World War Z- 3 Ways

This is going to be a first for me, I am going to discuss the book, the audiobook, and the movie, in the order that in which I consumed them.

World War Z by Max Brooks
As some back ground information for those who may not know, Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, this book definitely has a sense of humor to it, while also taking its subject matter seriously.

This book is one of my favorites, and it really has such a creative style. The book follows the gatherings of an investigator appointed by the UN to gather information about the world events leading up to and during the zombie outbreak.

The Narrator speaks with important people from all over the world who tell their stories of survival and in some cases how they were able to fight back against the enemy. The different characters reflect a lot of elements of different cultures as well as social critiques of our modern times.

I really don't want to tell too much about the book, but I would definitely advise anyone who likes zombies or who might be remotely interested to read the book. It is very well written and really gives an amazing perspective into this hypothetical event. After going through all of this, I think I might want to go back and read the book again, but if someone wants to read it, I might be willing to lend my copy out.


World War Z the Unabridged Audiobook
I don't have all that much experience listening to audiobooks, I remember listening to some on long road trips as a kid, but more recently I haven't really listened to any. So why did someone who hasn't really listened to audiobooks at all actually buy this audiobook? I think it has to be the fact that I loved the book, in combination with the cast they got to participate in the reading of the book.

I really think this audio book is more of what Max Brooks imagined than an actual movie, because the conversations that occur in the book would not be all that enthralling in movie format, it would have been cool if they did it in a miniseries on a channel like HBO with acting out of some of the scenes with the characters as Voiceover.

As I had mentioned the cast was great, the narrator of the book is Max Brooks himself, some of the people involved include Nathan Fillion, Simon Pegg, Masi Oka, Martin Scorsese, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, Henry Rollins, Jeri Ryan, Alan Alda, and many more voices. The story is told almost in an Orson Wellesian style, it gets very intense at times, and even a little bit emotional.

If you are someone like me and you spend a lot of time listening to an audio device, at work, or at home, it was worth the purchase of around $20 on iTunes. The run time is nearly 13 hours, so that is quite a good bang for the buck.


World War Z the movie
I was a bit skeptical of whether or not I would like the movie for a few reasons, the main reason being that the book involves the traditional slow zombie, but the movie actually contains a fast zombie, which for a zombie purist, like Max Brooks, is a no-no.

I guess I really need to look at the movie in to different ways, first as an adaptation of the book, and second as a movie overall.

As an adaptation of the book, I would give the movie an E for effort, but that is really as high as I can go on the grading scale. They tried to incorporate some things from the book, while also take some of those things and completely messing them up, and taking them in the exact opposite direction that they go in the book. I just can't recommend that people take the movie as an adaptation of the book at all.

As an actually movie, I quite enjoyed World War Z. I didn't love it, but it was an action movie, that was able to keep my attention, and action movies don't do that all that well. There are some very interesting action sequences, and some other dramatic scenes involving family. Overall I would probably give the movie a grade in the B-/C+ something in that range. It definitely doesn't have as much introspection and social commentary as the content of the books/audiobook. I know they are planning to make more movies in this storyline, I think they are planning to make a trilogy out of it, I am very interested to see what direction they will go with those other movies.