World War Z VFX Breakdown How It Should Have Ended Video
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With so many horror (no pun intended) stories coming out of the production of World War Z this year, it was completely surprising that the film turned out to be half-way decent. Late in production, the film’s entire third act had to be rewritten and reworked. Screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard were brought in to fix World War Z‘s problems. Luckily, the new ending worked well and World War Z went on to gross $540 million worldwide. Now that you know how the film’s third act was fixed, the video above shows how the film’s visual effects help sell the filmmakers’ vision of a chaotic zombie apocalypse.
The featurette above is from visual effects studio MPC (Moving Picture Company), and it shows off how many digital effects shots are in the final version of World War Z. When the film’s first teaser trailer was released, World War Z received a lot of criticism for trading in live-action zombie extras with completely CGI super-hordes of the undead. People also gave the filmmakers grief for incorporating fast-moving zombies, which are often disliked by more traditionalist zombie fans.
MPC is a VFX studio that has been up and running for over 25 years. They are one of the leaders in visual effects in film and commercials with movies like Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Prometheus, and Life of Pi under their impressive belt. MPC has also worked on commercials for top brands including Samsung, Cadbury, Sony, and Coca Cola.
While I feel that the zombies were ineffective because ultimately none of the film’s main characters died, the special effects in the film look believable from an audience point of view.
Meanwhile, the good people at How It Should Have Ended have released a new video featuring World War Z and other popular zombie properties currently in the pop culture zeitgeist. The video pokes fun at the various types of zombie movies and TV shows that are out there, such as The Walking Dead and Shaun of the Dead.
The video starts off with Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead just waking up from a coma, only to find himself in a whole new world filled with zombies. It’s funny that the nurse in the video points out that the zombies in World War Z don’t really eat people and seem to only attack healthy people instead of the sick. Considering that the only way to fight back against the zombie threat is to make yourself sick, the people in World War Z probably should have came to that conclusion much sooner than they did.
There are plenty of cameos from experienced zombie killers such as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead, Ben from the original Night of the Living Dead, Ash from Army of Darkness, Lionel from Dead Alive (AKA Braindead), Cherry from Planet Terror, Jim from 28 Days Later, and Tallahassee from Zombieland.
