The misunderstanding of military equipment and effects it would have on a fleshy body can be excused for the basis of all zombie material. Realistically, a zombie apocalypse would not likely happen. So some liberties have to be taken for it to spiral out of control. Simply put, for the setting to work, you have to suspend those particular areas of disbelief otherwise the entire thing will fall apart.
^ That's pretty much the short of the Anthropic Principle when applied to the zombie genre.
In addition, I've always been irritated when the "cure" for the disease (I know it wasn't a cure in the movie, but nevertheless it was an effective countermeasure) in a movie is reached before the end credits.
I mean seriously, we've been trying to cure cancer for around a century (a book in my house about scientific advances reports minor breakthroughs as early as the 1920s), yet when a zombie virus pops up, all it takes is a few tests and blam! It's cured!
The thing is, cancer is not, and has never been, a virus. In fact, "cancer" is a catch-all term for any harmful mutation of a person's cells that causes them to grow out of control. That's all there is to it, and so there are literally millions of mutations that can result in cancer, and many of them have absolutely nothing in common and so will never respond to one drug in the same way, making a single "cure" impossible. The only thing that can address and manage (not cure) cancer is improved detection across the board (see the plummeting rates for breast cancer after mammography was introduced) and the exact mathematical model of cancer's growth and development, which would allow to tailor treatments routines with greater certainty. In short, drugs are not the answer, maths is.
Vaccination process is a far more effective comparison here, and given that vaccines to swine fly and MERS were developed within half-a-year of their discovery, the film is far from implausible here.
^ Thanks for the clarification.
Glad to be of service. :)
"Vaccination process is a far more effective comparison here, and given that vaccines to swine fly and MERS were developed within half-a-year of their discovery, the film is far from implausible here."
Vaccinations can't be made in all cases, or we would have wiped out all viruses from the face of the planet. Viruses are still a very real threat, the V in HIV stands for "Virus", after all. Besides that, vaccinations rely on the human's ability to produce antibodies to the threat, which would never make you "Invisible" to zombies, at least from a logical standpoint.
I also find it annoying that zombie movies end with a "Cure". If one single scientist, or a small group of scientists, in a rundown lab with little electricity or other such necessities can cure something in a small amount time, the well equipped lab of thousands of scientists should be able to cure it before it gets to the "apocalypse" part. From a logical standpoint (Because movies can make up science if they want), how would a "cure" for zombies even work? Most zombies are shown as physically dead. They don't eat (Aside from flesh, of course), they don't sleep, they don't drink. Most are shown to be able to function perfectly well without a heart or lungs, suggesting they don't even breath or have a heartbeat anymore. Any body put in those conditions for months would be dead the second that the magical virus keeping them going was removed.
I said "a film is far from implausible here", which doesn't mean that the film was right, but only that real-world parallels do exist, and so it's not beyond the realm of possibility for them to have developed one in the film.
And honestly, it's best not to get into the zombie physiology, ever. If zombies obeyed anything even approaching real-life rules, they would have had rotted away completely in a month or so, meaning that the "apocalypse" would at worst kill 50-70% of the total population before its hordes are confined to dust, and the remaining humans can take care of the stragglers.
No there is really not an excuse for the military hardware issue. Instead of using good writing to make a plausible alternative they just make shit up and hand people giant idiot balls.
At least in this one the zombies were fast and the horde was anything but shambling. That of all things was a more believable way to neutralize the military advantage against a slow moving horde of dead bodies.
The flick overall though could be entertaining as a generic zombie action flick.
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Nothing Like the Book
Warning some spoilers are contained in this review.
Despite having World War Z in the title the movie isn't all that similar to the book. While the book was generally flawed with who got to hold the massive idiot ball and poorly researched effect of military gear would have in the first place it was still pretty good.
The book conveys the horrors of living in a zombie Apocalypse as society collapses and the world struggles to deal with the aftermath. The book is presented as a documentary conducted by interviewing various survivors in their current locations and detailing the events of World War Z as they saw it. This should have made a pretty good movie. Sadly the movie pretty much tosses out all this in favour of a more "action oriented" movie. Hordes of FAST ZOMZBIES that just devour humanity with occasional scenes filled with gunfire and explosions.
The main character is some UN guy running around trying to figure out where the zombie virus started from to find a cure.
The movie gets quite predictably boring with a bunch of people becoming zombie chow and the main character of course is relatively unscathed. By the hend of the movie they found a "vaccine" that somehow makes people invisible to the zombies.
I have to give the movie some credit though. The zombies were freaky with their clacking teeth and overall behaviour. The actors playing the zombies nailed the creatures down pretty well when actors were playing as zombies. The film also has some cool scenes of zombie hordes and assorted special affects. But sadly it still not quite enough to redeem the film. For supposedly being based of the book it drifted far afield from a potentially great movie to just another mediocre zombie action flick.
Watch if you like Zombie Action flicks.
Don't Watch if you were expecting something even reasonably reflecting the book and only being loosely associated with locations and zombies found in the book.