Who knew working for the U.N. could be so exciting?
Brad Pitt hijacks a motorhome, leaps across rooftops, wields an automatic weapon and engages in all other manner of action hero-style antics in the first official trailer for “World War Z,” director Marc Forster’s upcoming adaptation of Max Brooks’s bestselling 2006 novel about a United Nations employee (Pitt) who leaps into action after a zombie apocalypse sweeps across the globe.
Literal mountain of CG zombies aside, this first spot is actually pretty standard stuff – family gets trapped in bad situation, bad situation turns worse, lots of things blow up, Daddy takes charge and saves the day. Sure, it all looks great (and it better, considering a production budget rumored to be anywhere between $125 to $200 million), but it doesn’t get the blood pumping the way it should’ve.
Indeed, given the checkered history of the film’s production – Drew Goddard (“Cloverfield,” “The Cabin in the Woods”) was brought in to revamp the film’s third act earlier this year, forcing several weeks of re-shoots and a release-date switch from December 2012 to next June – seeing this rather lackluster first preview doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. If Paramount is looking to bring in the big bucks with this sucker next year, they’ll need to do a whole lot better than this. Luckily they’ve still got seven months left to wow us.
My grade for the trailer: C. After watching it below, rate it for yourself at top left.