“World War Z (2013)” Review Lyrics

World War Z (2013) dir by Marc Foster

Brad Pitt stars in a zombie movie that tries too hard to impress, and loses sight of itself in the process.

World War Z is a film that shouldn’t exist, and in the process of being made it has been so bastardised and compromised that the end product is a film that can’t justify its own existence. It is unfortunate, as there are no bigger fans of the source it is based on, Max Brooks’ fantastic book of the same name, than I. But from the moment a movie adaptation was announced I knew that heavy adjustments were unavoidable, necessary, in order to make a World War Z movie that had a wide enough appeal to pay off its budget.

If you haven’t read the novel itself, it cannot be understated enough how different the final version of this movie is. There are incredibly sparse similarities, mostly occurring in inconsequential pieces of dialogue, and nearly every recognisable hallmark of the book is gone. Max Brooks wrote his zombie novel as a series of interviews, following a UN investigator travelling the globe in the wake of a zombie world war listening to stories of survivors. Marc Foster, on the other hand, has made a film about a UN investigator being right in the thick of the action and turns him from a bystander to a full-on action hero.

It was a change that I cannot fault in logical terms. A filmic version of a man conducting interviews would be very boring, and for people looking for this there is already a very well-made audiobook. But in making this one compromise, you must make many others. Now that Foster’s zombie movie is about one man, you have to change the nature of zombies themselves. You see, Max Brooks’ vision of the zombie apocalypse channels the traditional essence of George Romero – the shuffling, crippled and slow walking corpse who wants to actually eat your brains, and only poses an offensive threat to the wary apocalypse survivor en masse. The zombies in the film are more akin to the ones seen in 28 Days Later. They sprint, they yell at you. They aren’t interested in eating you, just biting you in order to spread the virus they carry. Similarly to Danny Boyle’s non-zombie thriller, you turn almost instantly after being bitten.

All of these changes are designed to facilitate more excitement and to create tension for this one central character, but it ends up degrading the spirit of the source material and fails to bring enough fresh to the table to survive on its own merits. The interesting part of the book wasn’t the zombies themselves, but the intricate social politics that shaped the response of cultural groups around the globe to the same, unifying disaster. Take this away and focus on one guy and all you have is a generic zombie action movie.

Even if we are to put aside the book as a point of comparison by virtue of them being so distinct from one another, World War Z is still not a good film. It meanders from scene to scene, raising ideas then dropping them without proper resolution with alarming frequency. It leaps straight into the gory scenes almost straight from the off, and we’re left with no real information about our characters or setting or context. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is an ex-employee of the UN, who for no reason whatsoever is called up by his old boss to help with the fight-back against the horde. This is really all the information we’re given, and it would work if not for the fact that the script keeps moving the goalposts long after they should’ve been settled. Late into the movie, Lane is warned not to kill zombies, as it only “makes the others more aggressive”. Why bother with this odd and needless caveat? Earlier in the film, we see a nuclear bomb detonate almost directly below our protagonists’ plane. There’s some light turbulence, the phones go dead and… the camera cuts away and that’s it. Never mentioned again. It doesn’t seem to be the movie’s intention to leave the audience deliberately in the dark, as 28 Days Later did, and if it does it doesn’t commit to it hard enough for it to seem deliberate. The militaristic subtitles that appear whenever there is a cut to a new setting, even when we aren’t in a military context, are an example of this odd dichotomy.

The purpose of the supporting cast in the film is also largely questionable. There’s a wife and kids so you’ll care about Gerry, I suppose. But we’re already rooting for Gerry because he’s positioned from early in the movie as one of the only people who can stop the apocalypse. Wasn’t the fact that humanity’s future rests on his shoulders enough motivation to care? To make things worse, World War Z pulls the trademark goof last seen in 28 Weeks Later whereby you end up actively disliking the family because they make things worse. Listen, Mrs Lane, I know you’re worried about Gerry out on a field operation, but calling his mobile phone – causing a noise that results in the massacre of an entire platoon of soldiers – doesn’t make us sympathise.

The need for World War Z to widen its appeal also resulted in it being rated BBFC 15 in the United Kingdom. This wasn’t just a decision made by evil marketing executives trying to make the most possible money, either. This decision came from the big boss himself, William Bradley Pitt, who said "this whole thing started because I just wanted to do a film that my boys could see before they turned 18 — one that they would like, anyways. And they love a zombie”. This results in some irritatingly obvious compromises. As with all films in the genre, there’s an emphasis on headshots, but you never really see any headshots happen. There’s one close-up zombie bite near the start, but most of the “gore” after that is pretty much just assumed to take place. The large horde scenes, where whole cities are beset by waves of zombies, are masked by blurry crowds, CGI explosions and faraway camera angles. Even in intimate moments, the film cannot show us all it has to offer. Brad Pitt gets his crowbar stuck in one zed-heads’ skull as another bears down upon him, but all the tension is broken by the fact that all the film is allowed to do is focus on a postage-stamp image of Pitt’s face as he grunts in his attempts to remove it.

World War Z also ends abruptly, strangely and without any real conclusion. There’s concrete, tangible motivation driving Gerry Lane throughout the latter half of the film, which will produce concrete, tangible results if achieved. But at the crucial moment, when we’re about to see whether Lane’s plans actually come together, we get a ten-second montage and the credits. A cynical reviewer might comment that it’s saving material for a sequel, but I find it more likely that they just ran out of screen time. As unsatisfying as this film was, I find myself longing for another one just so I can see how it all pays off.

Zombies, like pirates, World War II, buddy cop movies and Jennifer Aniston, are worn out and have been overused. You need a fresh take on them in order to make them any fun to watch as a movie, and in order to make them artistically worthwhile. As it is, World War Z doesn’t do enough to achieve either. It’s a watchable, occasionally engaging popcorn flick, but anyone hoping for something different, cerebral or comparable at all to the source material won’t find what they’re looking for.

How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

To learn more, check out our transcription guide or visit our transcribers forum

About

Genius Annotation

A review of 2013 film World War Z, directed by Marc Foster and starring Brad Pitt.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Credits
Tags
Comments