I really wish Netflix remake this as a documentary- style series. The format would be perfect. Edit: It would be an incredibly relevant sci-fi series for a post-covid world.
To be honest, you can't make a movie out of World War Z. The intricacies of its overarching plots and the span of its events makes it impossible just to pick and choose. You'd be better off making a TV series instead... which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea.
@@CapoRip actually there's quite a bit of action in the book. There's also kind of a pseudo 3 act structure where the stories all have a very clear ramping of intensity toward the middle, before a climax and falling action where we revisit the story tellers and have a bookend to their present-lives.
@@Bloodhurl67 except that is literally what happens. At each place he finds info on the next place to go. That's it. There isn't anything more to see or read into. That's all there is.
That is the exact play by play of the movie There's no quiet moment in that film It's always hey we made it we're safe. And 2 seconds later it's back to Oh no zombies! RUN! SHOOT! RUN! SHAKY CAM! BRAD PITT! BACK TO RUNNING!
The book: once bitten, it takes an average of 24 hours for an adult to succumb to death, then fully reanimate as a zombie. The movie: dude becomes a rabid zombie 12 SECONDS after he gets bitten by a zombie GAS GAS GAS GOTTA STEP ON THE GAS
Brooks is very meticulous about laying down the ground rules for his zombies, it's a critical part of his story. Changing it so dramatically would be like a lord of the rings adaptation without elves where the orcs were the good guys. It just can't a shouldn't be done.
If you didn't watched the movie hoping it would follow the book it was good. I didn't knew about the book and imo it was one of the very well made zombie movie ever.
Movie Artemis wears a hoodie and jeans. That alone is enough to ruin the movie. Artemis's fashion sense is a key part of his obnoxious, overly-formal personality.
@@t.estable3856 Mario Bros, Dragon Ball Evolution, House of the Dead dude. In general video game to film adaptations and anime to live adaptations are worse. It's just that people didn't even watch them.
This Book is so amazing. You just said Yonkers and I immediately got "flashbacks" of how horrible everything in that battle was because of how vivid it was written.
The battle itself is absolutely ludicrous from a military viewpoint though. The rioters at Minneapolis should have been able to take down those slow-moving, melee-only undead punks and yet the US military get their asses handed to them on a silver platter? At the same time, these grunts are the ones who thought that confronting a slow-moving enemy that can be only lethal through direct touch should best be done in narrow streets because the more exposure to getting cornered, the better I guess.
yarpen26 I felt the same way, but it’s creative fiction in the end. Actually my feelings about a zombie pandemic are the same: given the amount of zombie movies and the amount of guns and weapons people have around the US, I feel like an actual zombie apocalypse would be over quickly. I’d be more afraid of real viruses TBH.
@@cccycling5835 Which is why most books and stories now a days the zombies are faster and also the virus tens to be airborne to some extent in order to spread, the movie was crap in order to get the spread they ahve the infection rates are all over the places going from days to seconds
@@yarpen26 well, the difficulty that the military had at the start of the pandemic and during yonker is kinda explain . It was hot summer, in full gear, bullet proof jacket, gaz mask, standing under the sun for hours before the battle start, and with helmet camera showing to your squad leader what's happening (like being eaten alive), withouth training against this target (the z) and with the media in the leg making the logistic difficult . It tell that hitting the head of the dead was difficult (no trainig), wich is true, soldier are train to it the body, not the head .
@@lawdmcchicken5635 it was predictable, and constantly predicted. China has a sanitary crisis since the CCP took over, if not before, the CCP are hostile to all foreign nations, and there was already a migrant crisis worldwide. It was bound to happen, and was poorly handled.
How about this, a post-apocalyptic where settlers in the outback live in constant fear of ferocious, near invincible emus. Think Attack on Titan but Australian.
While World War Z the book had flaws, I would have found its format more interesting than what we got in the film, which was just a generic zombie action flick.
That was the whole appeal of the book anyway, it was popular due to its unique format and scope. The movie failed to me because it left the best parts of what made the book appealing behind
It would be gorgeous as a "documentary", like full lo-fi found footage-ish where there is the exchange between the interviewed and interviewer and then suddenly, with a particular zoom on the expression of the survivor we see glimpses of the event.
Boy, I would pay from my own pocket to see a decent actress portray the pilot that was guided by Mets Fan, like: the uncertainty in her eyes, the standoffish nature after the narrator afirmates that they never found a Mets Fan, the unreliability of her tale! The human factor. It would be a blast.
LOVED the line about World War Z removing "the heart soul and lungs then revived[ing] its corpse with necromancy to make a thrall that will be obedient to the whims of focus group testing." SO GOOD. Also, I would also add Ender's Game to this list. The book is a masterpiece about war and child soldiers and humanity and the movie is... not. Also Asa Butterfield was too old to play Ender.
The movie follows the book I thought pretty closely, the themes were all still thier but the pacing was so fast that the whipped by without leaving a real impact. It was a serviceable film but utterly forgettable. Sort of book that would need a miniseries to do it justice.
Ender's Game needed to be a miniseries to get it right but the movie was alright just it felt it was trying to fit 20 pound plus story in a 10 pound movie
TBH I hated Ender’s Game when I read it in middle school. And Orson Scott Card can’t write children; I should have known, because I was one. I understand that the ending had a point despite the fact that it merely annoyed me at the time, but Ender acts like he’s 13, not 6. The recast was fitting, because there’s no way in hell an actual 6-year-old can act like that.
@@wannabehistorian371 that's the point, though--the kids in the book are the best of the best, not kidlike at all. They're much smarter than the rest of the world's kids because they've been bred that way. Of course they don't act like kids. They were never meant to.
Max Brooks did a great little talk about how he actually enjoyed the movie because it was so utterly divorced from his book that he simply wasn't watching an adaptation of it at all, he was just watching some random zombie movie: ruclips.net/video/WXFdO3DwRLY/видео.html
I love that he said that, cuz that's totally how I felt watching the Deathnote movie. It was SO different, I couldn't really take offense and just saw it as a silly drama that wasn't bad to look at.
Probably one of the least loyal yet best adaptations is how to train your dragon, as a fan of the books the only thing they kept was a bunch of names and yet they improved on the original source material a TON The books weren't even that good, the first 9 at least
I thought V for vendetta was a better movie then graphic novel. Stardust too was a great movie that significantly altered its source material, book is still great too but thier so different from each other.
I thought the same. I don't even remember what the issue was, something like pacing and exposition, but I couldn't read more than two before giving up. The author, Cressida Cowell, actually really likes the movie and thinks it stays true to the themes of the books.
@@TheUltimoSniper I find that there isn't much to them untill the very end, the first 9 seem almost formuliac just because nothing changes until the end of the 9th book in spite of having very different stories. I wouldn't say it stays to the themes of the books very well beyond Hiccup himself who is the one thing that stayed the same in adaptation however the dragons are treated very differently
The ensemble cast audiobook of WWZ is one of my favorite listening experiences of all time. Every interview has a different actor as the narrator, and they're all incredible. I'd argue that it's the best way to experience World War Z that currently exists.
Considering it's an 'oral history'... I'm picturing History Channel style series, with interviews in a studio office and the sequences that aren't interviews? "As portrayed by our actors" in white text at the bottom of the screen. That way you can go fairly cheap on the budget for action sequences because it's, in show, a recreation of previous events by actors.
@@wartang Oh I forgot about that one. It's been a while since I read the book (time to go digging) The stories that I remember the most were the evacuation of St. Petersberg, the AWOL Chinese sub, and the Parisian catacombs.
@@wartang my favorites would definitely be the story of the otaku in Japan. Here in the U.S., we tend to have access to weapons easily(hell, there's a gun store just down the street for me) but in Japan, he was stuck in a city packed with people with only a melee weapon. Kind of terrifying to me!
I think that the perfect way to adapt World War Z would to make a HBO style mini series. We can make the series into 6 to 7 episodes with each chapter getting its own episode except for "The Great Panic" which can made into 2 episodes due to the Battle of Yonkers. Have the story of the show follow the book where the Journalist goes around the world and interviews some survivors. When interviewing a survivor, we get a flashback detailing that they experienced during the war.
The book was amazing, a truly original take on the overdone zombie formula. Studio: "We like the title... didn't read the book but slapped it on another movie we wrote called zombie fuck'n mess".
I'm with the author Max Brooks on this one: the movie is so devoid of anything from the book except the barest of details that you can pretty much see it on its own. However, I wish the movie was actually good. As a zombie movie, it kinda sucked for me.
I was so annoyed after seeing the movie, because I had read the book years back and I was super excited to see how they would adapt it on screen. When I realised they hadn't, I felt played. They took the title of a much loved book and said it was an adaptation, which is the only reason I watched it. It was false advertising, if you ask me.
Imagine the scene at Yonkers from that soldiers point of view. The tanks and artillery letting loose on the horde and doing jack. Everybody being linked up and the screaming/panicking on the line as the zombies make their first contact. Or the view from the sub on the ocean floor covered in zombies.
If by some miracle a miniseries is made to be accurate to the book, Yonkers should be shot as a "Found Footage" episode with the POV of a soldier's helmet cam.
@@DJWeapon8 Cuts back and forth between different soldiers and camera footage. Footage from the tank's sights as it rips an AP shell through the horde and doesn't do jack, cut to the soldier that got "ambushed" from a dead family breaking out of their home and onto the battlefield, footage showing the moron who shouted "they don't die" explicitly missing the head and panicking.
Someone should make a War of the Worlds in-name-only adaptation where the aliens invade to set up a puppet government to extract resources and arm local insurgent groups to destabilize the region
The aliens should probably give weapons to religious extremists too. That way they could fight them later in a never ending war to pose themselves as "the good guys" to humanity and let their more and more authoritatian politics go over without anyone complaining.
What was on my mind as I was watching the video was that this is very much akin to the story of Half-Life - the only problem is that with the series' very understated worldbuilding and storytelling, none of it ever really rises up to the surface to be immediately seen and understood by the player. Still, you've got different factions within an incomprehensibly advanced alien civilisation who have been acting in secret within our society for who knows how long, before after engineering the collapse of our governments they then come along to install a replacement, puppet government with the ostensible purpose of seeing if we're going to be able to fit into their civilisation - and of adjusting us to fit if it turns out that we're not. As for what their real goals are... S̶p̶o̶i̶l̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶l̶e̶r̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶n̶i̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶n̶i̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶.̶
There was a tv series that was quite popular I think in the 80s that kind of did that (with the main character realizing what the aliens were doing.) It was called V and when they tried to remake it in 2000s, it didn't work out very well....
World war z book: insightful analysis of society seen through the lense of a devastating world shattering event that transform lives but also the way nations interact with themselves. World War z movie: Brad Pitt and zombies.
They actually asked Brooks to write the screenplay and he refused. I've always wondered if Pitt was annoyed by that so he fucked it up on purpose (still making a movie that would sell) I have to assume that if they wanted Brooks to write it, that the original intent was to make a faithful adaptation.
@@arturohernandez473 it never really got popular out of the UK from what I understand. It was doomed to fail. One of my English teachers let me borrow her copies she picked up abroad. I loved the series as a kid and opted out of seeing the movie. Glad I did. Reread it, they could do the books justice if they wanted. Hester is supposed to be ugly, that's the whole point! Throwing a faded scar on a grown ass woman doesn't work. From what I understand they fucked up Shrike pretty bad too.
Im glad you made a video about this book. They turned a unique mockumentary style book about the geopolitical effects of a zombie outbteak into a typical run and gun zombie movie
"Wow! You managed to adapt that book into a screenplay!? How? There's so many characters and situations, how did you manage to tie it all together?" "I decided to focus on Gerry Lane. I found his story the most compelling." "Oh... I see. You didn't didn't read the book, did you?" "Not so much."
There is a 3rd class of adaptation: The re-imagining/re-contextualizing/re-framing of a story in order to highlight a different perspective in that story or to challenge us to think about the way the original work.
@@kittykittybangbang9367 heck it was based on the original SARS outbreak back in the early 2000s China pulled the same crap with that too. It just didn't get as bad.
I watched WWZ during Covid in 2020 and liked it a lot, then over the summer of this year I listened to the audiobook, and holy shit is the book just the best piece of zombie media, while the movie just steals the title and does something entirely different. It's such a crying shame that now we won't get a proper adaptation of the best zombie story ever written. I really can't recommend the book enough regardless. Even if you dont like zombies, I think you'll still find something to love, whether it's the way the story is told or the immaculate world building.
In a perfect world it would have been a HBO series with a bottomless budget. Have it framed just like the book through a journalist globe trotting a post war world and then have the episode revolve around a story. All 5 season would be each stage of the war. Imagine an entire season of stories from The Great Panic. I really wish they didn't sully this property's name with this shit film. I hold a genuine grudge with Brad Pitt for being involved in it because someone had to have handed him the book at some point and he either didn't care to read it or actively ignored everything about it.
@Habadashery Jones RE: "I hold a genuine grudge with Brad Pitt for being involved in it because someone had to have handed him the book at some point and he either didn't care to read it or actively ignored everything about it." Brad Pitt was not to blame. He's merely an actor, after all. An actor simply reads the lines he is given. In my opinion, the real blame lies with the producer(s), the director and the screenwriter(s). They're the ones who made the decisions that turned a great book into a formulaic, cliche-ridden huge pile of bovine feces.
5 seasons is a bit much. And plus I think some of the stories wouldn't be very grand for viewers. Like that story if the soldier who is hallucinating. I just don't think a stand alone episode on that would be received well However to make it more of a spectacle they could potentially create new stories. Preferably with the great panic. The "Great Panics" in zombie books and media is always the best part
They could've called the movie something else and avoided paying Max Brookes altogether. It's so different, he wouldn't even think it was a ripoff of his novel. The narrative decisions and changes they made are baffling.
My favorite scene in the book is when we get to the former ISS guys in Sydney. The way he and his crew witnessed everything was really amazing in my opinion. From the Battle of Yonkers, to Iran and Pakistan nuking each other, and even to the Second Chinese Civil War. Fucking brilliant
the whole book is a masterpiece but the best story from it was by far the one talking about fighting the zombies by forming the raj singh square and the sandlers which supplied you with ammo.
I saw the movie when it first came out and I thought "neat zombie movie." I recently read the book and was pissed that it wasn't adapted into a TV show or something
WWZ is one of my favorite stories for the themes that often aren't explored well in most media (human ingenuity, the injustice of nature and ; the way it goes about being very episodic but with the several overarching characters and plots would be so great for a miniseries or something. I can't stand the movie; I am sure it is actually an okay movie, but the fact that it's existence will probably prevent that series from ever existing is painful to me.
I read the book twice before the movie came out, but the things that stand out to me are when they fled north and the Zombies. were frozen. There was plenty of food, and it was like a big camping trip until food got low. Then it was a free for all, and then the zombies thawed. Then the part in Louisiana where they are trying to get up to that long bridge, but in the process are running by abandoned cars. Some with supplies, some with trapped grabber. Then making it up to the bridge. I drive on that long bridge. I call it the Zombie bridge. Then the pet where Nelson Mandela teams up with a defeated white supremacist former foe, to use his harsh battle plan that would have originally been used against him, that grouped people in large fortified groups, and other smaller bait groups. All those stories would have been bad ass episodes in a multipart series.
Jumper is another book to movie adaption where a lot of things where changed to make it more of a blockbuster. The movie actually made me checkout the book and I enjoyed both
This is why I, as an author, recoil in disgust when people imply a film adaptation of my work. In fact one of the few times I felt personally offended online was when someone said "I'll wait for the movie to come out." That's how I realized I had to start purging fake friends from my circle.
@@SergioLeonardoCornejo Hello.I m kind of curious.In which other media aside from your own books would you like yo see your stories adapted to?(Audiobooks,comics,mini series etc)
@@HipstaHobbit sorry for not seeing your message until now. No reply alert appeared. My novels are meant to be adapted to anime, video games, and manga.
I’m just about done with the book. Anyone who has seen the movie first like me, please do yourself a service and read it. Audiobook it, even. It’s such an amazing and intricate story about humanity at the end of the day. Such a delicious juxtaposition.
The way I think it should have been done is to have the interviewer in a room with each person one at a time and go into a flash back of the events from that person's point of view.
I thought the movie as imaginary version of books story about dealing with the outbreak in USA. In the book, people were told to wait and stay safe when heroes (scientists and government in the book, Brad in the movie) deal with the problem. In movie, solution is found after action-packed character story and world is saved. In book, the whole "seeking for solution" was just a grand plan for preventing panic and buying time for evacuation of as many people as possible behind rocky mountains. I think your thoughts on movies inspired by (but not based on) source material fit this case, World War Z movie was basically very expensive fanfiction.
I would imagine you do a series just like the book. Max visits various locations around the world, we get glimpses of the post victory world, and then tell the story in flashbacks, in the form of Max and his interviewees narration. Just like in the book, some characters would be interviewed multiple times, others a one-off. You could have certain characters appear in other parts of the story to make it feel more interconnected. In the right hands it could be really great. Almost an anthology series, but not quite... I don't know if any other show quite like what I'm describing has ever been seen. It's actually a lot like Citizen Kane. We're told the outcome and basic beats of the story right at the beginning with the news reel, then through a series of interviews, we get the much more grounded, personal account of the events.
Based on what I've read about the movie, there was a germ of an interesting idea that could have maintained some of the spirit of the WWZ book: that the zombies, now made to be fast and dynamic instead of slow and horde-focused, would represent a natural disaster, or the outcomes of a crisis like climate change. The say that no disaster is ever fully natural: rather, the consequences of a major event like a hurricane, wild fire, etc. exposes the fault lines already inherent in a society, where all too often the poor and vulnerable are exposed to the worst outcomes while the rich remain in relative safety (see: New Orleans post-Katrina, which populations are most at risk with sea level rise, etc.). A film that used a zombie outbreak to explore this could have been pretty powerful, looking at how different cultures and societies responded to the crisis and show where their strengths and weaknesses were in their treatment of their populations. But yes, it seems the film instead got the ol' "we need a huge blockbuster, focus group this thing to death" Hollywood treatment, again just going by what I've read on the topic, which didn't result in a bad movie but did lead to an unfulfilling adaptation.
If the script for this video is an indication, you are one hell of a writer yourself, James. The metaphors about the heart, soul and lungs were amazing!
A War of the Worlds TV adaptation actually aired in the UK last year. It made various changes that didn’t make sense (e.g. making the Martians really agile rather than being encumbered by the higher gravity of Earth). It was set in the Edwardian era but as far as reflecting the current climate goes, it seemed to be criticising British nationalism following Brexit. Funny, really, how the best adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a rock opera.
Also, the anti-imperialist criticism of the BBC adaptation was about as subtle as a nuclear bomb in the face, and by that, I mean a minute-long rant by Rafe Spall.
The book and the movie resembled each other so little that they could have changed the movie to "Zombie war" and of been fine. Why did they even bother acquiring the license in the first place?.
This is the definition of "I just wanted the rights to the title." Obviously WWZ wouldn't have worked as a movie. But in today's age? It would have been (and could still be) a great tv show on a streaming network. It's pretty much gold for that kind of thing. And wouldn't demand nearly the same budget as some things. I don't care about the movie, but I do lament that this is the adaptation of a pretty decent book.
I’m terrified of the new PJO series that’s been announced. Also James I respect your efforts here, but I would like to respectfully disagree on one point. What you said about bad adaptations not damaging the source material. While I agree that the original will still exist obviously, I do disagree with the idea that an adaptation turning out unfaithful isn’t a bad thing. Adaptations help bring the story to a wider audience and even into mainstream awareness. When an adaptation is made unfaithfully, it destroys the possibility of the story being brought to a mainstream audience. Percy Jackson, if the movies were done faithfully would be respected by the mainstream and more people would talk about it just like Harry Potter. When a bad adaptation is made, you need to decide if loosing that potential for bringing the story into the mainstream is worth it for the movie you got. In the case of PJO they just made a cash grab. In the case of How to Train Your Dragon they still made a good movie, but it did still loose that potential for bringing the story of the books to a wider audience and allowing fans to see the story properly adapted. The question is was it worth it. Then there is Shadowhunters which I don’t how to classify. Just my 2 cents.
Idk if you watched the Netflix series. On its own it's a fair series, but the movie is surprisingly more accurate to the books. Which...is odd. All the nuance and character arcs are lost.
Apparently, Rick Riordan is going to play an active role as a producer, so he'll likely be pretty insistent that certain parts remain more accurate to the book.
I was so confused when I read they were adapting The Snowman, cause like, this book is so centered around Harry and his relationships, it's so personal to the main character, that if even if you start reading the books with this one you'll be a bit confused or detached. Yes, every book has it's own little contained mystery in it, but Harry's life keeps moving and you need to have read the other books to know what's going on in his personal life. That's litteraly one of the reasons everyone keeps reading these books, we're engrossed with Harry Hole's personal life. The Snowman was the worst book to adapt first.
It could only really work as a mini-series. There's so much to include. Yonkers alone could make up a full episode. Others, like the interview with the guy who profited off the sales of fake vaccines may need another story added on to fill the slot.
You want to talk about betrayal of source material!?! Look at I, Fucking, Robot, the movie adaptation of a book which expertly explored (nice alliteration) how robots would introduce challenge in a society, just short of armed rebellion, and the movie was a fucking robot revolution. Well done indeed.
Honestly it was as bad as WWZ with it literally being exactly the same, adaptation-wise: absolutely no similarities aside from robots/zombies respectively.
Speaking of some things needing to be changed for the adaptation. In that mini series Chernobyl the female scientist, can't remember her name, was actually the representation of dozens of people who did what she did. Obviously they can't make audience keep up with all those charcters and give personality. I think simplifying it to just one charcter was the right move.
Ironically enough, the American 'War of the Worlds' films which changed the time and place the story was set, still did a much better job of adapting the book than the BBC miniseries which was set in early 1900's England, was not at all subtle about making Wells' views on empire and religion its main themes and sucked utterly and completely.
If they ever do a new adaptation of World War Z they have to go with a mockumentary or a District 9 type idea. Like how when they make a documentary based on a book like Console Wars or something like that.
WWZ the book is an all time favourite of mine. The film has little/nothing to do with the book. It was a good movie for me but should’ve had a different name as it was inspired by the book at best. Still wish someone would make a series based on the book.
Are you saying they made Artemis not a narcissistic asshole but rather the nice guy? WHAT!? Like his whole character arc is learning not to be an asshole.
To those who only read the book I highly recommend the audio book version, great narration. And for those who only watched the movie read or hear the source material, it only gets better... so much better I get angry at the movie again, watched it in cinema and hated everything about it because the movie title was a plain lie, gave it a chance again and again, maybe it's me, but no, this movie, bad movie, bad Pitt, bad. Or to quote the author about what they had done to his baby: "Fast zombies suck!".
James you are my hero. The pains and torture you endure for the fans to review books. I'd really like to see your review on the vampire book Crave which is getting its own movie.
I took a couple of screenwriting coures, The rule of thumb is that One page of script averages One Minute of film on screen.. Most popu;ar books that get adapted to film are 350 to 1200 pages.
Being a huge fan of the book I highly agree altough this explanation also serves as a lens to why the tokyo ghoul anime adaptation was so bad. The problem is not that they changed the plot the problem was that they changed kaneki the main character who is honestly the main draw of the series and turned him into something completely different for the worse.
Max Brooks made it clear that he was not a fan of the movie say that the only thing his novel has in common with its big-screen counterpart is the title you add in the fact how both Brad Pitt and Paramount wrong him by making the only time he was asked to weigh in on the script was after production had already started meaning that they did everything in there power to keep him for having a voice and say on the script and in the production of the movie.
I liked the video before the advert was over, because I've been pissed no one talks about how Brad Pitt stole a mildly popular brand (of a terrific book) to peddle his awful film, that has less to do with the source material than average sonic fanfiction. And no one seems to talk about it. Thanks mate.
Brad Pitts character is based on one line from the books. The UN observer from Jakarta from the Mossad agents report right in the first chapter. And they didn’t even have him in Jakarta in the movie. Bigly stupidious.
To me, one of the biggest middle finger to me with a movie doing this was, "Starship Troopers". I LOVED that book, so when I heard that they were making a movie about it, I was really excited. Then I saw it. The movie wasn't even the same story as the story in the book. One of the characters was given a sex change just so we could have boobs in the shower and a sex scene. Gone was the iconic power armor that the soldiers were supposed to use. Gone was the entire war with the Skinnies. The book was about the future of the military. With the power armor, and weapons, one soldier was supposed to be equal to one battalion of today's army. It seemed like the people who made the movie saw the movie, "Aliens" and said, "We want a clone of that, but we can't call it Aliens. We need a recognized name to slap on this movie. OH!!! There's this classic sci-fi book called "Starship Troopers! Buy the name!". They didn't even bother to READ the damn book! They just read the description on the back of the book! And the bigger middle finger was that... people who watched the movie who never read the book, or didn't know that it was a book, loved the movie. But the movie was an absolute insult to ANYONE who read the book and wanted a movie based on it. There's almost NOTHING in common between the book and the movie. NOTHING!!! I'm a HUGE proponent of, "If you can't figure a way to tell the story that's in the book, the way it's told in the book, then don't make a movie of it!". There's some movies where they just... lose the entire focus of what the book was trying to convey. Starship Troopers.. Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, where they made the insane decision to make Quasimodo a happy hero, and the town leans a life lesson. Movies like these just.. kill anything that the books were trying to get across. They're so insulting to people who have read the books.
Although the case is similar to wwz, starship troopers isn't totally a bad movie because it has a relatively hidden satire of facism, meanwhile wwz movie was just a hollywood generic zombie movie
starship troopers however is an INTENTIONAL fuck you to the book, because the book is a piece of fascist propaganda and the director of the movie intentionally set out to ridicule the detestable ideology of the book.
a few things i loved about world war z that never got more than a paragraph: the guy explaining the ingredients of a pre war soda,, the battles that took place on the steps of the pyramids in Mexico, Guatemala and other latin countries, militaries employing the square formation of india, indigenous africans fighting the zombies, the feral deadly cats and packs of dogs, towns that voted to prepare-- using fundings to create walls, buy livestock and plant crops. i loved the chapters dedicated to japan, south africa, Great Britain, Jerusalem, the dogs, that one guy in the wheelchair that i didn't really like, the college(!!!), and how so many people died in their sleep. I love this book and was sorely disappointed in the theater room. hated what they did to jerusalem, and loved the last three seconds of the movie animorphs might be one of those stories left behind-- if they modernize it the whole story would fall apart, they already tried to adapt it to laughable efforts. I love this series tho T_T
World war z could've been a pretty great HBO miniseries. Just imagine a series like Chernobyl but with zombies
I completely agree, this would've been a great mini series on HBO.
Exactly, that would have fit the change in characters and settings. Each episode(s) dedicated to a specific character, place, and time.
Still could be
It made a pretty good video game
But that would be fucking expensive
I really wish Netflix remake this as a documentary- style series. The format would be perfect.
Edit: It would be an incredibly relevant sci-fi series for a post-covid world.
Maybe after all this is over.
Indeed.
In the mean time the Korean historical drama Kingdom did a very good job at holding a theme of an inept government ruined by it's own hubris
Be sure to get Mark Hamill. He had the best story and delivery in the audiobook.
I was going to say this. You could film it now with everyone wearing masks and social distancing.
To be honest, you can't make a movie out of World War Z. The intricacies of its overarching plots and the span of its events makes it impossible just to pick and choose. You'd be better off making a TV series instead... which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea.
Every episode is a story!
yeah, in the form of a documentary with reproduction of the event . Like the docmentary we sometime have on "what if [insert random shit] happen ?"
You can make a movie out if it actually. As a mockumentary mind you but you can still do it in movie length.
You could possibly make a dry British-style procedural. But apart from Yonkers and 3 or 4 other scenes there'd just be no action at all.
@@CapoRip actually there's quite a bit of action in the book. There's also kind of a pseudo 3 act structure where the stories all have a very clear ramping of intensity toward the middle, before a climax and falling action where we revisit the story tellers and have a bookend to their present-lives.
Brad Pitt goes to a place then that place gets overrun by zombies wash rinse repeat that's the movie
But that can be said about anything if you're oversimplifying it like that.
@@Bloodhurl67 except that is literally what happens. At each place he finds info on the next place to go. That's it. There isn't anything more to see or read into. That's all there is.
@@JimJamTheAdmin I was thinkin that while watching it. The guy is a walking disaster.
That is the exact play by play of the movie
There's no quiet moment in that film
It's always hey we made it we're safe. And 2 seconds later it's back to Oh no zombies! RUN! SHOOT! RUN! SHAKY CAM! BRAD PITT! BACK TO RUNNING!
@@bastionunitb7388 BRAD WATCH OUT!!! A MILLION ZOMBIES APPEARED OUTTA NOWHERE
The book: once bitten, it takes an average of 24 hours for an adult to succumb to death, then fully reanimate as a zombie.
The movie: dude becomes a rabid zombie 12 SECONDS after he gets bitten by a zombie GAS GAS GAS GOTTA STEP ON THE GAS
Brooks is very meticulous about laying down the ground rules for his zombies, it's a critical part of his story. Changing it so dramatically would be like a lord of the rings adaptation without elves where the orcs were the good guys. It just can't a shouldn't be done.
If you didn't watched the movie hoping it would follow the book it was good. I didn't knew about the book and imo it was one of the very well made zombie movie ever.
@@Bampiss that's a shame.
I'm actually happy that they made the zombies fast. Slow zombies aren't a threat.
@@armzngunz not a threat until they all come chasing
Movie Artemis wears a hoodie and jeans. That alone is enough to ruin the movie. Artemis's fashion sense is a key part of his obnoxious, overly-formal personality.
Exactly, a hoodie and jeans is more Juliet Butler's style.
I think "Artemis Fowl" might replace "Avatar:The Last Airbender" in my mind as worst movie adaptation around.
@@t.estable3856 Have you watched the Percy Jackson movie and where does it rank on your list of shit adaptations?
For me it might be the worst, because it isn't even a decent movie on its own... that or Eragon
@@t.estable3856 Mario Bros, Dragon Ball Evolution, House of the Dead dude. In general video game to film adaptations and anime to live adaptations are worse. It's just that people didn't even watch them.
This Book is so amazing. You just said Yonkers and I immediately got "flashbacks" of how horrible everything in that battle was because of how vivid it was written.
The battle itself is absolutely ludicrous from a military viewpoint though. The rioters at Minneapolis should have been able to take down those slow-moving, melee-only undead punks and yet the US military get their asses handed to them on a silver platter?
At the same time, these grunts are the ones who thought that confronting a slow-moving enemy that can be only lethal through direct touch should best be done in narrow streets because the more exposure to getting cornered, the better I guess.
yarpen26 I felt the same way, but it’s creative fiction in the end. Actually my feelings about a zombie pandemic are the same: given the amount of zombie movies and the amount of guns and weapons people have around the US, I feel like an actual zombie apocalypse would be over quickly. I’d be more afraid of real viruses TBH.
@@cccycling5835 Which is why most books and stories now a days the zombies are faster and also the virus tens to be airborne to some extent in order to spread, the movie was crap in order to get the spread they ahve the infection rates are all over the places going from days to seconds
@@yarpen26 well, the difficulty that the military had at the start of the pandemic and during yonker is kinda explain . It was hot summer, in full gear, bullet proof jacket, gaz mask, standing under the sun for hours before the battle start, and with helmet camera showing to your squad leader what's happening (like being eaten alive), withouth training against this target (the z) and with the media in the leg making the logistic difficult .
It tell that hitting the head of the dead was difficult (no trainig), wich is true, soldier are train to it the body, not the head .
For extra effect, get the full cast audiobook where no less than Mark Hammil recounts Yonkers to us.
My friend was reading that book about a month before quarantine. Some nice foreshadowing there.
It scary because it's accurate to what's happening
@@lawdmcchicken5635 it was predictable, and constantly predicted.
China has a sanitary crisis since the CCP took over, if not before, the CCP are hostile to all foreign nations, and there was already a migrant crisis worldwide.
It was bound to happen, and was poorly handled.
Sergio Leonardo Cornejo it‘s funny to me how you didn’t mention the capitalist system don’t reacting until there are millions of infected.
Felt the same way after reading lol
The similarities are surprising
Same! I literally read it a month or two before quarantine!
"And the show actually finished while the books are stuck in limbo"
Oof don't remind us.
Considering how the fans reacted to the ending though...
@@adams13245 The ending itself weren't that bad, the rest of the season though.......
I've seen dumpster fire with better writing than that.
@@riopittful Nah the ending itself was terrible, just like the rest of the season.
If you can call it a finish...
@@riopittful don’t kid yourself, the last two seasons shouldn’t be considered canon and the ending was the worst part of it all
How about this, a post-apocalyptic where settlers in the outback live in constant fear of ferocious, near invincible emus. Think Attack on Titan but Australian.
And upside-down
imagine mikasa saying eraaan but in a aussie accent
"Cargo" is all the Aussie post-apocalyptic movie you'll ever need. Sorry, no emus though.
David Spangler Tomorrow, The World Began was a good book.
Replace the emus with alien bat and you got Pitch Black
While World War Z the book had flaws, I would have found its format more interesting than what we got in the film, which was just a generic zombie action flick.
Would've worked better as a mini series imo
I thought that the WWZ was actually pretty spotless. I actually haven’t seen generic brad pit zombie movie yet.
That was the whole appeal of the book anyway, it was popular due to its unique format and scope. The movie failed to me because it left the best parts of what made the book appealing behind
It would be gorgeous as a "documentary", like full lo-fi found footage-ish where there is the exchange between the interviewed and interviewer and then suddenly, with a particular zoom on the expression of the survivor we see glimpses of the event.
Boy, I would pay from my own pocket to see a decent actress portray the pilot that was guided by Mets Fan, like: the uncertainty in her eyes, the standoffish nature after the narrator afirmates that they never found a Mets Fan, the unreliability of her tale! The human factor. It would be a blast.
LOVED the line about World War Z removing "the heart soul and lungs then revived[ing] its corpse with necromancy to make a thrall that will be obedient to the whims of focus group testing." SO GOOD.
Also, I would also add Ender's Game to this list. The book is a masterpiece about war and child soldiers and humanity and the movie is... not. Also Asa Butterfield was too old to play Ender.
The movie follows the book I thought pretty closely, the themes were all still thier but the pacing was so fast that the whipped by without leaving a real impact. It was a serviceable film but utterly forgettable. Sort of book that would need a miniseries to do it justice.
Ender's Game needed to be a miniseries to get it right but the movie was alright just it felt it was trying to fit 20 pound plus story in a 10 pound movie
TBH I hated Ender’s Game when I read it in middle school. And Orson Scott Card can’t write children; I should have known, because I was one. I understand that the ending had a point despite the fact that it merely annoyed me at the time, but Ender acts like he’s 13, not 6. The recast was fitting, because there’s no way in hell an actual 6-year-old can act like that.
@@wannabehistorian371 that's the point, though--the kids in the book are the best of the best, not kidlike at all. They're much smarter than the rest of the world's kids because they've been bred that way.
Of course they don't act like kids. They were never meant to.
Poke Emblem wait he was 6 in the book?
Max Brooks did a great little talk about how he actually enjoyed the movie because it was so utterly divorced from his book that he simply wasn't watching an adaptation of it at all, he was just watching some random zombie movie: ruclips.net/video/WXFdO3DwRLY/видео.html
I think the wwZ movie would of been much better if it picked a different title
He got payed, i it call the Stan Lee i love all actors playing spider- man syndrome
I love that he said that, cuz that's totally how I felt watching the Deathnote movie. It was SO different, I couldn't really take offense and just saw it as a silly drama that wasn't bad to look at.
One thing the movie did right tho, is the atmosphere
Probably one of the least loyal yet best adaptations is how to train your dragon, as a fan of the books the only thing they kept was a bunch of names and yet they improved on the original source material a TON
The books weren't even that good, the first 9 at least
I thought V for vendetta was a better movie then graphic novel. Stardust too was a great movie that significantly altered its source material, book is still great too but thier so different from each other.
I thought the same. I don't even remember what the issue was, something like pacing and exposition, but I couldn't read more than two before giving up.
The author, Cressida Cowell, actually really likes the movie and thinks it stays true to the themes of the books.
@@TheUltimoSniper I find that there isn't much to them untill the very end, the first 9 seem almost formuliac just because nothing changes until the end of the 9th book in spite of having very different stories. I wouldn't say it stays to the themes of the books very well beyond Hiccup himself who is the one thing that stayed the same in adaptation however the dragons are treated very differently
Dont jack that, the books were way better, all the movies have the same plotline.
Holy Moly, are there over nine books?! I stopped reading the series after the potatoe book.
The ensemble cast audiobook of WWZ is one of my favorite listening experiences of all time. Every interview has a different actor as the narrator, and they're all incredible. I'd argue that it's the best way to experience World War Z that currently exists.
I've got that (on Audible) and it's amazing.
I've got that and everyone I know is sick of me raving about it.
Mark Hamill as always was the best part.
@@dalekrenegade2596 What version is that? He's not in the Audible one.
@@1701spacecadet i recommend the unabridged edition
World war z is such a great book. I read it after I saw the movie and the depth of the book is un-matched.
I think this book could only be faithfully adapted as a mini series where each episode focuses on one characters story
Perfect✨💯
Oh hell yes. Rig up da cgi we be getting the awesome shots!
Considering it's an 'oral history'... I'm picturing History Channel style series, with interviews in a studio office and the sequences that aren't interviews? "As portrayed by our actors" in white text at the bottom of the screen. That way you can go fairly cheap on the budget for action sequences because it's, in show, a recreation of previous events by actors.
@@MuertaNox Or maybe make all the non interview scenes tv footage or what the protagonists recorded eith their phones.
World war z is hands-down my favorite book when it comes characterization
What was your favorite story? Mine was the pilot trying to get back to safety while on an overpass
Thats funny, World War Z is my least favorite movie when it comes to characterization
If you can read the zombie survival guide and recorded history by max brooks.
@@wartang Oh I forgot about that one. It's been a while since I read the book (time to go digging) The stories that I remember the most were the evacuation of St. Petersberg, the AWOL Chinese sub, and the Parisian catacombs.
@@wartang my favorites would definitely be the story of the otaku in Japan. Here in the U.S., we tend to have access to weapons easily(hell, there's a gun store just down the street for me) but in Japan, he was stuck in a city packed with people with only a melee weapon. Kind of terrifying to me!
I think that the perfect way to adapt World War Z would to make a HBO style mini series. We can make the series into 6 to 7 episodes with each chapter getting its own episode except for "The Great Panic" which can made into 2 episodes due to the Battle of Yonkers. Have the story of the show follow the book where the Journalist goes around the world and interviews some survivors. When interviewing a survivor, we get a flashback detailing that they experienced during the war.
You should check out the full cast audio book. It's really good. Has like 30 voice actors including Mark Hammill.
@@TheEnoEtile Alan Alda as well
The original world war Z is such a good idea, I always wanted to see a film about a zombie apocalypse years after the outbreak. Seems so interesting.
The book was amazing, a truly original take on the overdone zombie formula.
Studio: "We like the title... didn't read the book but slapped it on another movie we wrote called zombie fuck'n mess".
''not only are the zombies fast but they can also climb''
''but sir... thats not how it works''
''SHUT UP GARRY''
I'm with the author Max Brooks on this one: the movie is so devoid of anything from the book except the barest of details that you can pretty much see it on its own. However, I wish the movie was actually good. As a zombie movie, it kinda sucked for me.
I was so annoyed after seeing the movie, because I had read the book years back and I was super excited to see how they would adapt it on screen. When I realised they hadn't, I felt played. They took the title of a much loved book and said it was an adaptation, which is the only reason I watched it. It was false advertising, if you ask me.
"The outbreak start in China."
Why does that sound so familiar? O wait-
You'd be surprised how often fiction on China eventually turns real
@@williamgarcia1417 yea look at 1984 and prolly brave New world too in the near future
World war z predicted 2020
Imagine the scene at Yonkers from that soldiers point of view. The tanks and artillery letting loose on the horde and doing jack. Everybody being linked up and the screaming/panicking on the line as the zombies make their first contact. Or the view from the sub on the ocean floor covered in zombies.
If by some miracle a miniseries is made to be accurate to the book, Yonkers should be shot as a "Found Footage" episode with the POV of a soldier's helmet cam.
@@DJWeapon8 Cuts back and forth between different soldiers and camera footage. Footage from the tank's sights as it rips an AP shell through the horde and doesn't do jack, cut to the soldier that got "ambushed" from a dead family breaking out of their home and onto the battlefield, footage showing the moron who shouted "they don't die" explicitly missing the head and panicking.
Someone should make a War of the Worlds in-name-only adaptation where the aliens invade to set up a puppet government to extract resources and arm local insurgent groups to destabilize the region
The aliens should probably give weapons to religious extremists too. That way they could fight them later in a never ending war to pose themselves as "the good guys" to humanity and let their more and more authoritatian politics go over without anyone complaining.
Huh
What was on my mind as I was watching the video was that this is very much akin to the story of Half-Life - the only problem is that with the series' very understated worldbuilding and storytelling, none of it ever really rises up to the surface to be immediately seen and understood by the player.
Still, you've got different factions within an incomprehensibly advanced alien civilisation who have been acting in secret within our society for who knows how long, before after engineering the collapse of our governments they then come along to install a replacement, puppet government with the ostensible purpose of seeing if we're going to be able to fit into their civilisation - and of adjusting us to fit if it turns out that we're not. As for what their real goals are... S̶p̶o̶i̶l̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶l̶e̶r̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶n̶i̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶n̶i̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶.̶
There was a tv series that was quite popular I think in the 80s that kind of did that (with the main character realizing what the aliens were doing.) It was called V and when they tried to remake it in 2000s, it didn't work out very well....
@@Nothing-1w3 Whst the US does in the middle east
World war z book: insightful analysis of society seen through the lense of a devastating world shattering event that transform lives but also the way nations interact with themselves.
World War z movie: Brad Pitt and zombies.
They actually asked Brooks to write the screenplay and he refused. I've always wondered if Pitt was annoyed by that so he fucked it up on purpose (still making a movie that would sell)
I have to assume that if they wanted Brooks to write it, that the original intent was to make a faithful adaptation.
You missed mortal engines. Or did you forget about the movie like everybody else?
I think he’s already made a video about that.
that movie try so hard to be another ya triliogy but like most other they barely get any atention or that people don't care
@@arturohernandez473 it never really got popular out of the UK from what I understand. It was doomed to fail. One of my English teachers let me borrow her copies she picked up abroad. I loved the series as a kid and opted out of seeing the movie. Glad I did. Reread it, they could do the books justice if they wanted. Hester is supposed to be ugly, that's the whole point! Throwing a faded scar on a grown ass woman doesn't work. From what I understand they fucked up Shrike pretty bad too.
Mortal Engines, damn fine movie
Why? Why did you have to remember me the sheer existence of this film? Do you know the effort it takes to forget it? Please!
Im glad you made a video about this book. They turned a unique mockumentary style book about the geopolitical effects of a zombie outbteak into a typical run and gun zombie movie
"Wow! You managed to adapt that book into a screenplay!? How? There's so many characters and situations, how did you manage to tie it all together?"
"I decided to focus on Gerry Lane. I found his story the most compelling."
"Oh... I see. You didn't didn't read the book, did you?"
"Not so much."
Pitch Meetings be like:
There is a 3rd class of adaptation: The re-imagining/re-contextualizing/re-framing of a story in order to highlight a different perspective in that story or to challenge us to think about the way the original work.
Something like The Warriors movie? but tbh, that adaptation takes more from greek histories than the actual the warriors novel
I read that Brad Pitt fought a lot with the director about sticking closer to the source material. So much that by the end they weren't even talking.
"It starts in China where the government suppresses" alright. Sounds familiar? This book was a real warning to any possible pandemic.
Lol
A lot of pandemics have started in China before
@@kittykittybangbang9367 exactly! There's a wide array of reasons why.
@@kittykittybangbang9367 heck it was based on the original SARS outbreak back in the early 2000s China pulled the same crap with that too. It just didn't get as bad.
I watched WWZ during Covid in 2020 and liked it a lot, then over the summer of this year I listened to the audiobook, and holy shit is the book just the best piece of zombie media, while the movie just steals the title and does something entirely different. It's such a crying shame that now we won't get a proper adaptation of the best zombie story ever written. I really can't recommend the book enough regardless. Even if you dont like zombies, I think you'll still find something to love, whether it's the way the story is told or the immaculate world building.
that moment when the Onion has better child-actors than a big budget movie
In a perfect world it would have been a HBO series with a bottomless budget. Have it framed just like the book through a journalist globe trotting a post war world and then have the episode revolve around a story.
All 5 season would be each stage of the war. Imagine an entire season of stories from The Great Panic. I really wish they didn't sully this property's name with this shit film. I hold a genuine grudge with Brad Pitt for being involved in it because someone had to have handed him the book at some point and he either didn't care to read it or actively ignored everything about it.
I was thinking it should have been a mini-series set up like a Ken Burns documentary, but a full TV series mockumentary would probably be better yet.
@Habadashery Jones
RE: "I hold a genuine grudge with Brad Pitt for being involved in it because someone had to have handed him the book at some point and he either didn't care to read it or actively ignored everything about it."
Brad Pitt was not to blame. He's merely an actor, after all. An actor simply reads the lines he is given. In my opinion, the real blame lies with the producer(s), the director and the screenwriter(s). They're the ones who made the decisions that turned a great book into a formulaic, cliche-ridden huge pile of bovine feces.
@Walter Johnson no, it was Pitts movie - it's his film studio that made it. He was the producer as well as the star.
5 seasons is a bit much. And plus I think some of the stories wouldn't be very grand for viewers. Like that story if the soldier who is hallucinating. I just don't think a stand alone episode on that would be received well
However to make it more of a spectacle they could potentially create new stories. Preferably with the great panic. The "Great Panics" in zombie books and media is always the best part
They could've called the movie something else and avoided paying Max Brookes altogether. It's so different, he wouldn't even think it was a ripoff of his novel. The narrative decisions and changes they made are baffling.
My favorite scene in the book is when we get to the former ISS guys in Sydney. The way he and his crew witnessed everything was really amazing in my opinion.
From the Battle of Yonkers, to Iran and Pakistan nuking each other, and even to the Second Chinese Civil War.
Fucking brilliant
the whole book is a masterpiece but the best story from it was by far the one talking about fighting the zombies by forming the raj singh square and the sandlers which supplied you with ammo.
@@sapphire-x7406 ah, the Battle of Hope. Definitely one of my favorites
Netflix anthology series where each episode is an interview of a character.
I saw the movie when it first came out and I thought "neat zombie movie." I recently read the book and was pissed that it wasn't adapted into a TV show or something
WWZ is one of my favorite stories for the themes that often aren't explored well in most media (human ingenuity, the injustice of nature and ; the way it goes about being very episodic but with the several overarching characters and plots would be so great for a miniseries or something.
I can't stand the movie; I am sure it is actually an okay movie, but the fact that it's existence will probably prevent that series from ever existing is painful to me.
I read the book twice before the movie came out, but the things that stand out to me are when they fled north and the Zombies. were frozen. There was plenty of food, and it was like a big camping trip until food got low. Then it was a free for all, and then the zombies thawed.
Then the part in Louisiana where they are trying to get up to that long bridge, but in the process are running by abandoned cars. Some with supplies, some with trapped grabber. Then making it up to the bridge. I drive on that long bridge. I call it the Zombie bridge.
Then the pet where Nelson Mandela teams up with a defeated white supremacist former foe, to use his harsh battle plan that would have originally been used against him, that grouped people in large fortified groups, and other smaller bait groups.
All those stories would have been bad ass episodes in a multipart series.
Hell, I just met Max again, and completely forgot to ask where in Yonkers that section takes place!
Jumper is another book to movie adaption where a lot of things where changed to make it more of a blockbuster. The movie actually made me checkout the book and I enjoyed both
This is why I, as an author, recoil in disgust when people imply a film adaptation of my work.
In fact one of the few times I felt personally offended online was when someone said "I'll wait for the movie to come out." That's how I realized I had to start purging fake friends from my circle.
@@SergioLeonardoCornejo Hello.I m kind of curious.In which other media aside from your own books would you like yo see your stories adapted to?(Audiobooks,comics,mini series etc)
What kind of books do you write?
@@SergioLeonardoCornejo
The thing that gets me is when someone says, "I don't need to read the book because I saw the movie."
@@HipstaHobbit sorry for not seeing your message until now. No reply alert appeared.
My novels are meant to be adapted to anime, video games, and manga.
After recent events you start looking differently at this books’s name.
I’m just about done with the book. Anyone who has seen the movie first like me, please do yourself a service and read it. Audiobook it, even. It’s such an amazing and intricate story about humanity at the end of the day. Such a delicious juxtaposition.
The way I think it should have been done is to have the interviewer in a room with each person one at a time and go into a flash back of the events from that person's point of view.
I thought the movie as imaginary version of books story about dealing with the outbreak in USA. In the book, people were told to wait and stay safe when heroes (scientists and government in the book, Brad in the movie) deal with the problem. In movie, solution is found after action-packed character story and world is saved. In book, the whole "seeking for solution" was just a grand plan for preventing panic and buying time for evacuation of as many people as possible behind rocky mountains. I think your thoughts on movies inspired by (but not based on) source material fit this case, World War Z movie was basically very expensive fanfiction.
In this case, the actual WWZ fanfiction is better than the movie.
i called the character "Brad Pitt" so much i actually forgot the character's name
I would imagine you do a series just like the book. Max visits various locations around the world, we get glimpses of the post victory world, and then tell the story in flashbacks, in the form of Max and his interviewees narration.
Just like in the book, some characters would be interviewed multiple times, others a one-off. You could have certain characters appear in other parts of the story to make it feel more interconnected.
In the right hands it could be really great. Almost an anthology series, but not quite... I don't know if any other show quite like what I'm describing has ever been seen.
It's actually a lot like Citizen Kane. We're told the outcome and basic beats of the story right at the beginning with the news reel, then through a series of interviews, we get the much more grounded, personal account of the events.
Based on what I've read about the movie, there was a germ of an interesting idea that could have maintained some of the spirit of the WWZ book: that the zombies, now made to be fast and dynamic instead of slow and horde-focused, would represent a natural disaster, or the outcomes of a crisis like climate change. The say that no disaster is ever fully natural: rather, the consequences of a major event like a hurricane, wild fire, etc. exposes the fault lines already inherent in a society, where all too often the poor and vulnerable are exposed to the worst outcomes while the rich remain in relative safety (see: New Orleans post-Katrina, which populations are most at risk with sea level rise, etc.). A film that used a zombie outbreak to explore this could have been pretty powerful, looking at how different cultures and societies responded to the crisis and show where their strengths and weaknesses were in their treatment of their populations.
But yes, it seems the film instead got the ol' "we need a huge blockbuster, focus group this thing to death" Hollywood treatment, again just going by what I've read on the topic, which didn't result in a bad movie but did lead to an unfulfilling adaptation.
This book is kind of prophetic in terms of where the outbreak began..
The fact that the guy who wrote World War Z also wrote Minecraft: The Island
No way bro. I absolutely love that book. The nostalgia is crazy and I also love world war Z!
He also wrote Devolution which is about a clan of Bigfoot attacking an isolated community
If the script for this video is an indication, you are one hell of a writer yourself, James. The metaphors about the heart, soul and lungs were amazing!
A War of the Worlds TV adaptation actually aired in the UK last year. It made various changes that didn’t make sense (e.g. making the Martians really agile rather than being encumbered by the higher gravity of Earth). It was set in the Edwardian era but as far as reflecting the current climate goes, it seemed to be criticising British nationalism following Brexit.
Funny, really, how the best adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a rock opera.
Also, the anti-imperialist criticism of the BBC adaptation was about as subtle as a nuclear bomb in the face, and by that, I mean a minute-long rant by Rafe Spall.
The best adaptation is the 1938 radio play by Orson Welles, which was presented as a fake “news broadcast” that allegedly caused widespread panic
@@stoutyyyy that was proven false, the newspaper companies made up that story to discredit the new fangled radio.
@@stoutyyyy Which was a myth
Everything you love about the title, and nothing else
Betrayal is a more than fitting word for this. 😭
My favourite chapter was the pilot that crashed, and it turns out she was hallucinating the person guiding her. Fucking amazing
I used to like the World War Z movie,
Til I read the book.
Now it's nothing but a sub-par zombie flick.
Same it's a shame they didn't include something like the battle of yonkers or the battle of hope.
The book and the movie resembled each other so little that they could have changed the movie to "Zombie war" and of been fine. Why did they even bother acquiring the license in the first place?.
@@riftvallance2087 So suckers like me who read the book in high school would be tricked into watching a completely unrelated movie
How to sound smart when talking about movies: say "flick"
I am legend book is way better also.
How To Train Your Dragon is another weird case of being inspired by the books rather than really based off them.
WOAH WOAH WOAH
What do you mean
@@baronvonjo1929 The movies are completely different to the books, the similarities pretty much end at the characters names, vikings and dragons.
This is the definition of "I just wanted the rights to the title."
Obviously WWZ wouldn't have worked as a movie. But in today's age? It would have been (and could still be) a great tv show on a streaming network. It's pretty much gold for that kind of thing. And wouldn't demand nearly the same budget as some things.
I don't care about the movie, but I do lament that this is the adaptation of a pretty decent book.
The way he talks at 3:00 makes me feel like he predicted corona lol
I’m terrified of the new PJO series that’s been announced. Also James I respect your efforts here, but I would like to respectfully disagree on one point. What you said about bad adaptations not damaging the source material. While I agree that the original will still exist obviously, I do disagree with the idea that an adaptation turning out unfaithful isn’t a bad thing. Adaptations help bring the story to a wider audience and even into mainstream awareness. When an adaptation is made unfaithfully, it destroys the possibility of the story being brought to a mainstream audience. Percy Jackson, if the movies were done faithfully would be respected by the mainstream and more people would talk about it just like Harry Potter. When a bad adaptation is made, you need to decide if loosing that potential for bringing the story into the mainstream is worth it for the movie you got. In the case of PJO they just made a cash grab. In the case of How to Train Your Dragon they still made a good movie, but it did still loose that potential for bringing the story of the books to a wider audience and allowing fans to see the story properly adapted. The question is was it worth it. Then there is Shadowhunters which I don’t how to classify. Just my 2 cents.
Idk if you watched the Netflix series. On its own it's a fair series, but the movie is surprisingly more accurate to the books. Which...is odd. All the nuance and character arcs are lost.
Same with The Meg books, I love those novels. Then came the movie which discarded 98% of the story in favour of some abomination of a screen play.
Apparently, Rick Riordan is going to play an active role as a producer, so he'll likely be pretty insistent that certain parts remain more accurate to the book.
I still fully believe WWZ should've been an HBO anthology series.
I was so confused when I read they were adapting The Snowman, cause like, this book is so centered around Harry and his relationships, it's so personal to the main character, that if even if you start reading the books with this one you'll be a bit confused or detached. Yes, every book has it's own little contained mystery in it, but Harry's life keeps moving and you need to have read the other books to know what's going on in his personal life. That's litteraly one of the reasons everyone keeps reading these books, we're engrossed with Harry Hole's personal life. The Snowman was the worst book to adapt first.
You describing the book can be so easily misunderstood as you describing 2020
The city of ember added the idea of giant moles as background creatures which I thought was a neat idea that added to the mystery of the setting
The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu by Tencent is having the sort of adaptation of the books that I so wish someone would make of World War Z!
It could only really work as a mini-series. There's so much to include. Yonkers alone could make up a full episode. Others, like the interview with the guy who profited off the sales of fake vaccines may need another story added on to fill the slot.
In the foreword of devolution, max mentions that he got the rights back
Niel Blomkamp should've directed this movie, it would've been sick.
Still waiting for a district 9 sequel.
@@user-ck7tg1dq9y or halo! There were rumors that wither him or Peter Jackson would be making a halo movie but that was years ago
@@cashuflakbreakdancer halo movie? You mean like halo, halo? I hope not. Otherwise it'll probably get woke like the Doom movie.
At 2:56 it is as if he starts talking about the Coronavirus. Like EXACTLY.
You want to talk about betrayal of source material!?! Look at I, Fucking, Robot, the movie adaptation of a book which expertly explored (nice alliteration) how robots would introduce challenge in a society, just short of armed rebellion, and the movie was a fucking robot revolution. Well done indeed.
Honestly it was as bad as WWZ with it literally being exactly the same, adaptation-wise: absolutely no similarities aside from robots/zombies respectively.
really hits different in quarantine for the new year.
Sat through the whole video waiting for him to talk about my favorite book to film betrayal "I Am Legend" was disappointed.
I would say World War Z and 2004 Dawn Of The Dead are 2 movies that toss out their source material and just keep the names
The Dark Tower failed so hard. I'm still angry with that movie.
Speaking of some things needing to be changed for the adaptation.
In that mini series Chernobyl the female scientist, can't remember her name, was actually the representation of dozens of people who did what she did. Obviously they can't make audience keep up with all those charcters and give personality. I think simplifying it to just one charcter was the right move.
Ironically enough, the American 'War of the Worlds' films which changed the time and place the story was set, still did a much better job of adapting the book than the BBC miniseries which was set in early 1900's England, was not at all subtle about making Wells' views on empire and religion its main themes and sucked utterly and completely.
If they ever do a new adaptation of
World War Z they have to go with a mockumentary or a District 9 type idea. Like how when they make a documentary based on a book like Console Wars or something like that.
WWZ the book is an all time favourite of mine. The film has little/nothing to do with the book. It was a good movie for me but should’ve had a different name as it was inspired by the book at best.
Still wish someone would make a series based on the book.
Are you saying they made Artemis not a narcissistic asshole but rather the nice guy?
WHAT!?
Like his whole character arc is learning not to be an asshole.
Iirc that stuff also took the entire seven book series to fully resolve, too, no? Like that character arc went on for years.
I would like to see World War Z adapted into a Ken Burns style documentary.
So talking about adaptations just made me thought of anime, just a lot of sadness until you read the manga..
To those who only read the book I highly recommend the audio book version, great narration. And for those who only watched the movie read or hear the source material, it only gets better... so much better I get angry at the movie again, watched it in cinema and hated everything about it because the movie title was a plain lie, gave it a chance again and again, maybe it's me, but no, this movie, bad movie, bad Pitt, bad. Or to quote the author about what they had done to his baby: "Fast zombies suck!".
When you’re describing the failings of the wwz virus response and it sounds scarily like real life…
James you are my hero. The pains and torture you endure for the fans to review books. I'd really like to see your review on the vampire book Crave which is getting its own movie.
I took a couple of screenwriting coures, The rule of thumb is that One page of script averages One Minute of film on screen.. Most popu;ar books that get adapted to film are 350 to 1200 pages.
Being a huge fan of the book I highly agree altough this explanation also serves as a lens to why the tokyo ghoul anime adaptation was so bad. The problem is not that they changed the plot the problem was that they changed kaneki the main character who is honestly the main draw of the series and turned him into something completely different for the worse.
“Now a major motion picture”
Happy I met Max again this weekend and apologized for not having read the book yet when I last met him and had it signed.
2:54 Hmmmm now where have I heard that before.
PREACH. They literally wiped their asses with the pages of the book.
The battle for Yonkers is my favourite part of the book
I liked the battle of hope, when they actually got their stuff together
The way that disaster unfolds in the books is *way too real* right now...
Someone made an adaptation with the game Arma, it's a masterpiece and to be honest it is way better than world war z : brad pitt edition.
Considering thru out human history, everytime we get to a year with the last 2 digits being 20, there's always some sort outbreak of a virus or germs
This movie would have been a lot more interesting in 2020 if it had stuck to source material.
Max Brooks made it clear that he was not a fan of the movie say that the only thing his novel has in common with its big-screen counterpart is the title you add in the fact how both Brad Pitt and Paramount wrong him by making the only time he was asked to weigh in on the script was after production had already started meaning that they did everything in there power to keep him for having a voice and say on the script and in the production of the movie.
I liked the video before the advert was over, because I've been pissed no one talks about how Brad Pitt stole a mildly popular brand (of a terrific book) to peddle his awful film, that has less to do with the source material than average sonic fanfiction. And no one seems to talk about it. Thanks mate.
This was how I felt about Ready Player One lol.
Crap film and I never even read the source material.
Brad Pitts character is based on one line from the books. The UN observer from Jakarta from the Mossad agents report right in the first chapter. And they didn’t even have him in Jakarta in the movie. Bigly stupidious.
To me, one of the biggest middle finger to me with a movie doing this was, "Starship Troopers". I LOVED that book, so when I heard that they were making a movie about it, I was really excited. Then I saw it. The movie wasn't even the same story as the story in the book. One of the characters was given a sex change just so we could have boobs in the shower and a sex scene. Gone was the iconic power armor that the soldiers were supposed to use. Gone was the entire war with the Skinnies. The book was about the future of the military. With the power armor, and weapons, one soldier was supposed to be equal to one battalion of today's army. It seemed like the people who made the movie saw the movie, "Aliens" and said, "We want a clone of that, but we can't call it Aliens. We need a recognized name to slap on this movie. OH!!! There's this classic sci-fi book called "Starship Troopers! Buy the name!". They didn't even bother to READ the damn book! They just read the description on the back of the book! And the bigger middle finger was that... people who watched the movie who never read the book, or didn't know that it was a book, loved the movie. But the movie was an absolute insult to ANYONE who read the book and wanted a movie based on it. There's almost NOTHING in common between the book and the movie. NOTHING!!! I'm a HUGE proponent of, "If you can't figure a way to tell the story that's in the book, the way it's told in the book, then don't make a movie of it!". There's some movies where they just... lose the entire focus of what the book was trying to convey. Starship Troopers.. Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, where they made the insane decision to make Quasimodo a happy hero, and the town leans a life lesson. Movies like these just.. kill anything that the books were trying to get across. They're so insulting to people who have read the books.
I didn't even know there was a book, it has just been one of my favorite stand alone movies
Although the case is similar to wwz, starship troopers isn't totally a bad movie because it has a relatively hidden satire of facism, meanwhile wwz movie was just a hollywood generic zombie movie
starship troopers however is an INTENTIONAL fuck you to the book, because the book is a piece of fascist propaganda and the director of the movie intentionally set out to ridicule the detestable ideology of the book.
a few things i loved about world war z that never got more than a paragraph: the guy explaining the ingredients of a pre war soda,, the battles that took place on the steps of the pyramids in Mexico, Guatemala and other latin countries, militaries employing the square formation of india, indigenous africans fighting the zombies, the feral deadly cats and packs of dogs, towns that voted to prepare-- using fundings to create walls, buy livestock and plant crops. i loved the chapters dedicated to japan, south africa, Great Britain, Jerusalem, the dogs, that one guy in the wheelchair that i didn't really like, the college(!!!), and how so many people died in their sleep. I love this book and was sorely disappointed in the theater room.
hated what they did to jerusalem, and loved the last three seconds of the movie
animorphs might be one of those stories left behind-- if they modernize it the whole story would fall apart, they already tried to adapt it to laughable efforts. I love this series tho T_T