Ben Adams, Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather overthink World War Z, considering both the film with Brad Pitt and Max Brooks’s book.
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I have literally just finished the movie, and before I start listening to the podcast I’d just like to mention that there are no mountains of the size depicted in Nova Scotia, surprisingly that was my only big upset.
I know my province too well.
Alright podcast over and I have a few notes/questions;
If Alcoholism is a disease, does that explain why my home of Atlantic Canada seems pretty much fine?
Joe is correct in stating that the first episodes of pokemon had mentions to real animals, however that was never repeated so I believe it to no longer be canon, much like the park ranger episode where Ash has a luger pulled on him.
There are; Eco-terrorists, Poke-Peta and wars in pokemon, Lt. Surge served in Nam, where he used his electric pokemon to fry dem commies’.
Which is frightening, when you think of it.
As for remembering character names, I had a very Kung-fu movie sort of response to characters, I’ll explain –
I really like Kung-fu movies, all of them (Samurai Reincarnation being my favorite) however I always thought I was a huge racist, cause unless I tried really hard I could never remember character names, or tell certain characters apart.
I mentioned this to a friend, and they told me to go back, as see if a characters face and their name where Spoken/seen at the same time, and it never happens!
You remember the female soldier because she is /really/ cute when it shows her, but you don’t hear her name until much later.
When the first trailer came out for the movie, I went out and found the two scripts they trashed, any cripes you have about this movie are valid, but are pale in the apocalyptic mess they were about to film.
I am excited about the prospect of a second movie, since the book can pretty much still happen, and that’s just what I wanted anyway.
If you watch the beginning episodes of the original Pokemon animated series they specifically mention animals that aren’t Pokemon in conversation.
Didn’t see World War Z, I’m not interested in zombie movies, although I do love Shaun of the Dead nevertheless. I just wanted to point out that both that soldiers on a bridge thing and the brown note were disproven on Mythbusters. Also, they are doing a Mythbusters Breaking Bad special some time later this season, so keep an eye out for that Breaking Bad fans who do not know the joys of watching Mythbusters on a regular basis.
I hope this involves them attempting to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in vaccuum storage bags.
So what we’ve basically determined re: the differences between the novel and the film, is that World War Z is this decade’s Starship Troopers?
The funny part is that the movie World War Z is closer to the spirit of the book Starship Troopers than the movie Starship Troopers is.
The question is whether Marc Forster only got 1/3rd of the way through reading World War Z and became depressed, so abandoned it and then continued filming.
Given that it was a zombie movie I’m surprised that no one answered the question of the week with World War Omega. A prequel to Omega Man, which is an adaption of “I am Legend”
If we’re going with Greek letters, I would have preferred “World War Beta,” which would be when all the AFCs rise up against the Alphas and PUAs for making them feel inferior and sapping their self-worth.
World War Beta could also be about home video enthusiasts.
What about World War T – a magnificent historical epic retelling the events surrounding the Boston Tea Party. In the spirit of continuing the Brad Pitt theme (because who doesn’t want that?), I’m imagining him playing Governor Thomas Hutchinson.
Actually, now I think about it he’s probably more of a revolutionary leader type. Perhaps John Goodman could play Governor Hutchinson.
There’s a little more detail out about what the original final ending is…and it’s a little….rapey?
http://www.movies.com/movie-news/world-war-z-original-ending/12638
>>>[After calling Karin from Russian] Gerry reaches Karin. He explains to her that the cold is the way they’ll win battles, which does her no good because it just so happens she and the kids are in a refugee camp in the sweltering heat of the Everglades. They’re in the type of camp where you have to have something to trade to survive, and it just so happens the one thing Karin had to trade was herself. She doesn’t explicitly tell Gerry this, but after she hastily hangs up the phone we see that she’s in some kind of reluctantly consensual relationship with the soldier who rescued them from the rooftop at the beginning of the movie.<<<
And that soldier was played by Matthew Fox.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Gritty reboot of Pokemon!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX1m0Y2Vkg
“When is it gonna stop?” “When I’ve caught them all.” <– killed me.
So I actually saw it the day after it came out, and I'm reminded of something about that experience by Belinkie's discussion of the gore and ratings… I saw a lot of families with kids under ten in the theater, and that just got me really, really enraged. Sigh.
Ben, I was thinking about it as a natural disaster movie, too. And YES, the fact that nobody we knew is a zombie, it totally left a lot to be desired on that front… Well, except the dad from the apartment whose kid ends up with Brad Pitt's family, he shows up on the roof as a zombie. But it wasn't really done well enough to make that a very emotional kill.
"Fight the dead, fear the living."- If you like the human-relationship-aspect of the zombie genre (BELINKIE), but aren’t into the show or comic, try the Walking Dead game from Telltale. You spend more time negotiating and deciding who to trust than shooting zombies. The way you decide to act influences what happens next time you talk to the people around you, and there’s no going back and changing your answer. And it’s so. Damn. Good.
Yeah, I knew when I saw the trailer the zombies would be different from the book, but I was at least hoping that they’d incorporate elements from the book throughout by doing things such as having characters from the book interviews show up, or some of the weapons, or maybe a zombie with its lungs hanging out of its mouth… I don’t even think the movie got at the spirit of the book, the only similarity is there are zombies at all. But as I already said, they aren’t even the same kind of zombie…
So about the allegorical-Israel stuff, I did like the line the dude Pitt was talking to said when Pitt was commenting on them letting Palestinians in, “Every human we save is one less zombie to fight.” But the Israel thing… They cut themselves off and never got breached. Seeing it get breached was when I knew there wouldn’t be a Goddamned thing from the book.
Yeah, I thought the job classification stuff in the book was cool- it was essentially a reversal of Dirty Jobs– people with actual trades became important, desk workers would have to train from them (one of the stories has someone talking about a person being taught something by their former maid or something).
Well hey, I also couldn’t help but note how the reason the zombies go after Pitt as he’s on the way to the plane is because the wife called him.
So I’m under the impression nobody really liked Pitt’s character???
You mentioned listener feedback, how about another listener panel some time?