Road Warrior Food
I read The Road during the 2009 road trip travels. In this post-apocolyptic world, the father-son duo travels across country in search of cans and crumbs of food to keep themselves alive. And while they’re searching, they have to keep from being eaten by all the crazies on the road.
So I’m still debating about seeing the movie. I’m always interested to see how a movie adaptation captures the real themes of a book and how it changes to feed trends and the appetites of movie watchers. I try to not to be appalled by how they “ruined” it or how the author might have “sold out.” I only observe the choices made to get them from the book to the movie, eternally fascinated by human behavior and market drivers.
Going back to Chocolat, I thought it was quite interesting that they changed the chocolatier’s nemesis from a priest to a town mayor. Maybe they didn’t want to upset the Pope, or maybe it just wasn’t politically correct to show priests in such a bad light. They also played up the romance angle, which is just the thing to do in Hollywood. I’m not judging. After all, the key to marketing is to know your audience.
Sure I’d be interested to see what they did with The Road to make it appeal to American movie-goers. Since the book is short and fairly thin on plot, I’d think it would be easy to adapt. The cameras need something to focus on, so I’m guessing they played up the apocolypse and the violence. That’s what movie-goers want, right? I’m not opposed to a bit of movie action, but I’m still not sure I want to see it.
Don’t get me wrong, I did like the book. The problem is that I’m not sure I want to be in that world again. It didn’t taste very good.