When is a Zombie not a Zombie…when it’s in World War Z.

When I was a teenager my list of most frightening monsters started with werewolves, progressed down to vampires then crazy gigantic insects, zombies, with their lack of intelligence and slower than molasses movements, never struck me as practically frightening. Sure they looked gross but all you had to do was walk away, seriously zombies are that slow.

  

Then I saw World War Z’s take on zombies and wow that’s scary the first ten minutes had me at the edge of my seat but you know what even more surprising, this really isn't a zombie movie. There are no supernatural incarnations, no magical items that makes the zombies, no voodoo high priest directing the calamity.

In this case it is a very virulent virus that causes the symptoms and the overall plot is about the UN trying to find a cure. Of course the Z word comes into play because of the way the virus is spread and the way it attacks the body.

  

The difference in this movie to the other zombie movies I've watch and they are not many, my son is the real zombie aficionado of the family, is the way the zombies move. The virus seems to change humans from individuals into a hive like mentality, where the whole unit will react to stimulus supplied to just one of the infected, that and of course, how fast they react. Start training now if you ever hope to outrun these zombies.

Accepting this story line the movie plays out as a detective movie as Brad Pitt investigates the origins of the virus, the information which the UN doctors seem to feel will allow them to develop a vaccine, within the chaos created by the virus.

  

Director Marc Forster creates a thrilling and chilling 116 minute story that garbs the viewer from the start and does not let him go until the credits start to run. The characters introduced are all believable everyday people, no Winchester brothers here, reacting to events as they play out, which is what ends up making it that scarier.

This movie works on both levels, as a horror Zombie flick, though lacking all the gore and blood usually associated with zombie tales but the action and suspense more than makes up for this and also as a medical action/drama pretty much like 2011’s Contagion and 1995’s Outbreak.

World War Z is definitely a movie to watch.

Superman...can't wait for the sequel

This reboot of the Superman story is great, the action amazing and the changes to the characters were needed to ground the story more into reality. That is not to say that the movie could not have been better as there were some minor problems with the plot and editing, but all in all a movie you do not want to miss. In fact Warner Bros. has already fast tracked the sequel.

The movie starts, from the beginning of the Superman legend, on Krypton showing an advanced civilization that ultimately destroy their own world (sounds familiar?) then to an adult Clarke on a seemingly Australian styled ‘walk-about’.

  

As we learn more about Clarke in the present, we also, at the same time through flashbacks, learn the story of his youth and the life-changing moments that lead him to question who he is, why does he have these extra abilities and what is his purpose. His parents Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha (Diane Lane) share in his turmoil but also, more importantly, supply the grounding that instils the values of honour, family, sacrifice (Jonathan making the ultimate sacrifice) and above all love for his adopted race.

His search to discover himself is completed when he discovers an old Kryptonian space craft and learns about his origins from an artificial Intelligence (AI) created by, and resembling, his birth father Jor-El (Russell Crowe). This all comes to a head with the arrival of General Zod, whose life was returned ironically by the destruction of his planet, Krypton, which ultimately fuels Zod’s need to recreate Krypton, to earth’s and humanity’s ultimate demise.

A note to the religious among the audience, Superman finally reveals himself to his adopted Earth society after 33 years of obscurity.

  

Henry Cavill (the first non-American to play Superman aside for ‘baby’ superman in the 1978 Superman) superbly plays this incarnation of Superman, exquisitely showing the feeling of loss and not belonging that a man-out-of-place must feel.

Director Zack Synder (Sucker Punch, Watchmen, 300) wanted to ground Superman more into the real world than had previous incarnations and thus created (and adopted from more modern comic generated stories) elements that explained Superman known facts.

The symbol ‘S’ actually means hope in Kryptonian (rather than the initial for Superman) the symbol also being a herald/crest for the house of El. The superman costume is in truth an undergarment worn by Kryptonians on top of which fighting armour is placed. No more wearing of underpants on the outside of leotards for our super hero.

And of course Cavill having the body of a very strong (Kryptonian) man, which can be aptly seen in an early shirtless scene of Clarke rescuing oil rig workers (if you look closely you can see the ‘S’ being formed by soot and flame on his chest) and his coming to land after a long sea swim, just so the audience knows that the musculature under the suit, is in fact very real.

  

Continuing in this theme, Superman’s soul-mate, Lois Lane, is also grounded in reality. I could never understand how a seemingly Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter could not see that in fact she has worked alongside Superman for years, well ‘director’ Synder solved this dilemma by having Lois (the beautiful Amy Adams) track Clarke/Superman down and identify him even before the world knows about him.

Synder and the writers (David S. Goyer – screenplay & Story and Christopher Nolan – story) though missed one major inconsistency. In Krypton they bred citizens based on society’s needs, so when a new scientist is required they genetically grew a child who will become that scientist. Zod and his crew were mostly soldiers and Zod himself a general, so we must assume that they were grown and trained as proficient fighting machines. If this is so then they should be, at worst, evenly matched with Superman (strength vs. technique) but when Zod gains our yellow sun’s super generated powers surely he would be more than a match for Superman, who for all we know, has no fighting training or experience.

  

That being said the end of Zod is a great departure from the Superman we've come to know (though Zod suffered the same demise in another Superman film though not as personally).

The Man of Steel’s editing also was a bit off as well. Good editing is as much about good timing as telling a story and any good DJ will tell you knowing when to change the rhythm from slow to fast and back again is critical to keeping dancers on the floor so is good editing critical to keeping the audience interested in the story as it is unfurling on the screen.

At some periods the movie seems to slow to far down, allowing the audience to drift away from the story from time to time. The end result is the movie seems long, unlike the editing of the Avengers which kept you riveted to the end while not realizing the time spent in the cinema, by the by both movies were the same length at 143 minutes.

  

And now for a bit of movie trivia, the movie showed two quick references to Lexcorp, the company run by Superman’s titular arch rival Lex Luthor. First in a scene at the Kent’s farm house: a tanker with the Lexcorp logo drives by and later the logo appears on a truck in Metropolis during the fight with Zod.

In the final fight scene Zod and Superman, at one time, end up in a construction site with a safety sign saying 143 days without an accident, Zod throws Superman into the sign which then says 0 days without an accident.

Also, as a possible nod to Christopher Nolan’s Batman, the satellite that Zod and Superman crash into during their epic fight has the Wayne Enterprises logo on it.

  

My suggestion, go and see Man of Steel, you’ll end up sorry you did not. See you later and I hope we can meet at the Movies

After Earth, thrashed by the US critics, turns out to be a very watchable movie, for an enjoyable evening out with your friends or family.

The sci-fi movie, starring Jaden Smith as the young warrior Kitai Raige, is played out as a father and son coming of age story with his real life father (Will Smith) as Kitai’s father, military hero and ultimate warrior Cypher Raige.

Unlike the last time this father and son worked together where the father went through a transformation (Pursuit of Happiness - 2006) this time the transformation is entirely with Jaden Smith’s character.

The movie follows a fairly predictable story line where Kitai has to take on a perilous journey to save his father and himself while coming to terms with demons from his past concerning the death of his sister.

The adventure takes place on Earth a millennium after the human race has left because of man’s destruction of the planet due to overuse of the planets resources, and though this set-up was ideal to make allegories about our present day’s political and environmental issues, writers Shyamalan, Gary Whitta and Will Smith obviously ignored this temptation.

The movie, shot digitally in Switzerland and the US, was the first project worked on by M. Night Shyamalan in the last twenty years that wasn’t based on a self-created screenplay.

Will Smith, who has wanted to work with Shyamalan for years, hired him to develop the overall look and feel of the film but it was Smith himself who coached Jaden and directed most of the action and how the story played out on screen.

Though neither of the Smith’s will get nominated for their acting ability in this movie, the characterizations of their roles was good enough for the movie to play out with no obvious stilted or cumbersome acting. Jaden, though, did get nominated for MTV’s (Seventeen Magazine’s sponsored) Bad A** teen award.

The movie though definitely needed a science consultant, which would have allowed easy fixes to some obvious faux paus.

First, the lush green temperate vegetation that Kitai has to travel through would not have survived with temperatures dropping to below zero every night and rising back to normal levels during the day.

Second the needle Kitai used to inject anti-toxin into his heart did not look long enough to actually reach his heart. And then there is Cypher’s (Will Smith) self-surgery to connect the two ends of an arterial break through two self-inflected holes in his thigh, which are just big enough for the plastic tubing he used to make the connection, really! And how may I ask did he connect the end of the tube to his ruptured artery.

Then there is the diving of the eagle chasing after Kita during his travels through ‘After Earth’, When birds dive they fold their wings in to reduce air resistance but this eagle dives with its wings out stretched and the final faux paus; the signal cannot get through because of atmospheric interference, so the answer is to climb to the top of an active volcano, spewing millions of ionic metal particles into the atmosphere, to get a better signal, really!?

In the whole scheme of the movie though most viewers would not have questioned this as attested by the whoops of joy at the action scenes from local cinemas and the tooting car horns at the drive-in. And truth be told I, like the rest of the Barbados audience, enjoyed this movie.

After Earth’s financial success though will be a hard fought battle, with an estimated production budget of US$130,000,000 and an US income (up to 9^th June) of US$54,516,057 but producer/co-writer Will Smith does not see this film as the end all and be all of this project, he envisions a multi-platform franchise including books, graphic novels and interactive video games which would be generated from the 300 page bible already developed (by Eisner Award-Winning comic writer Peter David alongside Michael Jan Friedman and Robert Greenberger) covering the history of mankind from their decision to leave earth right up to the events depicted in the film.