This movie has haunted me for a year. It’s one of those movies you want to say “oh it was a great movie...” etc but yet you don’t want anyone to see because it scared you so much.
In that case I'd recommend not watching Threads. It's a 1980s British TV film about nuclear war and the aftermath, and it's even bleaker than The Road. Chilling stuff, and it could happen at any time.
@@callum0509 Threads is dark as fuck. I've got family in Sheffield and seeing some of the very places I've been to get utterly destroyed was terrifying to watch.
After finishing the book, I fell into a serious depression. It brought me back to when my father died of cancer just before my 13th birthday. He had to leave without seeing me finish growing up. As a father of four myself, that realization really hit hard
Year old comment but still feel the need to share my interpretation on this piece of art. The father is the author (McCarthy who had a son around the time of writing it) and the story of the road is exactly that fear you listed. Having to say goodbye before your kids are ready to "carry on the light". The whole book involves the father worried about dying and making his son tough enough to survive in a cruel world. The ending of the book that involves the family w/ the dog shows that even when the father is gone, there IS good in the world who will help round the child off to be a better person and that he had no reason to worry all this time.
People want apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fantasy, with a cure right around the corner and everyone with the full force of humanity's righteous fire. That is the fantasy or feel-good drama side of the coin. Then you have the realistic, horror side that displays what it would actually do to humans and their psyche. Only the bad ones survive, the ones willing to double back on their promises and stab you before you could turn around, before you can realize they've broken your trust.
Love the realism. The lack of guns blazing action, and focus on preservation and avoiding conflict instead. The lack of drama, and the focus on just survival instead. They grayness of morality in the film. This really makes this story stand out which I wish there were more movies like, but everything else seems to have to have drama, action, and blatant plot armor for the protagonists and black and white morality.
Agreed, theres not alot of wild west standoffs or brave gunfights. In this reality, boldness kills and alot of the encounters show fearfulness or awkwardness, everyones scared of everything, no one wants to fight because people don’t have enough energy or bullets to bother eachother with. Perhaps this takes place after the bang of survivalist communities and warlords, now the world dies with a whimper.
The scarcity of ammunition is a very realistic aspect. Most gun freaks don't consider what will happen when there's no more factories turning out cheap bullets and ammo stocks begin to get burned up in battles over resources.
@@wert7773 I agree, it seems like those communities wouldn't last long in this type of world though, with a certainty of absolutely no input of food, be it from the soil or livestock, that would hit the human psyche hard enough, not to mention the short period of time that food of that scale would be sustainable to power those raids and communities.
@@zippymufo9765 many of them do consider it, which is why they have a large stockpile and the means to produce their own ammunition. After smokeless powder dries up, you'd see a lot of people go back to black powder flintlocks as there's no priming compound needed and propellant can be made with limited skill or tools as was demonstrated in another McCarthy book "Blood Meridian".
@@TheStig505 I know some do, but many don't. Many "preppers" don't think past a few months of self-sufficiency. And "large stockpiles" can only go so far when you're having to use it up at a greater rate than planned for and even the best factory-made ammo can become unreliable after awhile. This movie is set roughly 10 years after whatever apocalypse occured, and that's the average shelf life for most ammo. I agree that having a knowledge of black powder (and the best firearms you can use it with) will probably the crucial factor in any scenario like this, but not everyone will have that knowledge or access to the resources. Trust me, a lot of gun nuts are going to die off just like everyone else if this happens 😃
He protects the last innocence on Earth, but he will absolutely end his boy with a quick resolute death, rather than see a bunch of deranged jackals rape torture his baby boy to death in front of his eyes, then devour him like vile demons. This movie brings tears to my eyes.
This isn't an overt criticism of anyone but I've read a lot of discussion about how "People could have done this," to improve the situation in _The Road_ (or any other bleak postapocalypse setting), when, at least with regard to _The Road_ , I think the implication is that this is _post collapse collapse_ . Like...at some juncture, there was a concerted effort to rebuild, to try and recover, for a centralized or at least localized agency to restore or provide aid to survivors. But, at the time of the book (and the film)...all that has ended. No more crops can grow, no more fish can be harvested, machines have mostly broken down, or rendered inert due to EMP (whether from nuclear weapons or a large doomsday-scale meteor impacting the Earth, which can produce EMP as well). This isn't _an_ end it is *The End* . The canned food has been eaten up, mostly. The police, governments, soldiers, they've no reason to do anything any longer, and have just wandered off. There's nothing to recover to, because there's no foundation to base a recovery on. Maybe a few stragglers here and there, like the family who adopts The Boy at the end, maybe they're just eking by with a greenhouse or something. But it's only to buy a few quiet moments before the end. In another decade or two, on that Earth shown in the film, it'll just be some interesting bacteria, and that's it.
Possibly. Fungi grows from the dead stuff, and machines from EMP would reboot, yet wouldn't be attended to. (EMP is temporary). The Earth may, in that current state, be dying, but the environment would rebuild itself eventually.
Oh sure. A planet like Earth wouldn't stay dead forever; it's just that in _The Road_ , none of the people living on it (none of the higher organisms at all, really) will live to see it flourish or even begin to flourish again. Give it a few hundred million or perhaps a billion years and something, perhaps evolved from Tartigrades, would get a leg up.
the book and the movie does go into some imagery of that first effort. Forts made from cars and office building fortified and walled off parking lots. I haven't read the book in a long time but i think him and his wife talk about "heading into town" which was a group of farm houses of old neighbors or church people i think when they were holed up and she was pregnant. There was also remnants of the army that turned into mini fortresses and were the last of the rebuilders to fall. Lack of sunlight isa hell of a drug
God didn't preserve Noah and his family so they had the "reward" of dying last. He did it so they could re-seed. Same with the boy in The Road. He's that remnant of goodness, he's "carrying the fire." Eventually the dust will settle...
Nothing would survive. There's no oxygen producing elements. The seas are dead, probably, and the trees were all dead and falling. Little if any plant life survived. This about 10 year after the apocalypse started. The land was soaked and frozen countless times over and there was no sun to help anything grow. Fact of the matter is all life on Earth would be extinct before that boy can even be middle aged, if he could live that long which it was very unlikely he could since there was nothing making food, the water was increasingly toxic and the oxygen wasn't being replenished.
It takes a certain breed of humans to watch this movie more than once , it’s glimpse into what the future could very soon be like and it’s a great movie.
Even watching these deleted scenes I am gripped by fear and sadness. The little boy's voice is haunting because it's so full of life and promise surrounded by such darkness and evil. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me!
The first scene was in the novel and it was a lot sadder; the boy's reaction about the same. And the (abridged) "did you have any friends" conversation. But I can see why these were left out, they were a bit awkward and out of tune. Just wish the film was about 1/2 hour longer and contained all the atmosphere from the novel, instead of plot-point to plot-point.
Watching something is different from reading it, you gotta get the 'pacing' right and the atmosphere &tc to not bore or overwhelm people. You can always put a book down and come back. I think it must be a really fine line and a very hard thing to do. But, I agree with you :) One of my favourite films.
Also in the novel there's a scene where they come across a camp where the men have pregnant women and (putting it politely) catamites that are doing "it " to pass the time while also eating a baby on a spit..... Even though theirs worse things shown in film I think the director left that out for a reason...
I think it's one of the most realistic movies I've seen in the post apocalyptic genre. Like, realistic in the way that I think this would be a post-apocalyptic world. Exactly like this, and it's scary, just the end of humanity and nothing can be done about it. But the love of father and son still remains, but even so, this movie haunts me, the fear that it passes is frightening.
It's not all that realistic. For one, they wouldn't have still been finding canned food nine or ten years later, but that's a cliche of all post apocalyptic films. Also, it's highly unrealistic that a child born into such a world and never knowing anything different would be so naive and full of compassion. A more realistic narrative would have been the kid tending towards brutality and nihilism while his father struggled to keep them as "the good guys".
@@zippymufo9765 if that's what you see as being more realistic it's okay, good point of view. But I like what they did here, being more a thing about keeping the connection between father and son etc. Not everybody is like, I think everyone is different and would act differently in this situation, what I'm trying to say it's that I like the way they acted.
@@antonsilva2003 I get your viewpoint, I'm just basing my opinion on what I've read about children raised during war or extreme conditions. For example, the children saved from Nazi camps were found to be almost feral and sociopathic from the experiences they'd gone through----they'd seen so much violence and had to fight other children over food, and they required a lot of therapy and patience to get past that trauma. That's kind of an extreme example, but it just doesn't play right to me that a young child who's only known a world of hunger and struggle and misery would be so compassionate and selfless. I think it would have been more interesting to see the dynamic flipped and the father having to remind him of compassion or "being the good guys", because he's the one with memories of a better world. That doesn't interfere with me appreciating the story, which is more of a biblical fable or legend, which is why they didn't explain what happened in either book or movie.
@@zippymufo9765 yeah, I guess being that kinda of biblical fable/legend is what makes me like this movie too. Of course you can not make a 100% realistic pós apocalyptic movie, and that's not what I want to see either, but from the movies that I've saw this is the one that I liked most.
@@antonsilva2003 What's weird is how so many people don't believe the ending is optimistic----"oh that family is going to eat him" 😂. The whole point of their journey is the hope that things are better further South, and the fact that they find a beetle and the sun seems to be trying to come out, as well as meeting a family with children and a dog, suggests that they were right.
+Ez Workout oh well , if they did that the movie wouldnt be depressive anymore , it would be quite grotesque and needlesly gore, which was not the point of the movie
+tony bc This is the sad thing about film, you can describe something in a book but if you put it in a movie, you've crossed the line. Some people will choose **not** to read the book, but if they're watching the film, they feel offended that it's so graphic or whatever. The cannibal scene was pushing the limits (I think it should have been much worse). It just sucks. Imagine being a director. You'd have to make everything artistic and pretty instead of real.
Good explanation. Now I get why they didn't. And yet.... that scene in the book was such a massive hammer blow in the face that I re-read it 5 times over. Just to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks. Man..
I know this is just a story, but it made me go out and buy a good bit of ammo for my guns. It was just so gut churching and heart wrenching with that scene in the cannibal groups bathroom, or even in the beginning with the suicidal mother. This movie made me say I’ll never be caught so low on ammunition. What a simple problem to become so powerfully meaningful. Terrifying.
The scene everyone who read the book was hoping to see, a scene should have made it into the movie: "He woke in the morning and turned over in the blanket and looked back down the road through the trees the way they'd come in time to see the marchers appear four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. He put his hand on the boy's head. Shh, he said. What is it, Papa? People on the road. Keep your face down. Don't look. No smoke from the dead fire. Nothing to be seen of the cart. He wallowed into the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind-up toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. Shh, he said. Shh. The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. They passed 200 feet away, the ground shuddering lightly. Tramping. Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dog collars and yoked each to each. All passed on. They lay listening."
I can't understand why such a vivid, interesting scene didn't make it into the film. Unforgiveable if you ask me. Maybe the director was worried that the sight of a few catamites would offend some people? I heard Hollywood is full of them...
@@goodyeoman4534 jeez I had to google what a catamite was. That is very disturbing. Really nails home why the father was ready to end his son's life if it came to that.
@@goodyeoman4534 Because it's repetitive. We already saw that there's gangs who prowl the roads. There's three instances in the film where they encounter them. Why do you need another scene?
@@zippymufo9765 Because it’s different. The other two cannibal groups we saw were just random disorganized assholes in the woods. These ones were a real society, they’re more interesting.
You know, they could've filmed the newborn on a spit scene from the book without actually filming such a horrifying scenario DIRECTLY. They could've shown the pregnant woman with the two men and their campsite, then skip forward to the next day with the father and the boy coming upon it and witnessing it off screen (maybe just show part of the spit and the dead campfire implying what they had done to the infant,) and have their reactions and later commentary about that "poor baby" to be enough.
True but honestly could this movie have really handled any more disturbing scenes? After the cellar scene it might be too much and alienate more of the audience.
Wouter d.B. - What are you talking about? And was so graphic about this slave caravan? Not saying slavery isn't horrible, but im guessing there must've been something unusually disturbing about this particular slave caravan.
My suspicion is they felt it would be hard to convey to the audience that the man might have been seeing things that weren't there because of starvation.
Also for anyone asking a catamite is a pubescent boy that gives pleasure and is the recipient of (oral and anal) sex by an older man. Basically in the roads bleak post apocalypse if you don't get eaten and you are a young man a teenager you end up a cannibals play thing. That's how brutal the apocalypse will be for survivors
I've seen much more brutal and harder films, but The Road shook me to the bone. Perhaps it's the extreme realism and hopelessness that this film exudes. A masterpiece that has perhaps received too little attention because of its bleakness. Yes, people want dystopian films, they want to see gang fights, chases and, even better, zombies. But they don't want to see a real scenario after the collapse of civilization.
Out of 10,000 known species of mushrooms about 4% are edible. the other 20 % of edible mushrooms would take processing and other difficult ways to ingest them. 50% of mushrooms are completely inedible, meaning you can't even swallow/bite into them. 1% can kill you, another 20% will make you sick. the odds of them finding a single edible mushroom are about 10 in every 250 mushrooms they find. So, no you cannot eat all types of mushrooms and it's extremely risky experimenting with different fungi.
There’s a scene in the trailers where they’re looking at fires from a distance and he says something about that being what the sun was like - is this in the film? I don’t remember seeing it.
I will forever love you my dear son, although you are a young handsome man today, my heart still mourns the time we were estranged from each other (temporary family court restrictions). I will forever miss that young innocent child who was taken away and forced into change and a sabotaged relationship. Our nuclear winter, we have survived!
Does anyone know what state(s) they were heading through? They don't give us a good look at the map the man has, and there's no mention of the names of towns or cities
@@SocialCreditScore Thanks for the information. I found another link which is very in-depth, but reinforces that they were heading for the South Carolina coast. web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/TR/route.htm The author of the above piece belives they started in Kentucky, moved through Tennessee, and ended up on the South Carolina coast. The one major city they pass through in the novel was meant to Knoxville, apparently. I'm not sure if the film had the same idea. I was way off course, though. I had imagined they started off somewhere in the midwest and were either heading to the Gulf Coast or possibly California. Anyway, thanks again for the Shmoop link.
@@michaelspears7116 no problem at all. It helps for me to remember that like all of McCarthys books take place in Appalachia or near the southern border, at least the ones I've read.
@@SocialCreditScore Have you read Blood Merdidan? I've heard great things so I'll have to get my hands on a copy soon. No Country for Old Men is high on the list, too. The film is brilliant, so I'm sure the original source material won't disappoint.
i always wondered how the movie version of this book would be. The movie itself is great and am happy they didn't try to copy everything that happens in the book because that stuff is haunting.
@@michaelspears7116 And then 99.99% of people they came across would be too tired, sick, or otherwise unable or not wanting to interact with them. The only thing I don't like about this movie, for the sake of ultimate realism, there was just way too many people alive in it, as well as in the book, he should've seen maybe one group of cannibals, and that old guy who puked up the food would've been dead a week after he ran out of the food in his kitchen. If there really were so many cannibals, with so much energy to run after their prey, they would eat each other or other cannibal communities.
The Last of Us and all that zombie apocalypse stuff is just crap. Fantasy. I remember watching I am Legend and being so disappointed. If the apocalypse should come it will be very much like this.
@@erikswanson5753 Exactly, people always believe that some super genius has the solution to all their problems right around the corner, be it a cure, or some other sort of scientific breakthrough. In reality everyone, or most everyone dies, and we most likely lost a lot of technological progression depending on the main demographic of survivors and their population size.
People love to write this off as being fictional until it's not. Many humans can be this disgusting any day given chances & circumstances. But still "it's a beautiful life".
I myself compared these two to Rick and Carl but the truth is, Carl eventually adapted to his environment! I doubt this kid ever did. In fact, it wouldn't shock me if he somehow ended up in that damn 'sheeple' basement.
@@QoQabai658 Realistically that kid should've been a staple example of stupid but instinctual, wouldn't know a darn thing, have two threads of empathy, and just know that you gotta eat, drink and that you can't eat people, or drink their blood, stealing is off the table as well. He should've been essentially incapable of feeling heavy emotions, and he's have a much more linear/one-track mind when it came to life, which for him, just meant staying alive. But for the sake of the plot they had to make him a big useless baby.
Yeah, right. Not a chance in hell would everyone come together for the greater good in a scenario where the vast majority of people were dead and the world was (presumably) more-or-less destroyed.
Really? He was pretty reasonable most of the time imo. Remember that he's the "last piece of naivety" in the world or smth, so makes sense that he will try to be kind. And he's also a kid, no matter how much he's seen, he's not as wise as an adult.
The movie sucked, my blame is on the director or editing because a lot of the lines are just very forced. The audio book does the pacing substantially better. But a lot of effort was put into making the atmosphere that shouldn't be overlooked.
This film should have been better. They miscast the wife and son. Charlize Theron does not work as the wife. Why would anyone go out to be raped and murdered? Her good looks take away from the film. The kid was to naive, weak looking. So, annoying hearing him talk. When the one scene in the film that you are in, gets cut. That has to hurt. I heard the book in very good.
@IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong When I think of a boy about 10 years old that's seen all that as you describe, I'd expect him to be a hardass lad mature beyond his years and ready and able to do what is necessary to survive without whining like a mollycoddled milk sop.
IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong I suspect it’s the fault of the author who has the final say in shaping every aspect of the characters’ persona. Slap the director, the script writer and maybe Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel.
this movie is so under rated as a parent this is hell on earth people trying to kill your son eat him rape him ..... whenever i watch this movie it makes me uncomfortable ,,,,
This movie has haunted me for a year. It’s one of those movies you want to say “oh it was a great movie...” etc but yet you don’t want anyone to see because it scared you so much.
In that case I'd recommend not watching Threads. It's a 1980s British TV film about nuclear war and the aftermath, and it's even bleaker than The Road. Chilling stuff, and it could happen at any time.
Callum 0 What about No Blade of Grass, or Soylent Green, or Silent Running?
@@callum0509 Threads is dark as fuck. I've got family in Sheffield and seeing some of the very places I've been to get utterly destroyed was terrifying to watch.
Its not scary cannibalism has been around for a long time
@@Eschatologygroup So has slavery, let’s enslave you and see if you get scared by the prospect.
After finishing the book, I fell into a serious depression. It brought me back to when my father died of cancer just before my 13th birthday.
He had to leave without seeing me finish growing up. As a father of four myself, that realization really hit hard
Jesus man...I am so sorry. I recently lost my grandfather. Who was really my father because my actual "father" wasn't around much
damn that sounds like a sweet book if it impacted you that bad
Year old comment but still feel the need to share my interpretation on this piece of art. The father is the author (McCarthy who had a son around the time of writing it) and the story of the road is exactly that fear you listed. Having to say goodbye before your kids are ready to "carry on the light". The whole book involves the father worried about dying and making his son tough enough to survive in a cruel world. The ending of the book that involves the family w/ the dog shows that even when the father is gone, there IS good in the world who will help round the child off to be a better person and that he had no reason to worry all this time.
This film is under the radar. But gives a realistically horrific feel to an apocalyptic world.
People want apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fantasy, with a cure right around the corner and everyone with the full force of humanity's righteous fire. That is the fantasy or feel-good drama side of the coin. Then you have the realistic, horror side that displays what it would actually do to humans and their psyche. Only the bad ones survive, the ones willing to double back on their promises and stab you before you could turn around, before you can realize they've broken your trust.
probably someone already mentioned it in the last 5 years but the book is so much worse that it makes you cry from how hopeless things get.
@@sarcanicus1The same as The Walking dead.The graphic novel RISE OF THE GOVERNOR is so much worse than the TV show.Far more apocalyptic.
@@DerekHarrison-d5d they can rarely ever make something as close to the material maybe in the future perhaps
Love the realism.
The lack of guns blazing action, and focus on preservation and avoiding conflict instead.
The lack of drama, and the focus on just survival instead.
They grayness of morality in the film.
This really makes this story stand out which I wish there were more movies like, but everything else seems to have to have drama, action, and blatant plot armor for the protagonists and black and white morality.
Agreed, theres not alot of wild west standoffs or brave gunfights. In this reality, boldness kills and alot of the encounters show fearfulness or awkwardness, everyones scared of everything, no one wants to fight because people don’t have enough energy or bullets to bother eachother with. Perhaps this takes place after the bang of survivalist communities and warlords, now the world dies with a whimper.
The scarcity of ammunition is a very realistic aspect. Most gun freaks don't consider what will happen when there's no more factories turning out cheap bullets and ammo stocks begin to get burned up in battles over resources.
@@wert7773 I agree, it seems like those communities wouldn't last long in this type of world though, with a certainty of absolutely no input of food, be it from the soil or livestock, that would hit the human psyche hard enough, not to mention the short period of time that food of that scale would be sustainable to power those raids and communities.
@@zippymufo9765 many of them do consider it, which is why they have a large stockpile and the means to produce their own ammunition. After smokeless powder dries up, you'd see a lot of people go back to black powder flintlocks as there's no priming compound needed and propellant can be made with limited skill or tools as was demonstrated in another McCarthy book "Blood Meridian".
@@TheStig505 I know some do, but many don't. Many "preppers" don't think past a few months of self-sufficiency. And "large stockpiles" can only go so far when you're having to use it up at a greater rate than planned for and even the best factory-made ammo can become unreliable after awhile. This movie is set roughly 10 years after whatever apocalypse occured, and that's the average shelf life for most ammo.
I agree that having a knowledge of black powder (and the best firearms you can use it with) will probably the crucial factor in any scenario like this, but not everyone will have that knowledge or access to the resources. Trust me, a lot of gun nuts are going to die off just like everyone else if this happens 😃
Bleakest film I've ever seen. Really gripping.
sean smyth is that a movie about my butt
Detroit never looked so good......
Watch Come and See. That one is bleak and it isn't set in some fictional super-apocalypse. It's based on real events.
Watch ‘Johnny Got His Gun’. That thing is about man made evil with absolutely no hope as well.
Barefoot Gen
He protects the last innocence on Earth, but he will absolutely end his boy with a quick resolute death, rather than see a bunch of deranged jackals rape torture his baby boy to death in front of his eyes, then devour him like vile demons. This movie brings tears to my eyes.
Did you watch the movie? He couldnt do it when the time came
@@prometheus705 but that time never came
@@burnttoaster6313 he didn't have the strength to do it in the book either
He didn't have to do it. Both the book and the movie clearly suggest that the kid is going to be okay.
@@zippymufo9765 actually in the movie the guy who helps him has his thumbs cut off, a sign he is a cannibal and was punished
It was genius to film this entirely on location in Detroit.
Seen 20 now that I didn't know....Detroit also has blighted houses and rural areas that make it look tore up so it fits the movie perfectly
@Pierre LeDouche whoosh
Pierre LeDouche don’t you get a joke?
hahahahahahah 10/10 best comment so far on a The Road video.
Is this movie on Netflix?
This isn't an overt criticism of anyone but I've read a lot of discussion about how "People could have done this," to improve the situation in _The Road_ (or any other bleak postapocalypse setting), when, at least with regard to _The Road_ , I think the implication is that this is _post collapse collapse_ . Like...at some juncture, there was a concerted effort to rebuild, to try and recover, for a centralized or at least localized agency to restore or provide aid to survivors. But, at the time of the book (and the film)...all that has ended. No more crops can grow, no more fish can be harvested, machines have mostly broken down, or rendered inert due to EMP (whether from nuclear weapons or a large doomsday-scale meteor impacting the Earth, which can produce EMP as well). This isn't _an_ end it is *The End* . The canned food has been eaten up, mostly. The police, governments, soldiers, they've no reason to do anything any longer, and have just wandered off. There's nothing to recover to, because there's no foundation to base a recovery on. Maybe a few stragglers here and there, like the family who adopts The Boy at the end, maybe they're just eking by with a greenhouse or something. But it's only to buy a few quiet moments before the end. In another decade or two, on that Earth shown in the film, it'll just be some interesting bacteria, and that's it.
Possibly. Fungi grows from the dead stuff, and machines from EMP would reboot, yet wouldn't be attended to. (EMP is temporary). The Earth may, in that current state, be dying, but the environment would rebuild itself eventually.
Oh sure. A planet like Earth wouldn't stay dead forever; it's just that in _The Road_ , none of the people living on it (none of the higher organisms at all, really) will live to see it flourish or even begin to flourish again. Give it a few hundred million or perhaps a billion years and something, perhaps evolved from Tartigrades, would get a leg up.
the book and the movie does go into some imagery of that first effort. Forts made from cars and office building fortified and walled off parking lots. I haven't read the book in a long time but i think him and his wife talk about "heading into town" which was a group of farm houses of old neighbors or church people i think when they were holed up and she was pregnant. There was also remnants of the army that turned into mini fortresses and were the last of the rebuilders to fall.
Lack of sunlight isa hell of a drug
God didn't preserve Noah and his family so they had the "reward" of dying last. He did it so they could re-seed.
Same with the boy in The Road. He's that remnant of goodness, he's "carrying the fire." Eventually the dust will settle...
Nothing would survive. There's no oxygen producing elements. The seas are dead, probably, and the trees were all dead and falling. Little if any plant life survived. This about 10 year after the apocalypse started. The land was soaked and frozen countless times over and there was no sun to help anything grow. Fact of the matter is all life on Earth would be extinct before that boy can even be middle aged, if he could live that long which it was very unlikely he could since there was nothing making food, the water was increasingly toxic and the oxygen wasn't being replenished.
It takes a certain breed of humans to watch this movie more than once , it’s glimpse into what the future could very soon be like and it’s a great movie.
The boy’s acting was really good and sold the sadness. Innocents in such a harsh world.
Even watching these deleted scenes I am gripped by fear and sadness. The little boy's voice is haunting because it's so full of life and promise surrounded by such darkness and evil. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me!
"He is my warrant" Damn that hits hard. The only why he living because of his kids
The first scene was in the novel and it was a lot sadder; the boy's reaction about the same. And the (abridged) "did you have any friends" conversation. But I can see why these were left out, they were a bit awkward and out of tune.
Just wish the film was about 1/2 hour longer and contained all the atmosphere from the novel, instead of plot-point to plot-point.
i think the director thought it was a great book and just wanted to get the point across.
Watching something is different from reading it, you gotta get the 'pacing' right and the atmosphere &tc to not bore or overwhelm people. You can always put a book down and come back. I think it must be a really fine line and a very hard thing to do.
But, I agree with you :) One of my favourite films.
that's one problem I had too...everything was portrayed well,but the director laid the movie in short cuts
The problem with movies is that they're a business.
Also in the novel there's a scene where they come across a camp where the men have pregnant women and (putting it politely) catamites that are doing "it " to pass the time while also eating a baby on a spit.....
Even though theirs worse things shown in film I think the director left that out for a reason...
The most underrated movie ever
2:10 ...am I the only one who whispered "dogmeat" when that kid wanted the dog to find something for them lmao
Ulysses I did the same
Ulysses? From Fallout New Vegas?
Dao Yang no fallout 4
Rico Robles
No from TESV: Skyrim
Dao Yang no dogmeat from fallout 4
Great movie and book!
I think it's one of the most realistic movies I've seen in the post apocalyptic genre. Like, realistic in the way that I think this would be a post-apocalyptic world. Exactly like this, and it's scary, just the end of humanity and nothing can be done about it. But the love of father and son still remains, but even so, this movie haunts me, the fear that it passes is frightening.
It's not all that realistic. For one, they wouldn't have still been finding canned food nine or ten years later, but that's a cliche of all post apocalyptic films.
Also, it's highly unrealistic that a child born into such a world and never knowing anything different would be so naive and full of compassion. A more realistic narrative would have been the kid tending towards brutality and nihilism while his father struggled to keep them as "the good guys".
@@zippymufo9765 if that's what you see as being more realistic it's okay, good point of view. But I like what they did here, being more a thing about keeping the connection between father and son etc.
Not everybody is like, I think everyone is different and would act differently in this situation, what I'm trying to say it's that I like the way they acted.
@@antonsilva2003 I get your viewpoint, I'm just basing my opinion on what I've read about children raised during war or extreme conditions. For example, the children saved from Nazi camps were found to be almost feral and sociopathic from the experiences they'd gone through----they'd seen so much violence and had to fight other children over food, and they required a lot of therapy and patience to get past that trauma. That's kind of an extreme example, but it just doesn't play right to me that a young child who's only known a world of hunger and struggle and misery would be so compassionate and selfless. I think it would have been more interesting to see the dynamic flipped and the father having to remind him of compassion or "being the good guys", because he's the one with memories of a better world. That doesn't interfere with me appreciating the story, which is more of a biblical fable or legend, which is why they didn't explain what happened in either book or movie.
@@zippymufo9765 yeah, I guess being that kinda of biblical fable/legend is what makes me like this movie too. Of course you can not make a 100% realistic pós apocalyptic movie, and that's not what I want to see either, but from the movies that I've saw this is the one that I liked most.
@@antonsilva2003 What's weird is how so many people don't believe the ending is optimistic----"oh that family is going to eat him" 😂. The whole point of their journey is the hope that things are better further South, and the fact that they find a beetle and the sun seems to be trying to come out, as well as meeting a family with children and a dog, suggests that they were right.
Underrated movie
One of the best survival movies.
so dark and dreary i would rather just die peacefully on my own than survive just to slowly starve in a wasteland of nothing
@@commiesnzombies same here. No hope at all, just prolonging the inevitable
@@commiesnzombies me too
@@BaseK59the ending speaks, the kid surely led the family to the bunker where they could’ve lived for a while.
Even that last deleted scene makes me cry. I remember being such a mess after watching this movie. I was just bawling.
Where's the. BBQ baby?
+Ez Workout oh well , if they did that the movie wouldnt be depressive anymore , it would be quite grotesque and needlesly gore, which was not the point of the movie
+Ez Workout they did film it I read but they just cut the scene after they realised it was too much for film
+tony bc
This is the sad thing about film, you can describe something in a book but if you put it in a movie, you've crossed the line. Some people will choose **not** to read the book, but if they're watching the film, they feel offended that it's so graphic or whatever. The cannibal scene was pushing the limits (I think it should have been much worse).
It just sucks. Imagine being a director. You'd have to make everything artistic and pretty instead of real.
Good explanation. Now I get why they didn't. And yet.... that scene in the book was such a massive hammer blow in the face that I re-read it 5 times over. Just to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks. Man..
+Sen
What is bbq baby?
holy shit .... i watched this movie on netflix yesterday ... its one strong movie !
It's not on Netflix.
@@platinum_4942 yes is it.
I just found it free on youtube
@@just_me6392 m.ua-cam.com/video/HmzDzsvxv_Y/v-deo.html
@@just_me6392 it is my pleasure
I know this is just a story, but it made me go out and buy a good bit of ammo for my guns. It was just so gut churching and heart wrenching with that scene in the cannibal groups bathroom, or even in the beginning with the suicidal mother. This movie made me say I’ll never be caught so low on ammunition. What a simple problem to become so powerfully meaningful. Terrifying.
This book is my favorite of all time. The meaning you get from it is incredible. How far do you go when you know there is no hope and no good ending
The scene everyone who read the book was hoping to see, a scene should have made it into the movie:
"He woke in the morning and turned over in the blanket and looked back down the road through the trees the way they'd come in time to see the marchers appear four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. He put his hand on the boy's head. Shh, he said.
What is it, Papa?
People on the road. Keep your face down. Don't look.
No smoke from the dead fire. Nothing to be seen of the cart. He wallowed into the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind-up toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. Shh, he said. Shh. The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. They passed 200 feet away, the ground shuddering lightly. Tramping. Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dog collars and yoked each to each. All passed on. They lay listening."
I can't understand why such a vivid, interesting scene didn't make it into the film. Unforgiveable if you ask me. Maybe the director was worried that the sight of a few catamites would offend some people? I heard Hollywood is full of them...
@@goodyeoman4534 jeez I had to google what a catamite was. That is very disturbing. Really nails home why the father was ready to end his son's life if it came to that.
@@goodyeoman4534 Because it's repetitive. We already saw that there's gangs who prowl the roads. There's three instances in the film where they encounter them. Why do you need another scene?
@@zippymufo9765 Way off the mark.
@@zippymufo9765 Because it’s different. The other two cannibal groups we saw were just random disorganized assholes in the woods. These ones were a real society, they’re more interesting.
You know, they could've filmed the newborn on a spit scene from the book without actually filming such a horrifying scenario DIRECTLY.
They could've shown the pregnant woman with the two men and their campsite, then skip forward to the next day with the father and the boy coming upon it and witnessing it off screen (maybe just show part of the spit and the dead campfire implying what they had done to the infant,) and have their reactions and later commentary about that "poor baby" to be enough.
True but honestly could this movie have really handled any more disturbing scenes? After the cellar scene it might be too much and alienate more of the audience.
They did shoot it, the director decided not to use it.
@@zippymufo9765where can i find it?
@@spaghettibolognese5838 It wasn't publicly released, but the director mentioned in a interview that it was filmed.
What happened to the 'army' of dudes in red they hide from in the novel?
I would have loved to see that in the movie. Ya know, all those canials with slaves and home made pikes and stuff..
They probably wanted to avoid an NC-17 rating
Man, I would love to see that scene...
Wouter d.B. - What are you talking about? And was so graphic about this slave caravan?
Not saying slavery isn't horrible, but im guessing there must've been something unusually disturbing about this particular slave caravan.
My suspicion is they felt it would be hard to convey to the audience that the man might have been seeing things that weren't there because of starvation.
This movie was quite realistic.
Was wondering if the part of the book where they find other survivors had barbecued a baby was a deleted scene. Guess not.
Mmmmmm I love BBQ baby 🍖
They couldn’t film that, it would’ve been so dark to put on film
You for got the pregnant women and catamites? The men use for pleasure
Also for anyone asking a catamite is a pubescent boy that gives pleasure and is the recipient of (oral and anal) sex by an older man.
Basically in the roads bleak post apocalypse if you don't get eaten and you are a young man a teenager you end up a cannibals play thing. That's how brutal the apocalypse will be for survivors
Catamotes are common in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Look up Bach’s Bazi
I've seen much more brutal and harder films, but The Road shook me to the bone. Perhaps it's the extreme realism and hopelessness that this film exudes. A masterpiece that has perhaps received too little attention because of its bleakness. Yes, people want dystopian films, they want to see gang fights, chases and, even better, zombies. But they don't want to see a real scenario after the collapse of civilization.
They want the cartoon version with bright colors and unrealistically interesting characters. Like the new Mad Max movies.
I remember that first scene from the book
where is the guy with the axe scene in the woods???
Where's the newborn roasted on a spit?
They didn't even film it.
Yayy another week of therapy for me.
what? was they farming people? lol
Jesus
Yeah they see a pregnant women walking with some men and follow them and find that
Surely species of fungi would survive, feeding off dead plants. Surely, humans could farm mushrooms using rotting logs as an example.
Bryden Searle surely.
Pretty sure they find mushrooms in the book.
They do.
You think you can eat all mushrooms?
Out of 10,000 known species of mushrooms about 4% are edible. the other 20 % of edible mushrooms would take processing and other difficult ways to ingest them. 50% of mushrooms are completely inedible, meaning you can't even swallow/bite into them. 1% can kill you, another 20% will make you sick. the odds of them finding a single edible mushroom are about 10 in every 250 mushrooms they find. So, no you cannot eat all types of mushrooms and it's extremely risky experimenting with different fungi.
This film does a great job in conveying a lack of hope
Viggo should do more like these
the most depressing post-apocalyptic movie ever
There’s a scene in the trailers where they’re looking at fires from a distance and he says something about that being what the sun was like - is this in the film? I don’t remember seeing it.
Darkest and scariest film of all time.
I will forever love you my dear son, although you are a young handsome man today, my heart still mourns the time we were estranged from each other (temporary family court restrictions). I will forever miss that young innocent child who was taken away and forced into change and a sabotaged relationship. Our nuclear winter, we have survived!
This movie should be called the American dream
Many of this it was in book
This break down in society didn't seem as real in 2009 as it does in post-pandemic 2024.
Poppa!
This movie made me feel uneasy... am i the only one
yeah you're a special snowflake
I watched it all but I was really disturbed after
@@Solaxe feeling emotions > special snowflake... fuck off
I can totally see why these scenes didn't work.
Does anyone know what state(s) they were heading through? They don't give us a good look at the map the man has, and there's no mention of the names of towns or cities
Someone did a bit of thinking and came up with South Carolina. Look up the road location shmoop
@@SocialCreditScore Thanks for the information. I found another link which is very in-depth, but reinforces that they were heading for the South Carolina coast.
web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/TR/route.htm
The author of the above piece belives they started in Kentucky, moved through Tennessee, and ended up on the South Carolina coast. The one major city they pass through in the novel was meant to Knoxville, apparently. I'm not sure if the film had the same idea. I was way off course, though. I had imagined they started off somewhere in the midwest and were either heading to the Gulf Coast or possibly California. Anyway, thanks again for the Shmoop link.
@@michaelspears7116 no problem at all. It helps for me to remember that like all of McCarthys books take place in Appalachia or near the southern border, at least the ones I've read.
@@SocialCreditScore Have you read Blood Merdidan? I've heard great things so I'll have to get my hands on a copy soon. No Country for Old Men is high on the list, too. The film is brilliant, so I'm sure the original source material won't disappoint.
San Francisco.
best movie
Did people eat their thumps and fingers? That is terrifying
What a great movie, sad but great
i always wondered how the movie version of this book would be. The movie itself is great and am happy they didn't try to copy everything that happens in the book because that stuff is haunting.
Detroit never looked so good.....
My only question: why did they make so much stupid noise?!
Same reason they walked in daylight, in the middle of the road, and casually walked through big cities; they knew 99.99% of people were dead.
@@michaelspears7116 And then 99.99% of people they came across would be too tired, sick, or otherwise unable or not wanting to interact with them. The only thing I don't like about this movie, for the sake of ultimate realism, there was just way too many people alive in it, as well as in the book, he should've seen maybe one group of cannibals, and that old guy who puked up the food would've been dead a week after he ran out of the food in his kitchen. If there really were so many cannibals, with so much energy to run after their prey, they would eat each other or other cannibal communities.
everyone is hating the the kid but nobody understands his role......
being annoying
I understand his role. But I still find him annoying.
And the annoyings win by a nose!
People who found him annoying have the emotional depth of cannibals
@@user-hu3iy9gz5j fact,a lot of edglords
they should have kept all this in
One of the most depressing films I’ve ever watched
Whenever I see this movie I feel depressed ,sad and disappointed
He could have at least put the lightning guy out of his misery; that’s one thing he could have done for him.
Great movie
People say America isn't what it once was. I dunno, Man ...
Viggo kicking things again?
🪖
Scariest movie I ever saw maybe cause it could happen.
it was either a solar storm or Yellowstone eruption
this is literally The Last of Us, without those infected zombies.. whats scarier is the human's desperation to survive.. we will eat each other.
TloU get inspired from this movie btw.
The Last of Us and all that zombie apocalypse stuff is just crap. Fantasy. I remember watching I am Legend and being so disappointed. If the apocalypse should come it will be very much like this.
@@erikswanson5753 Exactly, people always believe that some super genius has the solution to all their problems right around the corner, be it a cure, or some other sort of scientific breakthrough. In reality everyone, or most everyone dies, and we most likely lost a lot of technological progression depending on the main demographic of survivors and their population size.
am i the only one who didn’t like the book. the whole book until the last 30 pages the boy pissed me off sooooo much bruh
People love to write this off as being fictional until it's not. Many humans can be this disgusting any day given chances & circumstances. But still "it's a beautiful life".
The book was fantastic, but this entire movie should be deleted
every one here bitching about the kid has lost the plot,
How so?
I myself compared these two to Rick and Carl but the truth is, Carl eventually adapted to his environment! I doubt this kid ever did. In fact, it wouldn't shock me if he somehow ended up in that damn 'sheeple' basement.
@@QoQabai658 Realistically that kid should've been a staple example of stupid but instinctual, wouldn't know a darn thing, have two threads of empathy, and just know that you gotta eat, drink and that you can't eat people, or drink their blood, stealing is off the table as well. He should've been essentially incapable of feeling heavy emotions, and he's have a much more linear/one-track mind when it came to life, which for him, just meant staying alive. But for the sake of the plot they had to make him a big useless baby.
If this kind of apocalypse happens to all of us. I figure we all can work together and find a solution.
I think it's more likely it'd be every man for yourself for a few years but eventually ppl will come together
@@RobotWizard4209 we will return to tribal life and humanity has lost 1000s of years of progression. Such a waste
After only a week you would get the cannibal scene lol
Yeah, right. Not a chance in hell would everyone come together for the greater good in a scenario where the vast majority of people were dead and the world was (presumably) more-or-less destroyed.
In reality, it is difficult to say. We aren't really given enough information on what exactly has happened and how.
For a kid born and raised in a post apocalyptic world he was such a wuss!
Plus they picked a kid with such a chubby well fed face, never missed a meal in his life
@@starwarsroo2448 likely picked based on acting ability to be fair
@@Norwoodg00ner wrong his parents were set dressers or wardrobe, it's not what you know
@@starwarsroo2448 oh well, his acting was great for someone his age
@@Norwoodg00ner it was pretty good actually, the scene by the river he was crying for real as it was that cold.
that kid gets on my nerves
Likeable, non-annoying children are rare and unrealistic
Dio Brando but its normal for a kid with such a Bonding to Dad. I have 2 Boys and have to hear it everyday... ! One question . Are You a Daddy?
I don’t get it, i thought he was alright
@@FFFFFFF-FFFFFFFUUUUCCCC So is a post-apocalyptic movie. The kid is still annoying.
Really? He was pretty reasonable most of the time imo. Remember that he's the "last piece of naivety" in the world or smth, so makes sense that he will try to be kind. And he's also a kid, no matter how much he's seen, he's not as wise as an adult.
It would be so terrible to be alive in the final generation on a dead planet.
There’s a deleted scene where a few people are French kissing
The cannibals?
Greta didn't like this
Evergreen Stonedesert if this was made today she would have shit down the production
How dare you!
Ok
Great flick, however I hope this kid finally grew a pair by now..
The family ate him
@@victorfergn Either way, they'd likely all be dead.
Probably one of the catamites.
@@victorfergn The only thing that turns me away from that theory is, if they have a dog, they would have eaten the dog over a human child.
@@pipthewarrior3738 they loved the dog and the kid was annoying.
last of us
no
Not even close bud
The movie sucked, my blame is on the director or editing because a lot of the lines are just very forced. The audio book does the pacing substantially better. But a lot of effort was put into making the atmosphere that shouldn't be overlooked.
The lost of us
This film should have been better. They miscast the wife and son. Charlize Theron does not work as the wife. Why would anyone go out to be raped and murdered? Her good looks take away from the film. The kid was to naive, weak looking. So, annoying hearing him talk. When the one scene in the film that you are in, gets cut. That has to hurt. I heard the book in very good.
You're too unintelligent for both this movie and the book.
Im not saying that children in movies is a bad idea.... just this kid. he is so annoying.
@IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong When I think of a boy about 10 years old that's seen all that as you describe, I'd expect him to be a hardass lad mature beyond his years and ready and able to do what is necessary to survive without whining like a mollycoddled milk sop.
IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong I suspect it’s the fault of the author who has the final say in shaping every aspect of the characters’ persona. Slap the director, the script writer and maybe Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel.
One of the better child roles
I hate his mom was rewarded with getting him again after deserting in the beginning. Such bs
What the fuck are you even talking about. Watch the movie again and pay attention next time.
this movie is so under rated as a parent this is hell on earth people trying to kill your son eat him rape him ..... whenever i watch this movie it makes me uncomfortable ,,,,
Aragorn on crack