A walk in the woods was another grumpy male baby boomer coming of age movie.  The big mcmansion, the retirement, the marriage in this genre are now foreign concepts to later generations.

A lot of characters came & went, with no payoff. 

 

 There was a very sad subplot of Steenburgen living alone with her dimented mother which led nowhere.

  

 

For depicting baby boomers as old fashioned, it was overkill to see them sticking to pay phones & paper maps in 2015.  Even baby boomers had moved on by then.  

 

 Redford was shown with a 2015 era macbook.  Some bits of the 1998 book obviously were mixed with bits of 2015.

 

 

 

If there was any point, it was to showcase the Appalachian trail.  The real Fontana Dam in NC, on the trail, was shown.  

 

The starting point shown was the real starting point in Amicalola falls GA.  The red building since got a bigger entrance.  

 

 The entrance shown was actually at the Amicalola falls visitor center farther south.

Like the movie, the author of the true story never traversed the entire trail, but he did traverse segments instead of the contiguous path depicted.  

 

 The passage through the building is the real passage in Neels Gap GA.  

No way they would encounter a skinny woman alone on the trail.

 

 Thoughts of giving up began with the map scene.

 

 

Their last definitive position on the trail was McAfee Knob in VA, actually farther south than the map scene.

 

Getting stuck on the fictitious cliff was plausible in 1998.  By 2015, they would surely have had a satellite beacon.  There is no cliff on the trail, in reality.

 

 The last scene was in Atlanta GA, Jones St & Peachtree St, definitely a dramatization since they previously made it to VA.  Apparently the book was decent, subscription required for audio.

Lions pondered the logistics of attempting such a long hike.  It entails a lot of hitchhiking into towns.  Some animals have a support group providing supplies while they don't pack anything.