Paid Members unfitfinlay Posted May 19, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 19, 2022 5 hours ago, LaGoosh said: I'm not sure about that. Most King adaptations are terrible because usually they are made on the cheap by crap filmmakers, they are based on long books and get cut down to the point that there's barely a story left and because a lot of Kings best ideas just don't naturally translate very well to a visual medium. A psychic battle with a transdimensional spider made of endless orange light or a rhyme battle against an insane evil train across an apocalyptic wasteland works on the page but will never work on screen. That's spot on. For me, King's best stuff isn't the horror itself, it's how he gets across the character's reactions to it. Like Ben realising Pennywise's balloon is floating against the wind, knowing that that isn't possible and his brain....locking as he's trying to process it. Same with the Buick in From A Buick 8. You could easily make a car that looks wrong but you can't quite get across the feel, etc, when you can't read the characters thoughts. Crouch End is another good one. The main characters know that something is wrong but it's so bizarre that they can't even understand it themselves. On TV shows, it wasn't really an adaptation but I did like Castle Rock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jesse Posted May 19, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 19, 2022 I've heard a few positive things about Castle Rock now, I'm gonna have to remember to check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators neil Posted May 19, 2022 Moderators Share Posted May 19, 2022 4 hours ago, Ultimate Hitman said: If there was an ounce of substantiated evidence against Ric Flair I’d 100% be all for him being charged, convicted & regarded as a disgrace to the business. Just my opinion that Stephen King is a strange human. Savile vibes & worse. This is either the most moronic thing I've ever read or some top tier trolling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Teedy Kay Posted May 19, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 19, 2022 14 hours ago, LaGoosh said: Most King adaptations are terrible because usually they are made on the cheap by crap filmmakers, they are based on long books and get cut down to the point that there's barely a story left and because a lot of Kings best ideas just don't naturally translate very well to a visual medium.  This. It's no wonder that the most successful adaptation is Shawshank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted May 19, 2022 Share Posted May 19, 2022 28 minutes ago, Teedy Kay said: This. It's no wonder that the most successful adaptation is Shawshank. Successful in what aspect? Certainly not box office and that’s how success is measured in cinema. You can have all of the kudos from critics and the public but if you ain’t makin’ paper you ain’t a success. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Surf Digby Posted May 19, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 19, 2022 I've not read any for years, but I did go through a phase when the movie of Pet Cemetery was getting high praise. Skeleton King had a fair few in that I really enjoyed (like The Monkey), and I went through The Dark Half in about 5 days because I enjoyed it so much. It's a shame the film was such a pile of arse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted May 20, 2022 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 9 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said: I've not read any for years, but I did go through a phase when the movie of Pet Cemetery was getting high praise. Skeleton King had a fair few in that I really enjoyed (like The Monkey), and I went through The Dark Half in about 5 days because I enjoyed it so much. It's a shame the film was such a pile of arse. The Dark Half really got on my bad side. I read it during my first run of being a King fan in the mid-late 90s, and I think it was the way it was hyped as 'His Masterpiece', so my expectations were a lot higher than they would have been otherwise. The film was very much there as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 What would the most critically-acclaimed King film adaptation be? My immediate thought is The Shining, but I could see other making cases for Carrie, Stand By Me, or The Shawshank Redemption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Tommy! Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 2 minutes ago, Carbomb said: What would the most critically-acclaimed King film adaptation be? My immediate thought is The Shining, but I could see other making cases for Carrie, Stand By Me, or The Shawshank Redemption. Metacritic has Carrie top, then Shawshank and room 237 3rd. The Shining only gets a 66. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members bAzTNM#1 Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 (edited) Somebody, might have been King himself, directed a version of "The Shining" as he really wasn't a fan of Kubrick's version. Original "It" series still scares the shite out of me. My folks were big fans during his drugs phase. Edited May 20, 2022 by bAzTNM#1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 Forgot Misery as a possible contender. Still can't see anything being as iconic as The Shining, but that Metacritic score is surprising. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jesse Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 7 minutes ago, Carbomb said: Forgot Misery as a possible contender. Still can't see anything being as iconic as The Shining, but that Metacritic score is surprising. I think a lot of the poor reviews are "It wasn't a scary horror film full of jump cuts". If it came out these days I think the same press would be more comfortable calling it "elevated horror", which is a garbage term but might explain the lower than expected metacritic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted May 20, 2022 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 6 minutes ago, Carbomb said: that Metacritic score is surprising. The Shining was panned at the time by some critics. It's a bit like the whole current conversation about 'elevated' horror - some more horror-focused places didn't like someone coming in and telling them how to do it, and some more mainstream critics just didn't like horror films and were never going to like Kubrick lowering himself to make one. Horror has always been divisive, Kubrick has always been divisive and King has always been. https://www.indiewire.com/2020/05/the-shining-original-reviews-1980-1202233245/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted May 20, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 A lot of the still negative opinions on Kubrick's The Shining are from King devotees who are the sorts of twats who care about whether an adaptation stays faithful to the book or not. King's own mini-series on the book, which was more faithful, was awful and proved Kubrick's point. King still won't let it go even though it's widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time and one of the greatest films of the 1980s. Why let little things like those get in the way of a moan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted May 20, 2022 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 20, 2022 On King hating The Shining (copying this paragraph from the movie thread) - I think Jack is the most explicitly autobiographical character King's ever written, and that's despite the long line of writers with addiction problems he's written (and I don't think it's a coincidence that he's written about being an abusive alcoholic parent and Joe Hill has written a couple of times about children of abusive alcoholic parents - I don't think he broke Joe's arm, but I think his being a parent was a big part of the original interventions). The whole point of Jack is his redemption. that he can sink as badly as he does due to his weaknesses, but his love for his family is the one thing that saves him. Kubrick absolutely jettisons all of that shit and portrays Torrance as the primal beast, who never even attempts at redemption.  I totally get King hating it for that. And, to be fair, I don't think being closer to the film would have made the novel better - they're both fantastic in different and similar ways. I really don't get even his fans agreeing with him on it. As you say, the miniseries was godawful, as most of the 90s TV adaptations of King were. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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