Stephen KIng's "The Stand", particularlyi its television adaptation.

I am simultaneously hyped for this AND setting a low bar. Really don't want to know anything about structure, casting, or anything else so I'm not opening this thread again for a while. (Don't tell me, I'll tell you! You believe that happy crappy?) Meet you in the Boulder Free Zone.

This is like making a movie about the mundane life of a boy named Pinocchio as he occasionally reflects upon the wild adventures he had when he was still a puppet.

Richard Linklater will 100% make this someday

I’m around halfway through the 1st ep and this is pretty much exactly as good as I expected it to be. So far the things that are bad are nothing to do with the things you guys are worried about.

like, and the details like the dying family driving into Hap's gas pumps, the government trying to infect Stu with Captain Trips without telling him, Frannie burying her father in their backyard, these were devastating details, really the height of the book. — the entire first episode is basically what’s described here and nothing else! (so far anyway)

The non-linearity feels sorta in unnecessary but isn’t much of a hindrance from what I’ve watched, also given everyone’s opinion that the plague stuff is so much stronger than the good v evil material it might even help to have the former spread throughout instead of relegated to the first third of the series

anyway so far it’s decent king-nostalgia comfort viewing and also plague-schlock that is taking me back to the distant days of lockdown 1 and watching stuff like outbreak — connoisseurs of day players going BIG with the foreboding sneeze will enjoy. Kid who plays Harold is great.

(so far)

that's reassuring. ok, I'll give it a whirl!

Just finished the ep - don’t want to oversell it, it is really ropy in places!

right now my father and I are watching this, and he read the book as well as I, and I suddenly don't care if it sucks. glad we can see this together

lot of vomiting in this ep

the flu gives people Jabba the Hutt neck too

I liked this ep, but there are flaws. a lot of the ep is dedicated to the outbreak, but the time jumps around arbitrarily with no aim or purpose, and would probably have confused me if I didn't know the story.

managed to capture the dread of a society slowly rotting, and a bit of time during the naive period where they thought it was just a bad flu they would outlast.

Presidential address was pretty chilling.

Overreliance on "coughing to make it obvious I'm fatally sick", like Eazy E in Straight OUtta Compton

having Harold be totally crazy incel with a manifesto maniac from the start seems like a mistake - it leaves out any room for character development, proper story arc or any tension as to how things will play out? I feel like the original mini series did that storyline fairly well, because Franny did sympathise with him somewhat and the audience could too despite him being a total dork. With the new version we know he's going to try to kill them from episode 1, and we know Franny and Stu will be a couple... just feels weird.
Overall despite totally not liking how they're going back and forth in the timeline, which wrecks so much of what makes the book great, I thought it wasn't too bad and i'm curious to see all the characters they left out of Ep 1

also they must have spent a shit ton on sync rights for the music on this

Yes, those are weird choices that I do not like the sound of.

I’m all in on this Harold. I thought I recognised him from somewhere - same guy who played Patrick hockstetter in crappy It adaptation (talk about a waste!)

The more I think about it the more I like this opening ep but worry about how it’s going to play out. I didn’t watch lost but I don’t get the sense they are trying to make a puzzle, felt more like what gerwig did with little women - telling a familiar story non-linearly gives a sense of simultaneity, everything happening all at once, that adds some immediacy (also maybe they’re trying to supply the missing Yeats line). And it is a familiar story, even if you haven’t read it or seen the old series - it’s no work at all to fill in the gaps from everyone is sick —> everyone is dead.

Obv it’s less assured than gerwig and I think going forward it may fuck with the momentum a bit but I didn’t mind the structure at all, my main problems were with how some of the scenes themselves were realised (I expected that tho). Not convinced by marsden yet, I know redman is kind of a boring stoic hero type but he didn’t react much at all to the actual end of the world/other scary stuff happening.

Supernatural side of things feels like where it could really go off the rails, it may not be possible - or even desirable - to do the dreams in a non-cheesy way (and they certainly haven’t) but the glimpses we have so far are p bad

Second ep much more jarring with the time jumps. Nadine and Joe show up in present day without explanation about how they met Larry. Why not....just show that first?

It was ok. Got bored.

Lloyd Heinreid and Poke appear. As does Rita.

lol I’m still waiting to be annoyed by this

They attempted a version of the scariest scene in the book (+ one of the most disturbing) and kinda flubbed it but a lot of other big moments from the novel - larrys mum dying, Larry meeting Harold, Lloyd in prison were well done

Casting is good, I really like this Lloyd

It’s definitely following a modern tv formula - I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see too much of mother Abigail and then midway through a whole episode just about her

I will feel cheated if we don’t actually get to hear baby can you dig your man

I definitely liked the Lloyd/Flagg scene.

They're showing more of the outbreak times than people feared. In alarming visual detail.

They really went for it with the swollen neck, it’s gross

They attempted a version of the scariest scene in the book (+ one of the most disturbing) and kinda flubbed it

The tunnel?

Yea although they changed it up and also sorta seemed to combine it with another bit (the zoo) - didn’t really work for me

Honestly don't think that scene can possibly translate to film and have the same impact.

The Baby Can You Dig Your Man in this series sounds way more like what i expected in the book

From the 12 seconds i heard

Guess I’ll retype this here: I am still enjoying this! It is often silly (like the book) but incredibly well cast. Glen & stu broing out over a post apocalypse cold one is the most Stephen king scene ever - unlike stu glen went to college which you can tell cause he is listening to “so what” by miles lol

Tom Cullen is still 😬😬😬😬 that spells 😒 tho I like this actor (coover from justified s2!)

I am enjoying all the actors. This nick is dreamy. Skarsgård is looking more like his dad than I remember. Between Owen Teague and some latter J Gylenhaal performances I’m seeing a bit of a re-mainstreaming of crispin glover’s vibe

I did like this episode as well.

Lol i commented on Miles Davis too.

I like who they got for Andros

xp should I bother watching this, or is it just “good for a Stephen King adaptation”?

Worth it for Harold alone imo

Maybe my expectations have been worn down by how bad this “prestige king” era has been but I am enjoying it way more than I expected to! I think most of the decisions being made are otm

glen: would you like to come back to mine for some caviar
stu: (extremely good ol boy voice) cavi-what?

But lol if this line isn’t from the book I can guarantee you Stephen’s idiot son wrote it

That doesn't read like an SK original to me, but I am fully ready to be corrected if I'm wrong about this.

Hmm i'm 5 long hours into this now (not really had the enthusiasm to keep up to date week by week) and feel like I know/like all these characters far less than I did in the 6 hour miniseries... I just don't know how they managed to make this so long given so far they've missed tons of things I would have expected them to include? Especially when the new additions have been pretty unnecessary. Almost all of the Vegas/lloyd stuff from episode 5 was tonally just terrible, particularly the acting. It's quite something when Cyclops is one of the most charismatic cast members in your show. not a fan of new Harold either, the guy is totally unable to seem even in a tiny bit normal, and again his tone just contrasts so heavily from the (yes slightly boring) naturalism of everyone else in boulder that the idea they seem not to really notice is just laughable.

meh.

the fact that nobody else posted for 3 weeks maybe means others are also unimpressed?

I don't hate it, I don't love it, I appreciate it, but I get frustrated with the time jumps, which I think is part of why it feels like it's missing so much.

I decided to watch The Expanse instead, I'll come back to it eventually

just finished this

oof

this (1994 version anyway) is on Horror Channel UK at 1 tomorrow afternoon, boxing day, for ~8 hours

When the 2020 series came out I signed up for a trial Paramount subscription, watched two episodes and didn’t care for them. Currently have access again so I finished the series. I really didn’t end up liking this much.

Some of the casting didn’t work as we well for me as the old TV version. Didn’t like Whoopi as Mother A, and Harold was okay but too one-note psycho as noted above. Hard to know what to do with Tom Cullen, but that wasn’t it. Others were bland and uninteresting.

Agree that the non-linear storyline in the first episodes hinders way more than it helps. Also disliked Vegas; Lloyd, Julie Lawry and Ratwoman were hammy and horrible. New epilogue was pretty meh.

Overall I give it C-.