Apocalypse How – the unmaking of World War Z | Little White Lies

Apoc­a­lypse How – the unmak­ing of World War Z

05 Jun 2013

Words by Chris Rogers

Two men speaking animatedly, one with a shaved head, the other with long hair and a beard.
Two men speaking animatedly, one with a shaved head, the other with long hair and a beard.
The zom­bie pan­dem­ic thriller her­alds the end of the world as we know it. Again. It’s time to scram­ble into the bunker and lock the door.

Any­thing can hap­pen, in any kind of sce­nario, on any giv­en day. No one is spared, every­one is sus­cep­ti­ble.” In describ­ing what attract­ed him to Brad Pitt’s new film, World War Z, a glob­al action dra­ma in which UN inves­ti­ga­tor Ger­ry Lane (Pitt) leads a des­per­ate attempt to stop human­i­ty com­ing to an un-dead end, direc­tor Marc Forster is clear that the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the threat was key. I want­ed to cre­ate a movie that feels real, so audi­ences feel like this could hap­pen, this minute, to any one of us,” he says.

With Pitt as an every­man hero – Ger­ry can’t fly, he can’t beat up bad guys… he has no super-pow­ers. He’s a dad, with a burn­ing need to keep his fam­i­ly safe,” the actor says – and the entire plan­et affect­ed, World War Z is a fan­tas­tic but cred­i­ble depic­tion of disaster.

But although its verisimil­i­tude might be unusu­al, con­cep­tu­al­ly World War Z is mere­ly the lat­est in a long line of world­wide cat­a­stro­phe movies. And while sub­ject­ing the human race to great per­il might be enter­tain­ing, each film also says some­thing about the pri­ma­ry con­cern of its day, whether that be nuclear or germ war­fare, sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion, over­pop­u­la­tion or ram­pant capitalism.

The prin­ci­pal has lit­er­ary ori­gins. Sec­u­lar writ­ers have set out apoc­a­lyp­tic visions of plague since at least the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, and in lat­er years found inspi­ra­tion in pro­found tech­no­log­i­cal or soci­etal shifts. Rapid and dra­mat­ic advances in sci­ence saw Vic­to­ri­an fan­tasies of mad inven­tors hold­ing the world to ran­som, seized upon by cinema’s pio­neers. The First World War made real the mass slaugh­ter pos­si­ble with such weapons, and the over­whelm­ing impact of World War 2 and its atom­ic dawn was an obvi­ous start­ing point for the post-war generation.

As man stepped ten­ta­tive­ly beyond the earth and into space alien inva­sion actu­al­ly seemed pos­si­ble, although from the view­point of the Unit­ed States this was clear­ly tinged with dis­place­ment anx­i­ety – less green men from Mars than Reds under the bed. An unearth­ly foe of a dif­fer­ent kind was the astro­nom­i­cal body on a crash course for our small blue globe.

The range of films reflect­ing this unease is there­fore vast, from the Cold War para­noia of Them! and The Day The Earth Stood Still through the dystopi­an clas­sics of the 1960s and 70s such as Soy­lent Green, Logan’s Run and Roller­ball (as well as lit­tle-seen gems like The Ulti­mate War­rior or Saul Bass’ Phase IV) to Chil­dren of Men, The Road and The Book 0f Eli today. Evo­lu­tion, though at first a sign of enlight­ened under­stand­ing, drove the pri­mal scream that was Plan­et of the Apes, while The Androm­e­da Strain con­flat­ed space explo­ration, nuclear anni­hi­la­tion and bio­haz­ard research. Those wor­ry­ing lumps of rock hurtling through space saw a response in Mete­or, Armaged­don and Deep Impact.

The film adap­ta­tion of Max Brooks’s 2006 nov­el World War Z: An Oral His­to­ry of the Zom­bie War’, then, allows any num­ber of inter­pre­ta­tions. Pitt – who is also co-pro­duc­er – sees a par­al­lel in recent health scares, with the zom­bie con­ta­gion spread­ing much like we’ve wit­nessed virus­es such as SARS trav­el. What hap­pens when this jumps the fire break…what hap­pens when every­thing we con­cern our days with is ren­dered use­less?” Fel­low pro­duc­er Dede Gard­ner views the sto­ry as a metaphor for dis­en­gage­ment: Peo­ple are tied to their screens and their mon­i­tors and their head­phones – in the most basic sense, they do walk around like zom­bies by not inter­act­ing with oth­er human beings.”

Under­ly­ing theme aside, the prin­ci­pal chal­lenge com­mon to many of these pro­duc­tions is the real­i­sa­tion of destruc­tion and des­o­la­tion on a vast scale. Cap­tur­ing aban­doned cities and derelict build­ings on screen once meant a few snatched min­utes of loca­tion film­ing in the ear­ly hours before retir­ing to the back­lot, but the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion has brought lighter cam­eras and com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery, yield­ing far more con­vinc­ing vistas.

Resolv­ing that Audi­ences are smart, they know what dif­fer­ent cities around the world look like”, Gard­ner accord­ing­ly steered film­ing around the world, although work in the script­ed loca­tions was sup­ple­ment­ed by footage shot in oth­er, more acces­si­ble, cities care­ful­ly cho­sen to match. Thus Glas­gow stood in for Philadel­phia, with a fortnight’s shoot­ing in George Square, whilst Mal­ta played Jerusalem. The Roy­al Navy lent the pro­duc­tion a serv­ing ves­sel, RFA Argus, to rep­re­sent the fic­tion­al Amer­i­can heli­copter car­ri­er USS Madison.

Design­ing the move­ment of the infect­ed vic­tims, the team bor­rowed from the nat­ur­al world to cre­ate zom­bies that Gard­ner says are stag­nant, slow and wan­der­ing” when dor­mant, but when aroused to feed become what move­ment spe­cial­ist Ryen Perkins-Gangnes describes as rapa­cious and relent­less”. Many of the crew had expe­ri­ence film­ing sim­u­lat­ed com­bat, bring­ing addi­tion­al realism.

How­ev­er it is made and what­ev­er it might reveal of the present, World War Z joins a series of films that pro­vide an alter­nate com­men­tary on our times. Each of them is in the end about the same thing: fear. Fear of the dif­fer­ent, fear of the oth­er, fear of what’s out­side and what’s inside. Fear, ulti­mate­ly, of ourselves.

Chris Rogers writes on archi­tec­ture and visu­al cul­ture at chrism​rogers​.net

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