Book Review: World War Z: The Art of the Film

I'm underwhelmed by this book. It's actually more of a screenplay book accompanied by pieces of artwork.

About 80 percent of the pages are devoted to the screenplay. On those pages, the screenplay is mixed with concept art illustrations and set photographs. The concept art are of the burning cities, ransacked supermarkets, underground bunkers, deserted buildings and, of course, zombies.

Many of the art pieces look and feel unfinished. They are basically rough impressions for how certain scenes are to look. Few pieces are in the unpleasant collage style of photograph or 3D with art. If you look at the pictures at arms length, they look fine. If you look closer, the details don't hold up. The storyboard sketches are fantastic but there are only a handful of them.

The last few pages feature zombie art. There are some nice textures going on but ultimately the designs are quite safe. They could have been zombies from any other zombie film.

The only form of commentary comes in the form of short quotes from the crew. They aren't very insightful by themselves. There's nothing on how the film was shot which would have been more interesting.

I recommend flipping through the book, see the pages before you buy.

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