Ok so you all assume blind means he can’t see anything, but there are varying degrees of blindness. He might have just had really blurry vision, or been able to seen outlines etc. Because blindness is a spectrum, not a definite thing. It is like colorblindness. It does not mean you can’t see all colors, it just means you see differently.

It really doesn’t matter whether Eli was blind or not because the Bible was on the ipod; he had memorized it due to listening to it for 30 years. This is why it shows Solara with the ear plugs in starting her ‘mission’ to take the Bible back to her home.

I would like to discuss the idiocy of the majority of people that have commented about this movie.

1. What causes any war? Man’s nature to destroy, or survive. Which there is a thin line between both. Plus nowadays large wars (example.. World War 3??) are gonna do massive damage, there are approximately 23,335 “registered” nuclear weapons in the world. These nuclear weapons are shared by 9 countries, and I believe that almost all of them have had disagreements with at least 1 of the other 8 on the list in the past.
Now look at WWII with Little boy that was dropped, it was our first Atomic Bomb and that was only 13 kilotons. Fat man was 21 kilotons and was the second bomb ever used in combat. The average American nuke is 250 kt who have around 9,000 warheads. The average Russian nuke is around 550 kt who have around 13,000 warheads which are not as accurate, which explains the size difference. A 21 kt nuke has an effect radius of 0.51 miles, or 0.81 sq mi, a 550 kt nuke has 0.95 miles, 2.8 sq mi.
Think about just the effect radius….. Then think about the ozone layer witch is already greatly deteriorated, and the pressure exerted upon it when theses bombs go off. Hmmm can you say SPF 10,000 for a while?

2. “Them” are cannibals, and yes they are checking to see if the hands shake excessively. Caused by a disease called Kuru, Kuru is believed to be caused by prions and is related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The word Kuru translated means “shake” or “to shake”. Although it is considered a transmissible prion disease, there is some evidence that the origin of the disease was due to consumption of an individual (cannibalism) with sporadic CJD, thus implying a common pathophysiology.

3. The Bible was the first thing to go after the war I assume because the longest running war known to man has been over the holy land.

4. There are not very many people I am sure they can all find a way to eat every day there are some kind of nutrients in almost everything.

5. I have a blind sister who has a blind husband. They are as different as night and day. She has been blind since birth 22 years ago, he was blinded somehow as a child when he was around 8, he is now 21. One thing I learned as a small child was never to underestimate a blind person. My sister can tell who is walking around the house and almost deduce what the person is doing from another room. Can tell you exactly what you had for lunch hours later from the smell of your breath if you get too close to her. I watched a hispanic kid at a local restaurant that didn’t take credit/debit cards try to short change her and she knew because she can tell the difference between bills by feeling them. She walks around most of the time without the use of a cane, has never had a seeing eye dog, cooks entire meals, fills her own glass by sound, cleans, looks at you in the face because she can hear and smell your breath, never really has any problems at all. Her husband as I said is the exact opposite, can’t do any of the things she can, is easy to mess with if you want to, witch she is not. The only thing cool he can do and this might tie all of her’s is he can play certain video games, like wrestling and most sports games, and beat the cpu on medium difficulties.

6. As for all of the other little things. I am an avid movie buff and can find several things wrong with almost any movie.

Thank You For Your Time…

A lot of things hint he was blind. He never ever attacked first, he always smelled the water etc.

Another thing is, when you go blind it is said to be that your other senses get.. Stronger. So he obviously has superb hearing, and smell.

And for the whole rat thing.. If you listen the rat squeaks and pats around. Obviously he hears it and gives it the food.

For the ipod.. He presses the play/next buttons and it wont do anything. Thats how he can tell its dead.

When people go around him or behind him he always looks in that direction. That is part of the plot twist to make you think he’s not blind. (because you think he is looking behind to see who is there)

Great movie, and the Bible was not on the ipod. He might not of first trusted the general store ”clerk” with it, but he knew that he wouldn’t do anything.

The Bible he gave to Carnagie was obviously in Braille which he had read every day for 30 years, you could probably memorize most if not all of it. God probably gave him the strength to do this, the patience to read it everyday, the path, and even the finding of the book. It was all God’s plan all along.

God works in mysterious ways, but remember, they are always for the good.

This is a movie that has to be watched the second time for it to make sense to you. I never realized he was blind at all. I thought perhaps the war had to do with God ending the world, and the ones left were evil, except Eli who had a mission. You could tell that God had given Eli special fighting skills, as his movements were must too swift for a normal person. Also, his accuracy for shooting and fighting. When he was shot in the end, he also was helped by God to live long enough to repeat the Bible from memory. His appearance at the end was like a holy man or monk, as he was bald and dressed in a white attire. His sense of smell and touch helped him and represented more of a blind person who had perfected these tools. The world was ended by God, and was in the transaction of being turned into a new world, who needed the Bible. The bad guy wanted to Bible to claim himself as a God, and rule with it for evil. The young girl was given the other mission of continuing Eli’s efforts to give the Bible to turn people toward God. I really enjoyed this movie, and think that people are searching for these answers. They know the end will come, so just hearing that the things that we took for granted were then things that were being killed for, and one was the Bible. It gets you to think, with the economy, that what Eli said was true, people had more than what they needed, and that is exactly where we are now. We need to
take heed and re-evaluate our life and materialistic living, is it really necessary, or is the way of God more important in the long run. Think about this movie and learn..

Type— Tried hard to NOT show he was blind..

also i forgot to say that he is able to look at the sun and find out what way is west by watching what way it is setting. or the way how he is able to use doors, like the first house, the door he used to lock Solara in the spring, and the old peoples house. once again, not blind, but he could still be loosing his sight.

ok sorry i thought of a couple more thing suggesting Eli isn’t blind, in the beggining he got the lighter off of the dead high jackers and saw the flame, the wind was blowing away from him so he probeble didn’t feal the heat. and he knew the cart was tiped over on the right side and he was able to find her water in it no problem. also he was able to take the shotgun from the store clerk suprizingly fast and he knew where it was, he didn’t over reach or come up to short and he knew how high it was. and i forgot about the doors in the store, and in carnagie’s place.

After much thought and a little research in 1 Samuel of the Bible, there is a man named Eli, he is a high priest, and a mentor to Samuel. He wears the white linen dress that was called a Ephod, and they did shave their heads and face at that time. Eli was not a good father, and had two wicked sons, so God did not look upon him favorably. There is a lot of fighting in the book of Samuel. Was Eli the Eli from the Bible, did God give him another chance to prove himself with this mission. Eli was going blind, but not until his death. You will notice in the very end, Eli in the movie had taught the girl how to pray, he protected her, and even told her when they were in the house, that the two of them were to be protected. When she asked about the two older people, he said, I don’t know about them. When he gave the Bible over to the bad guys, God let him feel the shot when he was shot. However, gave him enough life to finish his mission. I don’t believe Eli was completely blind until the end when they showed his eyes. His eyesight was failing, and needed the braile Bible to memorize it as God wanted him to do. The girl was his main mission to teach her the ways of God and to continue the word of God. At the end, he had turned back into Eli from the Bible, as his sckin was without marks, and smooth, and he wore the robe of the high priest, plus was clean shaven as he was before. He thanked God for letting him do this mission, and he prayed that the girl would be protected. He also said, thank you for letting me rest as I am so very tired.
The Eli in the Bible died when he was sitting in a chair on the side of the road, and fell over backward, with a broken neck. Eli in the movie, was shot, but fell over backward. God let him go on, because he protected the girl, and was consequensly a good father image to her..where he was not before. Something to think about..

ok Sparks i like those observations, but the part where he was fealing for shoes on both bodies you have to remember, he had sunglasses on and was looking into dark places. its kind of hard to look inside a dark place, with dark sunglasses on.

First of all we all have to remember that it is a great movie, Second I have not read 1 thing that mentions that it all takes place in 2043 which is 30 years plus 1 after 2012 which is suppose to be the end of times as we know it. It took me only 2 times of watching the movie to catch all of the sighs that Eli was blinded by the flash of light and that a greater sprite lead him to the book. I know a lot of blind people and most of them wear sunglasses almost all the time and look right at me when they are talking to me. I did not see anything wrong with this performance. I am truly hoping that there are more movies too this one. Hope everyone does the math and gets the hint before something like this really happens.

ok I have seen many people say that Eli is blind and he is able to get around because he is being led by god. If god was able to lead people you would think that god would prevent the war in turn, saving religion and no longer needing Eli.

He wore the sunglasses because he didn’t want sand in his eyes, just like everyone else.

“a lot like Roland. ”

Not at all. Eli understands his mission and undertakes it with wisdom. Roland was a fool who sacrificed his friends for the mission, all the while missing the whole point of the mission which was his friends. Note that one meaning for Palavar, the talks Roland and his friends constantly had, is useless and meaningless talk, idle chatter that leads nowhere.

Eli was NOT blind at all. I don’t have any clue why you people come to that conclusion. Storywise, the braille was about making Solara’s mother more powerful. But hey, I don’t expect everyone to get it. Eli was never blind though. And braille is easily taught and learned. If you had the last book of anything, and it was in braille, you would learn to read braille.

But again, ELI was NEVER blind. Ever.

Why all in the movie are wearing sun glasses, I don’t understand

He’s not blind. Explain how he shoots arrows into the throats of two villians who are about to rape mila kunis? No amount of echo location in the world could explain that. Eli was not blind. Watch it again, knowing that. I own the dumb movie, for no reason, because it wasn’t a great movie. But holy hell, blind? Really? LOL is all I can say. Maybe they wanted that to be the big ending, but there are way too many times where he proves he isnt blind.

Neil, you make some good points but if he was using echo location to fight people, how would he have been able to shoot the sniper from a block away, and if he did hear the sniper there is no way he would have been able to get the one spot where the sniper was because guns are loud and the sniper was far. And I’m the one who said the thing about the doors because there are many kinds of doors. Doors with knobs, handles, what side of the door it was on, and what way the door opens. He also walks to the door no problem with ought hitting a wall. Also if you watch at the spring the door there is not a normal door, he knew exactly how to lock it. As for the bridge fight, look around, it looks pretty hot out there. He probable didn’t want to get hotter than it is so he fought in the shade. He also looks down the sights of hes guns when he shoots, if he was blind he wouldn’t need to do that. Also he looks away from the people getting robed on the overpass because he didn’t want to see that, if he was blind he wouldn’t need to look away from that. Look at all the other things I pointed out above, about 7 to 23 texts above, sorry there not all in one text.

Sure, no problem!
Here’s a link the inerview:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=articl e&id=25539
And in particular this part:
—-
One major turning point in the script to screen process came about in discussions with Washington over the film’s twist ending. Originally, Whitta had intended Washington to have visually blind eyes, wearing sunglasses to hide them for the entire film. Washington refused, preferring to play the character as blind with his own brand of subtlety.

“Without even thinking, I said to him, ‘Are you sure you can pull that off?’” Whitta said. “He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me as if to say, ‘B—h, please!’ Later that day, he gave me a tour of his house and he’s got his two Oscars. He said, ‘I just thought you’d like to check those out.’ The look was, ‘Don’t ask me if I can pull this s–t off again.’”
—-

It’s the internet, ya know? So take it for whatit’s worth. :)
Ya know colby… yeah… there are some inconsistencies… It’s not a seamless movie, I suppose… It DID bug me that he looks out windows, and down the sights of his gun. And that he knew the towelettes were from KFC. But I guess he does some of these things to hide his ‘disability.’ Dangerous world and all… if he appeared to be blind he’d be easily taken advantage of.
That’s my take anyway. :)

So he shot an arrow from at least one hundred feet away, right through the throat of a villain that was about to rape his friend. No, not blind. You can’t sell the movie as reality in the aftermath, and then make the main character a superhero who can see, even though he’s blind.

Eli is NOT blind morons. That one scene is the proof.

As for the question of his blindness, it’s in the eye of the beholder. There is no true answer, it was meant to let you decide.

Having been a huge fan of the video game “Fallout”, this movie was a great experience for me. Both the movie and the game take place in a post-apocalyptic setting, with similar “road warrior” bandits and “wild west” towns and villages along the way. It was a really fun movie and I’ll be watching it again.

As for the blindness, surprisingly I never even considered it. The entire time i expected the bible to be written in hebrew or something that carnegie wouldn’t be able to read. And when it turned out to be brail, i just assumed that Eli could read it.

One moment that did strike me as odd was when they were approaching the old couple’s house, his foot caught the first step. I assumed it was just a mistake and left in for realism, but now i see that he didnt see them!

@smart, if you were smart (irony) you would see that he shot them from maybe 20 feet away.

Smart, you’re fucking stupid. The entire message of the movie revolves around the power of faith, Eli is able to do those things like “shoot a guy in the neck” because of divine assistance. Thats the whole point of the movie is to show that through faith anything is possible. Have you ever heard “the Lord shall be my shepherd?” You’re the idiot here stop making yourself look like a jackass.

Salam, Peace,

Yes the final scenes where Eli is wearing what looked like a “Kamis” along with the fact that no cross was put on his grave, but an engraved stone, sure open a way to supposing that Eli could have been a Muslim. Let’s not forget that all this is fiction, and that Fiction, which is only “any” variation over the theme of Reality, does in no way dispense from the Truth.

Cheers.

Another indication Eli is blind, 8 minutes into the move, just after he tests the sink for water….he walks towards the two doors and bumps right into a small table. He doesn’t see the table.