So, this is going to be a bit of a wild journey. Welcome to this Halloween marathon's token Stephen King week. Over the next week (give or take) we'll be covering some King adaptations. And by some I mean two, because they're big ones and split up over multiple hours of visual media. So, over the next four days we'll be looking at a part each of the 1994 TV miniseries adaptation of King's novel, The Stand. Really, I couldn't ignore this one for the blog in 2020, could I? Not when the first act is a wide-reaching, multiple protagonist-spanning dystopian nightmare in which a superflu pandemic obliterates the United States. Yeah. King wrote that over 40 years ago, and now look at the hellworld we're in. I seem to remember people jokingly tweeted at him about The Stand when COVID started ramping up, and he corrected them about some minor detail or another. Ignoring that for a moment, The Stand is one of his most iconic books. Some might say his best, and King actually has lamented that fact in some nonfiction writing I can't remember specifically. Something about his best work being the goddamn plague book he did in 1978. I feel that mood, but let's talk about the first part of The Stand. Let's talk about The Plague.
Look, it's kind of fucked up but I have to say it. King's version is so much worse than our current hellscape reality. That's not to downplay the horrible reality we live in and the very real tragedy of it, but the hellworld crisis of The Stand is so much worse. The virus in this case is some government-engineered superflu which gets loose, and spreads thanks to one security guard at the army base hightailing it out of there while infected. The plot of Part 1 covers just ten days in June. By the end of those ten days? New York is on fire, everyone in the CDC is dead, martial law has been declared, and the government and army are denying and suppressing as much information as they can about the superflu, carte blanche executing reporters and radio talk show hosts who try and let it slip. Like, Christ. This is all just the opening act to more grandiose things for King, though, so let's talk briefly about our players.
Stu Redmond in Texas gets taken to the CDC when his town's quarantined after coming into contact with that guard, aka Patient Zero. Everyone he knows dies to the superflu, but he's perfectly healthy. Immune, somehow. Fran Goldsmith in Maine (it's a King story, you knew Maine had to factor in) is taking care of her sick dad while dealing with this dorky incel type named Harold who has a crush on her. He'll come in later. Fran's also played by Molly Ringwald! That girl from all those John Hughes movies. Neat. Larry Underwood, pop star, is in New York and shit hits the absolute fan there with rioting and looting and shit on fucking fire. Nick Andros (played by Rob Lowe, neat!) is a deaf-mute in Arkansas who gets jumped by some asshole, briefly deputized, and then continually jumped by said asshole before killing him. There's also a guy played by Miguel Ferrer whose character name I forget and I'm deliberately not looking him up. He comes in more in Part 2, but all you need to know is he's arrested in a botched holdup. There's strange rumblings and wild dreams on the go, as Stu and Nick dream of an old lady in a cornfield who tells them to come to Nebraska and see her. There's also repeated mention of a dark man, and we see him here and there. A spooky fellow who will come in later, no doubt. Part 1 is the rapid disintegration into a hellworld, but it's what comes after the superflu death that makes The Stand really tick. We'll find out, tomorrow.
Oh, and the opening credits pan over dead bodies to fucking Don't Fear The Reaper. Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment