Brad Pitt turns action hero in explosive 'World War Z' trailer: Watch
You've never seen so many CGI zombies
Who knew working for the U.N. could be so exciting?
Brad Pitt hijacks a motorhome, leaps across rooftops, wields an automatic weapon and engages in all other manner of action hero-style antics in the first official trailer for "World War Z," director Marc Forster's upcoming adaptation of Max Brooks's bestselling 2006 novel about a United Nations employee (Pitt) who leaps into action after a zombie apocalypse sweeps across the globe.
Literal mountain of CG zombies aside, this first spot is actually pretty standard stuff - family gets trapped in bad situation, bad situation turns worse, lots of things blow up, Daddy takes charge and saves the day. Sure, it all looks great (and it better, considering a production budget rumored to be anywhere between $125 to $200 million), but it doesn't get the blood pumping the way it should've.
Indeed, given the checkered history of the film's production - Drew Goddard ("Cloverfield," "The Cabin in the Woods") was brought in to revamp the film's third act earlier this year, forcing several weeks of re-shoots and a release-date switch from December 2012 to next June - seeing this rather lackluster first preview doesn't exactly inspire confidence. If Paramount is looking to bring in the big bucks with this sucker next year, they'll need to do a whole lot better than this. Luckily they've still got seven months left to wow us.
My grade for the trailer: C. After watching it below, rate it for yourself at top left.
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November 9, 2012 at 12:17AM EST Reply to CommentLooks like dogshit. They took arguably the greatest zombie book ever written and shit the bed in a way that comes through so clearly in the trailer that there is no reason to actually watch the film. Fuck this movie.
JD Here's an idea, don't watch the fucking movie and shut the fuck up. Dumbass.
November 9, 2012 at 1:00AM ESTTodd Rinzler
November 9, 2012 at 1:38AM EST Reply to CommentJD, ever hear a talkback? Some will say awesome, others will say nay. There will be ranting of all sorts, Cest la vie. So don't troll, pal.
tonyr
November 9, 2012 at 2:11AM EST Reply to CommentSometimes I think you film blog people live in a bubble. Regular folks love zombies, they don't care about the book, and a trailer like this will excite them. They'll flock to it.
Monty Jack "Regular folks love zombies"
November 9, 2012 at 10:49AM ESTUm, what's the highest-grossing zombie movie of all time? The Dawn Of The Dead remake? That made, what, sixty million? If they've actually spent over $200 million on this (including expensive reshoots), there's no way in HELL they're gonna make that back, even with a PG-13 rating. I know The Walking Dead is popular right now, but that's a TV show people can watch in their living rooms, and it doesn't tame down the gore.
mmcb105 Monty Jack - Actually, Zombieland is the highest grossing zombie movie at $75,000,000. But you do make some really good points. The Walking Dead is certainly a sign that people love zombies, but the zombies in this movie don't really look like those zombies. They do, however, look like the creatures from I Am Legend, which I would say is probably this pictures closest proxy. In terms of both look and marketing. I guess the question here is whether Brad Pitt can pull in Will Smith numbers (my vote is that he probably can't, but it likely won't be a complete bomb).
November 9, 2012 at 12:44PM ESTCody B
November 9, 2012 at 2:19AM EST Reply to CommentWorld War Z is one of my all time favorite books. I think it tells what is, hands down, the greatest zombie story of all time. The book is legitimately scary and constantly gave me goose bumps because there was such a reality to it. It all seemed like this was totally possible. The trailer doesn't really display that. The trailer shows a much more actioney movie. But I don't think that will necessarily be what the movie was like though because I saw a lot of potential in the scenes that were shown. I just think the way the trailer was cut was horrible. It hardly gave us a sense of this WORLD WAR because it spent to much time on that scene of the family in the city. I don't think the movie focusing on Brad Pitt's character is a wrong move because with how the book is laid out, it makes it very difficult to make a movie out of. I just think the trailer was wrong in focusing so much time on him when it should really be giving audiences a taste of, again, a WORLD WAR! Heres hoping the second trailer establishes the world and the story better.
jim You have a valid point, but I thnk people who do`nt know anything about the book will see this trailer. By the time the trailer is over they`ll be thinking: "boy I was`nt expecting that when I first saw Brad Pitt with his family stuck in a traffic jam". I`m probably wrong but I think the trailer tries to establish normalcy thrown into chaos. The next trailer may show more epic war scenes, we`ll see.
November 9, 2012 at 9:40AM ESTCharlie The trailer starts out feeling like War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise trying to save his family) and ends up feeling more global. I haven't read the book, so I dont have any expectations for what it SHOULD look like, but from my view the trailer tried to accomplish 3 things: 1)Establish a main character that is more than just a guy killing zombies, that we are pulling for and understand his motivation 2)Make the point that this is not your daddy's zombie and 3) this is a gobal zombie movie not just a kill the zombie in front of you movie. I think they did all three successfully for a 1st trailer. Between the military shots, the world wide chaos and destruction it was apparent that this was not your "on the ground" zombie movie but something bigger. From the "Zerg" style zombie runners (watching them scale that wall by piling up was thrilling/horrifying) I got that this was a zombie/outbreak movie with different rules than the old Romero style. And the setup family stuff showed me enough depth for Pitt that I can expect him to be more than just a guy with a gun in the second half of the movie.
November 9, 2012 at 10:36AM ESTmdk
November 9, 2012 at 11:45AM EST Reply to CommentSPOILER: Massive changes were made to the story. For instance, the attackers are no longer undead zombies, but swarms of crazed Tea Partiers enraged over the re-election of Obama.
mmcb105 Oooh, topical humor.
November 9, 2012 at 12:47PM ESTjim Nice...
November 9, 2012 at 3:15PM ESTFawst
November 9, 2012 at 4:49PM EST Reply to Comment*sigh* How long til the "re-adaptation?" Seriously, this doesn't look awful, but it is not WWZ. Sad.
mridge1
November 9, 2012 at 9:30PM EST Reply to CommentI thought the book 'World War Z' would lend itself to a more 'Contagion' style procedural film instead of the 'I Am Legend' version that it appears to have become. Perhaps the film will turn out to be very well done and a lot fun but it just doesn't seem like a proper adaptation or in spirit of the source material.
One positive note is that a lot of the 200 million budget seems to be on the screen.
Bill
November 9, 2012 at 9:42PM EST Reply to CommentThose things in the trailer don't look like zombies. Super fast ants maybe, but not zombies.
Zombies_Made_Boring
November 9, 2012 at 10:20PM EST Reply to CommentThis is exactly what I expect a movie based of a popular book then designed by committee to look like: generic. Seriously, we've all seen this film before dozens of time, haven't we?
Also, we're in an age where CGI has gotten mainstream enough that giant, wide shots with thousands of zombies/orcs/soldiers/whatever simple don't leave much of an impression. Look at the Total Recall remake - that movie was beautiful to look at, featured (mostly) top-notch effects, and yet was a complete PoS. Why? Lame, generic story.
This looks the same way. I bet we all know exactly how it will end already, right?
Steven Cederdahl
November 9, 2012 at 11:36PM EST Reply to CommentThis could be good and this could be extremely bad. The book was amazing, but there have only been a handful of good book to movie translations in Hollywood..
Steven Cederdahl
November 9, 2012 at 11:36PM EST Reply to CommentWorst
John Post a comment...
November 17, 2012 at 6:24PM ESTJohn I think what some of you are neglecting to see is world war z that max brooks wrote was AFTER the outbreak was dealt with world wide not during it dealt with accounts from various people around the world. Now that said I don't recall max brooks zombies to be like I am legends, but that's Hollywood trying to make a great book into a better movie. I guess we will see how this movie measures up but the fact that its been pushed back to June due to " a new creative look" just does not sit well for me.
November 17, 2012 at 6:32PM EST