Legend and AMC's The Walking Dead, I became accustomed to the fact that you become a scavenger during said zombie invasion and you start to fight for your life to survive. Whereas in this, as Pitts characters is an officer he is able to send his family to live cosily, if not very cramped, on a ship... which took out the need to survive more and it didn't show the loss and what they has to give up to stay alive; as on the ship they are given quite a lot of food and warm shelter which didn't give off the same survival needs there are in other thrillers.
Apart from this minor detail the plot is okay and it does have its interesting scenes. Although in some places it is a little bit confusing as to why they are in a certain place. There is one scene that I really like in the middle as it is made to be very atmospheric and creepy as Pitt's characters and a few others are trying to navigate around a runway at night while there are zombies lurking in the shadows. This is a very tense scene along with the ending, which is set in an abandoned medial centre filled with zombies; this end scene is brilliant and it brings that tense atmosphere back from the middle. In between these points is mainly talking about zombies, fighting zombies and running away from, ohh yeah, zombies. It turns into a generic action type film and doesn't actually have anything that interesting in these scenes; only the obvious zombies climbing over a wall scene, something they probably shouldn't have put in the trailer...
I guess the film was worth seeing but it isn't any better than 3 stars due to how much they took away from a regular and traditional zombie thriller. By taking away the need for survival in the taken over world, it eliminates how we emote with the characters. We don't ever feel sorry for Gerry having to go to find or cure as we know his family are completely safe and he won't die. Even when presented with a 50/50 option at the end, we know how the film is eventually going to turn out, which turned this into a mediocre film in the end.
Although this film does not link in too much with the theme that I am looking at, it is clear that the amount of visual effects present is an extraordinary amount. I recently watched the VFX breakdown to this film as well and it is incredible to see how the background of films can be made out of pure CGI, especially most of the scenes in this film. By looking at this film I can see how I can add in layers of background to help build up my scene efficiently so that it looks like there is more to the scene than there actually is.
http://www.moving-picture.com/showreels/vfx-breakdowns/world-war-z-vfx-breakdown
No comments:
Post a Comment