Stephen King's "The Stand" remake on CBS All Access

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Spaghettiows, Sep 24, 2019.

  1. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Except I thought it DID get better once they moved to a more linier storyline.
     
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  2. aroney

    aroney Who really gives a...?

    I do respect your opinion.

    Mine is that it actually got worse since they failed to stick the landing on any of the key plot points, characters, effects, and on and on and on...

    If you're gonna rejigger the story with a non-linear approach from the get-go at least have it pay off somehow. It served zero purpose and then there was...nothing.

    Was there even a single bit of suspense in that show? REAL scares? Moments where we cared about the characters?

    About anything? Man, the more I think about it, the more it sucks. :D
     
  3. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    OK...you got me there. I do agree that I was thrown when it moved to linear out of the blue...like a producer woke up half-way though editing.
     
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  4. I was really hoping that this series would be like the '94 mini-series with a bigger budget, more time for the details and story points not included in the series (but in the novel), and an updated, better, script. It really failed to deliver the goods for me.
     
  5. Remurmur

    Remurmur Music is THE BEST! -FZ

    Location:
    Ohio
    My own fears that this all would not happen, as well as some of the reviews that I have read so far are pretty much the reasons why I haven't yet paid the scratch to CBS Access to watch it and decide for myself.

    Having said that, as a King fan who read both versions of the novel first, I actually was surprised at how good the '94 Mini-Series turned out to be, given the obviously inadequate budget to what the story actually demanded and deserved. I thought that the screenplay stayed close enough to King's original story, and that the casting, for the most part, was close enough to what I had already envisioned for the characters in my mind's eye to make it an enjoyable experience.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2021
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  6. P(orF)

    P(orF) Forum Resident

    The whole thing is on Paramount+ with a thirty day free trial.
     
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  7. Remurmur

    Remurmur Music is THE BEST! -FZ

    Location:
    Ohio
    Thanks for that ! :cheers:
     
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  8. Phillip Walch

    Phillip Walch Forum Resident

    Or when the editors had finshed reading IT again hehe. It honestly felt like they were trying to give it the IT vibes with the back and forth and then suddenly its straight. A shame.
     
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  9. aroney

    aroney Who really gives a...?

    The MAIN problem was all in the approach of the showrunners and what they thought was most important.

    They thought (wrongly) that the most compelling aspect of the story was Boulder, so they built the whole series around that - bad move.

    If I was an exec and they came in and said "Hey, the best stuff about The Stand is when the characters are in Boulder - so that's going to be the main tent pole for the entire series", I would have thrown the script at them and kicked them out. :D
     
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  10. SomeCallMeTim

    SomeCallMeTim Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rockville, CT
    I think the disjointed first few episodes are a result of post-production editing.

    Production wrapped on March 14, 2020, the beginning of the big pandemic shutdown in California and other hard-hit areas (my own included). Initial estimates predicted that the crisis would be under control at various points last summer.

    "The Stand" was originally hyped as a ten-part series, yet the series as presented ran its length in just nine installments. I believe that the horrible (and hopefully not irreversible) editing that had us bouncing all over time and real estate was a post-production decision not to focus too heavily on the pandemic part of the story. As both the fictional Captain Trips strain of the flu and the very real COVID menace have major respiratory components, many of the symptoms of each mirror the other - not exactly what people looking for an escape from pandemic woes would choose to watch.

    I imagine that, as last year wore on and CBS All Access (now Paramount Plus) fretted about this very expensive original program gathering dust, someone came in with scissors and hacked out an hour's worth of the hacking and sneezing that accompanies the first third of the story. Then, in order to water down the impact of what remained of the pandemic, the first two parts of the tale were hackneyed together. Unfortunately, whoever did this also watered down suspense and character development to the equivalent of a gallon of warm water with half a Boullon cube thrown in.

    I hope we get to see this in purely linear fashion at some point, but I have my doubts. "The Stand" was shot when Americans hadn't faced a pandemic in over a century - certain details during the plague flashbacks (Larry's New York bar and music venue open and mask-free, for instance) just don't ring true anymore after the events of last year.
     
  11. Phillip Walch

    Phillip Walch Forum Resident

    I think you may be onto something. I had not really considered the idea that they had possibly watered down events given the backdrop of world events but thinking about it logically it makes sense. I said previously that it felt like they had hacked it down to fit the given episode and time count but had mised the fact it was indeed billed as 10 episodes. Plus previously I mentioned that the editing felt like it was done by people obsessed with IT and I thought they were maybe trying to be 'King' with the time skipping but if the overall 10 part series was met with concern they could have gone with the flashback idea to take out some of the more graphic events.

    As for whether we get to see some other version of it? IMO I think not but I would welcome it all the same.
     
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  12. aroney

    aroney Who really gives a...?

    That would make sense, expect for the fact that the showrunners always said that they found the most compelling thing about The Stand was the Boulder sequences...o_O

    That's why they started in Boulder and used all those flashbacks - nothing to do with what was going on in the real world.

    Boulder was the center of the show - always the plan, Covid or no Covid.

    Either way, it still sucked. :D
     
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  13. Phillip Walch

    Phillip Walch Forum Resident

    I don't think the suggestion made by @SomeCallMeTim can be dismissed as easily as you suggest, and saying "That would make sense, excect for the fact that the showrunners always said that they found the most compelling thing about The Stand was the Boulder sequences" does not discredit his suggestion in any way. They said, back in 2019 that it would be a 10 episode limited series, all the marketing talked about that, then suddenly in August 2020 it was a 9 episode series. A TV production does not just lose an episode like that, especially after it had already been shopped around the world to different distributors. Also, episode 9 is known by 2 names, The Circle Closes and Coda: Frannie in the Well. I think those were originally two separate episodes.

    The episodes feel cut unnaturally. The rythym is never there and I think cutting out the early pandemic is a likely scenario. That would not change the show being centered around Boulder, just the opening two episodes playing out differently.
     
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  14. aroney

    aroney Who really gives a...?

    Was not my intent to be dismissive about the well-crafted post. I do disagree with the "theory" as posed though.

    I'll go back to being singularly dismissive of The Stand.

    It still sucks...
     
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  15. fuzzface

    fuzzface Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lebanon, MO
    The gfriend and I enjoyed it.
     
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  16. P(orF)

    P(orF) Forum Resident

    Let’s see... a miniseries about a deadly world wide pandemic where half the population (the rednecks and rabble rousers, of course) follows a telegenic, murderous, racist demon/clown while the other half (the artists and intellectuals and persons of color) follow a gentle woke black saint with a deaf mute half-blind mouthpiece. Who would believe it?

    Having just finished it, I'm trying hard to think of anything positive, but not only was it awful... from the chopped to shreds beginning (and I think there’s a lot of merit in the argument that they panicked after COVID and recut the early scenes, thus robbing the series of its strongest scenes) to the truly terrible casting (where to start ... Stu and Fran vanished as soon as they were offscreen, Flagg was just boring, Nadine was maybe the least sexy siren in the history of sexy sirens, etc. ... I did like Tom Cullen) to the amateur cartoon Vegas to finally, the awful final episode, it revealed the original novel to be almost as cartoonish.

    You have to remember that, at the time it was published, Stephen King had practically invented the horror novel as a mass market commodity and when he expanded into horror fantasy with this door stopper there just wasn’t anything comparable. So we rabidly ate this up and King became a cultural idol. (I’m not exaggerating even a little. I’ve been a daily visitor on this site for more than a decade and Stephen King is the only writer who regularly inspires lengthy discussions. There is no number two.) But forty-odd years later we have seen the real thing and King’s book has lost its power to shock or move us.

    None of which excuses the mess this miniseries became (and why in the hell was it edited for commercial breaks?)

    There was a time when I loved Stephen King... and Neil Young, and Clint Eastwood... and I will always remember how much I loved them, but enough already...
     
  17. Daryl M

    Daryl M Senior Member

    Location:
    London, Ontario
    This debuted here in Canada yesterday on Amazon. I was preparing for the worst (I'm
    always wary of stuff filmed here in Canada) but I watched the first two episodes and dug
    them. And `M-O-O-N spells Moon' hasn't even appeared yet. But how could a nerd with
    Eraserhead and King Crimson on his walls go to the Dark Side, anyway?
     
  18. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Funny you say that...my partner and I are always impressed with Canadian productions...certainly their effects teams seem light years better that what you see on US productions.
     
  19. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    I'm three episodes in and not liking it that much but I'm in for the long haul so...

    The back-and-forth flashback thing is annoying and pointless.

    There doesn't seem to be any horror in it. A lot of people throwing up though.

    Missed opportunity : no Larry and Rita making their way through the rotting corpses in the Lincoln Tunnel , a highlight of the book and the original movie. Here, Larry makes his way through a smelly sewer and sees his dead mom.

    Speaking of the original movie , it seems to stand up fairly well although a bit tame considering.

    Randall Flagg is once again not as I picture him.

    More bitching later but it seems that M-o-o-n spells crapola.
     
  20. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Well....I binged heavily last night and today and ( barely ) managed to finish ' The Stand '

    It was truly no good. Poorly executed on all fronts. I was going to bitch at length but can't be bothered. Huge disappointment.
     
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  21. Because CBS All Access (now Paramount) doesn’t exist everywhere and it was aired on other networks with commercials overseas.
     
  22. I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s on par but the Canadian productions can be produced for less allowing for a show to produce more ona smaller budget. Perhaps that’s what you’re seeing. It’s also hard to know what is produced domestically in the U.S. anymore because it is farmed all over the world today.
     
  23. coffeetime

    coffeetime Senior Member

    Location:
    Lancs, UK
    In two minds wether to watch the new series or not.

    I read the original 1978 book in the mid/late 80s, my first King novel along with Misery, both of which I picked up at a school summer fete. Absolutely LOVED the 1978 book on first read, devoured it.

    I never got around to reading the 1990 uncut & complete expanded book at the time (always meant to), and always had a soft spot for the 1994 mini-series. The moments and casting that didn’t work didn’t and still don’t offend me as much as some, and much of it is terrific (loved Gary Sinese’s Stu). Having long since got rid of my old 2xVHS set from the 1990s (along with the means to play VHS tapes), I’ve ordered the BluRay of the 1994 set to watch again.

    I’m reading the expanded version now via Grover Gardner’s astonishingly good audiobook reading via Audible. I’m making excuses to take long walks & long baths, just to listen in peace. I was already familiar with just how good a narrator Gardner can be with his 90s audiobook readings of Richard Rhodes Making of the Atomic Bomb/Dark Sun: Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Other than the expanded version’s occasional odditity with the 1990 timeshift (Larry idolising before-his-time musicians etc), the new parts are mostly seamless and the book seems more detailed and richer than that I remember from my first reading.

    I’ve also checked out a few issues of Marvel comics serialised adaptation; it hews surprisingly close to the book, perceptibly picking out the key moments and dialogue from each chapter and marrying it with evocative, high quality artwork. Tempted to pony up for the hardback boxed Omnibus edition to read after I’ve finished the audiobook.

    So far I’ve 2 adaptions of the book lined up to rewatch & read after I’ve finished the audiobook. I’m wary of the new series though - the start in the middle and flashback structure sounds like a particularly bad idea (imagine if the book had been structured that way!), potentially unintelligible to anyone who wasn’t familiar with the book itself or at least the story already. Are there any aspects of the new series that make it worth watching given I’m familiar with the book and not expecting the new series to displace the 1994 mini-series in any way?
     
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  24. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City

    I don't think you should be discouraged from watching; while disappointing it's not terrible.
    I think the flashbacks were a bad idea, and they eventually give way to a more liner story. Certainly there are some solid performances and the special effects are better today. And whereas the end of the original mini-series left me cold (to say the least) I thought they did a solid job on the new one, and I liked the coda that King wrote.
     
  25. aroney

    aroney Who really gives a...?

    I obviously think it was terrible and will never watch it again.

    I basically hate-watched the whole thing out of a morbid curiosity to see how much more they could screw up.

    That said, maybe try the first 2 or 3 episodes and see if it floats your boat?

    Fair Warning - it does not get any better as it goes along - it gets worse...
     

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