they seemed to try to me they just had no idea what they were doing. Individual scenes seem well-executed, overall much better than the 1994 version. But creative choices are whacked.
I'd say overall the biggest problem is that it's too relentlessly grim. The subject matter is bleak for sure but that's why it's all the more important to have upbeat optimistic characters like Ralph Brentner and the actual Mother Abagail.
yeah, people complain how it "removes the tension when you know they survive" but the implications really go way beyond that.
Also, I think another big problem is severely trimming the early part of the story (spread of the plague, etc). I think the non-linear presentation was some kind of attempt to disguise what they were doing there. Basically, the first half of the story is crammed, non-linearly, into half of the episodes of the first half of the series.
yep, if you know characters will definitely survive the situation they are in then why would you be invented in said situation? they did it because they thought the second half with boulder city and the setting up of vegas was action light till the end so jump around, but it was a really dumb fricking idea. But beyond that the trips the slow recovery of some sense of normality and comminuity but its also happening on both sides is a great build up, without that the whole thing falls flat, lo missing the trips was a really dumb idea a single episode at least should've been dedicated to that, also cutting trashcans mans story to shreds was really stupid as he is so pivotal to the whole story, and showing just how clever harold was and how much stu admired him before actually meeting him as well, so many missteps
yep, if you know characters will definitely survive the situation they are in then why would you be invented in said situation? they did it because they thought the second half with boulder city and the setting up of vegas was action light till the end so jump around, but it was a really dumb fricking idea. But beyond that the trips the slow recovery of some sense of normality and comminuity but its also happening on both sides is a great build up, without that the whole thing falls flat, lo missing the trips was a really dumb idea a single episode at least should've been dedicated to that, also cutting trashcans mans story to shreds was really stupid as he is so pivotal to the whole story, and showing just how clever harold was and how much stu admired him before actually meeting him as well, so many missteps
This is why all prequels featuring characters from the previous stories are shit and I will never watch them.
thats why telling some stories out of order is just a bad idea especially in this case, 1/2 the tension comes from who will make it to boulder city or new vegas
There's so much more to storytelling, though. If all you care about is the suspense of not knowing what's going to happen why not just go watch sports or some reality show. Why watch a TV show adapted from a story you already know?
Of all the butchered characters, Trashcan man is probably the worst. > showing just how clever harold was and how much stu admired him before actually meeting him as well, so many missteps
Yeah especially given how obsessed the show was with Harold in the first place.
Like that scene where he gets in the fight with mutton chops, he just gets totally and utterly humiliated but in the original story he gets it together somewhat after freezing up. A much more interesting way to do it.
harold and trashy were the worst casulities of this thing there, were good part but for instance trashy gets pissed and blowing up their airfield, great scene, where was it? instead of the cuts back and forth why not cut back and forth to the backstories of these characters
Yeah. Mother Abagail was also totally butchered. People complain about the casting of Whoopi Goldberg but the new version was just written to be an authoritarian butthole magic-user. She was just totally inappropriate all around.
Lloyd Henreid was also shit. Reduced to a pointless filler character that tries to make up for it with obnoxious behavior. More of a consequence of Vegas as a whole being incoherent nonsense.
Another misfire imo is the emphasis on the Boulder committee's internal debates. Yeah that kind of stuff did happen in the book but it's all in the context of trying to get back on their feet. The 2020 Stand seems to think these discussions are some kind of top-tier moral dilemma shit but the details are changed just enough to make it moronic (eg the whole thing becomes a conflict between the committee and Mother Abagail) and so the whole thing winds up tedious
No she's a villain. Starts out virtuous and retains a little by the end (suicide-aborting her demon fetus), but she's a major antagonist.
[...]
So get this.
You know Frannie starts out pregnant, right? In the book, the father is some kind of emo poetgay. Fran dumps him because he's a weak homosexual and she doesn't love him anymore. He presumably dies of the plague offscreen. Both adaptations write this character out of the story almost entirely because he's pretty pointless otherwise, he's mostly there just to develop Fran.
In the 2020 adaptation, there's a scene showing Fran getting an ultrasound. She pulls out a tiny picture of herself and the baby daddy in a moment of joy. Of course he's black. M-O-O-N that spells coal burner. Literally no other reason to include that detail.
And here's the kicker. The actual baby that comes out in the end does not look African at all. So whatever woke writer shoved in the pointless racemixing scene seems to be different than the one who wrote the ending.
maybe aye it made many mistakes, connecting MiB and mother abigail, direct attacks and all that fine good stuff, good ideas with very very bad ideas, on the whole I sill think the non-linear approach is what really fricked it
Well yeah the non-linearity was part of stripping the idea of hope from the whole thing. Instead of seeing all the characters come together and decide to build something we just get thrown into the middle of them rebuilding and there's more of a sense of urgency and that they're only doing it for survival. That's why most of the rebuilding scenes are from Harold's pov since he's just on body disposal and an outsider. Did they even include the big lighting ceremony in the new one?
they did but because its so jumled itlacks the positivity, sure show harold seething and the prostitute of babylon calculating but thats not what the focus should be, the focus is the good it is getting it together and making something good and right, which is lost if all your focus is on the bad guys,funnily enough LOST nailed this, the group getting other in harmony and helping each other through the hardship
Flagg was fine he acted as randall always does, btw are you aware he was raped as a child in the sweltering summer of gilead year 10'452? also the son of merlin and the great spider
Flagg was fine he acted as randall always does, btw are you aware he was raped as a child in the sweltering summer of gilead year 10'452? also the son of merlin and the great spider
Flagg was OK. Don't know about whatever Steven King multiverse shit anon is going on about but I do think Jamey Sheridan was far better in the 1994 version. Much better mix of dark humor and unstable personality.
this was actually well done, such a shame some scenes were real well thought out well acted and correct, Nick and his buddy with the prostitute, really good stuff, the idea at this point is people choosing evil or good. Its not a fricking zombie story its the christian apocalypse Good vs Evil, and who chooses what side the are on.
>The original was perfect
It's pretty bad. iirc they wanted Brian De Palma as director but Steven King personally chose an interchangeable non-auteur director because he was still butthurt about The Shining.
Pfft, they weren't getting De Palma to direct in 94, even if they played the "King kickstarted your career" card. They were lucky as hell to get all the cameos they did get.
nah it reall wsn't but it captured the essence of the story at the very least, the new show focused so much on the bad it failed to capture the good, having said that the epilogue ep is pure king and is a perfect ending, so eh, its hit and miss, mostly miss
The original did a lot better job as far as big picture creative decisions. But its direction is hit or miss (heavily dependent on good actors carrying their scenes) and production values are low. Some scenes are just awkward, like the one where Harold and Fran meet Stu and Glen. Feels very amateur. Meanwhile other scenes are perfect (eg Flagg meeting Henreid). Molly Ringwald's acting is pretty bad, although even then I admit she somehow captures "Frannie" a little better than Odessa Young.
It was also limited to 6 hours of runtime rather than 9.
most king stories are so easy to translate to live action, the problem is most film makers who get them think they are kubrick and can make it better, take green mile almost a 1:1 adaptation very very good, or the mist it only made one significant change which is argued about endlessly to this day, in short you need to leave 95% of kings stories intact and maybe frick with the ending because King has a problem with endings
You're right about most, but The Stand is stupid big, so, while a 1:1 adaption would work fine, you're looking at a lot of runtime. 9 hour long episodes should have been fine, though.
King has three major problems with his writing, bloat, the ending, and just in the last 10 years or so he's so woefully out of date. I hate to say it but out of touch is probably the better term.
I haven't read anything recent from him, but most of his good coke days stuff the problem is the ending, the bloat is fine he can world build like a motherfricker and for me I want more of that, he always fricks the ending eh, thats ok. As far as his writing thats subjective if you like it you do if you don't you don't what he can do at his best is invoke images that are so clear you know exactly what is going on its his real talent, you get immersed in the world he has described.For example I can see the nuke powered water pump in Gunslinger and the homestead where he finds Jake to this day, or the beach with the did a chok dum a chum I ca see the lobstrosities it is clear as pure clean glass in my mind he is really good at that,
The Stand isn't really all that bloated.
I get why people claim this, but for a story like The Stand, the "bloat" is really the meat of the story. The ultimate plot is very simple and the virtues and themes are rather simple. The Stand is an American epic. It's 20th century USA. The huge cast of characters and all their "bloatedly" detailed backstories is one of the main points of the novel. All the various digressions detail civilization as it collapses.
I've only read a few other King novels and frankly don't remember them. So I can't say how the criticism stacks up against his other writing. But for whatever reason, it works in The Stand. (I have other criticisms, but "diarrhea of the typewriter" isn't one of them).
You're right, I wouldn't call it "bloated", but it's definitely large, and somewhat unwieldy.
For a write with a very easy to read bibliography, it's, relatively speaking, probably one of his hardest to get into due to the vast number of characters you may or may not enjoy.
King has three major problems with his writing, bloat, the ending, and just in the last 10 years or so he's so woefully out of date. I hate to say it but out of touch is probably the better term.
there's an element to king's writing that I like in his books, but which always feels fumbled on screen. he likes to write creepy nonsense, intrusive thoughts rendered in italics or delirious speech, which works well on the page but often feels campy and ridiculous when said out loud.
it's one of my favourite aspects of his writing but it never seems to land quite right when adapted.
The intrusive thoughts are done really well. Like in Cell where he thinks about how good his wife's zombie breasts look. No one would ever say they thought that, but it's something that could absolutely pop into your head for a second.
But if you say it out loud on screen, it's already spending more time in the viewers head than it spent in the character's. It also comes off weird because we've been seeing other mundane thoughts the whole book, so this blends more. But if you put ALL of that on screen, it'd be a mess.
I really like 1408 as an adaptation, but it's no surprise why it takes a different approach than the story because the story is like 99% those little intrusive thought moments as Enslin goes insane. >Tango-light, he thought. The kind of light that makes the dead get up out of their graves and tango. The kind of light--
>being produced by network tv
nothing good has ever come of this
No one cared to make it good.
they seemed to try to me they just had no idea what they were doing. Individual scenes seem well-executed, overall much better than the 1994 version. But creative choices are whacked.
I'd say overall the biggest problem is that it's too relentlessly grim. The subject matter is bleak for sure but that's why it's all the more important to have upbeat optimistic characters like Ralph Brentner and the actual Mother Abagail.
non-linear was the mistake, I know why they did it but it was a bad idea
yeah, people complain how it "removes the tension when you know they survive" but the implications really go way beyond that.
Also, I think another big problem is severely trimming the early part of the story (spread of the plague, etc). I think the non-linear presentation was some kind of attempt to disguise what they were doing there. Basically, the first half of the story is crammed, non-linearly, into half of the episodes of the first half of the series.
yep, if you know characters will definitely survive the situation they are in then why would you be invented in said situation? they did it because they thought the second half with boulder city and the setting up of vegas was action light till the end so jump around, but it was a really dumb fricking idea. But beyond that the trips the slow recovery of some sense of normality and comminuity but its also happening on both sides is a great build up, without that the whole thing falls flat, lo missing the trips was a really dumb idea a single episode at least should've been dedicated to that, also cutting trashcans mans story to shreds was really stupid as he is so pivotal to the whole story, and showing just how clever harold was and how much stu admired him before actually meeting him as well, so many missteps
>removes the tension when you know they survive
This is why all prequels featuring characters from the previous stories are shit and I will never watch them.
thats why telling some stories out of order is just a bad idea especially in this case, 1/2 the tension comes from who will make it to boulder city or new vegas
There's so much more to storytelling, though. If all you care about is the suspense of not knowing what's going to happen why not just go watch sports or some reality show. Why watch a TV show adapted from a story you already know?
Was this shot really necessary?
that is one of the few times trashy is acting correctly so yes its fine
Of all the butchered characters, Trashcan man is probably the worst.
> showing just how clever harold was and how much stu admired him before actually meeting him as well, so many missteps
Yeah especially given how obsessed the show was with Harold in the first place.
Like that scene where he gets in the fight with mutton chops, he just gets totally and utterly humiliated but in the original story he gets it together somewhat after freezing up. A much more interesting way to do it.
harold and trashy were the worst casulities of this thing there, were good part but for instance trashy gets pissed and blowing up their airfield, great scene, where was it? instead of the cuts back and forth why not cut back and forth to the backstories of these characters
Yeah. Mother Abagail was also totally butchered. People complain about the casting of Whoopi Goldberg but the new version was just written to be an authoritarian butthole magic-user. She was just totally inappropriate all around.
Lloyd Henreid was also shit. Reduced to a pointless filler character that tries to make up for it with obnoxious behavior. More of a consequence of Vegas as a whole being incoherent nonsense.
Another misfire imo is the emphasis on the Boulder committee's internal debates. Yeah that kind of stuff did happen in the book but it's all in the context of trying to get back on their feet. The 2020 Stand seems to think these discussions are some kind of top-tier moral dilemma shit but the details are changed just enough to make it moronic (eg the whole thing becomes a conflict between the committee and Mother Abagail) and so the whole thing winds up tedious
Also, that pathetic explosion.
In 1994 it looked really lame, but they had very little to work with.
>they sourced this from Ezra's private collection
>oh wow that's pretty accur-
>Ezra Miller
Lol. Lmao. This has Amber Heard as a sympathetic female too right?
No she's a villain. Starts out virtuous and retains a little by the end (suicide-aborting her demon fetus), but she's a major antagonist.
So get this.
You know Frannie starts out pregnant, right? In the book, the father is some kind of emo poetgay. Fran dumps him because he's a weak homosexual and she doesn't love him anymore. He presumably dies of the plague offscreen. Both adaptations write this character out of the story almost entirely because he's pretty pointless otherwise, he's mostly there just to develop Fran.
In the 2020 adaptation, there's a scene showing Fran getting an ultrasound. She pulls out a tiny picture of herself and the baby daddy in a moment of joy. Of course he's black. M-O-O-N that spells coal burner. Literally no other reason to include that detail.
And here's the kicker. The actual baby that comes out in the end does not look African at all. So whatever woke writer shoved in the pointless racemixing scene seems to be different than the one who wrote the ending.
>M-O-O-N that spells coal burner.
god damn i laughed
Some moronic nihilist was in charge most likely and wanted to make something closer to Walking Dead than the original adaptation.
maybe aye it made many mistakes, connecting MiB and mother abigail, direct attacks and all that fine good stuff, good ideas with very very bad ideas, on the whole I sill think the non-linear approach is what really fricked it
Well yeah the non-linearity was part of stripping the idea of hope from the whole thing. Instead of seeing all the characters come together and decide to build something we just get thrown into the middle of them rebuilding and there's more of a sense of urgency and that they're only doing it for survival. That's why most of the rebuilding scenes are from Harold's pov since he's just on body disposal and an outsider. Did they even include the big lighting ceremony in the new one?
they did but because its so jumled itlacks the positivity, sure show harold seething and the prostitute of babylon calculating but thats not what the focus should be, the focus is the good it is getting it together and making something good and right, which is lost if all your focus is on the bad guys,funnily enough LOST nailed this, the group getting other in harmony and helping each other through the hardship
A non-homosexual and actually threatening Randall Flagg could've saved this poor adaptation.
Flagg was fine he acted as randall always does, btw are you aware he was raped as a child in the sweltering summer of gilead year 10'452? also the son of merlin and the great spider
Flagg was OK. Don't know about whatever Steven King multiverse shit anon is going on about but I do think Jamey Sheridan was far better in the 1994 version. Much better mix of dark humor and unstable personality.
WORSHIP ME!
this was actually well done, such a shame some scenes were real well thought out well acted and correct, Nick and his buddy with the prostitute, really good stuff, the idea at this point is people choosing evil or good. Its not a fricking zombie story its the christian apocalypse Good vs Evil, and who chooses what side the are on.
Best part of this remake. If you get the best parts of this remake and the original miniseries you can make something phenomenal.
The Sit
The original was perfect
The remake aired during COVID when nobody really thought a pandemic killing everyone was entertainment
Literal who cast
>The original was perfect
It's pretty bad. iirc they wanted Brian De Palma as director but Steven King personally chose an interchangeable non-auteur director because he was still butthurt about The Shining.
Pfft, they weren't getting De Palma to direct in 94, even if they played the "King kickstarted your career" card. They were lucky as hell to get all the cameos they did get.
nah it reall wsn't but it captured the essence of the story at the very least, the new show focused so much on the bad it failed to capture the good, having said that the epilogue ep is pure king and is a perfect ending, so eh, its hit and miss, mostly miss
The original did a lot better job as far as big picture creative decisions. But its direction is hit or miss (heavily dependent on good actors carrying their scenes) and production values are low. Some scenes are just awkward, like the one where Harold and Fran meet Stu and Glen. Feels very amateur. Meanwhile other scenes are perfect (eg Flagg meeting Henreid). Molly Ringwald's acting is pretty bad, although even then I admit she somehow captures "Frannie" a little better than Odessa Young.
It was also limited to 6 hours of runtime rather than 9.
More Kat McNamara webms, please. lingerie ones if possible.
>Kingshit
How could it ever be good?
most king stories are so easy to translate to live action, the problem is most film makers who get them think they are kubrick and can make it better, take green mile almost a 1:1 adaptation very very good, or the mist it only made one significant change which is argued about endlessly to this day, in short you need to leave 95% of kings stories intact and maybe frick with the ending because King has a problem with endings
You're right about most, but The Stand is stupid big, so, while a 1:1 adaption would work fine, you're looking at a lot of runtime. 9 hour long episodes should have been fine, though.
so a mini series one hour per ep should've been perfect, literally 10 hours, but they couldn't help fricking with it
King has three major problems with his writing, bloat, the ending, and just in the last 10 years or so he's so woefully out of date. I hate to say it but out of touch is probably the better term.
I haven't read anything recent from him, but most of his good coke days stuff the problem is the ending, the bloat is fine he can world build like a motherfricker and for me I want more of that, he always fricks the ending eh, thats ok. As far as his writing thats subjective if you like it you do if you don't you don't what he can do at his best is invoke images that are so clear you know exactly what is going on its his real talent, you get immersed in the world he has described.For example I can see the nuke powered water pump in Gunslinger and the homestead where he finds Jake to this day, or the beach with the did a chok dum a chum I ca see the lobstrosities it is clear as pure clean glass in my mind he is really good at that,
You forgot his Black person worshipping fetish
he's an american white male. they all worship.
The Stand isn't really all that bloated.
I get why people claim this, but for a story like The Stand, the "bloat" is really the meat of the story. The ultimate plot is very simple and the virtues and themes are rather simple. The Stand is an American epic. It's 20th century USA. The huge cast of characters and all their "bloatedly" detailed backstories is one of the main points of the novel. All the various digressions detail civilization as it collapses.
I've only read a few other King novels and frankly don't remember them. So I can't say how the criticism stacks up against his other writing. But for whatever reason, it works in The Stand. (I have other criticisms, but "diarrhea of the typewriter" isn't one of them).
You're right, I wouldn't call it "bloated", but it's definitely large, and somewhat unwieldy.
For a write with a very easy to read bibliography, it's, relatively speaking, probably one of his hardest to get into due to the vast number of characters you may or may not enjoy.
yeah that's fair
there's an element to king's writing that I like in his books, but which always feels fumbled on screen. he likes to write creepy nonsense, intrusive thoughts rendered in italics or delirious speech, which works well on the page but often feels campy and ridiculous when said out loud.
it's one of my favourite aspects of his writing but it never seems to land quite right when adapted.
yea true, some stuff just does not translate well to screen
The intrusive thoughts are done really well. Like in Cell where he thinks about how good his wife's zombie breasts look. No one would ever say they thought that, but it's something that could absolutely pop into your head for a second.
But if you say it out loud on screen, it's already spending more time in the viewers head than it spent in the character's. It also comes off weird because we've been seeing other mundane thoughts the whole book, so this blends more. But if you put ALL of that on screen, it'd be a mess.
exactly
I really like 1408 as an adaptation, but it's no surprise why it takes a different approach than the story because the story is like 99% those little intrusive thought moments as Enslin goes insane.
>Tango-light, he thought. The kind of light that makes the dead get up out of their graves and tango. The kind of light--
>you will never frick Satan's GF in the ass
Feels bad.
Bless you, anon. I can fix crazy Julie.
how?
Image manipulation or CGI plus an audience that does not pay attention to details
The power of Christ compels it.
I enjoyed it but King just had to put in some supernatural shit at the end it could have just been Fallout New Vegas in a limited series.