World War Z: The Art of the Film
Softcover
Written by Titan Book Staff
Titan Books
Release Date: June 18, 2013
Cover Price: $19.95

In case you haven’t heard, World War Z is one of the summer’s big hits. I’m a long time fan of the book by Max Brooks, though I’ve heard the movie adaptation is quite different. FamousMonster reviewed the movie here if you’d like more information about it. But this review is about World War Z: The Art of the Film. Sort of…

The biggest problem I faced upon trying to review this was the tremendous amount of non-art in the book. Yeah, it’s like half art, half script. What they should have called it was an illustrated screenplay. Also of note is the incessant need to caption (on the photos) almost every large shot. Actors, production assistants, waterboys, animators, carrier pigeons…they all got to leave a comment or three. Okay, I may be exaggerating, I didn’t see any comments from production assistants. But really, this “art” book is chock full of words! I wanted to look at pictures, not read! That would be like watching a movie and having to read the words at the bottom of the screen. Wait, they do that on foreign films? You are kidding? What will they think of next? Geez.

But seriously, all joking aside, I would have preferred a layout that consisted of behind the scenes pictures showing the development of the film from the drawings and storyboards to the final product. I only say that because that’s pretty much how the vast majority of these publications are set up. This one is more of a scene by scene disbursement of sketches and end result pictures. Not horrible, but awkward to flip through. My guess is they did it to support the screenplay being in the book.

I think my least favorite part of this book is the fact that more than half the photographs appear to be of digital special effects. I’m not a hater of computer generated material but it loses some depth when there’s nothing physically there. The whole thing feels like they are chronicling an intro to a zombie video game. You may buy into it at first but eventually you are going to see something that reminds you that none of what you are seeing was real. It happens all the time…and in this book they actually show you what’s real and what’s not.

And speaking of real, this book was a real let down. I was hoping for more production photos rather than still shots of generated creatures. But no big deal, right? I didn’t pay for the book and if my guess is correct, neither will you. If you want a book of pictures from a movie that is almost wholly digitized and is backed by a script that doesn’t really follow the book, then this is for you. For the rest of the world, let this one pass you by. You’ll thank me for it later.

And if you haven’t read Max Brooks’ book World War Z, go do so. Right now.