The Book of Eli: Difference between revisions

* [[Pet the Dog]]: At first it seems like Redridge only wants Solara for one thing, but he does show some genuine concern for her well-being later in the movie. See below.

* [[Pound of Flesh Twist]]: Yay, I've got the book...oh.

* [[The Purge]]: Bibles were all burned after the war, and Eli mentions that people considered the possibility of religion being what started it in the first place.

* [[Real Men Love Jesus]]: Eli reads [[The Bible]] every single day. Before one of the most awesome melee battles in film history, he hands out that "dust to dust" quote, which makes the fight itself at least twice as badass. Also notable is that {{spoiler|he can recite the ''entire'' King James Bible from ''memory''. Which of course turned out to be the whole point of the movie -- that and that it's not the destination.}}

* [[Redemption Equals Death]]: A bizarre case: {{spoiler|Carnegie's Dragon obviously has feelings for Solara, seen when Carnegie threatens to kill her to get the Bible. When she manages to overturn the car she's in on the ride home, he's impaled by Eli's machete (he had taken it with him) and very easily could have used it to kill her. Instead, he spares her and dies outside.}}

* [[Red Right Hand]]: Cannibals develop several distinctive tics, including shaking hands. A common way to prove oneself trustworthy is to show you don't have them.

* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]: When {{spoiler|Carnegie is overthrown}}, the people breaking up the room are shown looting the place and forcing themselves upon the women.

* [[Shaggy Dog Story]]: {{spoiler|For Carnegie; he spends the entire movie hunting Eli to steal the bible. Carnegie feels that with the bible, he can use it to maintain his iron-grip on the town. At the climax of the film, he finally does get the book, but at the sacrifice of [[The Dragon|his dragon]], only to learn the book is in braille. And after putting so much effort into his manhunt, the towns people have finally turned against him and started rioting and looting his "kingdom."}}

* [[Shout-Out]]: When Carnegie puts Eli up for the night, the poster on the wall is for ''[[A Boy and His Dog]]'', another post-apocalyptic movie set in a desert.

* [[Shown Their Work]]: [[wikipedia:Kuru (disease)|The cannibals' hands shake uncontrollably.]]

** There's also a frequent [[wikipedia:Human echolocation|clicking noise]] heard throughout the movie.

* [[These Hands Have Killed]]: Eli is really good at killing people, but feels guilty about it.

* [[Throw-Away Guns]]: Averted when Eli runs out of handgun ammunition and sets his gun down on a car -- but retrieves it before he leaves. Also averted in the fact that apparently it's very common for people to carry guns despite ammunition being rare.

* [[Tomato Surprise]]: {{spoiler|Eli was blind the entire time. Plus, the book's in Braille.}}

* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: Before the apocalypse, Eli was a simple clerk at a local Kmart.

** Then again, Eli might've just been a [[Retired Badass]]. Solara on the other hand, certainly goes through this.

* [[Truth in Television]]: The [[Nightmare Fuel|symptoms]] that the [[Cannibal Clan|cannibals]] showed. [[wikipedia:Kuru (disease)|Kuru]], a prion disease caused by cannibalism, is characterized by truncal ataxia, headaches, joint pains, and, most importantly, ''shaking of the limbs''. Until the 1950's when cannibalism was outlawed in New Guinnea, [[Cannibal Tribe|members of the South Fore]] often contracted it by eating their dead. (It had an incidence that was 8 times higher in women than in men because the men would get the [[I'm a Humanitarian|better cuts]] and women were left with the brains and spinal cords).

** For a more memorable analogue, a similar disease is also known as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or more commonly "Mad Cow Disease", which can be caused by feeding cows beef.

* [[Walking the Earth]]: Eli has been doing it for thirty years. Solara starts doing this at the end of the film.

* [[Wasteland Elder]]: Carnegie is an evil version of this.

* [[We Have Reserves]]: {{spoiler|[[Averted]]; Carnegie realizes too late that he lost too many man trying to get the book, and his remaining men aren't enough to keep the town oppressed}}.

* [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]: The titular book of Eli, {{spoiler|a Braille Bible, purportedly containing the entire KJV text, would actually take up much more physical space than one volume. More like 18, and those are for ENORMOUS-sized books. Regular-sized volumes would number around 36. But perhaps it's another miracle.}}

** Also, just believing that {{spoiler|all the Bibles would have been burned}}. The thin veneer of an explanation about 'maybe that's what started the war in the first place'? There's ''a lot'' of them in the world, considering it's been the number 1 bestselling book since the invention of the printing press. It'd easier to believe that they just ''think'' it's the last one, or that it's simply the last one in that immediate area.