Le Fléau

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.

Save yourself time and watch the original or read the book.

Too much flashing around, sideways, forwards, backwards.

Whoopi Goldberg and Alexander Skarsgård are terrible miscasts.

I personally loathe Whoopi Goldberg as an actress. She strikes me as a washed up hippie in every single role. Casting her here as Mother Abagail she lacks the necessary motherly qualities for the role and comes across as... a washed up hippie. She looks the role but it isn't her.

Alexander Skarsgård meanwhile... he just doesn't have the element for Flagg. He comes across as a boring guy that would be best cast as a ride along cop in a police movie. He's not in the right element here.

Most of the other characters are mostly OK, but not stand outs.

Now split this up into 1hr runtimes. It drags out an already long story longer. Without the elements of continuity due to the flashbacks and such it's less immersive.

Read the book watch the original. Don't waste the time here.

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.

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.

I've read a few reviews from Stephen King groupies...and fair enough. The 1994 series had me mesmerized, though I had let it slip from memory. So this was exciting. Really if life came down to these characters, we are mince. It's so hard to identify with the 'righteous' at times, they seem oblivious to the world they're in. And the 'unclean' are really bland, the depravity is what you'd see going on if the world never went through this 'apocalypse' anyway. There is no awe at the Man himself, though he presents as the most watchable character...I don't know if there is enough going on to pique the interest to see it through.