I hesitate to call The Road speculative fiction. After all, it is based on a book written by Cormac McCarthy, who is known for all kinds of non-speculative fiction works like No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses. You would not find The Road in the speculative fiction shelf in your bookstore, and this is one of those times where I have to wonder why I am even considering this work a speculative fiction work.

I suppose it is the setting of this book. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and it is never stated what it is that happened. Was it an asteroid, or nuclear war? I suppose that it truly doesn’t matter with this story. When I say story, perhaps I should put that in quotes. This was one movie that I actually put off viewing, and it was because I loved the book. If you haven’t read it, you should, and I guarantee that even the slowest reader can polish it off in a few hours. In fact, you could probably read the book faster than you could see this movie.

One of the reasons why The Road is such a good story is because it really lacks a story. Serious, the story is about a father and a son (who are never named) that are wondering through the wasteland. That’s about it. Much of The Road is them scrounging for food, and encountering ravagers along the way. This is pretty much the same plot as the film, and it is pretty accurate. There are two things that I don’t really like about this adaptation.

First, the film insists on allowing Viggo Mortensen to narrate this story. In the book, there was no need for a voiceover. In fact, the book was told with an extremely objective narration with minimal description. And yet, it is very easy for the reader to get sucked into the story. The film compensates by showing a lot of wasteland shots that look they have have been taken through a gray filter. I am very glad that there are not a lot of CG effects, as they would just be distracting.

Second, the film also insists on showing flashback scenes that take place before the big disaster and shortly after it occurs. I only recall a few paragraphs about these in the books. I can’t help that the only reason why the film has so many of these scenes is because Charlize Theron is in the cast, and she’s like this big star.

There are some parts of the film that I felt are a successful adaption of the book. There’s an awesome scene where the father and son are sharing a can of Coca-cola that works really well. I think The Road is an example of something that I will be talking about a lot on the next few Saturdays, that things should stay within their own medium. I mean, do we need The Road movie? It works so well as a book, you shouldn’t just assume that it will work as a movie.

Next week, we’ll be covering the The Walking Dead, and we’ll talk about a lot of similar things.