Tag: stephen king the stand

Book Review: The Stand by Stephen King

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Published in 1978 and rewritten and republished in 1990

The stand is a post apocalyptic novel written by American Author Stephen King. The rewritten version added an additional 400 pages , moved the setting 10 years forward and changed some significant plot details allowing it to be the version of the story King always wanted to tell.

The stand is the fourth novel written by King and is often considered his best work.

This is a very long book coming in at a total of 1’153 pages and is not recommended for fans of shorter novels.

I’m will be putting spoilers in this as it will be a review and a comparison with the two mini series so be wary if you haven’t read it yet.

The opening scene of this book follows a father who escapes a controlled facility under quarantine due to a deadly virus called “captain kicks”

It is written in a way that we learn a lot about this family and are instantly emphasising with them so when they all drop dead it is a shock and a great hook into the rest of the story.

This is also where we are introduced to Stu Redman the first of our main characters and arguably the main protagonist of this story.

I think what makes this tale so compelling and memorable isn’t particularly it’s setting as a end of the world pandemic wasn’t anything new in the world of story telling, but in fact the characters along with the relationships and connections they build with each other.

Each character is flawed in one way or another, Harold and Larry both feel like the world owes them something but ultimately end up going in different directions before the finale.

Then you have Nick and Tom two disabled characters that each show strengths in their disabilities. King has an uncanny ability to write character weaknesses in a way that can show immense strengths. Nick a deaf mute is easily the best communicator of the group and partially becomes the leader before his death at the hands of Harold and Nadine.

Tom is extremely loyal and has a lot of insight considering his mental disability, he is the chosen member of the group to infiltrate the Las Vegas sight ran by Randall Flagg because Tom is the only member that wouldnt crack no matter how much physical or mental torture.

I feel the saddest and most sympathetic character may be Nadine Cross at least up until the point she helps Harold Lauder turn against Mother Abigail and her followers.

Nadine was a school teacher who always wanted a child of her own but unfortunately couldn’t conceive. She finds a little boy and takes him under her wing before joining then heroes, she hooks up with Larry only to be replaced as soon as another woman comes into town.

The little boy she took under her wing also rejects her and begins warming up to Larry instead, she even gets rejected by Harold Lauder a typical overweight creepy loser, this was the final blow for Nadine who is tricked into joining the Dark Man after he gives her attention and uses his powers to give her what she’s always wanted a baby of her own.

With such great characters which the reader can resonate with it only adds a whole new layer to what is considerably a very well written story about how humanity can band together in times of crisis.

Good and evil both play a very important role in this story and there is obviously a lot of religions values in the book. Thankfully King has always had a way with handling these subjects, in a book like Carrie he is very good at showing the negative extremes of religion and really for the first time here we get to a see a much more humble and positive extreme.

Mother Abigail is written to be a messenger of god to guide our band of heroes to Stand together and defeat Randall Flagg. In her design she is quite a simple character but she uses her religious values with so much love and embrace it’s hard not to fall in love with her character whether you are religious or not.

On the other hand Flagg is the embodiment of evil, a dark shadow with an over empowering presence and a poisonous tongue, like a siren he is able to convince people to his cause even those following Mother Abigail.

Tom Cullen shows some magical powers with his ability to have visions, later on we even see him communicating with the dead after Nicks passing.

As you can imagine there is a lot to unpack in this book and I think having such in-depth characters and a such a compelling plot this makes a lot of sense.

I loved the Stand from start to finish however there is just one thing I would change and that is the final confrontation with Randall Flagg, in the book and the original mini series the literal hand of God comes down and sets off a nuclear blast wiping out las Vegas and all of flags followers. I found this to be really over the top and I think this moment would have been more impactful if Lloyd Henry; flags right hand man had pressed the nuke after the people of las Vegas saw Flagg for who he really was and joined the stand taking away his power with everyone sacrificing themselves to destroy his presence.

Of course just like in the remake series Flagg appears right at the end of the book on a remote island becoming a god to a cannibalistic tribe making the stand feel ultimately pointless however King superfans know that this is just a set up for Flags return in the Eyes of the Dragon and the Dark Tower series.

The Stand is easily one of my favourite Stephen King Novels to date falling slightly short to my love of the Shining. It is extremely relevant to this day and age especially with the most recent COVID 19 pandemic.

It is a novel that shows humanity at its lowest and the struggle they have to go through to band together and ultimately become the strongest humanity has ever seen, it may not be my favourite story by King so far but the characters here are easily the most memorable for me and are in my opinion the selling point of the story. It’s a long read but highly recommended picking it up or listening to the excellent Audible reading by Grover Gardner.

To tie things up both mini series of this book are very good in their own rights, while the original clearly had better casting choices and in my opinion better story telling, the remake is simply put the most accurate on screen adaptation to date and while I prefer the original the remake is a worthy second choice and is genuinely easier to stream as it’s on Lionsgate +.

Our next venture into the world of Stephen King takes us straight into The Dead Zone a much shorter book (thank god lol) and number 5 in our deep dive series.

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The Stand (1994) Review

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Welcome to our fourth Stephen King deep dive this time we will looking at his Novel The Stand and its two mini series adaptations, the goal in this series is to see which adaptation has the closest ties to the original book, we always discuss the novel last so we will begin with the 1994 mini series directed by Mick Garris.

The series was given a large budget and consists of 4 episodes coming in at a total of 6 hours long and this did not include commercial breaks.

The show starts with a police officer and his family escaping a secure facility which is housing people who are sick with a new and top secret deadly virus.

After this we begin to slowly meet our main cast of immune persons but not before one of the best opening credits I have seen in a TV show.

It pans across the facility showing all the dead of scientists with (Don’t Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult playing in the background, the lyrics to this hit song are actually very important and have a lot meaning when tying it to this story.

All our times have come
Here but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are

The Reaper in the lyrics could be referring to the virus but personally I think its a warning of Randall Flag the evil entity of the series with the song being a message to our heroes not to fear him as they will have the power of God behind them.

In fact the show its self doesn’t go too deep into this new pandemic and does have a lot of religious morals, especially when you consider the portrayal of Mother Abigail by the late Ruby Dee, I strongly believe that coming up with a overly positive and serious religious character can be extremely difficult to pull off but Ruby does a phenomenal job here.

Mother Abigail is definitely considered an embodiment of Christianity in her character that initially only appears in dreams to our band of heroes who each share an immunity to the virus.

Speaking of the remaining cast I will say that I was thoroughly impressed with how well casted the series was, I haven’t read the book yet so it’s difficult for me to pinpoint whether these portrayals are accurate to the original novel but everyone here did a phenomenal job.

Some were big names were tied to this production including Gary Sinisi, Molly Ringwald, Jamie Sheridan, Rob Lowe and Bill Faberbakke to name a few.

Jamie Sheridan plays main Villain Randall Flagg, the demonic character who starts splitting up our surviving heroes turning them against each other,  he is a little goofy in this although still maintains his serious side, he is definitely a threatening villain but I really struggled to understand his motives other than taking over the City of Las Vegas.

There are two roles in this production which represent persons with disabilities, one of these characters Tom Cullen is portrayed by Bill Fagerbakke who is best known as the voice of Patrick Star on Spongebob Squarepants, Bill was fine in this but its hard to look at his portrayal as Mentally Handicapped more than simply dim witted. I think when you look at other portrayals in films such as Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Rain Man or Riding the Bus with my Sister that tackle the mentally challenged in much more realistic portrayals they became much more impactful and memorable due to the realism behind them.

Rob Lowe is here 10 years prior to his work in the 2004 Salems Lot mini series, here Rob plays Nick Andros a deaf-mute and one of the main heroes of the series. Rob is amazing in this and he gives a very respectful portrayal to his character and never tries to over play the disability. He has very few speaking lines during dream sequences but without his voice it gives the character much more personality and in many ways helps to show Lowe’s talents and range as an actor, I look forward to seeing Rob in more productions in the future.

I have only spoken here about my personal choices for the most discussable performances of the production but as a whole everyone does a great job and I don’t think I could pin point a single performance that I thought was badly casted.

I think if I had to say anything about the performances here I would say that there are definitely some sillier characters that I feel were somewhat unnecessary but none of them are massively important roles so I don’t feel it particularly matters.

The show deserves a lot of recognition for its variety of memorable sets, this production might have more locations than any other production of a King book (at least from what we have seen so far). There are so many to choose from but my 3 favourites are Mother Abigails Farm, Las Vegas and the abandoned town where Nick and Tom get shot at by Julie Lawry.

I think if this production struggled with anything I would say pacing, you see while this still comes in at 6 hours the book is huge, in fact its one of kings longest. I haven’t read it yet but I do feel that this production skipped over a lot of plot in order to cut down the production times, for example one of the episodes starts with Stu trying to perform surgery on another survivor, there was no mention of this in any prior episode so it comes out of nowhere.

Another example would be Christina’s relationship with Randall Flagg, a relationship which comes out of nowhere and very quickly falls apart due to certain circumstances.

Tom Cullen being sent away from the other members is another random moment without much background, I never really understood why this was done or why he got hypnotised other than maybe to find the members who turned evil?

I had a really good time watching this series, it had a great cast of likable characters and a story that was almost perfectly told if not for its pacing issues and a couple of sillier performances that I feel slightly took away from the realism that the rest of the show was portraying. Looking past its few issues what we have here is a fairly fantastic television series that makes efforts to respectfully portray more sensitive subjects, beliefs and needs.

If you ever get the chance check this one out, so far during this massive Stephen King Project it is the best TV series and will be hard pressed to get beaten anytime soon.

Up next is the 2020 series will this one offer anything new or will it not compare to the 1994 version?

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