Stephen King Month: The Stand

1.5 Stars - Awful

Now we're going way back to one of King's earliest books, a sprawling epic that was so long the original version had to cut out a large amount of material, it wasn't until several years later that it was published in its original uncut version. This is The Stand.

The Stand tells the story of a world wiped out by a plague, with only a small percentage of the population surviving. They start to have dreams, dreams of a sweet old woman by the name of Mother Abigail and dreams of a dark man wandering the world in worn down cowboy boots, named Randall Flagg. The people begin to split into two groups, those who side with Mother Abigail and those who side with Flagg. The forces of good and evil are set up on opposite ends of the country, ready to do battle with one another for the future of the world.

The book is an absolute masterpiece, taking its time to play out all the stories that develop and giving birth to King's most iconic villain, Randall Flagg, who would later play an important part in The Dark Tower series.

The miniseries however is atrocious, the characters are poorly acted, the script is nothing to shout about, the effects are lousy and it is really long and boring at six hours of sheer dross.

As an adaptation it is pretty bad, because even at six hours this is too big a story to do justice to in other media. Flagg is turned into a literal devil, which looks stupid. Characters are left out entirely or not as fleshed out as they should be. Despite this however I do kind of respect them for trying.

First Came The Days Of The Plague...

In short, an incredible book, an awful miniseries, skip this one unless you're some stupid guy who decides to watch a Stephen King film every day in October or something...