World War Z

Herman and I watched World War Z last night, a zombie movie with Brad Pitt about a virus spreading to the world’s human population and turning everyone into zombies.

Let me start off by saying the movie was Herman’s pick. I don’t care for creature movies or action flicks, and this was both.  That said, I think the movie had a lot going for it. It was engaging right from the first few scenes and kept me on the edge of my seat until the implausible ending.

I thought the best thing about this movie was the premise that a virus could spread over the globe, affecting the entire human population of this planet before the WHO could get a handle on it. I kept thinking that if AIDS had evolved to the point of being transmitted by air instead of by sex, this movie could have come true.

I also thought that it’s not just a virus that could spread like that, effecting the population. To some extent, I think greed is doing the same thing, spread by corporate advertising, and it is also poisoning our society and our planet.

SPOILER ALERT: Even though the movie did a good job of making Brad Pitt and his family sympathetic characters, and they come out unscathed in the end due to Brad’s efforts, I walked away from the movie feeling depressed and unsatisfied because basically the few remaining healthy humans left on the planet had to kill off all the zombies, about 95% of the earth’s population.

I don’t expect or even want every movie to have a feel-good ending, but I also don’t want to walk out of a movie totally depressed because six billion men, women, and children had to be exterminated. How hard could it have been to come up with a more hopeful ending than that?