Adapting to Zombies: The First Trailer for ‘World War Z’

Next summer’s zombie blockbuster looks epic in scope, but will it do justice to its celebrated source material?

After its original December release date was pushed back to June 2013 following two script re-writes and a reported seven weeks of re-shoots, internet doomsayers immediately began to predict that World War Z would be a cinematic train-wreck.  Just how much of a turkey the film might (or might not) be remains to be seen, but the release of its first official trailer at least gives us some proper footage to chew over.  So the question is, how does it look?

While it of course remains a possibility that the film will end up a convoluted mess, the trailer is admittedly impressive.  Glasgow city centre has never looked so awe-inspiring, and the exotic locations and myriad actors featured suggest that World War Z will be a zombie film much more epic in scope and ambition than most others of its ilk.  As Brad Pitt’s UN investigator travels the globe covering the ongoing zombie world war, it appears we’ll be treated to sequences of small-scale survival-horror as well as large-scale battles featuring heavily armed soldiers and thousands of CGI flesh-eaters.  Having a scope of such mammoth proportions also characterised the Max Brooks novel upon which the film is based, but it is here, however, that the similarities between source material and adaptation seem to end.

One of the things that makes Brooks’ novel so compelling is the fact that it is not just one man’s account of a fictional zombie world war, but rather an oral history featuring the accounts of multiple survivors from various different countries and walks of life.  The investigator character in the book is a neutral voice, largely serving as a framing device so that characters from China, Russia, India, South Africa and elsewhere can tell their gripping stories of survival and sacrifice.  With Brad Pitt in the role, it’s understandable that the investigator (a role played by Brooks himself in the book) would have a bigger part to play in the movie adaptation, but from what little we can see in the trailer, it seems that Pitt’s character has actually become the focal point of the film, with the tragedies and triumphs of the zombie war all brought to the viewer from his perspective.  If this is so, it means that a key component of what made World War Z a great novel will have been lost in the process of adaptation.  By placing its emphasis on the perspective of a lone American reporter, the film will lose the thoroughly international character of its source material, and will be the poorer for it.

It is by no means certain that World War Z will suffer such of a narrowing of perspective, but the lack of a truly multinational ensemble cast suggests that it might well be the case.  In bowing to the whims of Hollywood, and focussing on the American point of view, the film-makers risk taking the ‘world’ out of World War Z.