Hacker Cinema
World War Z
2013 · Film · 116 min
Directed by Marc Forster
Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies. After barely escaping the chaos, Lane is persuaded to go on a mission to investigate this disease. What follows is a perilous trek around the world where Lane must brave horrific dangers and long odds to find answers before human civilization falls.
7 positive11 negative3 mixed14 neutralfrom 35 commenters
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36 comments on Hacker News
That’s true, your comment reminded me of The Electric State which maybe 50 pages of drawings with descriptions and the trailer for the movie was unintentionally funny to me like it was a parody and World War Z where I loved the short action packed book which seemed like an easy translation but I was so wrong.
You have copied the World War Z script's tenth man description word-for-word:
(If nine of us) "look at the same information and arrive at the exact same conclusion, it’s the duty of the tenth man to disagree. No matter how improbable it may seem, the tenth man has to start digging on the assumption that the other nine are wrong." [1]
[1] https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/world-war-z-transcript/#:~:text=The%20Tenth%20Man.,the%20tenth%20man%20to%20disagree.
One of my favorite things about T2 is seeing who Sarah Connor becomes. Seeing a character changed by the previous movie is always cool.
And I do agree that an Alien or Terminator disaster/post-apocalypse movie could work. Just think World War Z with the Xenomorph.
I very highly recommend World War Z the audiobook version. It's great, and IMO, much better than the movie.
I remember this being the only part of that World War Z movie that I thought was interesting.
(I enjoyed the book quite a bit for its variety of stories and passion for zombies during a time when zombies were in a bit of a lull.)
Same with all those zombie scenarios. Quite conveniently, each and every film or series starts with patient zero, skips the part where the whole world order, society and whatnot collapses, and starts with our heros trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
World War Z, the book that is, is the only instance that tried to explain how the collapse occured. I'd expect it to take a lot more than 5 minutes, a lot of my optimism around pandemic control died during Covid, but the full collapse that always happens as soon as zombies show up just won't happen.
> often fail to recognize the best in their ranks
I know it's a dumb cultural cite, but I keep thinking of the "12th man" scene from the movie (book too?) "World War Z". The Israeli is explaining that his job is to disagree with the consensus. Just in case. Who is then given charter and resources to plan accordingly. Just in case.
I hope there's many buckets of research funds. With a modest bucket for long shots. And perhaps a smaller bucket for loonie tunes. Where by formalizing that model would preempt all the reactionary "omgherd golden fleece!?" outbursts.
As a taxpayer, I'd be thrilled if researchers, artists, journalists, musicians, and misc crazies got some kind of UBI, to do their work without starving. Considering the scale of all the usual waste and pork, genius grants wouldn't be more than a round-off error.
With a payout of 1:1000, it'd be a bargain for society. Smartest investments ever.
There is some kind of explanation (in a nutshell: the audience of the book is way smaller and niche than we'd like to admit and to be successful the show has to hit it with a larger crowd) :
> I have over the years talked to a few (quite successful) Hollywood screenwriters, just through an accident of what I do for a living (I am a college professor who researches topics that sometimes get me in the same room as said writers). I had a very nice conversation once with one of the guys who had written one of the more modern Planet of the Apes films (I forget which one) about the difficulty of making films that were true to source material. This was in the context of World War Z, whose film is literally the opposite of the book in many ways (the book is about how there aren't singular heroes that are going to save the world, the film is about how Brad Pitt saves the world, to put it bluntly). Anyway, he made the point that the only way in which an existing form of IP has any chance of guaranteeing some fidelity is if the fan base is very large and very important to the marketing or acceptance of the film. So Harry Potter had to be (perhaps painfully) deferential to the original source material. But World War Z did not, because the imagined audience was several orders of magnitude larger than the people who had read the book.
> Similarly I don't think Gibson fans were the imagined audience of The Peripheral show, since there aren't as many of us as we'd like to imagine, and even most people who have read some Gibson haven't read The Peripheral (such is my experience, anyway; I know a million people who have read Neuromancer and that's it).
> I was a little stunned last week when my exercise trainer guy told me he was watching The Peripheral, because he doesn't read books at all from what I can tell. (He's a super great guy, and great at his job, but reading is just not really his thing.) Which on the one hand is a huge success by Amazon — they penetrated the jock-bro market with this series — but also explains, maybe, why they made so many changes. Which, again, I think is unfortunate, because I think you could have had something that was more interesting (and, incidentally, truer to the book, which is more interesting than the show) and still had a fairly large market. Because as you note, there is actually a lot of reasons to think that more complex shows resonate with many audiences more than "more of the same" shows. Sigh.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WilliamGibson/comments/zawucs/comment/iysyxrh/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Also
> If it looks like something from a Marvel movie, there’s a reason. The army of consultants commissioned to work on Neom, the $500bn urban region of which the Line is part, comprises not only urban planners but numerous digital artists from the special effects industry. According to a Bloomberg report, they include Olivier Pron, a designer who helped create the look of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films; Nathan Crowley, known for his work on the brooding Dark Knight trilogy of Batman movies; and futurist Jeff Julian, who worked on the apocalyptic extravaganzas World War Z and I Am Legend.
I guess if there's a fat paycheck in it, I'd design a megalomaniac choppy-choppy prince's fantasy city too...
World War Z, the movie is far removed from the book and simply does not compare.
World War Z [0] by Max Brooks
it came out in 2006, when there was a bit of a fad of zombie-related content. most of it was pretty formulaic and predictable - there's a zombie apocalypse, there's a group of people struggling to survive, the story follows them.
World War Z broke out of the mold, taking the form of "an oral history of the zombie war". its conceit is that the narrator is a historian, going around the world to interview survivors and record their stories. each chapter takes the form of an interview with a different person, arranged more or less chronologically to follow the spread of the zombie outbreak.
this oral-history format lends itself really well to an audiobook with an ensemble cast. the author is the son of Mel Brooks, and he was able to use Hollywood connections to assemble an incredible cast [1].
there is also a film with the same name [2]. the film jumps right back into the predictable formula that the book so deftly escaped, and turns into "Brad Pitt saves the world from zombies". the two share no similarities beyond the name. it makes Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers look like a faithful adaptation of the source material in comparison.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z#Cast
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z_(film)
I have seen nobody mention it, but is "Z" by any chance associated with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z_(film) ?
I was thinking perhaps Russians are thinking of the opposition being zombies in much the same way as right-wingers talk about NPCs.
Or maybe it's just a coincidence.
I first read about this lifestyle in World War Z, a decent book for zombie lore with no connection to what ultimately became the movie.
There is a character in the book named Kondo Tatsumi who is described as an “otaku” which I presume has some approximation to hikkikomori.
The movie was an already written script paired with the title and some characters renamed. It was not made (the script) with the intention of adapting the book (which is a series of short stories with a common framing story). I, Robot, like World War Z, needs an anthology or serial format to be properly presented as a show or film.
I recommend World War Z though if your into this stuff you’ve probably already read it. It is absolutely nothing like the movie they based on the back cover. ;)
Though I have to say that for all the planning and exercises to prepare for nuclear war, pandemics, alien invasions, and zombie outbreaks the government fell absolutely flat on its face when we actually had one.
Maybe we really do need Bruce Campbell to take charge and save the world.
The book was so great, I have to read it again. The movie, so, well, it has nothing to do with the book, does it?
The book is also the only zombie fiction that really covers, somewhat realistically, the period between case zero and the break down of society. All other shows just show the early outbreak and then jump right into the post apocalyptic anarchy.
One good historical precedent to build this kind of fiction upon would be the Black Death in Europe. Good sources, real apocalyptic pandemic without counter measures. And yet society didn't completely disintegrate. World War Z is the only work I know of that comes close.
While popular films often depict a vaccine that’s effective enough and soon enough to stop an epidemic (Contagion, I Am Legend, World War Z) in real life many epidemics are fought without the help of vaccines (Ebola, HIV, SARS). The combination of speed, effectiveness, and new technology in COVID vaccines is “astonishing” indeed.
Sorta random, but these comments remind me of that 10th man concept from World War Z: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/12616/is-the-10th-man-rule-purely-fictional-or-is-it-based-in-fact
Totally agree, that's said most people cannot get surgical masks anymore, not to mention N95 masks. If we can learn the lesson from outbreak happened before modern tech invented, world would be a better place. We cannot produce or easily buy nanotech material used for N95 masks. However we can use whatever materials avail in our house easily. If need extra protection, add 2 layers of tissue between mask and face. Do not touch mask when you are outside. Stay away at least 2m from any human being. Do not touch anything outside. Immediately take shower and disinfect youself with 80p alcohol at home. :) hopefully most of us will not get infected, I do not want scenario in movie like Contagion or World War Z to happen for human race.
+1 for "World War Z", the book, which I literally read at the beginning of the current pandemic, by pure coincidence. It was an eye opener, at least the parts about how the [zombie] pandemic began and spread, how people and governments reacted and so on.
However, I enjoyed the movie too, and I think it's one of the best in the genre. Although, admittedly it has very little in common with the book.
It wasn't until this latest outbreak that I realised just how pervasive the ideas of pandemic are in the creative works I consume. One of my favourite books is "The Reality Dysfunction" which deals with a pandemic of possession. A favourite childhood video game is "Halo: Combat Evoloved" which centres on alien space zombies. Speaking of zombies, I really like "World War Z" (the book, not the film). And, in my efforts to have better job prospects, I am studying biostatistics which includes plenty of content on epi/pandemics.
It's bit like how nature and animals pervades all of our advertising and branding. You don't notice just how much our zeitgeist is filled with these things until someone or something points it out to you.
> things you can binge watch for a month?
this should get you through March :) ...
The Seventh Seal (1957) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/
The Last Man on Earth (1964) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058700/
The Omega Man (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/
The Andromeda Strain (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/
Dawn of the Dead (1978) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/
Outbreak (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/
12 Monkeys (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/
Cabin Fever (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303816/
Resident Evil (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/
28 Days Later (2003) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
Children of Men (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/
28 Weeks Later (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/
I Am Legend (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/
Blindness (2008) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861689/
Carriers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0806203/
Daybreakers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433362/
Black Death (2010) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181791/
Contagion (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4500922/
World War Z (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/
Maggie (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1881002/
Train to Busan (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5700672/
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/
93 Days (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5305246/
Cargo (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3860916/
It Comes At Night (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4695012/
Rabid (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5628902/
The Hot Zone (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4131818/
edit: There is actually a Wikipedia page for the genre (duh!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_viral_outbreaks
haven't seen him anything since Zoolander ... that said, his son is pretty good, Max Brookes wrote World War Z (only tangentially related to the movie of the same name).
World War Z the book is more or less this, on a global scale.
The movie has nothing to do with the book, except wasting the license.
If you want to build the "assume a spherical cow" zombie world, sure.
But the zombie genre tends to be based on the dynamics and interactions of actual humans. Romero's zombie movies are famed as social commentary, and you can (and people probably have) written entire graduate theses on what's going on in those films.
World War Z (the book, I haven't seen the film) explicitly has wealthy people using their resources to hide their infected status and spreading the infection as a result, some governments opting for tough-guy responses that make things worse but at least calm people down a bit, others deciding to protect favored racial/ethnic/economic groups while leaving disfavored ones out as literal bait, etc. etc.
That's mostly what the zombie genre is for, to comment on things like racism, economic inequality, etc. without risking the knee-jerk responses that would come from just explicitly saying "we live in a society that has these problems".
"World War Z" [1] -- the book, not the movie -- is based on the premise that people would work together to ultimately overcome the zombie plague. Notably, Max Brooks wrote "The Zombie Survival Guide" [2] before he wrote "World War Z".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zombie_Survival_Guide
A lot of these "adaptations" take the name, the cachet, and a handful of the character names and throw them into a blender.
Like World War Z. The screenwriter perhaps looked at the title of the book for inspiration, but that much could be coincidental based on the movie.
The problem is that a movie's fundamentally different as a storytelling method. You can't give the same insight into a person's mind. You can't reveal things about a character or situation that are intrinsically visual by describing them later on. Film is visual, it needs to show, but it's also not engaging in the same way a game is.
You can give people a taste of surviving in the wilderness, on a far-flung planet, at the bottom of the ocean in a film, but these films are at best a few hours long.
A game can take forty or more hours to complete and you're that much more immersed in the world. To replicate that experience in a two hour movie is impossible.
True, and it's a shame because a movie like Train to Busan is more engaging than World War Z or Marvel Civil War, but the latter will rack up more ticket sales. Most people don't care about substance or quality in the end.
Well, sometimes, you're a big fan of a movie and really want to see it. I was really into World War Z so I went and saw it when it came out in theaters, the first night. Other times your friends all want to go see Star Wars together, or some other friends and I went to see John Wick 2 the night it came out.
Sure, for the most part I don't care about going to the theater, most movies suck anyway. But socializing is a thing and watching a movie on the couch just doesn't compare to being in a dark theater with the screen filling your entire field of view and feeling the rumble from the speakers.
The novel "World War Z" basically touches on this resemblance. The author seems to have read lots of information about what real humans due when plagues and diseases strike and how human society reacts, and then transposed it to zombie apocalypse, which gives it a strange kind of authenticity.
The book wasn't very film-able, so the movie they made from it was quite different in approach.
I've also heard there's a non-fiction book about the "Spanish flu" outbreak that basically reads like a zombie film (e.g. one interesting tidbit, they call it the Spanish Flu because that is where the first reported cases were, but it didn't start there, the other countries just suppressed the information because they were at war)
Not to downplay any of this, but this seems like standard compositing done in most movies, and especially TV shows with smaller budgets. Big set pieces, or shooting on location is expensive. The more you can fake, the cheaper it is. For example, any shot in a stadium, or a place like Times Square is often much simpler to fake than to go out there and film on location.
World War Z breakdown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTr0k6-8_Fw
Reading this article made me realize how disconnected I am from popular culture. I only know of Duck Dynasty because my relatives watched it while I was visiting them. All I know about Miley Cyrus is that she's a singer. Until recently, I thought Hannah Montana was a different person. I have no idea what the Dolphin's "Jonathan Martin versus Richie Icognito feud" is, but I'm guessing it's related to the football team. Finally, I only know about George Zimmerman because a friend told me to watch the South Park episode he was in. That's also how I found out that there was a World War Z movie starring Brad Pitt.
If you want to have more free time and be a happier person, cancel your cable subscription. Unfollow Twitter users who talk about pop culture and news. Unsubscribe from subreddits that are full of this tripe. (Or even better, stop visiting Reddit.)
If you're in your mid-20's, you've got about 2700 weeks left on this planet. If you want to minimize future regret, spend them on more worthwhile things.
PhD Epidemiologist: I wouldn't. I love zombies, and I love zombies in Epidemiology, but I wouldn't exactly hold World War Z as a great example of pandemics in action. Especially not the movie.
Hollywood writes strong female characters because it can't write realistic women characters (something like 90% of produced scripts are written by men). All it can do is caricatures: Bella from twilight on one hand and the Kung-Fu princess on the other.
It's just the flip side of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test; http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/10-famous-films-that-surprisingly-fail-the-bechdel-test.php; http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test/.
One of the shows I really like is Orange and Black. By setting the show in a women's prison, the writers are forced to develop a range of female characters who don't just sit around talking about men.
Tilda Swinton's character in Michael Clsyton is also great. So is the female Israeli soldier in World War Z.
If you enjoy zombie science fiction, there is a scene in World War Z (the book, not the atrocious movie of the same name) which you would appreciate. Blink and you'll miss it, but the author distills some of the best parts of the British national character into two sentences which nearly made me (an American) weep for the beauty of it.
[Edit: Strong general recommendation for that book, by the way. If it were not in a low-status genre, parts of it would be taught in high schools.]
Nice to see this. However, does it look like they solved the distribution part? None of this movies got to me through ads, social networks, friends advice, etc. While take "World War Z", I probably knew about it few days after it's launch.