Anyone else read/ watched/ obsessed with World War Z?

[mosey]

Max Brooks has definitely hooked me. Not before this book have I really imagined our modern world in the grips of an outbreak. The Raimi films are mere harassment incidents compared to this ...

Which of course is a great difference: the isolated horrific focus vs. the global, inescapable madness.

Anyone on the fence, please jump into one of these scenarios. It's worthy stuff.

[Ed Oscuro]

I read the book. Brooks has just enough of a grasp of how the world works to be irritating. Stereotypes traipsing through the apocalypse.

[Skykid]

I watched fifteen minutes of the film and turned it off.

[mosey]

I am saving the film for after the book, but maybe it is just as gross as you say Skykid. I thought the Silent Hill movie was ok until around the end when I walked out. Some things are so sacred on a personal level, that even talking about them with fans of apparently equal enthusiasm is painful. Or maybe some experiences dissolve the more they are discussed.

[dan76]

I thought the book was dreadful. GCSE standard writing, though I only made it half way through so maybe it got better? I really enjoyed the film in a mindless Hollywood blockbuster sort of way.

I've read the original shooting script and all I can say is that the changes they made in the last third of the film are for the better. That part of the film is a more traditional zombie flick.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know the inside story, but I think that Max Brooks' rise was the culmination of a marketing campaign as much as anything to do with the merits of his message itself. I guess write a book about "How To Survive X" before you want to write about X more directly and you're a step ahead of the rest of the crowd flogging their scripts to a major imprint.

[mosey]

I thought the book was dreadful. GCSE standard writing, though I only made it half way through so maybe it got better?

Maybe it is a 'gravy & fries' kind of book, but I think it is well written. MB is pretty good with subtly framing scenes so the reader infers what really happened, like noir films showing a murder as two shadows on a brick wall.

[Ed Oscuro]

There's nothing subtle about it at all. He even paints out the moral lessons he wants you to learn (like the Israel scene). 'bout as subtle as a sledge hammer to the nose.

[mosey]

Maybe there are contemporary lessons to learn, but at least they're not explicit. I love the family our media admonished to 'go north', and how they eventually acclimate to a delicious normalcy in their frozen purgatory. Like those in that ninth circle of Hell, at least until the sun turns toward spring...

[Ed Oscuro]

From memory:

- Israel: Othodox Jews (or is that settlers? I forget who these guys are supposed to be a caricature of) are bad, don't blame the secular military
- Japan: Otaku will stay at their computers doing nothing, other people will suicide, etc. (okay, probably some of our resident Japanese experts will say this one isn't so far off, but still)
- China: Brute force and secrecy
- North Korea: Let's hide in a shell
- CIA: The dude is literally hauling around a wheelbarrow of manure (I guess this is called a metaphor!)
- batteries: Supply chain logistics what?
- The dude who commits suicide in his SUV vs. the Air Force woman: survival of will
- boats: boats are bad for some reason
- blind sensei and his loyal disciple
- don't be a crying baby when the Zs approach: FIGHT OR FLIGHT
- probably many other things besides

really the book tries to hit you over the noggin with one IMPORTANT SURVIVAL TIP after another and it's quite annoying. Having one or two things would be OK by me - for example I guess if you say that there's a bit of axe-grinding with the (rather short, but still important) treatment of weapons in Japan, or the rather unusual treatment of transplants as a vector for the problem - okay, that's to be expected. But when the book explicitly tries to hit you with one special reading of political or cultural issues, I expect that to be more than just thoughts after having gleaned some reading from the news. I think it takes a special awareness to write about what would happen in some country outside your own; you don't capture the cultural nuances and arguably Brooks has only a superficial understanding of many of the political forces he tries to sketch out, also.

To be fair somehow the book was still somehow a compelling read, but I can't say that it was nearly as well done as I expect from modern fiction of any stripe. I would like to say that you get extra room to play in when you are dealing with controversial issues and trying to be as ambitious as Brooks is here, but in practice we all know that controversial topics are sensitive and easily resented when they aren't presented in the right way.

But thanks to the magic of Hollywood, you can turn your brain off entirely for the movie version, I guess!

[brentsg]

It's like coming to visit this forum. Sometimes I want the cerebral experience and I read about shooting games. Other times I just want to turn off my brain and read Friendly's Sony threads.

[Ed Oscuro]

So arguably where WWZ fails is in deliberately trying to stimulate your brain, but in a way that is ultimately unsatisfying (to me, at least).

[Mischief Maker]

[Zombies] scare me more than any other fictional creature out there because they break all the rules. Werewolves and vampires and giant sharks, you have to go look for them. My attitude is if you go looking for them, no sympathy. But zombies come to you. Zombies don't act like a predator; they act like a virus, and that is the core of my terror. A predator is intelligent by nature, and knows not to overhunt its feeding ground. A virus will just continue to spread, infect and consume, no matter what happens. It's the mindlessness behind it.

There's nothing more depressing to me than dudes prominent in the media whose knowledge of biology comes from from Agent Smith's evil monologue in "The Matrix."

[drauch]

Zombies break all the rules! Zombies skip school and eat pizza and go skateboarding. Fuckin' zombies have a 2.5 gpa.

[jonny5]

Really enjoyed the book, the movie made me sad with how little it actually took from the book other than a couple key events and the title.

[Ed Oscuro]

[Zombies] scare me more than any other fictional creature out there because they break all the rules. Werewolves and vampires and giant sharks, you have to go look for them. My attitude is if you go looking for them, no sympathy. But zombies come to you. Zombies don't act like a predator; they act like a virus, and that is the core of my terror. A predator is intelligent by nature, and knows not to overhunt its feeding ground. A virus will just continue to spread, infect and consume, no matter what happens. It's the mindlessness behind it.

There's nothing more depressing to me than dudes prominent in the media whose knowledge of biology comes from from Agent Smith's evil monologue in "The Matrix."

If you have seen the short making-of of George Romero's Resident Evil 2 ad, his own explanation of zombies ("a pack of jackals" or something) isn't much better. But yeah, fuck Agent Smith too. SHUT DOWN YOUR CORES IF YOU CARE ABOUT PRESERVING THE PHOTONS YOU GOONY FUCK

[Obiwanshinobi]

I can willingly suspend my disbelief ragarding animated corpses, but what pissed me of in Reanimator was the severed head speaking. Just, no. No lungs - no breath - no voice.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The WWZ flick had a very bloated $190 million dollar budget & another six months of filming as the film crew & cast weren't too happy with the original ending shot. The last 45 minutes of the movie are entirely new scenes that they felt was needed to advance the story along.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[mosey]

Well I for one have been forever changed. Nothing before WWZ has painted my imagination of such a plague in quite so vivid and contemporary colors. Has anyone has played the iPhone game Plague Inc.? Much the same, but generalized over many symptoms and contagions. NEAT! Old age is no longer my final nemesis, everyone else is! Let us grunt and struggle for survival. May the best man win.

[KAI]

- Japan: Otaku will stay at their computers doing nothing, other people will suicide, etc. (okay, probably some of our resident Japanese experts will say this one isn't so far off, but still)

That's exactly what happens in I am a Hero.

[mosey]

Finally finished the book, and I wish there was a full-color coffee table book written in an alternative history style. Lots of pictures and in-depth interviews and chapters on the Z-WAR...

Great $2.50 spent for Kindle!