Stephen King’s “The Stand”

[High Plains Drifter 11054]

On 2/11/2021 at 9:08 PM, thunderlounge said:

 

 

Have there been good films off his work? Of course. But for all the Shawshanks and Green Miles out there, the good ones are running pretty damn thin. 
 

 

 

The Shining.

Carrie.

 

[Knoxtnhorn 6073]

Stand By Me

[thunderlounge 7980]

2 hours ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

Stand By Me

Damn. Forgot that one. Kinda sad since I watched that ome a couple weeks ago. 
 

 

3 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

The Shining.

Carrie.

 

 

Not even the same quality level as GReen Mile or Shawshank. 
 

Not Pet Semetary cheese, but not quality either. 

I’m not saying those two are bad and horrible and never watch, I’m talking overall film quality. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by thunderlounge

[mchookem 16435]

haven't read most of the thread yet b/c we just started and are only on ep 4, but observations thus far...

acting for the most part is really good. haven't seen much of Whoopi. and not enough of Alexander. heh. 

the minor character changes work (Larry as AA, Nick as Latino)

quality production value 

seems they followed the basic plot lines pretty close, some ommissions but nothing egregious so far...which is a good segue to what i think is wrong with the way the timeline is laid out in these early episodes...

part of what made the book so good was the growing sense of dread as each character's story developed, through the progress of Capt. Trips and their journeys to Boulder/Las Vegas. the jumping around in time breaks that 'building' up, you can't get really invested in any one story. 

we are enjoying it so far, though

ETA: i think we're halfway thru now and i realize we haven't met Trashcan Man... which makes me think they changed the climax... which is not good. *sigh*

dislike the Tom Cullen character. and this Lloyd is too stupid and fucked up, he's a caricature, Flagg would never tolerate him.

EATA: nevermind...Trash showed up...and i also do not like this character take. again, too over-the-top...they did that with several of the 'bad guy' characters. King kept their humanity...i remember feeling sorry for Lloyd at many points, even after he was already in Las Vegas. 

anyways, i'm obviously late to the party lol  

i do like this take on Harold...he's not too different than what i first imagined 40 years ago, except maybe taller. this kid was really good in Bloodline and Mrs. Fletcher. 

Edited February 25, 2021 by mchookem

[austingirl 2192]

I wanted to love this soooo much. The Stand is one of my favorite books ever, and my favorite SK book for sure. The 1994 miniseries was meh, and when I saw that they were rebooting it I couldn't wait. It has a great cast, and the miniseries format is really the only way you could properly adapt the book for the screen, IMO. 

So as to not completely shit on it, I'll say that I liked the casting for the most part. Frannie was a bit weird for me, and I can't really articulate why, but the actress was good. The kid who played Harold was fantastic - definitely got a "We Need to Talk About Kevin" vibe from him. I really liked the rebooted Ralph character, Ray. Greg Kinnear was great, as always. It was also fun to see Krycek from The X-Files. I don't think I've seen Nicolas Lea do anything since that show. Kojak the dog was awesome.

But.

Flagg was a complete cartoon character. I mean, The Stand is not subtle in its metaphors, so I wasn't expecting a light touch, but they made a character who is obviously the devil completely flat. I guess in the book there are a lot more Flagg POVs so you get into his head a bit. Skarsgard was fine, but I didn't like the material he was given to work with.

Nadine was ok, but I think her latching on to Harold probably came across as really out of the blue if you didn't know it was coming. Honestly, I liked Amber Heard better in the 10 minutes she was in Zombieland.

The pacing seemed really off. There's a lot to cover, so I get it, but the further we got into the show the more it felt like they were moving too quickly. I think it's just more proof that you can't properly do this show in 8 or 9 episodes.

Considering how little they developed Trashcan Man, I'd rather they had left him out altogether and had someone else bring the warhead. And the rewriting that has him being explicitly told to bring it to an airport hanger near New Vegas, and him fucking up and bringing it to the middle of town instead, did not work for me. It doesn't make sense that Flagg, supposedly omniscient, had no idea that TM didn't do what he ordered and was delivering death to the settlement. And it's not that his plans weren't ever upended, but usually when that happened it was because a character made a quick decision to defy him in the moment.

Finally, they should've modified a lot of the colloquialisms from the book. They just don't make sense now. Julie calling Tom a "feeb", Tom says "my laws", etc.

Still better than the 1994 version, though.

[High Plains Drifter 11054]

 

On 2/18/2021 at 5:23 AM, thunderlounge said:

Damn. Forgot that one. Kinda sad since I watched that ome a couple weeks ago. 
 

 

 

Not even the same quality level as GReen Mile or Shawshank. 
 

Not Pet Semetary cheese, but not quality either. 

I’m not saying those two are bad and horrible and never watch, I’m talking overall film quality. 

 

Just to be clear, you are saying that the movies Carrie and The Shining are "not quality"?

 

[thunderlounge 7980]

4 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

Just to be clear, you are saying that the movies Carrie and The Shining are "not quality"?

 

I wouldn’t say they were shit. But I was referring to the overall films. They are what they are, but compare them to The Green Mile, or Shawshank; even the two chapters of IT.

 

The cinematic quality is subpar. Some of the performances were shit. For example Shelley Duvall being nominated for worst actress razzie, Kubrick for worst director razzie.

That’s not to say either of those films were total shit. However they aren’t on the same quality level. Do I like them? Absolutely. But the scripts, performances, and visual quality just have that low budget cheese feel.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t power in their stories, just that they could have been done  significantly better. Look at IT for example. I thought they were done pretty damn well for the genre. I had some hesitation before it was out, was kind of partial Tim Curry and just wondered how it would turn out. They were done well, IMO. 
 

Now Carrie is better quality than Pet Semetary (original), but even that was worth the watch and an occasional now. 
 

But then you get something like The Green Mile. Still King, but it was given significantly more attention and handling. Same with Shawshank. Both are fucking excellent in all the areas. 

I just would like to see the same effort applied to other King works, and they could really turn out some incredibly powerful flicks. 
 

[rage-a-holic 4503]

What a horrible sack of shit. Fuck you CBS. There is nothing you can't ruin.

[XYZ 2154]

Finally got around to watching this. Cliff notes: 2020 The Stand sucks in most regards compared to the 1994 edition. Let’s compare.

Casting: Mother Abigail, Larry, and Stu are a push. Harold is probably the only character that’s slightly better in 2020. 1994 Harold was too cartoonish. Flagg, Nadine, Tom, Trashcan Man, and Nick: 1994 by a mile. Especially Flagg. I just can’t believe how much they fucked up the character of Flagg with Alexander fucking whatever.

Script: 1994 wins and it’s not even close. 1994 tried to stay true to the book, and they did a good job of telling the story and developing the characters. 2020 version: Hemingford Home, Colorado? GTFO. The back and forth in time at the beginning was unnecessary and stupid. The four that get sent to Las Vegas are all men. They had to do a fucking diversity script change and replace Ralph with a woman, because diversity. Fuck you for butchering the story just so that you can score woke points. And too much time spent on Harold, as if he were a major character.

Esthetics: 2020 looks better, of course. HD versus shitty video. But other than image quality there’s not much to say in favor of the 2020 version. There’s just nothing particularly appealing about the camera work or the sets in the 2020 Stand

So, in summary, this show fucking sucked. The end.

[Js1 85651]

I never finished it. For the reason that the time jumps took me out of it, that was so stupid. 

1994 edition >>>> 2020 version

And I had such high hopes for it too. 

[AUS-97HORN 11825]

Only read the responses until the shows first episode was released.

 

finally got around to watching this on Paramount Plus....

not really impressed at all.   As others said, the jarring first scene of being in Boulder confused the ever living shit out of me, I had to pause the show... I thought i had accidentally started on episode 4 or 5, then realized that no, this was the first ep, and then after that, we jumped to Stu already in Vermont.

What kind of idiot director takes a 1300 page book, and in the first scene, shows what would have been on page 500 or so. and on the 2nd scene jumps back to roughly page 60 or so? and NEITHER scene was particularly important to the book or story? 

Yes, the story itself was strong enough to get me to keep watching 9 episodes over 2 weeks or so, but the first TV mini series was lights out better than this one. 

They managed to completely gloss over the importance of multiple HUGE characters. Characters that you really shouldnt be skipping over.  And that glossing over happened because they went completely non-linear at the beginning of the story. 

Off the top of my head, the viewer missed out badly on the development of TrashCan Man, Judge Ferris, Tom Cullen, Dayna Jurgens, and even Julie Lawry.

Hell they didnt even fucking mention the name TrashCan Man until episode SIX!  You are shown that hes a weird dude who likes to blow shit up, but you have no idea why hes got burn scars all over his body.. or that he personally blew Gary, IN to smitherines (nor why he did it).  I am not sure if they did that because Ezra Miller's lunacy had started showing itself 3 years ago, and they needed to cut a lot of his shit out of the show... or if they truely meant to cut the character, who more than anyone else, brought about the destruction of Vegas, into a tiny role. 

The scene where the group of 5 decide who to send to Vegas as spies didnt have anywhere near the emotional impact to the viewer as it should have.   We are barely introduced to Dayna and Judge Ferris (didnt mind that they made the Judge female), but the Judge was a massive legal guide and confidant, for the 5 getting Boulder up and running, sending her to what was probably her death should have been seen as a much harder decision. 

Tom Cullen's story, and why he and Nick were so close,  and why they really thought Tom could handle the assignment, plus they skipped over HOW they made it so that Flagg couldn'd find him ...  and then after being sent to Vegas, why Tom was important to the final storyline. 

They absolutely skipped over his rescue of Stu... hell they literally never even show him finding Stu.. just Kojack, who runs off Lassie-style. Tom's next scene was in the next episode hes shown walking behind Stu when they get to Boulder.  Completely skipping over his caring for and rescue of Stu for something like 2 months as they made their way back to Boulder

 

now, there were some parts of this that were better than the 30 year old mini series, I liked that they had Rita (Heather Graham) in this version- she was important to Larry's development. Her suicide inspired Larry to stop being a fuckup.

I also actually liked Whoopi's performance, Iiked that they made the decadence of Vegas even more grusome in this story. 

It wasnt horrible, but I would give the orignal mini series an 8 for much better casting of the characters, and this a 6 overall.  It wasnt trash, but it clearly felt rushed... which doesnt make any sense, because they could have made this a 10-12 episode show and solved a lot of the rushed feel.