Chris Bergeris-The Stand

Released: 1994
Written by: Stephen King
Directed by: Mick Garris

Stephen King released his 4th book (out of over 40) in 1978, entitled "The Stand". The concept of the long novel is an American military base has accidentally released a pleague that kills 99.99% of the population. The novel focuses on the survivors of the pleague as they split into two groups. One, is led by an elderly black woman named Mother Abagail and the other is led by a mysterious mystical man who goes by many names, but mostly goes by the name of Randall Flagg. The two leaders represent not onyl good and evil, but God and the devil. As one group is creating a new society, the other group is destroying society. It all leads to a big battle of good and evil and who will make their last stand.

The Stand is acutally published in two different volumes. The original, which was released in 1978 and the second volume (which is really the only one you can find in bookstores) was re-released in 1989 with all the pages that were cut out from the original which all adds up to 1141 pages, making it the longest book of King's carerr (and for those keeping score The Stand is longer then all 3 books of Lord of the Rings) and the second volume also adds a new ending to the book. For years, fans asked King if The Stand would ever be adapted into a film (as if even a 3 hour movie could cover all 1141 pages of the book) and finally, in 1994, it happened.

In 1994, ABC bought King's adaptaion of the Stand (which took him a whole year to adapt) and turn it into a 4 hour mini-series. While the mini-series casted a then nobody Gary Sinease as the main character role (Sinease now stars on CSI New York) it also casted Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald. The mini-series had many actors and many characters to cover in King's long epic. However, because the series was limited to four hours, several things had to be changed. For one, the script that King had written was based off of the 1978 version of The Stand, not the 1989 reissue which meant certain things like the new ending, were not included. Several characters were also either cut or formed into one. For example, the character of the woman who follows Larry Underwood out of New York City was formed into one with the woman he falls in love with, Nadine Cross. The other problem with the mini-series was the fact that it was brodcasted on network televison, which meant there were certain censorship issues. Nevermind the fact that plot of the book consits of almost the entire population of America dying (Mind you that in a post 911 network televison may have servere problems with it) but the violence was played down. This became a big problem for King later on when his other famous novel, "It" was adapted for televison and many of the iconic scenes in the book had to be cut out because of violence.

Other problems with the mini-series was that while some events like the society getting electricity back was exciting the novel, it didn't translate well on televison. And we also must remember that this was in 1994 TV, which meant while there was some good acting (Sinease and Rob Lowe's portrayal of a deaf and mute were good) most of it was cringe worthy. Other problems included the very low budget special effects that the show got and it really doesn't go well with the end of the novel when the hand of God comes down and destorys a bomb. While it made for a good scene in the novel, it came off cheesy and unfullfilling in the show.

Overall, it was a good attempt to adapt King's most famous novel, but in the end it failed. It would be interesting to see if it could be done again (like how the Sci-Fi channel is preparing to re-do "It") but with better acting and better special effects and maybe a more concise script could make this into a very decent adaptation.