Now that's out of the way, on with the SPOILERS sort of.
I went to see World War Z, a movie that shares a name with a book that also has zombies in it. I'm not going to talk about how the two are different from each other. I'm not even really going to review the movie. (I enjoyed it.)
I'm going to talk about are tropes I'm tired of seeing in movies.
1) Little girls in movies are worthless. In the event of any trouble in a movie they will either curl up in a ball in the floor of the car screaming, or going mute and catatonic OR they'll have an asthma attack.
2) Little boys in movies are amazeballs! Little spanish speaking boy trapped in an apartment when the zombie hordes broke down the doors some how managed to fight his way free of the zombies, up a stairway full of zombies and garbage the heroes had thrown at the zombies WHILE CARRYING THE USELESS GIRLS (maybe, sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.) and catch up with them on the roof leaving his family as zombie food back in the apartment.
3) Black men are damned liars. This could also be the UN is innefective because the Secretary of the UN (The movie's token black man. I really don't remember any others at all.) swore he'd protect and take care of our intrepid hero's (with the salon quality hair) family but, of course he didn't. He just waved as the military took them off on a helicopter (where was the fuel coming from?) to drop them on the mainland since they weren't of any use any more... probably because they were useless girls... although they did drop off Tomas the scrappy boy as well... probably because Tomas wasn't white like EVERYONE ELSE ON THE SHIP.
4) Women are stupid. No, seriously. Your husband off in a top secret government mission as a super spy? Best thing to do is call him in the middle of the night on the cell phone. And while you're doing it... why not do it while you're in the bowels of a ship, you know... for best signal reception. Needless to say the noise-sensitive zombies ate everybody on screen because she lay there in bed curled up around the useless girls who were catatonic at the time (probably from drinking jet fuel which the Navy evidently stores with their water. What? I don't know. It was color-dialog to show how tough things were. The actor that did it got paid scale. I'm positive it's his first job all year except as an extra in a soap commercial... in France.) Secondly, in the only safe city in the world that managed to fling up walls in a week who is it that grabs the mic and starts singing at volume 11? Singing their joy and happiness? And attracting every zombie within like 10 miles to climb the walls and eat the whole city? A woman... who was quickly joined by another one. Two women are like stupid-squared or something. (It's also possible the trope here is that the singing people were religious because in the setting it could have been a religious type song, and the trope could have been religious people are stupid.)
5) Scientists are inept clumsy morons. The first one was running with a gun and managed to fall on it in such a way that he killed himself. No shit. Held the gun less than a minute, tripped, fell, died instantly. Scrappy little boys = good. Scientists = clumsy dumb-asses. Exhibit B) The World Health Organization chief ran into or kicked every loud thing in his giant lab of death over... and over... and over again. Seriously. Thank God they didn't give him a gun! Or maybe they should have. It would have been over faster if our world famous super-genius virologist is any indication.
6) The Israeli military folks are tough as hell. If they survive the useless girl trope and grow up to be Israeli military you can LITERALLY cut off their hand with a machete and she'll just keep on going. I don't know how she loads a gun with only one hand but my guess is she uses her power of mean to do it. That bitch could kick some ass. And I mean bitch in the best way possible. She was great. Like Lois Lane in Man of Steel great. No fainting flower damsel in distress in need of rescue here. She was amazing. Damn you Man of Steel for not making Lois Lane Israeli!
So those are things, tropes if you will, that this movie really could have done without. Perhaps they were in the original book. If they were then it had more in common with the source material than I think it did. Those things all could have been done differently. They're too expected. They're too formulaic. They're too tropey. When there are too many of them it kind of gets in the way of my enjoying myself.
Surprise me once in a while would you? It's okay to do something we, the audience don't expect from you. There can be smart women of action who aren't helpless who spend the whole movie curled up in a ball in bed. Lois Lane took on alien supermen just last week!
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