Honest Trailers Season 1 Episode 35 Honest Trailers - World War Z
- September 17, 2013
In this episode of Honest Trailers, the team takes on the 2013 hit movie World War Z, based on the best-selling book by Max Brooks. The trailer starts off by acknowledging that despite the book's reputation as a critically acclaimed piece of fiction, the movie adaptation, directed by Marc Forster, takes some serious liberties with the source material.
The trailer then takes us on a tour of the movie's various plot points, starting with the character of Gerry Lane, played by Brad Pitt. The team pokes fun at the fact that Lane is a former UN investigator who inexplicably finds himself leading a worldwide search for the cause of a zombie outbreak. They also point out that the character's name is essentially just a pun on the phrase "get out of my lane", which seems like a weird choice for a serious action movie.
The trailer then touches on the movie's most famous scene, in which Pitt's character leads a frantic chase through a crowded street in Jerusalem as zombies swarm over the city's walls. The Honest Trailer team notes that this scene is actually pretty impressive in terms of its visual effects, but they also make fun of how convenient it is that Lane and his team are able to escape unscathed while everyone else around them gets eaten alive.
From there, the trailer moves on to some of the movie's more ridiculous moments, such as the reveal that the zombies are attracted to noise and that the survivors can evade them by walking around with bulky, sound-muffling helmets. The team also pokes fun at the fact that Lane's wife, played by Mireille Enos, spends most of the movie holed up in an apartment building with a handful of other survivors, waiting for her husband to save her.
The trailer wraps up with some general observations about the movie's strange mix of gritty action and over-the-top silliness. The Honest Trailer team notes that while World War Z may not be a great movie by any means, it is at least entertaining in a way that's hard to quantify. They also point out that the movie's ending, which involves a sudden shift in tone and a bizarre revelation about how to cure zombieism, is one of the craziest things they've ever seen in a big-budget blockbuster.
Overall, this episode of Honest Trailers is a hilarious take on a movie that, while flawed, still manages to be pretty entertaining in its own weird way. Whether you're a die-hard fan of the book or you're just looking for a fun zombie movie with some big-name stars, World War Z is definitely worth checking out - if only so you can appreciate how ridiculous it can be at times.