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.