Re: Upcoming Stephen King Projects
Posted:
Sun Dec 20, 2020 3:50 pmby TheBaxter
CBS's The Stand is out now (at least the 1st episode) and the reviews are not very good.
i'll definitely be watching this, but not in a rush, especially with the so-so reviews. since they're doing the one-episode-per-week release schedule, this'll wrap up sometime in february, i'll wait til then so i can watch it all at once. it's not like i don't know the story inside and out from reading the book and watching the previous miniseries, the only "surprise" will be King's new ending, which I'd have to wait til the last episode to see anyway.
i get why these streaming services are going back to the weekly model, it keeps people subscribing for 2 or 3 months, instead of just binging for one month and then cancelling, but there are too many of these streaming services to subscribe to all at once, so i'm happy to wait til the entire series is available instead of getting strung along.
Re: Upcoming Stephen King Projects
Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:40 pmby TheBaxter
i finished watching CBS Paid Access's THE STAND this weekend.
after squeezing out a turd like this, they should've called it THE SQUAT instead.
there's a DVD box quote for you, CBS. free of charge. wow, what a disappointment this was. this project was announced shortly after i had just finished reading the book a couple years ago, so i was pretty excited about it. it's not King's best book by a long shot, and it's probably among his most overrated (i think early reviewers got fooled by the length into thinking anything that long had to be a masterpiece, but it isn't; IT was King's actual 1000+ page masterpiece). still, it's a good book and, in the right hands, could make for an incredible epic story. these were not the right hands.
it's been a while since i saw the first TV miniseries. i remember it as a passable version with some really good casting (gary sinise, ruby dee, rob lowe, molly ringwald, ray walston) and some really bad casting (the guy who played randall flagg as an over-the-top buffoon) and some forgettable casting (whoever played larry underwood, i had to look him up on imdb and i still don't remember that guy). that's one thing these versions have in common. the casting is mostly on point, and give good performances (considering what they had to work with). some of the characters are still forgettable, but in this case it's probably more the writing than the acting/casting at fault. and of course, there are a couple of flabbergastingly bad performances. this adaptation's version of the trashcan man is probably one of the worst, most ill-conceived version of a King character (or ANY character) i've ever seen committed to film. he screeches and mumbles his way through his scenes, almost literally sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard. the guy who played Nick Andros is miscast, he doesn't convey the warmth that character is capable of, but then that may be due to the writing which basically cut out most of the scenes that would have better established his backstory and humanity (more on that to come).
on the other hand, the casting of alexander skarsgard as RF knocks it out of the park. it's just a shame he couldn't have starred in a better version of this story. i always thought The Stand could work as a cool backdoor sequel for a Dark Tower tv series. instead of the book (and this adaptation's) ending where RF wakes up in the middle of a tribe of isolated natives, i imagined a version where he wakes up in the middle of a desert. he sits up, turns around and off in the distance, through the shimmering heat rising off the sand, he sees the silhouette of a figure in a stetson hat walking his way. a look of fear comes over his face. he stumbles to his feet, and begins fleeing into desert. as he runs, a man steps into frame, his hand resting on the butt of the revolver in his holster. cut to black: "The Dark Tower... coming soon." well, considering how poorly The Stand turned out, i guess it's for the best that these same people aren't given the opportunity to ruin that series as well. but if they ever do make a proper Dark Tower tv series, i'd support Skarsgard as the man in black.
back to The Stand, though... this series was really undone by a horrifically bad decision to start the show with everyone already in Boulder, and then spend the first 3-4 episodes showing how they got there through flashbacks. the problem is, nothing interesting happens in the Boulder scenes in these early episodes, they just take time away from all the story and character development that occurs while these characters are on the road. this is devastating for some of these characters. i already mentioned Nick, so much of what goes into establishing this character, his kindness and humanity, and his friendship with Tom Cullen, is just left out completely or given such short shrift that it doesn't register. we get one scene of him giving some food to the guy who beat him and partially blinded him before leaving the hospital, instead of the long build-up in the book of him taking care of the sheriff who gets sick and caring for the men who beat him in their jail cells, scenes which set up why he is such a natural choice for initially leading the survivors and helping Mother Abagail during their early days in Boulder. we also only get a single flashback scene of him with Tom Cullen on the road to Boulder, and it serves mostly to establish a different character who ends up in Vegas and becomes a threat to Tom's spying mission, rather than establishing the friendship between these two damaged characters, the bond that makes Nick's decision to send Tom to Vegas to spy such an anguished choice. without that, the decision to send Tom, and Nick's part in it, is rendered meaningless. (also, the return journey with Tom and Stu from Vegas is completely cut from this adaptation; the end result is that Tom's character is basically reduced to pointless comic relief, instead of what i think King's original intention was, to show how even the least valued members of a society can turn out to be important contributors).
Larry Underwood is another character whose development is seriously compromised. in the book, he starts off as a selfish dick who thinks only of himself, whose self-esteem is so low that when he tries to help one woman escape the city, and she ends up killing herself, he blames himself and thinks he's worthless. then he finds and bonds with Nadine and the mute kid she's taking care of, and they help heal each other, before Nadine betrays them and chooses Flagg. his whole character arc, from selfish asshole with impostor syndrome to a guy who realizes his worth and ability to lead people, is one of the biggest arcs of the book. the tv version ruins it. we never even see the scene where he discovers his first traveling companion's suicide, we just hear him talk about it afterwards. a really pivotal moment of the book is reduced to throwaway line of dialogue, mere exposition to explain why we don't see a certain character anymore. there's one flashback scene to show him beginning to bond with the kid, but it's not nearly enough to really establish the connection that forms there.
and finally, there's Harold Lauder. in the book, Harold begins as a sad studly kid with a crush on his sister's friend, a bullying victim with big dreams but no real way to achieve them, until the apocalypse literally makes his wildest dream a reality: he is the last man on earth, and the girl he likes is the last woman. in this series, though, the very first scene of the show is Harold in Boulder, cleaning up bodies. we already see him as the creep that he only gradually morphs into in the book. but then, when we see his flashback, we find out he was this same creep all along. instead of transforming from a studly scared kid to a fit, skilled road warrior able to use his intelligence to protect his dream woman (all while nurturing a growing resentment of her for not appreciating him enough, as well as anyone else he perceives as a threat to his "ownership" of her), he starts exactly where he ends: a skinny, creepy incel with a sociopathic mental disorder. the actor who plays him is fine, i'm sure he could have played that more nuanced version of the character (minus the studly part) if it had been written that way, but instead he's given one note to play, and that's all we see.
the end result of these disastrous early episodes is that we simply don't give a fuck about any of these people. the middle part of the series, after the flashbacks have ended and the plot actually gets underway in Boulder, is better. but it ultimately amounts to nothing, because we don't care about the characters so we don't get invested in anything that happens to them. when Nick dies we don't care because nothing that made that character interesting or humanized him was ever shown. when Mother Abagail dies we don't care because, by eliminating most of the pre-Boulder story, most of the scenes of her appearing to characters and telling them to come to her are gone, so her importance to the story and the other characters isn't made clear. she just seems like a batty old lady who people listen to way too much for some reason. btw, nice touch changing her to a nursing home resident instead of living on a farm; especially prescient given the role of nursing homes in the current pandemic. so, when the remaining characters begin their walk to Vegas, and people start getting hurt or killed, we just don't really care. the more harrowing scenes after arriving in Vegas are watered down (literally... they change the method of execution from being drawn-and-quartered, to being drowned in a slowly-filling swimming pool, which is just asinine; the whole point of Flagg's executions is spectacle, to simultaneously titillate and intimidate his followers; how does watching someone drowning in a pool accomplish that?), and they can't even properly set up the arrival of the nuclear warhead, because Flagg's plan and reason for making Trashcan Man go searching for a nuke in the first place is never made clear, so it just makes Flagg look dumb.
and then, there's King's new ending... holy crap, as if everything that came before wasn't already bad enough. this "ending" (really more of a pointless post-finale coda that serves only to inflate the running time by an extra episode) is further proof that King should just retire already and spend his remaining days walking around Maine and enjoying his piles of money. he has nothing to offer as a writer anymore. if the first 8 episodes are turds, episode 9 is a steaming pile of runny diarrhea. because this is so bad, and because people might be tempted to watch this thing just out of curiosity i'll sum up the final episode and spare you that temptation and the misery that would inevitably result. i'll spoiler-text it just in case though:
so first you see Frannie give birth to her kid, and it gets sick, and everyone's worried it's gonna die of the superflu and the human race is gonna die out, etc etc but then it gets better. and other babies get born that don't get sick at all, because unlike Frannie's kid, both parents were immune. so humanity will survive after all. yay, i guess. no one knows what happened in Vegas (because what explodes in a nuclear holocaust in Vegas, stays in Vegas) and no one has returned yet, so Frannie is worried about Stu, but then one day as she's about to put his picture up on the dead people memorial, she turns around and he's standing there. he's alive because Glen's dog kept him alive and then Tom Cullen hauled his lame ass back to Boulder, but do they get any love? no, because that whole return journey didn't warrant a single scene in the series, but i guess it's not important when Stephen King has a whole story about a magic little black girl to tell us, but we'll get to that in a bit. up til now, it's all book stuff and it would have been fine if this part had been tacked to the end of the previous episode (along with my super-awesome Dark Tower setup-tie-in) but no, King's ego needs some stroking, so there's more to come. first, we fast-forward to next summer, and everyone's happy and having parties and stuff, but Frannie is homesick so she makes Stu promise to taker her back to Maine. because when you've got a newborn baby to care for, who wants to live in a place with doctors and food and shit? that's also from the book, but it's stupid so it's the one thing they would've been justified in cutting, but they need this stupid Frannie decision to set up the really mind-numbingly stupid things she'll do later on. so now on to the new stuff. Fran and Stu and Baby Abbie and Glen's dog all leave in a camper truck to head back to Maine. at some point they stop at a farmhouse in the middle of a cornfield, and the darkening sky and ominous music make it clear something bad's about to happen. while Stu checks out the house to make sure it's ok, and Fran nurses her baby, the only smart one in this group (the dog) heads out to check out the corn field. there's something out there and he stands there staring at it and whimpering. because humans are too stupid to listen to dogs when they tell you there's something wrong, Stu and Frannie don't notice, Stu declares the house safe, and they all go inside, with Stu calling out to the dog repeatedly until he finally turns around comes. then we finally see what he was staring at out in the corn: it's... A LITTLE BLACK GIRL! (duh-duh-DUH, cue dramatic chipmunk) for a second here, i thought instead of the Dark Tower tie-in i was hoping for, we were gonna get a whole Children of the Corn crossover instead. which i would have been down for. but it's more stupid than that. later that night, while everyone's safely asleep inside the house, we see the little black girl sitting in a tent in a clearing in the field holding a doll. the next day, Frannie's not feeling well or something, so Stu volunteers to drive back 10 miles to the last town they passed through to pick up some stuff from the drugstore. the smart member of the group suggests that maybe splitting up and leaving a mother and her helpless baby alone isn't a great idea, but no one ever listens to the dog. so stu leaves, frannie is out rocking on the porch when she spots a well with a pump and decides now would be a great idea to put the kid in a bassinet, leave her gun and walkie-talkie behind, and head on over to see if there's any water in that well that is covered with some really precarious looking old wooden boards. she reaches across to try the pump, gets a little water but then it gets stuck. so this genius decides to lean the rest of the way out and reach inside the pump to clear out whatever's blocking it: which turns out to be a rat, which bites her, which causes her to fall onto the rotting boards that give way and she tumbles all the way down the well. meanwhile, stu is headed back and he gets a flat tire. frannie is stuck unconscious at the bottom of the well, bleeding profusely from the head, with a badly bent and broken leg. while unconscious, she dreams about being in a jungle or forest or something, and Flagg shows up. he tells her she might have a skull fracture and die, that stu has a flat tire and can't come to save her in time, that her baby will be left all alone and possibly die too, etc etc but that he can save her. all she has to do is let him kiss her... and live rent-free in her head from time to time too. she acts like she's gonna agree, but then she bites his tongue and refuses and runs away. stu finally gets the flat tire fixed (after nearly having the truck fall on him because apparently the plague made people forget how to properly change a tire), and arrives back at the farmhouse. he finds the Little Black Girl rocking their baby on the porch, with frannie nowhere in sight and he's... confused. but then the LBG tells him she's at the bottom of the well, and has a broken leg and they need to get her out. so while he's trying to figure out how to rescue her, LBG gets in the truck and tells stu to get on the winch and she'll lower him down and then haul them both back out. somehow she knows how to operate a truck winch, and also knows both stu and frannie's names, which is enough to make him trust her to drag him back out of the well i guess because how could she possibly know their names, it's not like she could have overheard them by hiding in the nearby cornfield or anything. anyway, she lowers him down and they drag frannie out, and he lays her down, and then the Little Black Girl becomes the Magical Little Black Girl because she waves her hands over Frannie and miraculously heals her wounds and her broken leg. then she tells Frannie that there will always be evil, but their response has to always be the same, to be true and to "stand". get it? Stand? so Frannie gets up and stands on her previously broken leg and it doesn't hurt, and they look at the MLBG but now she's gone, because i guess she was Mother Abagail's ghost or reincarnation or something? or maybe just because all black characters in Stephen King books are magical. whatever the case, they find the MLBG's little black doll in the baby's bassinet, which means something symbolic, and then that's pretty much it. they get to Maine, everything's fine, happy ending for everyone but the dog who's still stuck living with these dumbasses. and then we see RF wake up in his cowboy boots and nothing else in the middle of the Amazon(?) jungle with the lost tribe who try to fire arrows at him but he catches it like a ninja and then blows up the one indian's head, which makes the other indians bow down and worship him, which makes him float up into the air to show he's powerful again, but don't worry, there's always a spear or indian head to block us from seeing his junk, so i guess Randall Flagg is really Austin Powers? the end
