The Plane Detail In World War Z That Had Fans Scratching Their Heads
"World War Z" was a capitulating moment in America's zombie fever of the late aughts and 2010s. Based on the book by the same name by Max Brooks (Mel's son), "World War Z" stars Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane — a U.N. investigator trying to stop the global zombie pandemic. Lane travels the world, documenting the start of World War Z and the fierce attempt to contain the virus.
The movie takes some pretty wild divergences from the source material. In the movie, a vaccine serves as the ultimate savior of humanity. In the book, the hope of a vaccine is a pipe dream. The author's book also takes place after the zombie war has been won, while "World War Z" shows the entire conflict from American infection to post-war recovery.
Additionally, Jerusalem is overrun in the movie, but in the book, it stays fast. The movie zombies are incredibly fast, much like those in "28 Days Later." However, the novel's undead are the slow shamblers of Romero. The speed of the movie zombies contributes to one of the film's most significant plot holes, which does not occur in the book.
Do zombies respect first class?
Fans don't entirely buy the film's plane set piece. Gerry Lane escapes Jerusalem on a commercial flight, and what happens next is rather unbelievable. One stowaway zombie infects all of the economy passengers and flight crew in a total rampage. Somehow, the pilots and first-class passengers don't notice or hear the carnage behind them. Only Lane looks past the first class privacy curtain to see the zombies going absolutely buck wild.
The zombies also seem to respect the sanctity of a privacy curtain, leaving first-class alone long enough for Pitt and his nearby passengers to construct a barrier of luggage between them and bitey death. Flights are loud, but they aren't "I can't hear people's guts being ripped out" loud. If we've learned anything from videos of unruly passengers being duct-taped to airplane seats, it's that one can hear an unruly passenger over a plane's engine roar. The zombies may have been distracted by more easily reached prey, but there's no way a privacy curtain could drown out such a bloodbath.