As if King’s original ending in the book wasn’t bad enough, this new series adds a totally unnecessary additional epilogue chapter that is just garbage.
I liked the Epilogue. At first I didn’t understand why they needed anything after the first 9 minutes had ended the series. But then after watching the whole thing, I really like the symmetry of the first episode having Frannie in a cornfield in her dreams, and the last episode having Frannie in a cornfield in real life and also her dreams.
Plus I really like the physicality of that scene with the well. Like, they seem to have used a real well, and a real winch, and actors actually going up and down, and it just gave me an appreciation for this series overall.
I guess in the end, we wind up with good and evil both in the world again after a Captain Trips reset to the human population. The good community starting in good old USA, and the evil community somewhere in Papa New Guinea I guess.
4 episodes in and this is…not good. I gave the first 2 episodes the benefit of the doubt, but now I’m just bored.
I can’t stop comparing to the 1994 miniseries. It’s unbelievable how much better it handled the characters and story.
I just finished this. I didn’t hate it, and I think it’s worth a watch but the 1994 miniseries despite feeling dated was a much better experience even with Molly Ringwald stinking up the place (hey look at me! I’m acting! overacting more like it.)
It seems other than Harold, they gave the rest of the cast short shrift. And the last episode was totally superfluous. I liked the original cast members better (except for Molly Ringwald) and I thought Lloyd was miscast. They didn’t develop Ray enough either so it appears weird that she was one of the folk on the walk at the end. I also thought Larry was underdeveloped we didn’t get to appreciate his arc of selfish self absorbed druggie to a good guy. Part of that can be attributed to all the time jumps which absolutely impacted the quality of this outing. I also thought the relationship between Nick and Tom also wasn’t given due attention, and Stu just showing up at the end with a cane also didn’t sit well with me because it really gave Tom short shrift too, this was his moment to shine.
The actor playing Harold, did a great job though. I was genuinely creeped out by him and that smile. I’m still shuddering. Exactly how I imagined an incel to be. I could see him as a school shooter which was said by one of the bullies in the first ep. I think he was an incel in the book too but we didn’t have that word in nineties.
So, TLDR, not as bad as everyone is saying, but the 1994 version is a better experience.
If you like Stephen King, or the process of writing, I HIGHLY recommend his book On Writing. And I recommend it in audio book form, as he is the one reading it. It’s a combination of his journey as a writer (his description of getting the phone call from his agent, in he and his wife’s tiny trailer, telling him they’d sold Carrie and telling him how much they got, is pretty funny) and his thoughts on the craft of writing.
I don’t do audio books but I might just get this one. Great book.
Thanks! I borrowed it from my Digital Library using Libby.
Sorry, but resurrecting only because this is probably one of my all time favorite books, and I’ve only just subscribed to P+ and just today watched this new(ish) series. I’ve not read all comments in the thread because the ones I have read I pretty much don’t agree with as is the case with most here, so I’m not going to go out on any debating limbs, and am not wanting to start any arguments. That said, in my humble opinion, this was a significant improvement over the Molly-version, but very far from the book. While I believe nearly all castings are improvements, my disappointments mostly are with the relatively non-existent relationships. No deaths, connections, surprises, etc, were significant because we were given no reason to care. All significant relationships which were supposed to be crucial were simply not developed at all, with the possible exception of Harold. Nick/Tom, Nick/Everyone, Tom/Everyone, Stu/Fran, Stu/Everyone, Fran/Everyone, Larry/Rita, Larry/Nadine, Nadine/Anyone (including Joe), Larry/The World, Trashcan/Anyone (including Randall), Lloyd/Randall, Lloyd/Anyone (including Randall), and why no Ralph? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved it, but only because I knew and loved the book so well. It just could have been so much better. That’s all I’m saying.
Quite often when I see books brought to the screen, I get the feeling that the screenplay and editing was a paint by numbers approach; making sure specific scenes from the book were captured in all their glory but losing focus on the connective tissue that makes a story more meaningful. I wonder if the fault of this approach is perhaps at the producer level where communication is vital; “this scene is fantastic - we’re doing great!” or “needs more cowbell.”
I believe this can still work well for fans of the book as they can fill in the missing parts with their own memory, but even then it relies an awful lot on the viewer to make it work and for them to more completely agree on the interpretation of the source material.
I think it originally had to do more with the difference between the media. You can take however much time you like to get through a book, while 5 or 6 hour movies were untenable. I don’t think the industry has completely adjusted to the streaming age.
Sure the producers could have committed to filming 5 or 6 seasons in order to shoehorn everything in, but that’s risky.