World War Z

This week I read the book World War Z by Max Brooks. I went into this assignment assuming that the book would be the same as the movie. It was not. I loved the movie and I have seen it many times. I also enjoyed the book, but not as much.

The movie version starting Brad Pitt was action filled and covered the lives of one family as they struggled for survival during a zombie apocalypse. The book version was a series of short interviews of different people’s accounts of the zombie apocalypse.

I liked the book version quite a bit, but I liked the movie much better. Let me share my thoughts on both versions.

The book caught my attention at the beginning. I felt that it was a very strong start. The book was built on the premise of a person named Max Brooks (the author of the book who was also a character in the book). The book was a series of interviews of survivors.

As the book progressed, I felt that the story went flat towards the middle. There was a lot of talk about politics and there were too many geographic regions and interviews for me to try to keep track of. Don’t get me wrong, that was probably an important part of telling the story, but not the type of story detail that keeps me engaged.

I understand why the producers changed the narrative when adapting to the book to the movie. I can imagine that a movie that was just a series of interviews would probably be very hard to follow and would confuse the readers.

So in summary, the key differences between the book version and the movie version were that the book has a narrative of interviewing survivors by Max Brooks, while the movie focused on one family’s survival. Also, the zombies in the book moved very slowly in the book and they moved quickly in the movie.

As I read the book, I could not help but notice all the parallels that they reminded me of in our current time with the COVID-19. I guess I kind of felt that way reading I am Legend as well. It always freaks me out a bit when I read a horror story that reminds me of current events or has reflections into my own life or experiences.