One of the movie news sites I’ve been to has pictures from the new adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. You can see the one I’m interested in here. There’s “the man” and “the boy” both. Does anyone else raise their eyebrows at the boy?
I’m curious, how old did you picture the boy when you read the book? McCarthy never named his age, nor said when the world-wide disaster happened (which would have given us the child’s age too, given he was born within months of it), so it’s open to interpretation.
From the boy’s behavior, I assumed he was between six and eight, and if pressed I’d pin my guess at his age down as seven. The actor playing the part is eleven, which seems way way too old to me. The boy in the picture looks eleven too, so it’s not a case of hiring someone who is going to play a character younger than their real age. Does he look like “the boy” you imagined as you read the book?
Feel free to hijack this thread for other movie vs book discussion as info about the film is revealed.
I pictured him to be between eight and ten. I agree, eleven’s pushing it, although, I can buy that the boy would be incredibly naïve and childish for eleven years old, because of the circumstances he would be raised under. No social activity, threats all around, no book smarts, and only rudimentary survival skills. He won’t be a kid we’ll be able to relate to, no matter how old.
I also imagined the global disaster was Yellowstone finally blowing its wad.
I’m not terribly bothered by the age of the boy, and I really like the overall look so far – Mortensen appears appropriately grizzled, and the shots look hazy, cold, and ashy. I’ll just remain hopeful.
I’m with you. The boy’s “voice” in the book made me picture him 6 or 7.
I’m trying to envision scenes and dialog in the book with an 11-year-old – the boy’s fears and joys. I can’t imagine an 11-year-old getting so innocently, heart-rendingly emotional over leaving an old man, or a boy, or a dog.
Having just watched the LOTR movies again, I’m not that crazy about casting Viggo Mortensen as the father.
The Road is the book our campus is reading this year and I’ve agreed to be one of the discussion group leaders. And I kinda hate the book. Yet it haunts me.
I’m reading the book right now and don’t have much of a problem picturing him being 10. He even uses some phrases that startle his dad a bit but sound like a 10 year old trying to talk like an adult.
In the conversation about if the people who left the boat are still alive:
“But the odds are against them, right?”
It’s also rare that he carries the boy which seems to make sense for a 10 year old. 6-7 you’d think he’d carry him more.
And he also seems to trust the boy in handling the gun. I don’t know if you could put a gun in the hands of a 6/7 year-old and expect them to use it in a crisis.
The boy also seems to struggle with the guilt of not helping others along the way which would be a burden. I don’t think a younger child would have such a moral dilema.
I picked up the book at the Newark airport yesterday and finished reading it before I landed in Nashville last night (thank you, USAir, for that 3-hour delay in Charlotte. Bastards.) The flight attendant was probably wondering why I was weeping as we prepared to land.
Anyway, with the book still very fresh in my mind, I had pictured the boy as about 10. So 11 is not much of a stretch. And since I knew Viggo was playing the man in the movie, he is exactly how I imagined the man in the book.
As I mentioned on this thread during amnesia weekend, a good friend of mine worked on the new film and said not only was Viggo one of the nicest actors he had ever had the pleasure to work with, he is already getting “Oscar buzz” about this role. My friend is not easily impressed, so if he says Viggo is that good, I have to believe him.
I was trying to picture exactly where in the country they were.
I know they passed a road sign early on that said “See Rock City” which is near Chatanogga, TN and explained them passing through the mountains pretty well.
From there they kept heading south but also toward the ocean.
I imagined they cut sort of south-east across Georgia but it’s hard to tell.
When they did reach the ocean I couldn’t tell exactly where it might be. Once you hit the SC or Georgia coast there are so many harbors, inlets, bays that you can’t really follow a road south anymore unless you go to the interstate further inland.
I was doing the same thing, starting from Chatanooga, and trying to figure out where they were going. I was more picturing them headed south toward Savannah and then down I-95 (what’s left of it, anyway).
I’m keeping an open mind. I am certainly willing to believe he was “meh” in LOTR because Aragorn is a such a blandly-drawn character. (Mortensen also had zero chemistry with Liv Tyler.)
Huh. Did they actually say where they were? I thought they were headed west. I pictured the mountains being the Rockies and the ocean in California (since there seemed to be strong sense there was “nowhere else to go” after the ocean, and it sure didn’t sound like the Atlantic). I didn’t know Rock City was a real place, though, so that changes things.