Right. So that's The Stand, done and dusted. Uh. What in the world did I put in front of my eyes for the blog? I said it last time, but my memory has this as a grandiose thing remembered rightly as a King classic. I'm willing to chalk it up to adaptation decay, now, but the product I just finished was a bit of a mess. Let's try and finish this off, and try to ascribe something to it. The Stand is, as best I understand it, a grand Stand of good versus evil. The binary here is a little more shallow than usual, but there are glimmers of nuance here and there. Just the slightest glimmers of doubt in the Grand Plan Of The Lord for our four guys to walk out into the wilderness, into the lion's den. Let's talk about that lion for a moment. Let's talk about Randall Flagg.
Look, this guy's a major part of the Stephen King Literary Universe. A major part of my inspirations, too, as his personality in the Dark Tower books stands out. The Stand is his debut, but what do we have in this series? He's better than the Flagg/Man In Black from the Dark Tower movie, that's for sure, because he actually fronts a friendly jokester personality. He's also like Satan or some shit. I am playing Death Of The Author here (even though the author is very much alive in the text, as King has a cameo) and ignoring anything that isn't on screen. What we get here is the grand plan of Randall Flagg crumbling around him. He betrays Harold and takes Nadine, forcing himself upon her to create his legacy in a pretty horrific scene (and not just the horror of Randall Flagg having a demon face!) before she flings herself off a balcony in a later scene... but not before taunting him that his empire will crumble. Right, okay. It's evil being vanquished by good as all its plans fall to bits, but exactly what in the fuck does good do here? Our characters follow their karmic destiny, the will of God or whatever you'd like to call it, and in the end what is it that kills Flagg?
What is it that wipes Las Vegas off the map like a modern day Sodom? A nuke brought by the unhinged Trashcan Man, who brought it to Flagg for reasons. A nuke set off by wayward devil lightning shot out by Flagg which manifests into a giant hand that the goodies call the hand of God. What the fuck? The grand plan of the Lord is to sacrifice you along with everyone else in what's little more than a Final Destination trap? This is a weird fucking climax. I do like the ending wind-down, with Stu and Tom Cullen trying to get back home. It takes them until the winter, and seeing the frozen landscape along with the travel music gives me some emotion. Fran's baby lives through the flu, and there's a final line wondering if people can change which is totally muted compared to the book (I know, I know, author dead, couldn't resist) and that's The Stand.
Well. It makes me want to go back to the book and see if the adaptation missed something, because this started as a resonant thing with our world and ended as a weird mess. You know, like a Stephen King book. Ah hah hah. That's a little joke for all the Constant Readers out there. Shit, I don't know. If you're 18 like I once was and you probably once were, the mysticism and destiny would likely light your world on fire. At double that age, it doesn't hit as hard as it could. Maybe I'm just too old for it. Maybe it was just a bad adaptation. Hell, I wasn't really scared of The Stand, and isn't that what I built King up to be in my head? We need a spooky King story. Oh. Oh no. I have just the grandiose epic of mysticism and destiny in mind. Unfortunately it's the one that's fucking haunted me for 25 years. Yes. Next time we go there.
While I wouldn't be surprised if the adaptation is worse than the book, the adaptation is supposed to be fairly faithful to the source. When I read the Stand around age 27 or 28, I thought that the plague part at the beginning was the best section of the novel, and it is crazy how the story develops. I still liked it, but I think his plotting in It is a fair bit stronger (although the children having sex at the end is terrible).
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