The Stand (2020)

“Dangerous being a prophet. Especially during times of upheaval. ” – Ray Brentner

Number of Times Seen – 1 (16 Feb 2021)

Brief Synopsis – After a deadly plague hits the world and kills 99% of the population, the forces of good and evil vie for the souls of the survivors.

My Take on it – Amazing to watch this story play out during COVID-19 because it helps make things feel even more relevant to our times.

The cast is great bit these actors aren’t able to do better jobs with these characters than the cast of the mini series from 1994 were able to do.

Despite the film being 9 hours long, things aren’t presented in a more profound way or in depth and it’s really hard to care about these characters as shown here.

Great seeing new interpretations of characters from the novel (and miniseries), but they aren’t really able to give us anything new or profound here.

The non-linear method that they tell this story in makes things a bit crazier to follow than the original novelor miniseries and they should have stuck to the normal linear method of telling this story becaue it helps develop the characters so much better.

The additions to this story by author Stephen King help give a bit more closure to the story, but the rest of the story just isn’t powerful enough in it’s premise or message as this story should be.

I guess, this is further proof of how great an author King truly is because in order to make his work come to life, the character development needs to be much deeper and even in a 9 hour series, they aren’t able to achieve that like he was able to in his original (or even expanded) versions of this story.

Watching this, made me yearn to rewatch the previous miniseries to see how that one holds up to a COVID-9 world.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Ben Affleck was selected to direct. He described it as “‘Lord of the Rings’ set in America”, as he envisioned it to be a trilogy. Affleck dropped out due to other commitments and was replaced by ‘David Yates’ and Steve Kloves, who were replaced by Scott Cooper. Cooper ended up dropping out of the project over “creative differences”, which were believed to be that Cooper wanted an R rating while the studio wanted PG-13. Paul Greengrass was also considered to direct the film at one point. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (6/10)