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[gridboy]

 Wow, another post-apocalypse movie.  This one is set 30 years after a civilization-ending
religious war.  It has the message that the words and ideas in the Bible are beautiful, but
can be abused by tyrants.  The timescale is different from how I would imagine it.  It's
30 years since the war, but they're only now getting back to printing books?  Fire is used
freely while camping at night, something I would be afraid to do.  The opening scene is
anti-revolver, showing a revolver on the ground, with open cylinder and a dead body.
This sort of implies that the slow reload of the revolver cost the guy his life.

 I think civilization would recover much faster.  5 years after a collapse, we should be
pretty much completely recovered technology-wise.

http://www.imfdb.org/index.php?title=Book_of_Eli%2C_The

[ZooT_aLLures]

I think civilization would recover much faster.  5 years after a collapse, we should be
pretty much completely recovered technology-wise.

I wouldn't bank on that because specialization in industry and technology are interlocked to the point where a dozen different manufacturing concerns would have to be brought back up to yield a single product that folks now might consider to be trivial or insignificant..................

[gridboy]

 I was going to look into what would be necessary to get us from post-apocalypse collapse back
to the Internet age, assuming we had text books and raw material, but no industrial infrastructure.
I'm thinking getting up to Iron Age tech wouldn't be too bad.  A good chemical industry would
be a key point.  I don't think it would take too long to bring things back, even with the interlocked
manufacturing sectors.  But the Dark Ages did last a long time, so maybe your thinking is
closer...

[cz7]

i have seen the movie -it is more real done and it has made few  brain cells move ,on the what if facts -seeing how we deindustrialized this nation ! with a bad ill wind blow this way on this nation ,you got a big hair ball! like the movie!

[mi6a2lm]

Filthy didn't like it.  Although it is directed by the Hughes brothers who did the decent movie 'Dead Presidents'. :

---
The Book of Eli is the latest after-the-end-the-cannibals-will-get-you flick. It's a quasi-mystic raging volcano of horseshit with a silly story, an even sillier surprise ending and a message as offensive and hypocritical as a priest standing up with his mouth smeared in feces to sermonize about the evils of shit-eating. Denzel Washington is Eli, a man who has been determinedly walking across the desolate ruins of the USA for thirty years since "The War" obliterated most everything and everyone. Take note of the prophet-ish nature of his name. He's headed west. Let's see, 30 years is about 11,000 days. The United States is, give or take, about 3,000 miles wide. Even assuming he started in the east, Washington is the world's slowest walker. At this rate, it takes him ten minutes to cross a residential street.
---

[azcoyote]

I saw this a number of weeks ago when it was at the $3 theater. I generally found it enjoyable (at least the cat he kills for food in the beginning is an ugly hairless sucker). Mostly, I found it "interesting".

From strictly a cinematic standpoint, I liked the washed-out cinematography. It added an atmosphere that made any desert rat cringe (and probably sold lots of sodas). Denzel does a good solid job. Has he ever been bad in anything? I'm glad Gary Oldman didn't reprise his role in "The 5th Element" and take things over the top as I as afraid he might.The story kept me interested to the end. The cannibals were really only a small part of the picture. The story also borrows from a lot of it's other predecessors including "A Boy and His Dog", "The Road Warrior" and, at the end, "The Blind Samurai". But even though I could see it (so to speak), it didn't really bother me. Everything's derivative. I basically enjoyed how they took the elements and put them together.


ok, the end. I'm certainly not religious, but it didn't surprise me much that his book was a Bible, nor was I offended. Like it or not, the Bible is an integral part of our history. What, did you want him to be carrying the Constitution or "Atlas Shrugged"? I don't remember why they said the war started, so if it was religion, that didn't stick in my head. Actually, what the ending reminded me of was "Fahrenheit 451" and the colony of "book people"--those who had memorized banned books. They were the repository of literature in a dystopian future. That is how I saw the Alcatraz library. I didn't get the impression they were ONLY saving religious volumes. Heck, the King James Bible is also a work of poetry. Damn, I can't believe I just said that! Revoke my membership in the godless heathen club. lol

As far as a vision of 30 years after the nukes, what happened to nuclear winter? Guess the radioactive snow melted by then but left the desert. I think the empty revolver indicates more the lack of ammunition after so long rather than some comment on it's efficiency. Hell, I've been on the range and reloaded my wheelgun faster than my semi-auto co-workers. Any ammo by now would be precious, if it still worked, so maybe that dead guy just ran out of ammo. 5 years recovery time? That depends on how many nukes and how may people were left. Many of the tech types probably died at their posts. Could you get a power plant going using just books, if you could find the right ones? I couldn't. The Romans build fabulous roads and aqueducts with a technology much simpler than ours. It took hundreds of years to recover after their empire fell (the Dark Ages are actually more complex, but for arguments' sake, we'll go with the common perception). But you are right gridboy, printing books wouldn't be that hard.

mi6, you may have nailed the biggest flaw--the time it took him to get across country. I wrote it off to poetic license. Seriously, I saw it but didn't really care as I found the characters interesting (yes, the name was a clue from the get-go), the story--while derivative--still intriguing, good plot pacing, decent acting, good production design, and, yes, something to think about ,not just in-your-face-hero-kicks-ass action.

It's out on DVD now. I'll get a copy when the price goes down and watch it again. Maybe I'll be more critical but Denzel's always worth the money.

Coyote

[gridboy]

Maybe the movie needs a prequel to explain why it took Eli 30 years to cross the country.
For a blind person, I think 30 years could be reasonable.  Maybe he ran into some interesting
delays.

I have to watch this one again.  I didn't get the blind thing until late in the movie.
I did notice that in the firefights Eli didn't take out the roof snipers until they shot at him.

[mutti]

We watched it as a family. There were many points that we considered/wondered about (It is a beautifully shot film)

1. One canteen? That would just not be enough water.
2. Solaris was too "non-jaded" and unspoiled for a girl/woman who had lived her entire life in the harshness shown. Perhaps the character was cast to show that innocents would still exist, but it was a detraction from "join up".  (As well as the "Cart woman" trying to wave her away.)
3. The 30 year travelling issue bothered me until I realized he said "30 winters". What if the climate had changed so much that there were 3 winters per year? Maybe winters were so horrible that travel was not possible?  Perhaps if I read the book it would be clearer.
4. The KJV Bible. It was placed among other "Relics" at the end. I would have been interested to see if other religious texts had been destroyed as well as the KJV after the "event".

In all perhaps a "stepper" between "One Second After" and "The Road".

[Klapton Isgod]

I think civilization would recover much faster.  5 years after a collapse, we should be pretty much completely recovered technology-wise.

Depends which flavor of TEOTWAWKI happens.  If peak oil is true, and viable alternatives do not replace fossil fuels for transportation, the world might be VERY different indeed.  Basically anything that wasn't created within a day's horse-ride from you will become VERY expensive.

[azcoyote]

A co-worker loaned me his copy and I watched it again. I think I ended up liking it even more.

This time I knew he was blind. If you listen closely to the soundtrack, it all works. Opening scene, he knows where the body is. He's aimed on it waiting for a scavenger. The cat mews so he knows where it is. When he gets to the abandoned house, he bumps into a table and feels up the hanging body to find the boots. In the fight scenes, the bad guys move/shoot first so he knows where they are. The soundtrack lets you hear what he hears. It's pretty amazing when you know and pay attention. There are a couple of things I may need to check out again, but for the most part, the moviemakers were consistent and did a great job.

One canteen? I live in a desert. Yeah, that one's iffy. Maybe to save weight?

30 years? Maybe he checked out the whole country in his wandering? ok, that's lame. Poetic license, I guess.

Second viewing certainly did not make it worse, in fact better. Still may need to buy it. "The Road" is so much grimmer, but may need to check that out a second time.

Coyote