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World War Z offers more evidence Hollywood should leave the project managers to Barclays and Coca-Cola

Vanity Fair recently ran a piece on tortured zombie thriller World War Z. Refreshingly free of tabloid metaphor, it shone the light on a movie which had turned out to be spectacularly difficult to create, which resulted in some high up people decided meant that it would arrive at cinemas much like its subject. Cue rewrites, a recut ending and a meeting between actor/backer Brad Pitt and scriptwriter/gun-for-hire Damon Lindelof in a faintly Lynchian sequence.

The main thrust of the article gave precedence to 'budget', 'location' and 'different motivations' as explanatory reasons for the failure of WWZ to successfully coalesce as one piece. A rationale that seems a little out of place for a film and more in keeping with, say, a logistics company, or a multinational media conglomerate.

'Wales? No way am I shooting in Wales!'

Not to be trusted with money by themselves it seems, directors are handed consultant-type figures to refer to in monetary matters. Because of the new 'virgin' talent walking into the industry, often directing films with massive budgets after one or two successful (much smaller) films, their effective handlers keep an eye on times, finances and other such things. One such figures was touted as the man 'who brought Michael Bay in on time and under budget.' You have to wonder what Bay's job is if it isn't splashing enormous sums of cash on special effects (I thought that was his raison d'etre, to be honest) because he's certainly pretty negligent at the directing stuff based on films like Transformers 2.

Why does a film require a project manager? Why do 'budget and logistics' hobble a movie before it has got going? It's pretty much one thing: perception of what its audience wants.

Attempts to create an Eiffel Tower out of people were going well.

It seems that boredom is the ever-present core of movies like World War Z. You can hear marketing, cinematographers and special effects co-ordinators triangulating in on the oversaturated consciousness of the moviegoer. Bored? Look at this! Still bored? We've got more of it, in a different country. Ah, that's perked you up. How about this?

None of this solves a terrible script, and guess what? World War Z hasn't fared well, critically.
Like the 'Z' of the title, it shambles into areas it has no previous experience of and feels patched up - probably because it was written by at least two different people.

But commercially it's done fine - well done to all you second-line departments who came together when the script turned out to be a turkey. And WWZ won't be the last big-budget film ($210-$250 million according to Slate's sources) to swim on its less artistic merits.

Demand v supply is a chicken and egg argument at its heart, but the effect of thousands of extras running up a hill like ants attacking a dead animal in Malta (above) is not necessarily rabid demand for more of the same. But it does involve some difficult decisions being made about who's really making a movie.

Pictures courtesy of io9.com and justjared.com