To cleanse the palate, what’s missing from this trailer? Hint: It has something to do with the “Z” in the title.

Actually, it makes some sense for this flick to go lighter on close-ups of the undead than standard zombie fare would. The movie’s not really “about” zombies. I haven’t read the novel it’s based on but I know enough about it to know that it’s more a story about international crisis management of a terrible plague than it is about zombies per se, which is true to the genre in one sense and very much a departure from it in another. “The Walking Dead” isn’t really “about” zombies either, unfortunately; it’s a soap opera about how a small group of (boring, unlikable) people cope with the end of the world, which is more or less what all zombie movies are about. “World War Z” is an unusual birds-eye view of how the planet copes with the end of the world. Or at least it’s supposed to be: This trailer feels like a standard, if unusually high-budget, “Brad Pitt saves everyone” action flick with some unspecified epidemic driving the plot. I understand that — if you’ve got a mega A-list star, you make sure the film’s marketing is saturated with him — but AMC’s doing blockbuster ratings week after week with a pretty bad show just because of the irresistible zombie element of the premise. If you’re lucky enough to have the undead as part of your cast, feature them. There’s a market, I promise.

The set piece on the airplane at the end looks neat, though.