Y'all are going to prison for paying Kid Rock to take me out for the Illuminati Freemasons Epstein network and you're gonna give back what you stole from me too.
@@digitalhub492 using “and” instead of commas makes the prose seem more free and straightforward compared to being heavily refined and written in a way that is “easy” or simple to read. Cormac makes the reader earn their understanding, rather than rest it on their face slowly overtime.
It isn't scary so much as it is sickening And what major film studio would want to (or rather, be allowed to) depict half of the viscera and perversion in it?
@@MISTERORIONFuck a budget. They should make a real RAW movie. It doesn’t need to be cinematically legendary. Just tell a great story that is true to the book and cast the characters properly. It’s all you need.
No country for old men is 100% the most popular popular Cormac McCarthy adaptation not only is it written by a legendary author. It was also directed by the Cohen brothers two of the most legendary contemporary directors of the current time
His most famous film, Psycho, is literally based off a book by Robert Bloch. Rear Window is based off “It Had To Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Strangers on a Train is based off the book by Patricia Highsmith. The Birds is based off the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Vertigo? Based off a book. The 39 Steps? Based on a book. Rebecca? Based on a book. Is Hitchcock really the best example for the point you’re trying to make?
@@wesstewart2677 But that's all either pulp or, at best, "good literature" that you mention. By "great literature", of course, he meant the very best of the best - Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner, Hugo, you name it (that particular quote was attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, I think). "Blood Meridian" is great literature too, no doubt.
@@Jansson350 100% faithful movie-adaptations are near impossible. Peter Jackson probably knew this, and did his own thing with Lord of The Rings. Jackson's movie trilogy was as good an adaptation as the books could get.
@@user-cq5sg9cb4tSo what you're saying is that literature and film both have strengths exclusive to their medium that can't simply be adapted into another form. Films that use their medium to the fullest extent can only be as good as they are because they're a film, with the best books following this same logic.
Are there any directors alive that have the obsessive desire to get the "perfect" shot like Kubrick? Sure the movie could be made, but without the right director, is it worth it? The last Mccarthy book adaption was over a decade ago when Hollywood still cared to make quality.
Of course a version of the story could be filmed. But how could the wild descriptions of landscaped, characters, and philosophies be portrayed? Would there be a narrator? Would they be omitted? Which would ruin the story for those of us who read it. 🤷♂️
I think in an age of instant self gratification this and an accurate Lovecraftian movie would be a humbling experience for most audiences. Blood Meridian in general makes its mission to show you that the cowboy escapist fantasy does not exist. That being said, I don't know how confident producers would be willing to fund it. But I can dream.
Ideally HBO could scoop up the rights and produce a mini-series of it. The network has a lot of ultraviolent shows under their belt; (Deadwood, the Sopranos, the Wire, Game of Thrones, Oz, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, etc). They would be a great fit for an adaptation
To reduce Blood Meridian to a mere antiwestern is to misunderstand it utterly. There's so much in the book that to reduce to a mere revision of the frontier myth is ludicrous, especially because by the time the book came out, revisionist westerns had already had a solid place in the culture. Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch in the late 60s' and Pat Garret in the early 70s'!
I've yet to see anyone come close to nailing the off putting nature of lovecrafts literature, aside from John carpenter. Everyone seems to think "tentacles equal scary." Where as for me, what I find appealing about Lovecraft is how he handles the themes of madness. Someone once said, lovecrafts horror is like putting an ant in a humans body for a day, and then putting it back in its ant body retaining all of its human memories. If very few directors or writers can succeed at bringing that to life on the silver screen, I have no faith they would succeed in adapting blood meridian. It's not just violence for violence sake, it's definitely nihilistic, but it's nuanced. I could only think of a few directors that might be able to pull that off, and I don't know any contemporary writers with the balls to do anything that provocative in this day and age.
I imagine eventually someone will have the vision to make it. For a long time LOTR was considered unmakeable but Peter Jackson came along, and it will need to be someone who really sees the story and has the talent to tell it visually.
The difference between lord of the rings and blood meridian is that lotr's adaptability problems come from its sheer scale. Once tech improved they adapted it, with some difficulty but they did. Not only does blood meridian have am immense scale but its the very way the story is told. Like he said in the video it's a very vague and surreal tale with prose that's difficult to even interpret
I think the very final (horrifying) scene takes place around 1883. The Kid is all grown up and hunting buffalo for the Army when he encounters the Judge in the saloon. Could it have been 30+ years since their last encounter? Maybe.
I would honestly prefer a Blood Meridian HBO/FX style mini-series with some of the creative team from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul onboard. I think that way, McCarthy's vivid descriptions of the Texan/Mexican landscapes would have a better chance of being done justice. Plus, these days, you can get away with onscreen ultra-violence a lot more easily on prestige television than you can on film
Yeah agreed. HBO do great work and any good/ great book deserves a well made series. Unless it's a short story then the book just gets butchered trying to fit it into a movie length time frame. Even if they make it into a 3 hour movie.
I'm so glad you addressed this issue at 3:00 about McCarthy's writing style. I thought my english was just not good enough, but now i know there are others who struggled in the beginning.
I read the leaked Monahan script, and it was SO AWFUL that I genuinely thought for a while that it was a joke until I talked to the guy who leaked it in the first place and he confirmed it for me. There are some truly baffling changes that make you wonder if Monahan fucking despised Blood Meridian. It changes stuff like making Holden explicitly the Devil to an eye-rolling degree, the first third of the book is truncated to the point of nonsense, it has some excruciating original dialogue, and most horrible of all, it completely changes the ending to a happy one where the Kid stabs Holden to death in the bathroom and rides off into the sunset with the child he adopts, I am not joking.
The ending is the scariest part for me. Knowing what the Judge did to kids throughout the entire book and wanted to do the same to the boy and taunting him with the idea of it through the entire thing, the only thing preventing him is the gang who the Judge sells out to Indians and watches them all die gruesome deaths and scalps their heads for quick cash. Can’t even imagine how scary it is to see the Judge during the day, but at night and sleeping next to his towering body just knowing he wants to hurt you but hasn’t yet.
I think it's far more terrifying that Judge Holden is 100% human, like Anton Chigurh from NCFOM. They fancy themselves as forces of nature but are ultimately still just men who gave into their demonic side and darker impulses. The implication that we ALL have the ability to do that is far scarier than literally being the Devil.
When I watched No Country for Old Men, not only did it become one of my most favourite movies ever made but the goldmine you can make when adapting a novel. I'm now a little over 100 pages into Blood Meridian and in a dark way, I would love to see an adaptation. I don't know how, but I can just see the potential to it becoming one of the greatest movies of all time if done perfectly
Adult animation always seemed like it could work for telling this story. It could capture the inhumanity of Judge Holden, it could express the horror and beauty of the West. It would also be more palatable than showing live action guts and gore. And actors would not have to show their faces to the constant atrocities depicted.
I am a huge animation fan but in this instance I'd want live action solely for the cinematic opportunities the setting of the book holds for a talented film maker. Although Holden represents a platonic ideal of Evil, I feel like the true antagonist for much of the book is the landscape.
@@dancom6030 Name an actual adult themed animated movie or tv series that broke records in popularity/numbers that isn’t on Adult Swim, let alone a Japanese anime
I thought he was mentioned by another source too. I think I read it in a writing about the history behind Blood Meridian. Maybe "Notes on Blood Meridian"?
As an innocent child, I thought scalping was just cutting someone's hair off all at once with a big pair of scissors and tying it off like a ponytail. Took me awhile to understand what all the fuss was about when I started learning about the pioneer days in US History
You miss the most important physical description of Judge Holden. He's a gigantic infant. Baby-faced and bald like a newborn. This is extremely important as it relates to the overall theme of manifest destiny. Holden knows much beyond what any man should know. Languages, philosophies, chemistries.... he's an extraordinary suckling thinks it knows everything and has every right to devour all of creation in its pursuit to assert it's own dominance. America, when it was young, as it does now, destroys everything it encounters that disagrees with its own certainty about its divine manifestation.
Don't laugh, but I always figured that Glenn "Kane" Jacobs would have made an excellent Holden, because a seven-foot tall baby was pretty much the perfect descriptor of what he looked like.
@@JLF-cn1rr all y'all be trippin- my boy Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the call 😆naw but in all honesty though, they should get Glenn Fleshler aka Errol Childress in True Detective S1 to play The Judge
It's 2025 and people still think animation is for kids yet I was told I needed to grow up when I watched a lot of shows with mature themes under the guise of "cartoons are for kids" and parent's blissful ignorance
I personally think it should be a tv mini series or something. It’s not a long book sure but there’s so much detail and it’s incredibly violent there’s no way they’ll cram it all in to a 2hr movie. It needs to be an indie production because Hollywood doesn’t have the balls to properly adapt it.
I made a lil skit last year about how you need to tab out to google words every other sentence in reading Blood Meridian. I've read the book three times now and I still have to google words. McCarthy's just on a whole 'nother level
@smelltheglove2038 it sounds like you haven't read the book. You're absolutely full of it if you say you completely understood almost every sentence in it's entirety.
I'd love too see Craig Zahler take a swing at Blood Meridian, he has a very deliberate style of filmmaking that i think would suit the book. He made Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in cellblock 99 and Dragged across concrete
I was shocked at how damn good a writer he was upon first reading. All the Pretty Horses was my first, which I'd describe as a hypnotic and surreal contextual buildup to a crescendo of shockingly unimaginable brutality. Which is his signature I suppose, being that every other book does this to only slightly varying degrees of intensity. While certainly not impossible, I could see adapting Blood Meridian as a seemingly insurmountable endeavor to the vast majority of screenwriters and directors. Namely maintaining the story's essense, prioritizing the heart of the thing, instead of merely relying on superficiality, such as through cinematic violence, starpower, etc. The thing that gets lost in translation from novels to film is what I believe makes Cormac McCarthy's work so impactful. That thing exists between the words of the author and reader's imagination, being an interplay of two intellects. Particularly in the case of Cormac McCarthy, that thing is how gracefully and elegantly a picture can painted in our minds through the profound nature of the elements provided. It's actually not even fair if you think about it from the perspective of a screenwriter. There are worlds lost in context and feelings that couldn't possibly make it to the cutting room floor, let alone into a script for a 2-3 hour screenplay. The most obvious being an almost entire omission of either a narrator's or character's thoughts, which give profoundly explicit insight into the story for readers; something that images alone can't inherntly convey, especially within such a timeframe. That's why, in my estimation, a superior film adaptation is the exception rather than the rule. You'd need a Stanley Kubrick level director to do it justice.
John hillcoat is directing. He was collaborating with McCarthy on the script before his death. Hillcoat is definitely capable of pulling this off. Watch “the proposition” for reference
The problem isn't that it can't be filmed. Obviously, it can be. It's that there's no way to convey six pages devoted to a single moment of horses riding through the desert. Also, they'd either need to take out the entire section where Tobin describes his man-crush on the Judge, or change the plot so that it incorporates those incidents instead of just having Tobin describe them to the Kid. And at the end of the day, you'd probably end up with a film similar, if not inferior to, the Johnny Depp movie "Dead Man".
A Blood Meridian film would not hold up today. Not because it would be bad, but because it is slow, deliberate, and deep. People just don’t like movies that make you think. That’s why a lot of people now hate older movies like Citizen Kane or 12 angry men. They aren’t action packed, explosive, or quick paced, which is what people expect from a movie today. I would LOVE a Blood Meridian movie, I just think people would hate it, even if it was really good.
I heard "1880's" a few times. Pretty sure Blood Meridian was set along the Texas/Mexico border in the late 1840's, just after Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the annexation of Texas into the U.S. I know it ended in the 1870's, but I don't think the book went past that.
@@ElanMorinyes, the exact years are 1849, 1850, 1861, and 1878. Nothing ever happens outside or in-between these years that is mentioned in detail in the novel. Apart from the birth of the kid in 1833. All major events happen in the aforementioned years.
The only book of Comac McCarthy that I have read is "the road", while I still don't know how I feel about that book I can see how his writing would be hard to make into a film, that sense of horror that you feel while reading that specific type of writing is hard to replicate in any form. I really liked your video, keep it up, love from NE India. ❤
I would definitely love to see an adaptation of it. Plenty of books get considered “unadaptable” until they get adapted with great success. For a while people thought Lord of the Rings was impossible to translate to movies or shows. Same with A Song of Ice and Fire, American Psycho, Dune, Fight Club, etc. Just a matter of finding the right people for the job.
Tbh i do want a blood meridian film, however not in irl, what i mean is, i think it would be cooler if blood meridian was an animated film instead of an live action film, anyone else feel this way?
I think rotoscoping is the perfect medium for it. It would stay grounded and gritty but have enough room to play and capture the more psychedelic aspects of BM.
You could argue that the road is his most popular work along with no country. Both becoming wonderful live action movies. Blood meridian could be argued as being his master piece while being his least read novel. Mostly because of its stubborn style. Blood meridian is the biggest example of McCarthys writing style. As a first reader of his work it's so hard to jump into. No writer before or since has had more people give up before finishing them I doubt.
Once you lean into the style of writing that McCarthy is using, particularly for Blood Meridian, it then becomes a wild ride. All gas no breaks. In the Wild West, you have no time to think, do, or feel. You take it as it is and keep going
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk is a traditional western that is basically just John Ford’s “The Searchers” mixed with “The Hills Have Eyes” unlike Blood Meridian, which is postmodern and entirely distanced from the conventional western narrative
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x I am mostly just stating in terms of tone. I am not speaking to thematic content. It's the feeling of an unforgiving landscape with a "horror" type of direction, is what I am saying a Blood Meridian would require. You are reading into my comment a little too much, I am talking cinematic style and tone.
The writing style of the book is integral to it as a piece of art, so to try and turn it into a different medium would mean losing what makes it unique. A bit like the way Watchmen being a comic is a vital part of its existence and how we experience it, so when Zack Snyder made a film of it he lost something in the translation.
I think so. Would've loved a prime Gandolfini as the judge, only one that I can think of that fits the frame and has the skills to pull the monologues off.
Malickw movies are just abucnh of surreal bs. The tree of life was completely plotless and was just abucnh of nice looking shots. Malick should be a photographer. Not a filmmaker
I just listened to the audiobook. Made it 100% easier lol and was a great listen! I literally listened to it over 3 shifts at work and it made the time FLY
Iv never read the book. I listened to it on audio book and the narration was unbelievable. His voice tone and cadence captured perfectly the tone of the work. Would recommend. I can still hear the judges lecture on war in his commanding voice
I think his messy writing may be an attempt to recreate the "fluxo de pensamento" ("stream of thoughs") aesthetic. I would have to read the book and find someone who studies literature to confirm this, but from the description it seems to be that. This literary aesthetic is based on conveying descriptions about what is happening to the characters, what the characters think and feel about it and in some cases what the narrator thinks and feels about it. It's a very difficult type of writing to do, especially to do it and leave the text clean. An example of an author who succeeded is Clarice Lispector.
Would you describe the work of Hubert Selby Jr. successful in that regard? Never read anything by McCarthy but Shelby’s work always seemed to very much lean heavily into stream of consciousness style prose.
@vincer7824 I don't know these authors, I'm sorry, my few references are chronically authors from my country (Brazil). But from the little bit I know about literature, what defines an author's success in bringing this aesthetic is whether the text manages to convey the feelings described or expected of someone in that particular situation. For example: In one of Clarice Lispector's books ("Paixão Segundo G.H"), it is very common for people to feel confused and lost, even forgetting exactly where the character is (even though the synopsis itself explains that the entire book is inside a small room), this is because the book itself is about a woman who has lost herself and is reflecting on who she is and what her identity is, the feeling of being lost and confused is what the character herself (who is also narrating the book in this case) was feeling, the book manages to make you enter her mind and feel as lost and hallucinated as she did at that moment. Another important characteristic is being able to convey the "feeling of time", this book that I used as an example seems to happend over months, when in reality the character only spent about 6 hours or less in that daydream in search of herself. You can try to reach your own conclusions by researching what the author's possible objective is with the book and analyzing whether the text manages to achieve this objective through this combination of descriptions of what is happening, what the character feels or thinks about it and what the narrator thinks or feels about it. The aesthetic is much more about a specific creative process than the result itself for some people, it's important to remember that.
@vincer7824 Sorry if it was strange or too long, english is not my first language and I had to stop studying it a few years ago, I hope I was able to explain.
I definitely want a blood meridian film. I just finished the book today and it was awesome. Chilling, violent, funny at times, incredibly intense. This thing was fantastic. I feel like if a director can pull off the vivid imagery of this book then the movie would be awesome. Though I think that some of the violence should me cut away from in the movie or not shown because some of the violence (especially the ones towards children) in the book are fine for a book but would definitely be too much if put to screen.
@@ElanMorin I think that can be easily addressed with the appropriate camera angles, much like what was done to Michael Clarke Duncan for John Coffey. David Morse was actually the tallest dude on set.
It's already in pre-production. "The film adaptation of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is in development, with John Hillcoat directing and John Logan writing the screenplay. The film is being produced by New Regency, Black Bear Pictures, and Hillcoat."
Maybe unfilmable but I’ve been working on an animated version for years. This book has a special place in my soul, McCarthy’s writing on the great American nothingness and the west in most of his books is unparalleled. I hope I can share it one day
I’ve not read Blood Meridian but have read the other books so I know the effort you have to put in to understand the books lol There was a series on TV called The English (Emily Blunt & Chaske Spencer) which really felt like a Cormac book. There was so much prose in the series and it was also set in the American West. The filming and scenery were outstanding, the script was interesting too as it often felt that I had walked in on someone mid-conversation. Anyways, The English was written and directed by Hugo Blick. I reckon he would be good on the team for Blood Meridian
Increedibly well done vid, new sub as a result. Love McCarthy's books, seldom do movies do them, if any, justice. I would be up for a Blood Meridian adaptation. Would love to see it released by NEON or A24. Cheers from Austin.
I haven't read any McCarthy (yet) but I like all the screen adaptations of his books. The Road was so bleak I didn't go back to finish it when I got interrupted lol. Everyone thinks highly of No Country; I think almost any book can be adapted with the right film crew. If he wasn't already in the middle of Dune, I'd say Denis Villeneuve might be a good choice for translating descriptions of grand scenes and landscapes to film. I've heard some grotesque things about Blood Meridian, though, so we'd better team him up with Paul Verhoeven lol.
@@TheNotoriousMrDee Reading McCarthy is a trip. I'm frankly surprised whenever someone manages to make a good adaptation of his work. It's so easy to get lost in the details or to misinterpreted his themes.
Forgot to mention that McCarthy was writing the screenplay for Hillcoat when he passed. It isn’t clear if any drafts were finished. Also, Todd Fields was briefly involved either before or after Scott. I was at a Q&A in 2008-9 and he mentioned it. Doesn’t seem as if it got past a development phase.
Guess I'll watch this video because, fucking hell I couldn't finish Blood Meridian, and not from a lack of trying or discomfort. I got like 200 pages in before realizing I was getting like, nothing out of the experience.
Read up on some of the history that it portrays, then give it another try. Trust me, it's an incredibly fascinating novel about the morality (or lack thereof) in the West at that time
There is an amazing audiobook version of it right here on RUclips. Its super long tho, first part is 10 hours and the second part is 3 hours. I love it
he doesnt want you to think or feel, he wants his stories to be transmitted into your brain and soul at the speed of light in a way that other books do not do. his books arent books, theyre something else entirely that look similar to books but are more like a new kind of media. like, yes books technically have words, and sentences, but so does the internet, and you wouldnt call those the same. he doesnt care if you get it or not, he wasnt asking.
Lynne Ramsay (You were never really here, Morvern Callar) has said that Blood Meridian is her dream project and has been actively lobbying for it for years.
Sometimes when you're ''adapting'' something in the actual sense of the word, its unavoidable that you'd need to change some things to have the story make sense in a new medium. Thats a double edged sword because although it might work in its new medium, its changed so much that whats the dang point? The Last of Us might be the actual best number 1 adaptation, they cut out pretty much 70-80% of every storyline because you cant fit a 100+ hour video game story into 1 season of a tv show, but they did change all of the stories while they were at it, they made Sam a mute and him and Henry are fleeing revenge consumed people, they made Bill's town more of a neighborhood and fleshed out an unseen backstory and made it the focus of an entire episode, and they made the entire horrifying Winter storyline fit pretty well into 1 episode but kept most of the important story beats. By all means, they could just make a literal adaptation, where everything in the movie or tv show is recreated exactly as its described in the book or how its done in a video game, but whats the point there as well? Could just read the book/play the game. I think at the end of the day, someone has the answer to all these problems and has the perfect solution everyone will agree with and be satisfied, their answers might even be super simple and we're all just overthinking everything, The Road movie didnt have a baby being barbequed and people have problems with that for some reason so I personally have no dang clue.
Actually the kid has a father and a sister. It specifically says “he has a sister who he will never see again” And it also takes place during the 1850s
It takes place right at the turn of the decade and most of the story takes place within I believe about 1-2 years The timeskip at the end is about the 1870s-1880s
S Craig Zahler who wrote and directed Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete is a director that could pull off a Blood Meridian adaptation. The way violence is portrayed in his films is unforgiving and horrific.
i listened to an audiobook of blood meridian, and it was so well read. but it was dense as hell! I already knew I'd struggle actually reading it, and now I hear there's no commas or quotation marks? Definitely wouldn't be able to get through that. If you struggled with reading it, I'd recommend the audio book read by Richard Poe. That was movie enough for me, great voice for it.
It is so weird that I had never heard of this book before, but I watched a random Indie horror demo for a game called " No I'm not human" and there was a character that everyone said was inspired visually at least by the judge from Blood Meridian... and now I keep seeing this book talked about everywhere I seemingly look lol Guess I know what I'm looking for this weekend.
Y'all are going to prison for paying Kid Rock to take me out for the Illuminati Freemasons Epstein network and you're gonna give back what you stole from me too.
???
You tell them!
Wtf are you talking about😊
YEEAAHHHHH THATS RIGHttt They gon pay
Yeah buddy
If you take a shot for every time McCarthy writes “and” where a comma should be, you would be dead of alcohol poisoning by the second or third page.
It works way better than a bunch of commasb
His run-on sentence form of writing gives me so much anxiety.
@@AstralBelt How so?
@@digitalhub492 using “and” instead of commas makes the prose seem more free and straightforward compared to being heavily refined and written in a way that is “easy” or simple to read. Cormac makes the reader earn their understanding, rather than rest it on their face slowly overtime.
“Why would I mark up my pages with silly lines and dashes?” - Cormac McCarthy, a fucking lad
Blood Meridian will always be scarier in your head than depicted on screen.
Not if your really really good
100%. Couldn’t even see anyone replacing the image I have of the judge in my head.
It isn't scary so much as it is sickening
And what major film studio would want to (or rather, be allowed to) depict half of the viscera and perversion in it?
Blood Meridian isn’t so much un filmable as it is hard to get people or studios to participate with a budget due to its EXTREMELY graphic nature
@@MISTERORIONFuck a budget. They should make a real RAW movie. It doesn’t need to be cinematically legendary. Just tell a great story that is true to the book and cast the characters properly. It’s all you need.
No country for old men is 100% the most popular popular Cormac McCarthy adaptation not only is it written by a legendary author. It was also directed by the Cohen brothers two of the most legendary contemporary directors of the current time
That book was originally written as a screenplay so…
Movie sucked.
@NostalgiNorden Your bad taste does not change the quality of a film, it only reveals your inner self.
@@NostalgiNorden sounds like rage bait
Love that flick
As sir Alfred Hitchcock once said: "Great literature doesn't make great pictures."
His most famous film, Psycho, is literally based off a book by Robert Bloch. Rear Window is based off “It Had To Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Strangers on a Train is based off the book by Patricia Highsmith. The Birds is based off the novel by Daphne du Maurier.
Vertigo? Based off a book. The 39 Steps? Based on a book. Rebecca? Based on a book.
Is Hitchcock really the best example for the point you’re trying to make?
@@wesstewart2677 But that's all either pulp or, at best, "good literature" that you mention. By "great literature", of course, he meant the very best of the best - Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner, Hugo, you name it (that particular quote was attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, I think). "Blood Meridian" is great literature too, no doubt.
I mean....there are exceptions like the Lord of the Rings.
@@Jansson350
100% faithful movie-adaptations are near impossible.
Peter Jackson probably knew this, and did his own thing with Lord of The Rings. Jackson's movie trilogy was as good an adaptation as the books could get.
@@user-cq5sg9cb4tSo what you're saying is that literature and film both have strengths exclusive to their medium that can't simply be adapted into another form. Films that use their medium to the fullest extent can only be as good as they are because they're a film, with the best books following this same logic.
I always go back to the Kubrick quote... 'if it can be thought, it can be filmed'
@@C.G.Jr. yep🤠
Are there any directors alive that have the obsessive desire to get the "perfect" shot like Kubrick? Sure the movie could be made, but without the right director, is it worth it? The last Mccarthy book adaption was over a decade ago when Hollywood still cared to make quality.
@@brettbrooks5511 Fincher could make it
Of course a version of the story could be filmed. But how could the wild descriptions of landscaped, characters, and philosophies be portrayed?
Would there be a narrator?
Would they be omitted? Which would ruin the story for those of us who read it.
🤷♂️
@@brettbrooks5511Robert Eggers would nail a Blood Meridian movie.
I think in an age of instant self gratification this and an accurate Lovecraftian movie would be a humbling experience for most audiences. Blood Meridian in general makes its mission to show you that the cowboy escapist fantasy does not exist. That being said, I don't know how confident producers would be willing to fund it. But I can dream.
Ideally HBO could scoop up the rights and produce a mini-series of it. The network has a lot of ultraviolent shows under their belt; (Deadwood, the Sopranos, the Wire, Game of Thrones, Oz, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, etc). They would be a great fit for an adaptation
Pasion project or it's a no i'd say.
To reduce Blood Meridian to a mere antiwestern is to misunderstand it utterly. There's so much in the book that to reduce to a mere revision of the frontier myth is ludicrous, especially because by the time the book came out, revisionist westerns had already had a solid place in the culture. Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch in the late 60s' and Pat Garret in the early 70s'!
I've yet to see anyone come close to nailing the off putting nature of lovecrafts literature, aside from John carpenter. Everyone seems to think "tentacles equal scary." Where as for me, what I find appealing about Lovecraft is how he handles the themes of madness. Someone once said, lovecrafts horror is like putting an ant in a humans body for a day, and then putting it back in its ant body retaining all of its human memories. If very few directors or writers can succeed at bringing that to life on the silver screen, I have no faith they would succeed in adapting blood meridian. It's not just violence for violence sake, it's definitely nihilistic, but it's nuanced. I could only think of a few directors that might be able to pull that off, and I don't know any contemporary writers with the balls to do anything that provocative in this day and age.
To make an accurate lovecraftian movie, you would need the ability to force the audience into a state of sleep paralysis at will.
I imagine eventually someone will have the vision to make it. For a long time LOTR was considered unmakeable but Peter Jackson came along, and it will need to be someone who really sees the story and has the talent to tell it visually.
Exactly. American Psycho, Fight Club, Lolita (twice), all “unfilmable”.
Cinema has so many tricks nothing is truly unfilmable.
The difference between lord of the rings and blood meridian is that lotr's adaptability problems come from its sheer scale. Once tech improved they adapted it, with some difficulty but they did. Not only does blood meridian have am immense scale but its the very way the story is told. Like he said in the video it's a very vague and surreal tale with prose that's difficult to even interpret
Next The Silmarillion.
@@sauron2000000 Okay Sauron two million
@@geoffhoutman1557Ulysses, Salo, The Naked Lunch and A Clockwork Orange too
Blood Meridian does not take place in 1883. It takes place in roughly 1848 or 49, just after the conclusion of the Mexican War.
I believe that near the end of the book it takes place 28 years after the initial date of 1849. still not 1883 but closer to 1883.
I think the very final (horrifying) scene takes place around 1883. The Kid is all grown up and hunting buffalo for the Army when he encounters the Judge in the saloon. Could it have been 30+ years since their last encounter? Maybe.
I would honestly prefer a Blood Meridian HBO/FX style mini-series with some of the creative team from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul onboard. I think that way, McCarthy's vivid descriptions of the Texan/Mexican landscapes would have a better chance of being done justice. Plus, these days, you can get away with onscreen ultra-violence a lot more easily on prestige television than you can on film
It definitely deserves more time than a feature length movie can provide.
@@jvladcliff4083 Exactly. 23 episode mini-series (each episode is about 50min, covering a full chapter)
Yeah agreed. HBO do great work and any good/ great book deserves a well made series. Unless it's a short story then the book just gets butchered trying to fit it into a movie length time frame. Even if they make it into a 3 hour movie.
Imagine that we’re getting a crossed adaptation coming soon the world is truly ending lmao
The issue isn't just ultraviolence but the depictions of child death, viscera, and abuse
"Blood Meridian" could work in a Avant-Garde, Experimental Arthouse, Alexandro Jodorowsky sense.
Yes, or a Bela Tarr, Satantango way.
Jodorowsky would personally be my pick to direct BM. I honestly can't think of many others up to the task.
There was s French movie maker from way back,real avant garde stuff, somebody like that might have the creative vision...and the courage ...to try!
Jodorowsky would probably do the film justice.
Yes, it needs spiritual warriors to commit to making it.
I'm so glad you addressed this issue at 3:00 about McCarthy's writing style. I thought my english was just not good enough, but now i know there are others who struggled in the beginning.
I read the leaked Monahan script, and it was SO AWFUL that I genuinely thought for a while that it was a joke until I talked to the guy who leaked it in the first place and he confirmed it for me.
There are some truly baffling changes that make you wonder if Monahan fucking despised Blood Meridian.
It changes stuff like making Holden explicitly the Devil to an eye-rolling degree, the first third of the book is truncated to the point of nonsense, it has some excruciating original dialogue, and most horrible of all, it completely changes the ending to a happy one where the Kid stabs Holden to death in the bathroom and rides off into the sunset with the child he adopts, I am not joking.
@@oneinathousand2156 Tf it’s like Monaghan didn’t even read the book 😭
The ending is the scariest part for me. Knowing what the Judge did to kids throughout the entire book and wanted to do the same to the boy and taunting him with the idea of it through the entire thing, the only thing preventing him is the gang who the Judge sells out to Indians and watches them all die gruesome deaths and scalps their heads for quick cash. Can’t even imagine how scary it is to see the Judge during the day, but at night and sleeping next to his towering body just knowing he wants to hurt you but hasn’t yet.
This is pretty typical for Hollywood, so I’m not surprised.
I think it's far more terrifying that Judge Holden is 100% human, like Anton Chigurh from NCFOM. They fancy themselves as forces of nature but are ultimately still just men who gave into their demonic side and darker impulses. The implication that we ALL have the ability to do that is far scarier than literally being the Devil.
When I watched No Country for Old Men, not only did it become one of my most favourite movies ever made but the goldmine you can make when adapting a novel. I'm now a little over 100 pages into Blood Meridian and in a dark way, I would love to see an adaptation. I don't know how, but I can just see the potential to it becoming one of the greatest movies of all time if done perfectly
The Coen brothers would absolutely perfect it
Finish the book yet? Hahahah
Adult animation always seemed like it could work for telling this story. It could capture the inhumanity of Judge Holden, it could express the horror and beauty of the West. It would also be more palatable than showing live action guts and gore. And actors would not have to show their faces to the constant atrocities depicted.
No, a cartoon would tank
@@smittyjjensin558 animation aimed at adult audiences doesn’t sell, and most auteurs consider it a lowly medium, wont work in either case
I am a huge animation fan but in this instance I'd want live action solely for the cinematic opportunities the setting of the book holds for a talented film maker. Although Holden represents a platonic ideal of Evil, I feel like the true antagonist for much of the book is the landscape.
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x"animation aimed at adult audiences doesn't sell" simply untrue
@@dancom6030 Name an actual adult themed animated movie or tv series that broke records in popularity/numbers that isn’t on Adult Swim, let alone a Japanese anime
I’m not entirely convinced that Chamberlain didn’t just make the Judge up. His account is the only source of the man’s existence.
I thought he was mentioned by another source too. I think I read it in a writing about the history behind Blood Meridian. Maybe "Notes on Blood Meridian"?
Why would he make that up though. Don’t you think someone else alive at that time would have called him out for making that up?
9:02 There is no way that The Road is more famous of a McCarthy adaptation than No Country
I opened the comments because of how crazy of a statement that was
As an innocent child, I thought scalping was just cutting someone's hair off all at once with a big pair of scissors and tying it off like a ponytail. Took me awhile to understand what all the fuss was about when I started learning about the pioneer days in US History
You miss the most important physical description of Judge Holden.
He's a gigantic infant.
Baby-faced and bald like a newborn. This is extremely important as it relates to the overall theme of manifest destiny. Holden knows much beyond what any man should know. Languages, philosophies, chemistries.... he's an extraordinary suckling thinks it knows everything and has every right to devour all of creation in its pursuit to assert it's own dominance.
America, when it was young, as it does now, destroys everything it encounters that disagrees with its own certainty about its divine manifestation.
Derek mears who played Jason in the Friday the 13th reboot would be a perfect casting choice.
@BrandonOfJapan Vincent d'onifrio would be good choice .Orson welles would have Been great
Are you trying to argue Judge Holden is a personified incarnation of America?
Don't laugh, but I always figured that Glenn "Kane" Jacobs would have made an excellent Holden, because a seven-foot tall baby was pretty much the perfect descriptor of what he looked like.
@@JLF-cn1rr all y'all be trippin- my boy Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the call 😆naw but in all honesty though, they should get Glenn Fleshler aka Errol Childress in True Detective S1 to play The Judge
people probably hate this idea, but I feel like the best way to adapt this to a movie would be a super stylized animated movie.
Agreed. Just let anime industry does it. In fact, anime industry did many disturbing animations
It's 2025 and people still think animation is for kids yet I was told I needed to grow up when I watched a lot of shows with mature themes under the guise of "cartoons are for kids" and parent's blissful ignorance
I personally think it should be a tv mini series or something. It’s not a long book sure but there’s so much detail and it’s incredibly violent there’s no way they’ll cram it all in to a 2hr movie. It needs to be an indie production because Hollywood doesn’t have the balls to properly adapt it.
The Coen brothers would absolutely do it justice
@@buckyyyb I’m not a fan of them but I get why people are.
I hope and pray I can see a Blood Meridian film that does it justice, good video!
Dude…i used to watch ur vids all the time wtf
Snooker? What are you doing here you need to edit yet another reddit video
I made a lil skit last year about how you need to tab out to google words every other sentence in reading Blood Meridian. I've read the book three times now and I still have to google words. McCarthy's just on a whole 'nother level
You seriously need to up your vocab, playa.
@@smelltheglove2038 "up your vocab, playa" 🤣🤣🤣
@@BEDCORN I can see you have a good sense of humor.
@@smelltheglove2038 bro talks like Saints Row.
@smelltheglove2038 it sounds like you haven't read the book. You're absolutely full of it if you say you completely understood almost every sentence in it's entirety.
3:16 Hey, theres a giant egg in the sky!
- My brain while reading Blood Meridian
Judge Holden grinning painting seems to be the inspiration for one of the characters in the game "No I'm Not Human"
I haven't heard of the game. But that game's title sounds so fitting, considering how Judge was written
8:25 It's 1840s Mexico. It takes place right after the Mexican American War
"Unfilmable!"
Animation:
imagine a tim burton directed blood meridian animation
@@ty15533 sounds absolutely awful
@@starchillius yeah I’d have to agree
studio eclypse or Gemba could probably do it
@@cymikgaming1266studio eclypse? you mean the scam berserk fan anime or is there another I dont know of?
I'd love too see Craig Zahler take a swing at Blood Meridian, he has a very deliberate style of filmmaking that i think would suit the book. He made Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in cellblock 99 and Dragged across concrete
So much yes
Zahler would be an exquisite choice for a director of Blood Meridian
I’d be down
That would be Awesome, but Zahler is painfully inactive
Good choice!
McCarthy was a demented genius. Blood Meridian was so grotesque that I had to put it down
I was shocked at how damn good a writer he was upon first reading. All the Pretty Horses was my first, which I'd describe as a hypnotic and surreal contextual buildup to a crescendo of shockingly unimaginable brutality. Which is his signature I suppose, being that every other book does this to only slightly varying degrees of intensity. While certainly not impossible, I could see adapting Blood Meridian as a seemingly insurmountable endeavor to the vast majority of screenwriters and directors. Namely maintaining the story's essense, prioritizing the heart of the thing, instead of merely relying on superficiality, such as through cinematic violence, starpower, etc.
The thing that gets lost in translation from novels to film is what I believe makes Cormac McCarthy's work so impactful. That thing exists between the words of the author and reader's imagination, being an interplay of two intellects. Particularly in the case of Cormac McCarthy, that thing is how gracefully and elegantly a picture can painted in our minds through the profound nature of the elements provided. It's actually not even fair if you think about it from the perspective of a screenwriter. There are worlds lost in context and feelings that couldn't possibly make it to the cutting room floor, let alone into a script for a 2-3 hour screenplay. The most obvious being an almost entire omission of either a narrator's or character's thoughts, which give profoundly explicit insight into the story for readers; something that images alone can't inherntly convey, especially within such a timeframe. That's why, in my estimation, a superior film adaptation is the exception rather than the rule.
You'd need a Stanley Kubrick level director to do it justice.
John hillcoat is directing. He was collaborating with McCarthy on the script before his death. Hillcoat is definitely capable of pulling this off. Watch “the proposition” for reference
Robert Eggers to direct I’d say!
Honestly a perfect idea.
Craig Zahler
Coen brothers
Zack Snyder
Not a bad suggestion at all.
3:14 That is a really huge egg in the sky.
Bone tomahawk and no country for old men felt very much like how I’d expect a blood meridian adaptation
I can’t spatchcock a chicken without thinking of that scene 💀
The problem isn't that it can't be filmed. Obviously, it can be. It's that there's no way to convey six pages devoted to a single moment of horses riding through the desert. Also, they'd either need to take out the entire section where Tobin describes his man-crush on the Judge, or change the plot so that it incorporates those incidents instead of just having Tobin describe them to the Kid. And at the end of the day, you'd probably end up with a film similar, if not inferior to, the Johnny Depp movie "Dead Man".
A Blood Meridian film would not hold up today. Not because it would be bad, but because it is slow, deliberate, and deep. People just don’t like movies that make you think. That’s why a lot of people now hate older movies like Citizen Kane or 12 angry men. They aren’t action packed, explosive, or quick paced, which is what people expect from a movie today. I would LOVE a Blood Meridian movie, I just think people would hate it, even if it was really good.
McCarthy teached me that you can write like a wattpad kid and still achieve success
I heard "1880's" a few times. Pretty sure Blood Meridian was set along the Texas/Mexico border in the late 1840's, just after Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the annexation of Texas into the U.S. I know it ended in the 1870's, but I don't think the book went past that.
yes the bulk of the book was 1849 and 1850.
@@ElanMorinyes, the exact years are 1849, 1850, 1861, and 1878. Nothing ever happens outside or in-between these years that is mentioned in detail in the novel. Apart from the birth of the kid in 1833. All major events happen in the aforementioned years.
The only book of Comac McCarthy that I have read is "the road", while I still don't know how I feel about that book I can see how his writing would be hard to make into a film, that sense of horror that you feel while reading that specific type of writing is hard to replicate in any form.
I really liked your video, keep it up, love from NE India. ❤
That book made me cry, man, i loved it
Didn't they make that into a film?
yes
@@MichelangeloVAit’s quite good 👍🏻
@@MichelangeloVA There was also a graphic novel adaptation released this year!!!
I would definitely love to see an adaptation of it. Plenty of books get considered “unadaptable” until they get adapted with great success.
For a while people thought Lord of the Rings was impossible to translate to movies or shows. Same with A Song of Ice and Fire, American Psycho, Dune, Fight Club, etc.
Just a matter of finding the right people for the job.
The answer to these projects should be found in animation
It may be unfilmable, but not undrawable
The guys who filmed "The Road", also a McCarthy book, is working on "Blood Meridian" right now
Damn, wish I mentioned that in the video
About to be filmed by the Aussie director of my favourite film The Proposition 2005
superb film
Tbh i do want a blood meridian film, however not in irl, what i mean is, i think it would be cooler if blood meridian was an animated film instead of an live action film, anyone else feel this way?
I think rotoscoping is the perfect medium for it. It would stay grounded and gritty but have enough room to play and capture the more psychedelic aspects of BM.
You could argue that the road is his most popular work along with no country. Both becoming wonderful live action movies. Blood meridian could be argued as being his master piece while being his least read novel. Mostly because of its stubborn style. Blood meridian is the biggest example of McCarthys writing style. As a first reader of his work it's so hard to jump into. No writer before or since has had more people give up before finishing them I doubt.
Once you lean into the style of writing that McCarthy is using, particularly for Blood Meridian, it then becomes a wild ride. All gas no breaks. In the Wild West, you have no time to think, do, or feel. You take it as it is and keep going
They're actually making a movie right now, said to release in 2026.
Who's making it
@@oyega1010someone who Scott Rudin can’t push around
@@oyega1010 John Hillcoat, great choice if you ask me
Source: just Trust me bro....
@@RomanGuerr1126 try googling next time, it works
Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 movie “Dead Man” is the closest adaptation of the novel we’ll ever get for now
Actually, Bone Tomahawk or El Topo is the closest we will get
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk, no
El Topo, yes
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x Really El Topo + Bone Tomahawk = Blood Meridian
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk is a traditional western that is basically just John Ford’s “The Searchers” mixed with “The Hills Have Eyes” unlike Blood Meridian, which is postmodern and entirely distanced from the conventional western narrative
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x I am mostly just stating in terms of tone. I am not speaking to thematic content. It's the feeling of an unforgiving landscape with a "horror" type of direction, is what I am saying a Blood Meridian would require. You are reading into my comment a little too much, I am talking cinematic style and tone.
The writing style of the book is integral to it as a piece of art, so to try and turn it into a different medium would mean losing what makes it unique. A bit like the way Watchmen being a comic is a vital part of its existence and how we experience it, so when Zack Snyder made a film of it he lost something in the translation.
Wow Cormac Mc Carthy can paint a picture with his words. I'm going to have to look into his books
Terrence Mallick (sp?) is the only person on earth capable of approximating that book on the screen.
Love this idea
I think so. Would've loved a prime Gandolfini as the judge, only one that I can think of that fits the frame and has the skills to pull the monologues off.
Gandolfini was too fat, Judge was more lithe, plus Gandolfini is all wrong for the part.
Malickw movies are just abucnh of surreal bs. The tree of life was completely plotless and was just abucnh of nice looking shots. Malick should be a photographer. Not a filmmaker
@@someguy42093 Blood Meridian is p surreal and postmodern tho
Imagine they make a blood meridian and i have no mouth and i must scream films
The Road is not more famous than No Country
The thumbnail is terrifying
I just listened to the audiobook. Made it 100% easier lol and was a great listen! I literally listened to it over 3 shifts at work and it made the time FLY
Iv never read the book. I listened to it on audio book and the narration was unbelievable. His voice tone and cadence captured perfectly the tone of the work. Would recommend. I can still hear the judges lecture on war in his commanding voice
I think his messy writing may be an attempt to recreate the "fluxo de pensamento" ("stream of thoughs") aesthetic. I would have to read the book and find someone who studies literature to confirm this, but from the description it seems to be that. This literary aesthetic is based on conveying descriptions about what is happening to the characters, what the characters think and feel about it and in some cases what the narrator thinks and feels about it. It's a very difficult type of writing to do, especially to do it and leave the text clean. An example of an author who succeeded is Clarice Lispector.
Would you describe the work of Hubert Selby Jr. successful in that regard?
Never read anything by McCarthy but Shelby’s work always seemed to very much lean heavily into stream of consciousness style prose.
@vincer7824 I don't know these authors, I'm sorry, my few references are chronically authors from my country (Brazil). But from the little bit I know about literature, what defines an author's success in bringing this aesthetic is whether the text manages to convey the feelings described or expected of someone in that particular situation. For example: In one of Clarice Lispector's books ("Paixão Segundo G.H"), it is very common for people to feel confused and lost, even forgetting exactly where the character is (even though the synopsis itself explains that the entire book is inside a small room), this is because the book itself is about a woman who has lost herself and is reflecting on who she is and what her identity is, the feeling of being lost and confused is what the character herself (who is also narrating the book in this case) was feeling, the book manages to make you enter her mind and feel as lost and hallucinated as she did at that moment. Another important characteristic is being able to convey the "feeling of time", this book that I used as an example seems to happend over months, when in reality the character only spent about 6 hours or less in that daydream in search of herself. You can try to reach your own conclusions by researching what the author's possible objective is with the book and analyzing whether the text manages to achieve this objective through this combination of descriptions of what is happening, what the character feels or thinks about it and what the narrator thinks or feels about it. The aesthetic is much more about a specific creative process than the result itself for some people, it's important to remember that.
@vincer7824 Sorry if it was strange or too long, english is not my first language and I had to stop studying it a few years ago, I hope I was able to explain.
@@Lalikaki-es7ug No worries, your explanation was thorough, thoughtful and easy to understand.
Happy New Year from the US!
@vincer7824 Happy New Year from Brazil! 🌼🌼🌼
I definitely want a blood meridian film. I just finished the book today and it was awesome. Chilling, violent, funny at times, incredibly intense. This thing was fantastic. I feel like if a director can pull off the vivid imagery of this book then the movie would be awesome. Though I think that some of the violence should me cut away from in the movie or not shown because some of the violence (especially the ones towards children) in the book are fine for a book but would definitely be too much if put to screen.
If ever it finds a script, I think Vincent d'Onofrio should be Judge Holden.
Nah, Shaq should totally play him
@@thestrongestlivingcreaturepale
gotta be a very tall guy. Holden was like 6'10" (described as near to seven feet tall)
@@ElanMorin I think that can be easily addressed with the appropriate camera angles, much like what was done to Michael Clarke Duncan for John Coffey.
David Morse was actually the tallest dude on set.
@thestrongestlivingcreature yes, we'll just have to CGI him into an albino European and we're set.
The guy who plays the Kingpin is made for Holden got the acting chops and the bulk camera angles could make him look taller
My dad named me Meridian after this book
lol how dumb
It's already in pre-production.
"The film adaptation of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is in development, with John Hillcoat directing and John Logan writing the screenplay. The film is being produced by New Regency, Black Bear Pictures, and Hillcoat."
Maybe unfilmable but I’ve been working on an animated version for years. This book has a special place in my soul, McCarthy’s writing on the great American nothingness and the west in most of his books is unparalleled. I hope I can share it one day
More like Blood Meridian: The unreadable book.
Dream casting for The Judge: John Goodman
Dave Bautista
I’ve not read Blood Meridian but have read the other books so I know the effort you have to put in to understand the books lol
There was a series on TV called The English (Emily Blunt & Chaske Spencer) which really felt like a Cormac book. There was so much prose in the series and it was also set in the American West. The filming and scenery were outstanding, the script was interesting too as it often felt that I had walked in on someone mid-conversation. Anyways, The English was written and directed by Hugo Blick. I reckon he would be good on the team for Blood Meridian
Increedibly well done vid, new sub as a result. Love McCarthy's books, seldom do movies do them, if any, justice. I would be up for a Blood Meridian adaptation. Would love to see it released by NEON or A24. Cheers from Austin.
Most of his books are 10/10.
But his most underrated and also probably the best imo is Suttree. It's a must guys please give it a try
The screen from 1:54 what is that from? Is it a comic version?!
I keep thinking that thumbnail is of a demented Mickey Mouse
I haven't read any McCarthy (yet) but I like all the screen adaptations of his books. The Road was so bleak I didn't go back to finish it when I got interrupted lol. Everyone thinks highly of No Country; I think almost any book can be adapted with the right film crew. If he wasn't already in the middle of Dune, I'd say Denis Villeneuve might be a good choice for translating descriptions of grand scenes and landscapes to film. I've heard some grotesque things about Blood Meridian, though, so we'd better team him up with Paul Verhoeven lol.
@@TheNotoriousMrDee Reading McCarthy is a trip. I'm frankly surprised whenever someone manages to make a good adaptation of his work. It's so easy to get lost in the details or to misinterpreted his themes.
Forgot to mention that McCarthy was writing the screenplay for Hillcoat when he passed. It isn’t clear if any drafts were finished. Also, Todd Fields was briefly involved either before or after Scott. I was at a Q&A in 2008-9 and he mentioned it. Doesn’t seem as if it got past a development phase.
1:25 That´s worth a like in my book
The Samuel Chamberlin book was extremely interesting and provided a real sense of what life was like back then.
Only person who could try this successfully is Dennis Villeneuve. He's adapted one unadaptable book. He's not made a bad film. Let him do it.
So judge Holden is like a wild west Vladimir Harkonnen
Guess I'll watch this video because, fucking hell I couldn't finish Blood Meridian, and not from a lack of trying or discomfort. I got like 200 pages in before realizing I was getting like, nothing out of the experience.
Read up on some of the history that it portrays, then give it another try. Trust me, it's an incredibly fascinating novel about the morality (or lack thereof) in the West at that time
Same here. I found it very un engaging and weirdly dull.
@@darkchild130kinda like how western life was, not some fantasy that someone wants to live
There is an amazing audiobook version of it right here on RUclips. Its super long tho, first part is 10 hours and the second part is 3 hours. I love it
Same. Although I did love the recap of the story form online videos.
I felt in reading the road his vocabulary prose and syntax fit the bill so lovingly like why does it matter
I goon right Blood Meridan
I just subbed this morning because of another video
And then your drop a banger about my favorite book by cormac
he doesnt want you to think or feel, he wants his stories to be transmitted into your brain and soul at the speed of light in a way that other books do not do. his books arent books, theyre something else entirely that look similar to books but are more like a new kind of media. like, yes books technically have words, and sentences, but so does the internet, and you wouldnt call those the same. he doesnt care if you get it or not, he wasnt asking.
this legitimately reads like a copypasta comment lol
No they're definitely books. It's weird and awkward of you to say they aren't.
@@jaykelley103 🤡
@@jaykelley103 for the sake of immersion, just take this comment with your best understanding of figurative language
I watched The Road before I even knew what it was about and my god did I get thrown into a pit
3:20 Egg Sun
Egg sun over paradise
@@blakecollins3037 more like paradise Lost
I love this guys writing cadence!
Lynne Ramsay (You were never really here, Morvern Callar) has said that Blood Meridian is her dream project and has been actively lobbying for it for years.
Great video!
Sometimes when you're ''adapting'' something in the actual sense of the word, its unavoidable that you'd need to change some things to have the story make sense in a new medium. Thats a double edged sword because although it might work in its new medium, its changed so much that whats the dang point? The Last of Us might be the actual best number 1 adaptation, they cut out pretty much 70-80% of every storyline because you cant fit a 100+ hour video game story into 1 season of a tv show, but they did change all of the stories while they were at it, they made Sam a mute and him and Henry are fleeing revenge consumed people, they made Bill's town more of a neighborhood and fleshed out an unseen backstory and made it the focus of an entire episode, and they made the entire horrifying Winter storyline fit pretty well into 1 episode but kept most of the important story beats. By all means, they could just make a literal adaptation, where everything in the movie or tv show is recreated exactly as its described in the book or how its done in a video game, but whats the point there as well? Could just read the book/play the game. I think at the end of the day, someone has the answer to all these problems and has the perfect solution everyone will agree with and be satisfied, their answers might even be super simple and we're all just overthinking everything, The Road movie didnt have a baby being barbequed and people have problems with that for some reason so I personally have no dang clue.
If there is a a film adaptation for blood meridian. I want Robert Eggers to direct it
Hey, who knows.. Maybe 75 or 150 years down the line we might see an adaptation.. Hope is hope, anything can happen in this world apparently.
Blood Meridian would make for a great graphic novel.
Actually the kid has a father and a sister. It specifically says “he has a sister who he will never see again”
And it also takes place during the 1850s
It takes place right at the turn of the decade and most of the story takes place within I believe about 1-2 years
The timeskip at the end is about the 1870s-1880s
@@AstralBelt oh yes the time skip but it’s a really short part of the story towards the end
S Craig Zahler who wrote and directed Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete is a director that could pull off a Blood Meridian adaptation. The way violence is portrayed in his films is unforgiving and horrific.
it could only be captured in the medium of animation.
I would like to see a Robert Eggers full-out big-budget effort on a two or three part adaptation
Remember when people called Dune the Un-Filmable Book for literally half a century then it got adapted into movies and they were phenomenal?
no because it was adapted in 1984 and was better then
@@BIacklce Aint no way you just said that.
@@BIacklce bait used to be believable...
@@yashwinning not baiting get taste
@@yashwinningcope
i listened to an audiobook of blood meridian, and it was so well read. but it was dense as hell! I already knew I'd struggle actually reading it, and now I hear there's no commas or quotation marks? Definitely wouldn't be able to get through that. If you struggled with reading it, I'd recommend the audio book read by Richard Poe. That was movie enough for me, great voice for it.
Vincent D'Onofrio as the Judge
It is so weird that I had never heard of this book before, but I watched a random Indie horror demo for a game called " No I'm not human" and there was a character that everyone said was inspired visually at least by the judge from Blood Meridian... and now I keep seeing this book talked about everywhere I seemingly look lol
Guess I know what I'm looking for this weekend.
I allways thought that Holden was a dark Djinn spreading chaos over the world
Judge Holden looks like he's about to say "For I beheld Satan when he fell down from HEAVEN, L I K E L I G H T E N I N G!"