Upcoming: World War Z

This is a rare "before" post. My thoughts about an upcoming movie before I see it.

I remember seeing a trailer for World War Z months ago. My initial feelings were mixed. The zombie genre has gotten trendy. Much like with the vampire craze spurred by the Twilight films, I've felt like the zombie craze has ruined zombies a bit. Anytime something becomes popular you tend to lose quality. And there are a lot of zombie films and books floating around that are pretty awful. With any of these genres the popularity often leads to a "falling out." No matter how interesting or creative, new movies and films with imaginary and fantasy characters tend to be met with groans and "not another one" comments. That was basically my first thought:  Oh, no. Another zombie film. But I did pause at the fact that it stared Brad Pitt and looked kind of different (super speedy aggressive zombies?) I didn't give it much thought after that though.

I love the fantastical and I love the post apocalypic/dystopian genre. The latter has inevitably led me to zombies. Especially the more realistic vein that is full of social commentary and themes about human nature and survival.

Now that the movie is just one week away I've realized that I'm excited.

Here are some of the things that have gotten me excited over the last few months:

- Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt's production companies had a bidding war over the screen rights to the novel

I'm a firm believer that Leo knows good scripts. He almost universally chooses really good movies to be apart of. Brad Pitt's choices have also gotten better and better as he's matured as an actor. I've become a big fan of them both and I generally trust their judgement when it comes to project selection. So when these two actors are fighting over something, you know there's probably something unique or special about it.

- It's being directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace, etc.) I find this to be a promising choice.

- The Book

The book is so much more than I expected. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm part way through and loving it. It's written like an oral history made up of individual accounts. So far it's unique, well-researched, well-written, and interesting. It's not campy or over the top...it feels completely plausible. If society collapsed and this was one of the only books to survive I'm pretty sure people would believe there had been an actual zombie war and probably be on their guard for the walking dead.

- The screen play was written by J. Michael Straczynski

Nerds rejoice? Straczynski is the writer of many comic books and Babylon 5. I'm not extremely familiar with his work but if you're going to do a movie about zombies it should be written by someone nerdy. who knows science fiction and fantasy so I feel pretty good about this choice.

- Brad Pitt

Have you seen him lately? He's getting better looking with age. The long hair/scruff combo in this movie just does it for me. And John Paul. And anyone with a pulse. *swoon*