World War Z

Posted on August 10, 2013 by underwhelmer

I don’t normally write movie reviews, but this flick had such an impact on me I decided to share…

Last month, I had the misfortune of watching the summer blockbuster film, World War Z. I say “misfortune” because this movie was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back; I no longer have any faith left in Hollywood and, by extension, the movie-going public.

Before I go any further, I would like to say that I read the book by Max Brooks a few years ago and I had very high hopes for this movie. Hopes that were crushed mere minutes into the film.

The book was a sociopolitical commentary that was set against the backdrop of a theoretical zombie apocalypse. Max Brooks explored many touchy subjects such as human trafficking in Asia, political tensions in the Middle East and the cognitive and cultural divide between Western Europe and former Soviet-bloc countries. There’s even an ironic and brow-raising scenario where American refugees are attempting to flee the zombie hordes of the States by taking rafts into Cuba.

When I first cracked the pages on World War Z, I expected to be taken on a fun, zombie-riddled, fantasy ride by the son of famous funny man, Mel Brooks. What I got instead was a thought-provoking tale of humanity’s brush with extinction as told from the perspective of over a dozen flavorful characters.

The movie, on the other hand, was the loose story of Brad Pitt traveling the globe and outrunning explosions/ zombies. There were so many battles in exotic locales, I half expected Optimus Prime and Shia Labeouf to make an appearance.

With the bloated special effects budget and little to no plot, it felt like a Michael Bay film. I swear to God, that man could ruin anything.

As I grew more and more agitated in my theater chair, I realized that I needed a dramatic shift in my expectations lest my mood would sour for the rest of the evening. I decided to watch the film for what it was, a mindless, globe-trotting CGI romp that would challenge none of my thoughts or opinions on anything whatsoever.

Ultimately, this proved unfruitful because I was stone cold sober with no access to alcohol and therefore, unable to turn off my brain. Instead I made a compromise between actively hating the movie and passively enduring it and henceforth focused on the movie’s glaring mechanical inconsistencies. I will share those with you now.

*I would normally warn against spoilers at this point, but it’s hard to spoil a steaming piece of crap.

-Zombies, regardless of their physical attributes & dimensions whilst living, gain the power, speed and coordination of an NFL linebacker.

I’m not biologist or anything, but zombies are animated corpses. It would stand to reason that an animated corpse, although fearless and armed with near-limitless endurance, would not gain power through the process of dying. How can something that doesn’t eat, heal, rest or sleep get stronger? Everything it does expends energy and it does nothing to intake energy. They don’t even eat people, they just bite them and move on to the next victim.

-There are no fat zombies.

Let’s just pretend zombies that can run a 3.8 second 40 yard dash and then head-butt through ballistic glass somehow make sense. How come there are no fat zombies? I would imagine that the vast majority of fat people would have become the first wave of zombies due to their inability to outrun anything. Watch the movie and try to spot one fat zombie. There aren’t any.

-Zombie bones are made of titanium.

Somehow, zombies are able to bend the laws of physics via some Wile E. Coyote bullshit. More times than I could count, I watched a zombie suffer a bone-obliterating fall only to get up and sprint after the nearest human.

Looking back at the movie, I feel really bad for Max Brooks. It seems that the whole discussion as to how the movie was written went like this…

And then a few years later, a multimillion dollar abomination was released upon the public and we still lined up to see it. According to IMDb, this movie has already made a tidy $25 million dollars. I can just imagine the hidden cabal of masked Hollywood executives lounging about a chateau amidst piles of cash, getting oral sex in some creepy Eyes Wide Shut style orgy.

So if you like zombies and you want to be a part of the solution and not the problem, buy Max Brooks’ books and don’t watch the movie.

Final verdict: Book = 9/10

Movie = -712/10

P.S. I made a little facelift to the blog homepage. Hope you like it.

P.P.S. It’s good to be back. 🙂

Video Games Keep Proving that I’m an Awful Person

Posted on July 1, 2012 by underwhelmer

For those of you that don’t know, the powers that be have made a Walking Dead video game. Interestingly enough, this game doesn’t focus on killing hordes of zombies, instead the focus is on difficult decision making. The game is spread out over five episodes and your character, Lee, has to call some tough shots that will affect various aspects of the game and the other characters therein.

Interactive storytelling is a great area for games like this, but it does have a way of pointing out how awful of a person I am.

Here’s what happened last night while playing Walking Dead Episode II: Starved for Help.

*Minor spoilers ahead.

After a brief scuffle with some non-undead enemies, our five-person group finds itself locked in a cold storage unit.

Kenny, the casually racist commercial fisherman from Florida, and I are talking about how to get out. Lilly, the ex-Air Force de-facto leader of the group, is trying to calm down her dad, Larry, who is banging on the door and screaming obscenities at our captors. Clementine, the seven year old girl that I saved in episode one, is covering her ears trying to block out all the grown up words spewing out of Larry’s mouth.

As I wander around trying to find a way out of this refrigerated steel box, Larry, unsurprisingly, gives himself a heart attack.

Serves the fat prick right. That hatchet-faced douche tried to kill me in the last episode and now it’s coming full circle.

I grin and cross my arms as Lilly rushes to help her dad.

Lilly starts with CPR and I go to help. I’m glad Larry’s dying, but I can at least try to salvage the relationship with Lilly, right?

Kenny, with an uncharacteristic flicker of situational awareness, says this:

Now helping Lilly would’ve been a no-brainer, but earlier in the episode we discovered that the recently dead (regardless if they’re bitten or not) will always reanimate as walkers. This is bad; my grin fades as I realize that Larry is a 6’4” 300lb ticking time bomb.

Kenny uncovers the same line of thinking as me and continues with this:

I was presented with a choice; help Lilly save Larry or help Kenny smash Larry’s head in.

Larry was a danger to me about 75% of the time while he was alive. Now, he was about to become a 100% undead danger. We had no weapons other than a few 40lb blocks of salt lick.

I made the decision to help mutilate Larry’s still warm corpse in about .02 seconds.

I pull Lilly, kicking and screaming, off of her dad and Kenny finishes the deed by smashing in Larry’s skull with a salt lick block.

Lilly rushes back to her mostly headless dad and begins sobbing uncontrollably.

I think Clementine is sobbing in the corner too, but I’m not really sure though; I tend to lose track of her a lot.

I really wanted to feel sorry for Lilly, but it was at this point that I remembered that Lilly had been a colossal bitch to me the entire game; shouting, pointing guns at me, etc.

No more pretending to tolerate this person.

It was time to pour salt (get it? IT’S A PUN!) in the wound.

Instead of continuing to try to find a way out, I click on Lilly and initiate conversation.

There were four dialogue options to respond to this.

I’m so sorry, we had no choice.
Remain silent.
He was a good man.
Larry would have wanted it this way.

Without hesitation, I chose option four. It seemed to be the most psychologically devastating option as it implied that Larry would have wanted his skull obliterated by an 18 kilo block of sodium chloride. It was the perfect thing to say to Lilly mere seconds after what we just did.

It had the intended effect that I was looking for:

Kenny had to restrain her and I’m glad that the game didn’t require that I go through a button pressing sequence to help restrain Lilly because I had dropped the controller due to my fits of laughter.

I then saved the game and quit for the evening; mission accomplished.

THE END.

P.S. I played a little bit more this morning. I found that, in order to escape, I had to use a coin to unscrew the AC unit in the cold storage room.

P.P.S. I think I remember Larry saying that he kept some change in his pocket. Maybe I should ask Lilly if it’s in bad taste if I loot her dad’s corpse before it cools off?

What Would Rick Grimes Do?

Posted on May 27, 2012 by underwhelmer

Last night, I finally finished watching The Walking Dead Season II. Great series if you haven’t seen it, by the way. I finally realized how much crap that Rick Grimes has to put up with from his whiny group of (somehow) survivors so I decided to put together a What Would Rick Grimes Do flow chart… enjoy.

*minor spoilers ahead.