- 22 hours ago
From thousand-page novels to complex character ensembles, Stephen King's distinctive writing style has proven notoriously difficult to adapt to screen. Join us as we explore why so many King adaptations miss the mark despite his literary brilliance! From "Maximum Overdrive" to "The Dark Tower," we examine the challenges filmmakers face when trying to capture the King of Horror's unique vision.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Get in! Get in right now!
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're exploring the distinctive writing style of the immensely popular Stephen King,
00:12and why so few film and TV interpretations live up to it.
00:15We all know that the King of Horror is an overall literary legend.
00:18The astonishingly prolific Stephen King has earned almost unparalleled success across many genres, formats, and media.
00:25He's also an avid film buff with deep ties in the industry.
00:28And yet, many don't realize how unflattering most screen interpretations of King's work have been.
00:34The Duns are overshadowed by gems like Brian De Palma's Carrie, Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, and Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption.
00:52Incidentally, one of the most celebrated takes, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, is one of King's least favorite.
00:57That says a lot about how hard it is to capture his highly experimental and dense storytelling style.
01:03Let's come at the King to see why there are several dozen cinematic misses to his name.
01:15Narrative Scope
01:17The most obviously challenging Stephen King trend can be spotted by the spine of a book.
01:21He's notorious for writing extremely long novels on a relatively short timeline.
01:26Under the Dome, It, and the uncut edition of The Stand span over a thousand pages.
01:31Many attempts to compress only slightly shorter epics into standalone films have done them a disservice.
01:36Where the 1979 miniseries, Salem's Lot, had two 90-minute episodes to flesh out its layers, the 2024 feature adaptation is stripped down to a generic vampire and spook house flick.
01:52Even more egregious were the takes on Needful Things and Desperation, which each covered around 700 pages in around two hours.
01:59It's no wonder these films were criticized as disjointed and convoluted.
02:03I hear you, boss.
02:05What's wrong?
02:06West?
02:07Ely.
02:08Boss.
02:10About a mile and a half.
02:13I'll be done.
02:14Boss.
02:14Beyond his pedantically detailed writing, King often places world building as the true focal point of narratives.
02:20He also knows the importance of emotional investment in such unforgivingly imaginative lore.
02:25It's all right here.
02:26Paul, you can't!
02:31Deep storytelling.
02:32Your father's a thief.
02:35Over the last six years or so, he's stolen more than $14,000 from that marine supply company he works for.
02:41What sets Stephen King apart from many genre writers is that he asks something to say and wants you to care about the people saying it.
02:48Hailing from the small town of Durham, Maine, he uniquely approaches ensemble casts as communities of complex individuals.
02:54Their subplots often represent morality, mortality, and the very natures of humanity and fear, with vivid descriptions of psychological tension.
03:02So, many adaptations that loosen pathos feel heavy-handed and hollow.
03:07With 1987's The Running Man, pathos is thrown out entirely to capitalize on Arnold Schwarzenegger's campy action stardom.
03:14Hello, cutie pie.
03:19One of us is in deep trouble.
03:22The film's critics, including King himself, see this as a fatal flaw in the story's core commentary against violent consumerism.
03:29That's nothing compared to 2017's catastrophic The Dark Tower, based on a series consisting of eight king-sized novels.
03:36After just over an hour and a half of clunky exposition and incoherent action, nobody was interested in any sequels.
03:52Maybe it'll work better as the TV show long envisioned by developers, but there's no guarantee.
03:57Film vs. TV
03:57Given the scope of King's storytelling, it's natural to assume that it works better on TV.
04:03And yet, for all his disdain for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, a 1997 miniseries that King wrote himself was heavily panned.
04:10What would it want you for, Danny?
04:14Because of The Shining.
04:17That's what Dick calls it.
04:19It's less about telling the whole story than about having the adequate production values and subtle nuances to translate the material properly.
04:26Why even bother remaking Carrie and Children of the Corn as small screen features?
04:31But when ABC made It and The Stand in the 90s, they were blockbuster events praised for their ambition and concise, character-driven writing.
04:39I don't know how many different ways I can say this.
04:41This so-called super flu does not exist.
04:45It eventually hit big screens in the late 2010s, in two parts, coming out longer and more acclaimed than the miniseries.
04:51Paramount Plus' The Stand, on the other hand, was more fixated on spectacle than cohesive character and plot development.
04:58CBS's Under the Dome and Audience Network's Mr. Mercedes show that there is virtue in loosening adaptations to develop the finer points across multiple seasons.
05:06Despite HBO's The Outsider also achieving pause, it seems that no amount of dramatic and artistic breadth can sell certain supernatural twists.
05:24Genre-bending
05:25King shouldn't be strictly categorized as a horror writer.
05:28Even within that genre, he often uses more fantastical elements as metaphorical complements to grounded drama.
05:34We were hired as a cleanup crew, not as exterminators.
05:37Even if filmmakers can logically plot the often drastic shifts in genre and tone, viewers must ultimately be able to buy the new direction.
05:45Take Frank Barabont's The Green Mile, a jointly spiritual prison drama that is seen as a masterpiece by some and bloated cheese by others.
05:52Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other.
05:57I'm tired of all the pain I feel in here in the world, every day.
06:03There's too much of it.
06:06Everyone agrees that Lawrence Kasdan's Dreamcatcher was rendered inaccessible by its blend of character tragedy, telepathy, and alien invasion.
06:14All in all, it's a daunting task to replicate fans' subjective experience with King's experimental style.
06:19It's daunting even for King.
06:21And comfort you, and lift you up, and give you peace.
06:26Amen.
06:27King Behind the Camera
06:28In 1986, Stephen King made his directorial debut with a loose adaptation of his short story, Trucks.
06:42Who else could be trusted to pull off a filling station being besieged by sentient semis?
06:46But even with a comedic tone, Maximum Overdrive was almost universally panned, earning King a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Director.
06:53That's what you're doing?
06:55Yeah.
06:58That's what I was doing before every machine in the world went into Maximum Overdrive.
07:02He himself disowned the film as a byproduct of his severe substance use struggles at the time.
07:07King saw firsthand the difficulties in writing his work for the screen, but went on to self-adapt Pet Sematary, A Good Marriage, and Cell to crushing reviews.
07:16Hello?
07:17Kid.
07:18Even the original scripts for Sleepwalkers and Rose Red were fundamental messes.
07:27If Stephen King can't successfully adapt Stephen King, then who can?
07:31The Reliable Interpreters
07:32King's work has been translated by renowned directors like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, and Pablo Lorraine.
07:38The results have been mixed based on filmmakers' willingness to compromise their personal aesthetic.
07:42Tobey Hooper and George A. Romero found hits in Salem's Lot and Creepshow, only to bust with The Mangler and The Dark Half.
07:50I'm gonna write the ending chart.
07:54Is it gonna be your ending?
07:57Or mine?
07:58As selective as King must be with the filmmakers he trusts, some have built careers on adaptations, such as the case of McGarris,
08:05and even the director of The Stand is responsible for making The Shining, Desperation, and Bag of Bones for TV.
08:11Compared to the dullest human being walking on the Earth, the most brilliantly drawn character in any novel is nothing more than a Bag of Bones.
08:19Rob Reiner and Frank Darabont delivered outright masterpieces through Castle Rock Entertainment,
08:24named by Reiner after the fictional town in several of King's stories.
08:27But Stand By Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption are more about human drama than fancy genre bending.
08:33You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be held against you on a court of law.
08:39More recently, Mike Flanagan has been called the Stephen King of horror cinema for his dramatic and philosophical motifs.
08:45He turned the short stories Gerald's Game and The Life of Chuck into high-concept triumphs,
08:50while making a sequel to The Shining that finally satisfied King.
08:53I can make you an offer.
08:56An offer I rarely make.
08:58Oh yeah? I can't wait.
09:00Though Dr. Sleep was indeed acclaimed, this raises questions about what the author actually knows about good movies.
09:07Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
09:13You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
09:16If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
09:22Questioning the King
09:23You have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is, do you?
09:28Stanley Kubrick's intensely abstract and atmospheric interpretation of The Shining is considered one of the greatest horror films ever made.
09:36But Stephen King was livid about the liberties taken in his work, particularly the nihilistic reduction of a central conflict between good and evil.
09:43There are other times when I feel as though I'd given Stanley Kubrick a live grenade and he heroically threw his body on it.
09:49His praise of Brian De Palma's more faithful carry was more consistent with the glowing critical reception.
09:55In fact, King said the film was even better than his debut novel based on his creative style.
10:00He also sided with the consensus that Darabont's tragic twist ending for The Mist was more satisfying than his book's ambiguous conclusion.
10:06Come on, come on! Come on! Come on!
10:16King understands that the key to a good book to screen adaptation is logical reconciliation between the source material and the filmmaker's vision.
10:24For almost 50 years, his Dollar Baby program licensed his short stories to film students for just one dollar.
10:30King admires film and the general flexibility of art, but as he rarely has a kind word about adaptations of his work,
10:37and as infrequently as they've succeeded for audiences, his own art isn't very flexible off the page.
10:42How do you feel about the track record of Stephen King adaptations, and why?
10:46Give us your interpretation in the comments.
10:47Thank you!
10:59I'll see you soon!
11:05The Mist of God
11:07CaržAH
11:11Caržah
11:13Cargah
11:14Cargah
11:16R
Recommended
11:58
|
Up next
1:26:00
1:34:15
1:21:18
1:36:10
10:54
7:53
12:44
5:28
13:35
26:07
8:09
8:53
0:52
4:12
Be the first to comment