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Cormac McCarthy was an American writer who became famous for gritty Western stories. During his career, McCarthy wrote 12 novels. He also worked on several plays and screenplays for films. His best-known books include No Country for Old Men, published in 2005, and The Road, which came out in 2006. No Country for Old Men was originally written as a screenplay before it became a book. In 2007, Ethan and Joel Coen directed a film based on the novel. Two years later, John Hillcoat directed a movie adaptation of The Road.
Not every story he wrote made it to TV, film, or the stage. In April 1985, Cormac McCarthy published the novel Blood Meridian. Critics and fans of McCarthy's work often cite Blood Meridian (also known as The Evening Redness in the West) as one of his best stories. Unfortunately, for many years, the industry considered Blood Meridian unfilmable, so an adaptation never made it to the silver screen. A Blood Meridian movie has gone into production several times over the years, but ultimately, the project always falls apart. Regardless, this story still has the potential to be one of the best Western films ever made.
Updated on August 26, 2024, by Christopher Raley: Cormac McCarthy is one of America's greatest writers. While a few of his books have been turned into movies, some of his greatest have not, including Blood Meridian. A film production of the book currently in the works seeks to change that. More information and analysis has been added to this article, and it has been updated to conform to CBR's current publishing standards.
Production Is Underway For a Blood Meridian Movie Adaptation
John Hillcoat Will Direct It
But now it looks like audiences will get a movie adaptation of Blood Meridian . New Regency Pictures has retained John Hillcoats as the director for an adaptation of the novel. HIllcoats not only directed The Road but has a wide range of productions to his name that gives him a big wheelhouse to work from. Hillcoats' version of The Road received the author's blessing before it was released, so it may be that Hillcoats gets McCarthy where other directors have not.
In April 2024, New Regency announced that they have engaged playwright and screenwriter John Logan to write the adaption of Blood Meridian. Logan is known in film for his successful screenplays for Gladiator, Hugo, and The Aviator. Logan is a fan of McCathry's work and his violent Western epic in particular. Tapping him as the screenwriter for this project seems to have been a smart move. Logan's own thoughts on the subject make it clear that he is thrilled to be a part of it:
Blood Meridian has been one of my favorite novels since first reading it in 1985. It's a majestic, beautiful and uncompromising book and I'm thrilled to be able to help bring Cormac McCarthy's dark masterpiece to the screen.
In another development that may be positive, McCarthy's son, John Francis McCarthy, is the executive producer (McCarthy will receive posthumous credit as executive producer, indicating that perhaps the author was involved in talks about this project before he died in 2023). Perhaps this team can succeed where James Franco/Russel Crowe, Ridley Scott, Todd Field, and Tommy Lee Jones (who directed McCarthy's play Sunset Limited) have failed. The film is scheduled to be released in 2026, but its release, while an accomplishment all its own, is no guarantee of success.
Blood Meridian's Plot, Explained
Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy's fifth novel, and it is an epic historical novel that takes place on the American frontier (the Old West or the Wild West). The story is set in the historical context of the Glanton Gang, but McCarthy's main character is a fictional teenager named "the Kid." The novel is a Western, though some critics and experts consider it to be more of an anti-Western novel. Anti-Western (also known as revisionist Western) refers to a Western subgenre that focuses on tearing down the romanticism, tropes, and stereotypes of the classic Western genre. Anti-Western stories focus on realistic characters and plots to help depict a truer look at life in the Wild West.
Blood Meridian tells the story of "the Kid," a teenage boy who runs away from his home in Tennessee. Readers never learn the Kid's real name, but they do learn that he was born in 1833 during the Leonid meteor shower. The Kid eventually makes his way to Nacogdoches, Texas, where he first runs into Judge Holden. The Kid gets mixed up in a violent fight, and he finds himself among John Joel Glanton's gang. Judge Holden is also a member of the Glanton Gang.
The real John Joel Glanton was already an outlaw in Tennessee before he moved to Texas.
Glanton died in April 1850 when he was killed in his tent by people of the Yuma tribe.
The Glanton Gang was a real, violent group of scalp-hunters who attacked and murdered Native Americans, Mexicans, and Mexican soldiers from about 1849 to 1850. Originally, the Glanton Gang was supposed to protect people from Apaches, but after a run-in with Holden in the desert, things took a drastic change for the worse. Most of the novel is dedicated to exploring the Kid's time with the Glanton Gang and the horrific atrocities the gang commits. It also explores how the gang falls apart and what happens to the Kid after it does.
Blood Meridian's Legacy Explained
The Novel Is Considered One Of McCarthy's Greatest
When Blood Meridian first hit shelves, readers and critics mostly overlooked it, but today, it's considered one of Cormac McCarthy's best novels. Some call it his magnum opus. Most of the novel is shown through the Kid's eyes, but the reader learns little about what the Kid is thinking or feeling. Many people have argued over what the point of the novel is.
On the surface, it's violence for the sake of violence, but the novel runs much deeper than that. It seeks to explore the true horrors that humanity is capable of for the sake of personal gain. Since Blood Meridian takes place on the American Frontier, it directly criticizes and peels back the curtain of the American dream of Manifest Destiny. In The New York Times in 1985, reviewer Caryn James wrote of Blood Meridian:
This latest of [McCarthy's] books is his most important for it puts in perspective the Faulknerian language and unprovoked violence running through the previous works, which were often viewed as exercises in style or studies of evil. Blood Meridian makes it clear that all along Mr. McCarthy has asked us to witness evil not in order to understand it but to affirm its inexplicable reality; his elaborate language invents a world unhinged between the real and surreal, jolting us out of complacency.
Even so, readers who have long lost the ability to view humanity sympathetically find themselves feeling optimistic compared to McCarthy's dire view of the world. Some readers mistakenly see Judge Holden as the mouthpiece of McCarthy's worldview. While echoes of it may be found in him, the Judge's limitless capacity for evil and his seeming permanence in the world stand in for the depth of human depravity. Readers are rightly alarmed by the Judge's triumphs, but his philosophy serves only to excuse his acts and should be as suspect as the acts themselves.
Many Believe Blood Meridian's Violent Nature Is Too Much
Movie Goers May Be Unprepared For What The Book Describes
McCarthy's Blood Meridian novel is full of endless and horrific violence. The Glanton Gang are notorious for their sadistic massacres. Overall, the gang seems to get off on murdering just about anyone they can get their hands on. While the Glanton Gang does inevitably fall apart, Judge Holden, the novel's true antagonist, survives, and he is the worst of the lot. One of Kid's companions in the gang describes how every member met Holden and had some dealings with him before joining the gang. Holden is described as extremely intelligent and educated. Unlike the rest of the gang, he carries himself with dignity and can exist in a respectable society. Holden is also huge, pale, and hairless. Sometimes, the text suggests that he might not be human at all.
Judge Holden is believed by some to have been a historical character as well.
Holden likely met his end in the same attack that took Glanton's life.
All of Holden's refined characteristics don't remove his bloodlust from him. While most of the Glanton Gang is shown doing horrendous things to innocent people, Holden's enjoyment of slaughtering men, women, children, and even animals extends to another level. Even with all of his education, he believes that the concept of god is equivalent to that of war and that life is an endless cycle of conquest. "Violence is written into humanity's DNA" — this line of thinking keeps Holden from feeling any amount of empathy or remorse for the victims of his crimes.
At the end of the book, years after the Glanton Gang's demise, the Kid (now known as the Man), has one last run-in with Holden, and it doesn't end well for the protagonist. McCarthy leaves the Man's fate up to interpretation, but it's insinuated that he meets a horrible and bloody end. Holden is also seen dancing, drinking, and exclaiming that he will live forever. Since Holden is often described as a supernatural being, it makes readers wonder if he means this literally, or if he means his heinous crimes will be remembered by humanity forever.
Why Blood Meridian Would Make A Great Western Film
It Has An Audience To Receive It
As mentioned, a few stabs at making a Blood Meridian film have already happened. Every film project ultimately died before it got off the ground. It's believed that the film's graphically violent nature is the root of this, but it's worth noting that Blood Meridian is also a sprawling epic whose structure is difficult to articulate in the long account of violent deeds. This probably has as much to do with the adaptation's difficulty as the violence.
Blood Meridian was the first of several Westerns that McCarthy wrote in the middle period of his career, but it stands alone and is not part of his Border Trilogy.
McCarrthy's first four novels were set in Tennessee, the state that the Kid leaves. Similarly, the author didn't return to this setting until The Passenger, his last novel.
Nevertheless, considering the novel came out in the 1980s, it does make sense that a film adaptation might have been too much for audiences of the time to digest. This reason may not apply to modern audiences, though. Movies and shows that explore graphic violence are more commonplace now. Streaming services have lifted restrictions on shows, allowing for a number of them, such as The Outsider or the violent western series Godless, to explore the dark nature of humanity. Horror movies are increasingly intense and bloody, and the movie Logan was lauded, in part because it let graphic and almost cartoonish violence into the superhero genre.
Modern audiences more and more seem mesmerized by raw stories that explore the darkest parts of humanity. True crime has become one of the most popular genres of today because people are fascinated by understanding what drives a person to do horrible things. Blood Meridian is, at its core, a story about people doing horrible things because they want to and because they enjoy it. It doesn't sugarcoat humanity's savage nature, but that's the point of the story. Yes, a film adaptation would not be for the faint of heart, but there is an audience for it.
Blood Meridian Still Has a Place With Modern Audiences
The Violence Of Western Expansion Still Affects Us
Most critics, readers, and scholars agree that Blood Meridian presents a vision of the Wild West that undermines the concept of the White Savior and leaves readers with a modern West built on the foundation of racial superiority and the slaughter that comes from it. Blood Meridian might be about the American frontier, but in issues of race and crime, America continues to deal with the consequences of that time. The weight of this story spreads across centuries, and it will give its audience a lot to think about.
Near the end of the book, the Kid talks to a side character about the decimation of the buffalo for their hides, a conversation that is deeply emblematic of the novel's themes.
In 1845, Texas was annexed by the United States, and much of the southwest followed in 1848 after the Mexican-American War.
Judge Holden may be at the heart of things to consider. His character takes on an almost mythological nature as he claims he is the devil and that he'll live forever. It makes readers wonder if they're reading a book about more than just the American frontier. Novelist, short story writer, and former professor, David Vann, called Blood Meridian "the Inferno of our time" in a 2009 The Guardian article. Vann compares McCarthy's novel to Dante's work, highlighting McCarthy's use of blighted landscapes as settings that play host to history's worst criminals.
The Inferno is the first part of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Dante describes himself as lost in the error of his ways until a poet from antiquity, Virgil, comes to guide him through hell, showing him the ultimate consequences of sin. Virgil then takes him out of hell on a journey that will ultimately lead him to heaven. Unlike The Inferno, Blood Meridian offers no spiritual guide to redeem the Kid. Hell is an end and a justification, and war is the gift it gives humanity. The Kid's Virgil, as it were, the Judge, only seeks to entrap him deeper and deeper into its terrible landscape.
McCarthy Has Enjoyed Plenty Of Silver Screen Success
But His Works Have Also Proved Problematic
Cormac McCarthy's work has led to more than half a dozen films, including No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Road (2009). More recent films include The Sunset Limited (2011), directed by Tommy Lee Jones, Child of God (2013), directed by James Franco, and The Counselor (2013), directed by the legendary Ridley Scott. McCarthy's stories have already proven to hold an audience's attention, so it seems likely that one of his greatest novels should get the same treatment.
However, McCarthy's works have not always been successful as film adaptations. McCarthy's first novel to be adapted was not successful critically or financially. McCarthy's breakaway novel was not Blood Meridian but 1992's All the Pretty Horses, which won several awards and granted the writer a broad readership for the first time since beginning his career with The Orchard Keeper in 1965. The 2000 movie adaptation was directed by Billy Bob Thornton and featured the likes of Penélope Cruz and Matt Damon.
In All the Pretty Horses movie, a young Lucas Black gives a standout performance as Jimmy Blevins.
It is said that when Cormac McCarthy visited the movie set, he spent little time talking to the cast and a lot of time with the prop master discussing firearms.
The film has a 5.8 on IMDB and 32% on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time, the movie did poorly, even though critics recognized that Thornton's vision might have been unfairly truncated by producers. Nevertheless, most critics commented that McCarthy's works deserved better. Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers insightfully comments that "although the actors work hard, the haunted soul of the book resists capture onscreen." This difficulty in bringing McCarthy's work to light may be why another adaptation didn't happen until No Country For Old Me came out in 2007. And it may yet prove a factor in making Blood Meridian unfilmable
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