“Hello. Yes, this is dog. No, I can’t save your movie.”
The early reviews for World War Z aren’t as bad as we expected considering the less-than-glowing Vanity Fair article which suggests the movie has to gross $400 million just to break even. There were also rumors Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster weren’t even speaking during extensive reshoots. Then the first footage was filled with rolling balls of bad-CGI zombies (because screw physics).
Paramount isn’t giving up on World War Z, though. They released an extended clip via the music video for Muse’s “Isolated System” which was surprisingly compelling. Well, compelling when compared to their previous footage, anyway. Which is like saying unfrosted Pop Tarts are more compelling than eating packing peanuts. Technically true, but frost that sh-t.
Now Paramount has dropped several TV spots and 33 pictures from the film. The TV spots inform us that The President is dead and Europe’s gone dark, which is exactly what I’ll be worrying about during a zombie apocalypse. One of the spots also warns us, “Try not to kill one. It only makes the rest of them more aggressive.”
Yeah, they still aren’t calling them zombies. Even the 33 pictures are loaded with scenes of Brad Pitt and only one or two pictures of zombies, one of them photographed from behind and the others photographed from far away. The closest thing to an admission these aren’t regular humans is the black blood visible on Brad Pitt’s clothes after he kills one.
In a perfect world, those black spatters would be ink from Brad Pitt breaking the screenwriter’s pen and yelling, “This has nothing to do with World War Z the book! Rewrite it now.”
World War Z opens June 21st.
Potential spoiler on the next page.