The Stand

[T-ski]

M-O-O-N..... that spells reboot.

[millahh]

M-O-O-N..... that spells reboot.

Everybody knows that!

[vtgrad]

Laws YES... didn't you just!  Yes you did!

[millahh]

Ok, so I'm about two hours into the miniseries (when in Rome, I guess?), first thoughts:

-I was impressed with how much of Larry's backstory was successfully implied with a minimum of dialog
-I was picturing Larry s much more of a Springsteen type (perhaps this was because SK said as much in his notes)
-Matt Frewer as Trashy is perfect casting, as is Miguel Ferrer as Lloyd
-Skinny Harold makes no sense
-Molly Ringwald is a better fit than I'd thought, but seems very wooden
-Given how Rita & Nadine have been combined. I guess Joe is getting written out?  There's some cool stuff that gets lost with that
-Deitz/Deninger were a bit more camped up than I expected...but, it was 1994
-Kojak was cast well
-Overall, it delivers less punch than I'd expected.  But, the wife basically didn't sleep that night, so maybe it's just me...

[Cool Chris]

Having seen it a couple of times, and enjoying it quite a bit, I can agree with pretty much all of that.

* I thought the casting was mostly spot-on. Even the smaller parts were done well.
* They translated many of the characters well, especially Larry**, Lloyd, Glen.
* Rita and Nadine being combined, as with Deitz and Deninger make sense, I am sure it is an easy way to trim down a potentially bloated screenplay.
* Everything with Stu's stay at the Govt facility is a bit campy. On a related note, Gary Sinise is a boss.

** Larry is my favorite character in the novel and maybe my favorite character in any King novel. I was most apprehensive about how they handled him and I was fully impressed. And I never heard from that actor Adam Storke again.

I have other thoughts that are later on that I will small font for you to avoid for now. 


* Shame we don't get to see The Kid at all but I can understand why as he doesn't affect the main plot, and only interacts with one other character, who, while significant, isn't in the story very much.
* Harold was a bit of a miss for me. His transformation was so.... mild? In Maine he is just mildly annoying. His borderline psychotic behavior isn't even hinted at, and he ends up being a slightly disgruntled teenager who kills some people because his crush is seeing another guy. The series' biggest downfall for me.

[El Barto]

Doesn't Joe make a couple of appearances? I seem to remember him in both Kansas and Boulder.

Harold was by far the worst of the casting. His obnoxiousness was fine, but it was his transformation from Harold to Hawk that was the compelling part of his story. They blew all of that off and simply made him a tool.

Miguel Ferrer was excellent, but Lloyd was perhaps the most interesting character in the novel, and the miniseries reduced him to a token lieutenant. That was the biggest failing of the whole thing, I thought.

Overall I really liked the miniseries. I thought they did a very good job given the time constraint, and the casting was excellent. At the same time they really only needed another 90 minutes or so to cover what they cut out. It could have gone a bit further. That's why I'm happy the new version will be 10 hrs. That's plenty of time to really cover the novel.

[millahh]

Doesn't Joe make a couple of appearances? I seem to remember him in both Kansas and Boulder.

I'll know before that long.  At this point I'm only up to where Stu meets Bateman.  They've introduced Nadine already, so at the very least she and Joe are not a package deal.  I'm a little disappointed that it telegraphed that Nadine was in the thrall of Walkin' Dude so quickly, I like how that was a later reveal in the book.

[El Barto]

Doesn't Joe make a couple of appearances? I seem to remember him in both Kansas and Boulder.

I'll know before that long.  At this point I'm only up to where Stu meets Bateman.  They've introduced Nadine already, so at the very least she and Joe are not a package deal.  I'm a little disappointed that it telegraphed that Nadine was in the thrall of Walkin' Dude so quickly, I like how that was a later reveal in the book.

Well, by appearances I only mean that some kid plays him in a scene or two and doesn't say anything.   

Walston's Bateman didn't rally work for me. Glenn was a really cynical guy, and while Walston could have done him very well, he just didn't put much into him.

[Cool Chris]

EB and I have discussed this before and are in agreement on many of the major issues, good and bad.

In the book much of Lloyd's psychology we learn from his time in prison, which would be hard to write into an ensemble-type film. But any amount of Miguel Ferrer is good for your movie, no matter how limited.

Spot on with Harold, except I didn't even find him that obnoxious.

[Cool Chris]

Some production pics (and text I am too lazy to read through).

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/stephen-kings-the-stand-exclusive-first-look

[El Barto]

I wasn't too lazy to read through it, and now I'm sorry I did. Seems they're starting in the middle and telling half the story as flashbacks. WTF is wrong with a straight ahead narrative? I'm generally just fine with non-linear storytelling, but this seems like a really bad call for a couple of reasons. One is certainly that King's narrative is textbook. It's got beginnings, middles, and endings for the various groups of survivors that progress naturally. No need to make it disjointed. Another is that there are already a ton of characters and groups of characters to keep track of, and now we have to keep track of multiple tenses. I gather they're just doing it to be "modern," and separate this from the earlier miniseries, but there are already more than enough ways that they'll be doing that.  Frannie will probably tell somebody to go fuck their mother in the first 10 minutes.

Also, I loved this part:

King does this great thing that we made the conscious decision not to do

Really inspires confidence, don't it?

On a side note, "pretty" is not an adjective that comes to me when I think of Randall Flagg. Most of the other characters look just fine, but he doesn't really seem right to me. Eh, it's not like he's a major character or anything.

[Cool Chris]

Great, so they are Tarantino'ing it?

[Stadler]

Also, I loved this part:

King does this great thing that we made the conscious decision not to do

I'm avoiding reading that for... your reasons, but did they at least say what the "great thing" was?

[El Barto]

Also, I loved this part:

King does this great thing that we made the conscious decision not to do

I'm avoiding reading that for... your reasons, but did they at least say what the "great thing" was?

Basically chopping it up.

The showrunners said they loved Contagion—which is why they didn’t think it was necessary to repeat Contagion. “King does this great thing that we made the conscious decision not to do, which is to go to the 10,000-foot view of what’s going on,” Cavell said. “That’s not a luxury that our people have. What does the apocalypse look like from the ground where you can’t see what’s happening other places, you can’t see what’s happening to other people, you can only see your subjective experience?”

This goes to a point I've made many times before about modern audiences. Everything has to suck you in and be personal. It's no longer enough to just show a great story. You have to make the audience feel like they're in the middle of it all. That's why JJ Abrams hits you with lens flares and people walking the opposite direction as the camera motion, Or why when The Hulk body slams Batman the camera shakes. Movies for the cell phone generation. I was content to just watch Brody, Hooper, and Quint take on the shark. I didn't need to be fucking water-boarded when the boat started to take on water.

And as it relates to The Stand, King was telling a broad story, with something like 20 main characters. It wasn't personal. You cared about them. You got to know them. You didn't see everything through their eyes, though.  For my taste, the situations and the details were just as intriguing as the characters themselves.

[Cool Chris]

I was content to just watch Brody, Hooper, and Quint take on the shark. I didn't need to be fucking water-boarded when the boat started to take on water.

And as it relates to The Stand, King was telling a broad story, with something like 20 main characters. It wasn't personal. You cared about them. You got to know them. You didn't see everything through their eyes, though.  For my taste, the situations and the details were just as intriguing as the characters themselves.

Not to argue, as you make a brilliant point, but didn't you feel a little bit like you were sitting around the table while Quint and Hooper shared their tattoos instead of watching from afar? If so, that is a testament to the storytelling, not fancy camera/sound/editing/lens flares, etc...

[El Barto]

I was content to just watch Brody, Hooper, and Quint take on the shark. I didn't need to be fucking water-boarded when the boat started to take on water.

And as it relates to The Stand, King was telling a broad story, with something like 20 main characters. It wasn't personal. You cared about them. You got to know them. You didn't see everything through their eyes, though.  For my taste, the situations and the details were just as intriguing as the characters themselves.

Not to argue, as you make a brilliant point, but didn't you feel a little bit like you were sitting around the table while Quint and Hooper shared their tattoos instead of watching from afar? If so, that is a testament to the storytelling, not fancy camera/sound/editing/lens flares, etc...

Not really. I could relate to them. More importantly, I could imagine what it might have been like to be a fourth member of their group. I didn't feel like I was sitting across from Quint, though. Notice in that scene it's a couple of long, unbroken shots and Quint never looks into the camera. He always maintains eye contact with Brody off camera. I think there's only one reaction shot from Brody in the middle of it, looking somewhat shell-shocked. That is not how that scene would be shot nowadays.

And Spielberg is a master storyteller. That's what he does. He tells his stories so well that you can feel what it must be like, but doesn't force you to be a part of the movie. I never felt like I was running from helicopters up the side of Devil's Tower. I never felt like I was on the run from Nazis. I cared about whether or not they made it, though, and the realism of it all is a big part of that.

(I've played cat and mouse with helicopters, and run around on the side of Devil's Tower before, though obviously not at the same time. Suffice it to say, Spielberg really nailed that scene.)

[Cool Chris]

You are saying pretty much what I am, and exactly what I was thinking about the storytelling aspect of it.

“King does this great thing that we made the conscious decision not to do, which is to go to the 10,000-foot view of what’s going on,” Cavell said. “That’s not a luxury that our people have. What does the apocalypse look like from the ground where you can’t see what’s happening other places, you can’t see what’s happening to other people, you can only see your subjective experience?”

I have read this three times and I am still not fully sure what he means. I think I might, but it just makes me believe they are thinking about this too hard.

[Cool Chris]

30 second trailer up:

https://youtu.be/5hO49HF9f9A

[jingle.boy]

30 second trailer up:

https://youtu.be/5hO49HF9f9A

I dunno if it’s a Canadian thing, but “This video is not available”

[T-ski]

Two minute trailer....

https://youtu.be/l--4gu4CQBM

[jingle.boy]

Cool!  Fuck I wish I had time to re-read this before it's released.  It's been 30 years since I read it, and I have the 1200 page extended copy

[Cool Chris]

Did Stu(?) just say "... these uncertain times...?"

[lonestar]

Fuck. Yes.

[Cool Chris]

Random thoughts (trying, and probably failing, to not compare it to the 1994 miniseries)....

* I hope they don't make the visuals too stylized, or surreal (I don't know the right word). The Stand is about ordinary people in ordinary towns - Boulder, Ogunquit, Arnette (not real, but resembling a small town in East TX...). Some of these set pieces look like they are from the Wizard of Oz.

* I hope they write Harold more how he is in the book. He was a bit of a waste in the miniseries.

* I hope Lloyd and his psychology is explored more. He isn't given much in the miniseries, though Miguel Ferrer delivered (as he usually does).

* I hope Vegas and Flagg's followers aren't portrayed as a mindless mob of vice and evil. Sure, they were some bad dudes, but they were also lonely, misguided, isolated, afraid.

* Curious if The Kid will be in this.

[El Barto]

* I hope they write Harold more how he is in the book. He was a bit of a waste in the miniseries.

Harold's a fascinating character because of his transformation from obnoxious fat kid to Hawk. And even more fascinating because Hawk's newfound respect was a temptation for him to stop being a dick. Presumably just not as tempting as Laura San-Giacomo's ass.

* Curious if The Kid will be in this.

I'm curious to see if a few things get reinstated. The Kid probably will be. The zoo will be included, but probably toned way down. The white boy lottery definitely won't make the cut, though.

As for Lloyd Henreid, I'm pretty sure we've already discussed him. Along with Harold/Hawk he's one of the two really interesting characters in the book.

[Cool Chris]

When you and I discuss The Stand, we always find our way back to Lloyd. The problem, possibly, with his character is that, aside from the botched robbery, our introduction to him, and where we gain the most insight in to his character, is while he is alone in his cell. I don't know how you could do that well on screen.

I have not read this in ages, and do not recall the White Boy Lottery.

[El Barto]

When you and I discuss The Stand, we always find our way back to Lloyd. The problem, possibly, with his character is that, aside from the botched robbery, our introduction to him, and where we gain the most insight in to his character, is while he is alone in his cell. I don't know how you could do that well on screen.

I have not read this in ages, and do not recall the White Boy Lottery.

[Cool Chris]

I (used to) take pride in my knowledge of The Stand. I would rank it in the Top 5 books I know the most about. Thank you, sir, for humbling me! 

[lonestar]

First episode in the books. In intrigued so far, but they definitely take liberty with the material. I'll wait for more to catch it before beginning heavier discussions.

[jingle.boy]

Dayum... gonna have to pirate this if I wanna watch.  No one's picked up the broadcasting rights in the Great White North

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I will pick this up when I get the chance. Btw I just saw it's rating on IMDB, so many of the comments are about Amber Heard and not the show. Looking at the posters alot of them are new members with fresh accounts.

[lonestar]

Anyone know how many episodes they're doing?

[El Barto]

First episode in the books. In intrigued so far, but they definitely take liberty with the material. I'll wait for more to catch it before beginning heavier discussions.

In what way? I know they definitely "diversified" the cast, and I'm thinking they probably ratcheted up the excitement to appeal to modern ADD audiences. Anything else?

[lonestar]

First episode in the books. In intrigued so far, but they definitely take liberty with the material. I'll wait for more to catch it before beginning heavier discussions.

In what way? I know they definitely "diversified" the cast, and I'm thinking they probably ratcheted up the excitement to appeal to modern ADD audiences. Anything else?

It's not a linear telling of the story, at least as far as I remember it. I only read the book twice, the last time being decades ago, but it's definitely scattered a bit. For someone who knows the story it makes sense, but to a noob, it's gotta be confusing as fuck. I'm curious to see what someone who's more intimate with the story thinks.

[El Barto]

So is anybody still watching this? Only RJ has had anything to say about it, and that was weeks ago. I'm not going to watch until it's all done, but given what it is I was kind of expecting a fair amount of chatter. Unless it sucks, that is.