Conrad as Film Director

World War Z
Caution!  Spoilers!
I read the book several years ago, then heard it was being made into a film, and wondered how it would translate.  The actual production seemed to be troubled, although getting your props impounded in Hungary - and thus making the news world-wide - is really good publicity. 
     I think the film fell between two stools.  It couldn't emulate the novel, which is composed of countless vignettes, without a budget of billions and a run-time of several days.  It didn't stick to one location and fill in the background implicitly or with passing information.  Instead it hops from one location to another, but in a limited way. 
     Then there is the way things go from Completely Normal to Absolutely Cfuked Up in the space of hours, if that.  No news warnings or stories about zombies or mass strange behaviour - the apocalypse unfolds instantly as Mr Pitt drives into Philadelphia.  Perhaps, if we get a sequel, this would be explained, but the incredibly rapid onset is only ever referred to in passing in a single sentence about air travel being the perfect way to spread the disease.
     And, surely, if you are facing gigantic kaiju from beneath the sea, a more rational response would be missiles with sub-kiloton nuclear warheads, instead of building - whoops, no, sorry, that was one of the trailers!

     Basic physics and the human body: I am not a doctor, for which you may be truly grateful, but at a couple of points in the film we see a vertical mass of zombies attempting to get at victims and surmounting vertical obstacles thanks to sheer numbers.  I rather suspect that a mass of humans attempting to scale a wall of a hundred metres height would in fact collapse under it's own weight.
     That in turn brings me to what I liked about the film - I could be way off here, but it appears one of the production design staff likened the zombie mass to ants in the way they mass and move. This has a precedent in the novel, where a Japanese survivor describes zombies in a Japanese term that is derived from ants.  Like ants, these WWZ zombies have no individual will or intellect but manifest direction at a (slightly) higher level.

     Patient Zero
     In the novel this is a Chinese boy in mainland China.  The film has this transposed to South Korea - as far as we know.  Again, if we get a sequel, this may get backfilled, but I am not holding my breath.

     Contrast
     In Philadelphia, New York, Korea and Jerusalem we have expansive cityscapes, explosions, gigantic zombie attacks, guns, and explosions galore.  At the dramatic crisis we end up with a handful of survivors trying to creep around a building being as quiet as mice, one gun between three of them. 

In summary, I liked the film, but it could have been much better!  The novel [SPOILER AHOY SPOILER AHOY DO NOT READ ON ah whatever] doesn't have a magical McGuffin, instead it has a hard-headed triage system for surviving human communities.  Which, in fairness, is not a quick cinematic fix and would probably need a lot of cinematic resolution to remain convincing.

Okay, now, my own Zombie Novel takes the tack that civilisatio <cont. Page 96>