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Zombies on crack in 'World War Z' trailer

Posted Friday, November 9, 2012 at 3:19 PM Central

by John Couture

I'll be frank. My knowledge of the zombie oeuvre is pretty limited. I'm not a zombie expert.

Don't get me wrong, I love zombie flicks and I dig The Walking Dead, but I haven't watched every George Romero a hundred times. Only maybe like 10 times each.

Apparently, there's a whole site dedicated to the different zombie types, but if I had to choose, I prefer the old school lumbering brain-eaters. So, these ultra fast walkers of World War Z already have a strike against them.

Second, the whole opening of the trailer immediately makes me think of War of the Worlds. This is obviously strike number two.

While we are War of the Worlds, my colleague Tim pointed out something that I agreed with completely. From this trailer, it looks like Brad Pitt is simply playing Brad Pitt, ala Tom Cruise playing Tom Cruise in the Jack Reacher trailer. While this isn't a bad thing, it's a bit of a distraction.

At least, it's a step up from his Chanel No. 5 ads. Or maybe the ads are a major spoiler for World War Z: Brad becomes a zombie!

Now, that I've bashed the trailer sufficiently, I will point out that I'm intrigued by the story and I do want to see where this is going to go. I mean for this to be a "world war" I would imagine that to do it complete justice this will have to take place over a couple films.

The problem with this trailer is that it suffers from an identity crisis. It just doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a teaser trailer or a full-length trailer? It tries to do too much and leaves everything muddled.

I am excited to see Mireille Enos in something other than the Seattle rain, so there's that. I'm also hoping for an intelligent take on the zombie genre that doesn't simply dissolve into the same old muddled mess.

The fact that they've been doing extensive re-shoots on this film doesn't fill me with much confidence, but maybe they really are trying to get it right. We'll find out on June 21, 2013 when the world war starts.