Saturday, November 10, 2012

Hypothesis: World War Z as the end of zombie mania

The World War Z trailer is out. I think it looks stupid. I have not read the book. I hear the book is pretty good. The movie's production has been...rocky, to say the least.

If the movie fails, which is a very realistic possibility given stories of reshoots and reedits, and changes to the script after the movie was done (never a good sign, that) what will that mean for the humble zombie? I submit that it will make any production of zombie related movies and TV difficult.

Example: The seventies fad of disaster movies. 'The Towering Inferno,' 'The Poseidon Adventure,' 'Airport,' and The Swarm. After the movie 'Airplane!' satirized the genre it became impossible to take it seriously, and despite the odd movie hither and yon (there was a moderate renaissance of disaster movies, in the form of Twister, Armageddon and Deep Impact, and Volcano and Dante's Peak) disaster movies haven't taken off as they have.

Genres are incredibly fragile things. Granted, the zombie apocalypse sub genre is reasonably robust with a broad body of media, such as The Walking Dead, which is reputed to be good. However, it dosen't take much, just a few bad entries, before it becomes impossible to take seriously. That, and the whole zombie craze has been going on for a decade, and while its been a fun ride, you really have to ask yourself: how much farther can this thing go?

I think within the next half decade we're going to start seeing serious parodies come out, which is always the sign that the powers that be who give us our books and movies have grown weary of putting the same thing over and over. Remember The Da Vinci Code from five years ago? Apparently, we're beginning to be on the downward slide from the YA dystopia boom of the past five years. After the Hunger Games movies are complete, and after the adaptations of related works, we'll start seeing something new---never a bad thing. A disappointing thing to be sure, but not bad.

I feel kind of the same way about superhero movies, which have no doubt hit their peak and by 2015-ish we'll have a rejuvenated Star Wars boom to provide large scale sci-fi action. Just an organic process, really, just the beat of time, and the beat always must go on.

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