A personal note beforehand: Stephen King's novel "The Stand - The Last Stand" is one of my all-time favorite books. I've certainly read the tome eight times since the late 80s. I really liked the six-hour TV mini-series Mick Garris directed in 1994 at the time. However, even then I was bothered by the fact that some elements of the novel had been smoothed out too much and that the effects sometimes looked too trashy. For several years now, I've been following the efforts of self-confessed Stephen King fan Josh Boone ("Fate is a Lousy Traitor") to remake the novel. Initially, a (multi-part) theatrical adaptation was envisioned, but it never made it past the planning stage. But Boone didn't give up and was now allowed to set up a nine-part series adaptation.
After everything I had also heard from Boone himself about the project in the past years - for example in an extensive podcast interview with Kevin Smith - I thought the remake was in good hands with him. Because you could tell that Boone really loves the book and the adaptation is a real affair of the heart for him. I was all the more disappointed when I read the first reviews and viewer comments from the USA, which were almost entirely negative about the new mini-series. Apart from the fact that the series about a deadly pandemic is not exactly released at the right time, the criticism is especially directed at two aspects: First, there's the casting of Amber Heard as Nadine Cross. Heard, who just got into a media mudslinging match with Johnny Depp, is readily panned by fans of the actor. She is credited with numerous 1-star reviews and negative comments on social media. So that doesn't really count and has no bearing on the actual quality of the series. But then the second aspect is actually a justified and for me fully understandable point of criticism.
This is about the narrative structure. For some really obscure reason, it was decided not to tell the story in a linear fashion. Instead, the plot gets in about halfway through the book, only to jump back and forth between the present and the past. This may have made sense in a series like "Lost", but here it takes away much of the story's strength. "The Stand" thrives on the development of events and characters. Because of the series' disjointed storytelling, much of the novel's strength is lost. This is a shame, because in itself the series does a lot right - both visually and dramaturgically. The atmosphere is right, the locations are well chosen and also the cast can - at least in the first episodes I watched - quite convince.
"The Stand" then also impressively shows in some moments how good the series could have become. But with the decision not to tell the story linearly, a lot was broken here. This also makes other dramaturgical weaknesses much more obvious. In my eyes this doesn't make this series a complete disappointment. Because in many scenes the realization actually corresponds to what I imagined when reading (of some changes that are due to the difference of the time in which the novel and the series are set). When the series works, it works really well. But just that also intensifies the disappointment about the mostly unnecessary things that are not well implemented.
So I will definitely keep watching and not give up hope that in the end then a mostly positive overall impression remains. Interesting now will be how the remake brings the story to an end. Because King himself has written a new finale for it, which will be seen as the ninth episode.
Info on the series:
In addition to Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail and Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg, the series also stars James Marsden, Odessa Young, Jovan Adepo, Amber Heard, Owen Teague, Henry Zaga, Brad William Henke, Irene Bedard, Nat Wolff, Eion Bailey, Heather Graham, Katherine McNamara, Fiona Dourif, Natalie Martinez, Hamish Linklater, Daniel Sunjata and Greg Kinnear.
You can watch THE STAND on Starzplay since 03/01/2020, with a new episode released every Sunday. The finale can be streamed from the end of February.
An article by Frankfurt-Tipp