The Road-Movie trailer

So last night while writing my blog about The Road, I googled it to find the correct spelling of the author's name. One of the hits that came up was the trailer for the upcoming movie.

I watched it on my Iphone, because my speakers on my computer died, and so far I'm both excited and apprehensive about this film. This makes me question what I should expect and what I should be thinking about when going in.

There were some parts of the trailer that I immediately recognized from the book. Several lines and shots showed up similarly to how I had pictured them in my head while reading. There were also several other parts of the trailer that were completely new to me.

To me, this seems like the main problem with telling the same story over two different mediums. The books tells one story, and plays to a certain audience and uses literary devices to say what it wants to say. A movie is completely different though, because it plays to a different audience who is usually more demanding in what they want.

The book deliberately leaves some things semi-open for the reader to piece together. It never says exactly what happened to the world, or how these bands of raiders are organized or anything. The trailer seems to imply that they'll explore some of these questions though, which I have mixed feelings about.

There are certainly some places where some of the action could be spiced up a bit, however I worry that adding too much might take away from the overall feel of realism that the book had. It feels like the story could go from being about just survival to one big chase, with the man and boy one step ahead of a Wile E. Coyote like villain, always on the chase even though there is reason enough to give up.

I suppose it's all too early to tell, and I won't really know until I see the movie itself. I just hope they don't mess this up like the did Watchmen, Amiright?