By now everyone has to be familiar with the recently released World War Z film. There were posters everywhere of springy armies of the undead launching themselves at helicopters against a pale sky. There were trailers featuring Brad Pitt looking desperate and heroic. And before all that, there was a novel by Max Brooks of the same name which had little to nothing to do with the film. (Or perhaps did.) To compare the two is to compare oranges to goldfish crackers: both can be eaten as snacks, both have an orange color, but man are they different flavors.

World War Z the film deviates from the book in more ways than you can count. But it’s the fundamental structure change in the movie that might make a Max Brooks fan sit up and take notice. Brooks’ books depicted a nuanced view of a world looking back on a zombie plague that almost ended humanity, told from the varied perspectives of people from every walk of life. The film World War Z instead takes a white-washed view of the end of the world, in which a single western man turns away from violence to save the world. Gone is the multinational flavor of the apocalypse, replaced by a very beatific—and very American—Brad Pitt. And that, above anything else, makes this film a near travesty.

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