The Stand

Hideous adaptation of Stephen King's sprawling novel stupidly breaks up the narrative into flashbacks and flash forwards, thus destroying any dramatic tension that might have existed. But I doubt there was any anyway under the lousy direction by a whole bunch of people. Was King involved in this mess?

Narrative aside, most of the cast is awful. Whoopi Goldberg and James Marsden are good. Everyone else stinks. I've never seen so much hammy overacting in one show. And all the blonde girls looks alike.

The timing of this mini-series is probably off. Showing a mini about the end of civilization in the midst of a pandemic might not have been the best idea. It leaves a sour taste.

The show runners here turned King's serious novel into a comic book.

Someone needs to edit this back into chronological order, it serves zero purpose to have it jump around all over the place. Whatever hack writer thought this was a good idea needs to slap himself back into sanity.

That's the only point worth making, everyone else has covered the show.

Maybe I'm the target audience for this current adaptation of The Stand. I didn't read the book and didn't see the 1994 mini series so I watched it with no preconceived biases. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it based on the awful reviews. Yeah, none of the actors are going to win an emmy and it seemed to bounce around a bit so there were times I was confused but I just kept watching and everything fell into place eventually. The storyline was good, not great, so I'm guessing the book was better, as many have pointed out. All in all, I'm glad I ignored the 1 star reviews and watched it. Maybe now I'll read the book and compare.

Why does everyone think they can rewrite King and make it better? I can't think of one time this worked out but they still insist on rewriting King just in case THEIR version is better. It isn't. I'm 15 minutes in on episode one and it's a confused mess. I know the novel well and read both the abridged and unabridged version. There's an ocean of material to work with so if you're tossing it all and making up your own story it's pure ego! And I might say it isn;t a tenth as good. I doubt I'll watch anymore. I'm expending too much energy trying to untangle their mess with my memories of the novels. The original mini series sucked but at least they vaguely followed the story! Why pay a fortune for King rights then rewrite the story??? All they care about is a sellable name, they don;t even want his story, they just want his name and a concept then they'll write their own script that won;t be a tenth as good as if they followed the novel but hey, they got their ego stroked and people will still watch it even if it's incoherent garbage.

I don't like making comparisons, but I can't help it in this instance. The 1994 miniseries had it's flaws, but at least it stuck to the main themes of the book; the human beings as pawns in a game of good and evil, who they are and become. Only one episode left of the 2020 version and I feel nothing for any of the characters, simply because I don't know them.

It is based on a massive book, but the 1994 miniseries managed to create a cohesively evolving story and characters. And that in a 6 hour long series. This version has 9 hours and yet the story is so all over the place that so many things don't make sense anymore. As if the writers were puzzling and piecing, cutting and pasting, until they just gave up, rather than working until it made sense.

This version seems to hope it can get by on chock value, but it completely misses the point when turning New Vegas into a Sodom or Gomorrah, rather than a fascist state, for example.

It's a hot mess, and if you're too lazy to read the book, then watch the 1994 version instead.