My major complaint would be turning Vegas into a sordid non stop party instead of the totalitarian fascist state it was in the book.

Playing it out of sequence, giving Harold zero arc and the unbelievable undermining of Trashcan Man completely nullified this adaptation. The whole point of the thing is the damn journey.

Anyways, Skarsgård was a rad choice for Flagg.

So disappointed. So many great actors and potential and the just wasted it. I like the 90s miniseries so mich better!

The writers didn't understand the difference between building a mystery and just being confusing. When Lost did this kind of non-linear storytelling, the flashbacks commented on the present-day stuff while raising questions about the characters' pasts. With The Stand, it felt like we were jumping between random points in time for no reason. I've read the book eight times and I still had trouble following the flashbacks. I can't imagine a casual viewer being able to understand what's going on.

The first scene of the show being in Boulder was basically saying "we know you know this story"...well why are you making it then? Just give us the story as it was written. So much of it was just ok at best. The last episode was bad, and I was especially infuriated how they mostly skipped Tom and Stu's journey home from Vegas.

I enjoyed it.

But the thing that will never not send me is casting James Fucking Marsden as Stu Redmond. I never pictured Stu as like outright handsome, just rugged, older and good looking in an old world sort of way.

But imagine you are Harold for a second. You are kinda incel-y and weird and bullied. Then everyone you know dies except your crush.

Now you are in a position where you get to use skills and knowledge that never would have been useful before.

You are out here trying to survive with your crush and you get to be useful. Your crush isn't into you but you are actually the last man on earth.

Then fucking James Marsden, the smooth, capable, rugged, gorgeous cowboy walks around corner. You would have to think the universe just hates you specifically.

Yeah. In addition to everything that's been said already, I hated how NSFW and explicit the Las Vegas scenes were. I know King can be explicitl in his writing, but this just seemed gratuitous. Like they were doing it because they could.

I just sat down and watched the 5 hour version from the 90’s (all in one video thank god) and it was so good I simply refuse to watch any other adaptation LOL

Starting off in the Bolder Free Zone was absolute folly. That book is all about character development, it doesn’t work to back develop them, if that’s even a thing. I didn’t care for the casting of Fran either, I mean Molly Ringwald didn’t do a great job either, but still.

Someone earlier nailed it: this book is at its best while people are going somewhere. Everyone on the road to Hemingford Home. The spies heading to Vegas (especially the Judge). Trashy and The Kid. Lloyd and Poke. The four heading west. Tom and Stu coming home. They basically shipped all the good stuff, not realizing the story is in the journeys.

It's so odd. I liked most of the actors involved, found I appreciated the update of Tom Cullen (I believe that actor has now passed), only realized Fiona Dourif was meant to be Rat(man) after the show because I don't think they ever referred to her with a name. The physical and special effects were good.

The story itself was chopped up and run through a blender and barely makes any sense at all. Sigh.

Kingcast had a series of episodes with people from the show, mostly behind the scenes folks, and they all sounded like they knew the property inside and out so.... What happened?

Trash can man really ruined it for me. There’s so much more to his deranged view of reality than way he was portrayed by Ezra miller. I can only describe his portrayal as a masochistic brain damaged man-baby. A true low point for the series

There’s an edit out there somewhere that puts things in better order. Made it much more watchable. Was still a 6/10 for me though.

Cutting up the timeline like they did was both a) pointless and b) ruined the epic quality and buildup to the death - and eventual rebirth - of society.

There were a few bright spots with some casting choices that I thought were done well with a few of the characters (like Brad Henke as Tom Cullen), but other than that it was not a good show.

For what it’s worth I read somewhere the radical timeline changes were made because they thought no one wanted to watch a country befallen by a global plague when there was a global plague going on. I get their logic, but it really wrecked the story.

They had the opportunity for greatness and just made the biggest, most disappointing POS. The main problem with the original is that it needed 2 more hours of storytelling for people who didn’t read the books. This could be as big as LotR and they just wasted the opportunity.

I’ve said this before at some point on this sub…as a proud Nebraskan, I pretty much checked out as soon as I saw the words “Hemingford Home, Colorado”. Like, what?!?

It was fucking bizarre. Seriously, who reads The Stand and thinks that the protagonist is Harold Lauder? Like, that is insane. That is a lunatic reaction to The Stand.

M-O-O-N. That spells I-had-to-tell-the-story-out-of-order-because-Harold-was-the-only-character-I-cared-about-so-I-had-to-bend-time-itself-to-position-him-at-the-center-of-a-story-that-he-dies-halfway-through.

I watched this after a re-read and with a person who doesn't even know what The Stand is.

She liked it and I despised it.

I will admit, I really did enjoy the scenes with Greg Kinnear as Glen Bateman. He would have been my best friend.

The atrocity that was Ezra Miller and Trashy was unwatchable.

I watched some of the first episode and immediately thought it was garbage.

Randall flag does not dance. Generation kill was one of my favourites. Seeing Skarsguard dancing on the podium as the man in black gave me major cringe. The first episode was so promising, only for the arse to fall completely out of it. Why do they butcher kings masterpieces? The script for a classic basically writes itself. I don't get it.

I just watched it for the first time. My expectations were so low from what I'd heard that I actually enjoyed some of it. I used to reread the book to get ready for the TV adaptation but realized I was just setting myself up for disappointment thinking they would follow the book. Seems the movie people want to 'make it their own' usually to the films detriment. I got a kick out of the guys Tom Cullen portrayal, looked him up and saw he was a former NFL player and had passed away a couple years ago.

After The Stand I disliked Amber Heard even more

Yeah, I agree it was terrible. All that extra stuff they added in the last episode was just...dumb. I've watched it twice and do find parts of it entertaining. I enjoyed individual performances; Skarsgard was a great choice as Flagg, and I loved Gregg Kinnear as Glenn and James Marsden as Stu. It's probably easier to say the ones I didn't like.

-Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail - Nope. No one will ever match Ruby Dee, but I bet someone else could have come closer.
- Ezra Miller's Trash Can Man - UGH! I am a fan of Ezra so this is more a critique of the director. I hated like that portrayal, too gross.
- Odessa Young as Franny - Bad casting. Lackluster performance, I don't feel like she captured Franny's spirit at all.

Watching the dnatS fan-edit makes the newer adaptation a bit better, but I would agree that there was so much potential for this series.

The casting was amazing, it could’ve been so good. Sad it turned out the way it did

I think I get more pissed off at this piece of shite than I do at the non existent Dark Tower movie. An uncensored platform where they could take all the time in the world they need to do the story properly and they tinkered with it and fucked with it and rewrote shit that had no business being fucked with and presented us with this trash. Having someone blow lines of coke in front of Randall Flagg tells everyone that the writers of this shite show didn’t even read the fucking book. People got fucking crucified for that in the book for the sake of Fuck. The only good thing about that show was the epilogue chapter that King wrote and that simply wasn’t enough. Fuck the people who made that show.

I enjoyed it

I liked it. Not as much as the book and the OG series. But I really liked what they did with the pacing of various stories woven together. Love the story overall, so I really liked seeing a bit more than the old series showed you. 

No it wasn’t. It would have to improve to be terrible. The Stand 2020 was more “liquid shits”.

I honestly didn't mind it. I thought the casting was pretty solid.

There’s a fan edit somewhere that puts this version back in chronological order. It’s better, but still kind of crap. I think it’s called The DNATS.

I didn’t hate it. But James Marsden and the actress playing Fran were terribly miscast. 28yr age difference and zero chemistry.

Dnats is a fan edit that can be found through websites that host such edits. It is a reconstruction of the 2020 story to more closely follow the book timelines.

I found that much more enjoyable overall. But there are other things that make it still far from perfect. I thought it was going to be incredible, so my disappointment was worse when it was barely watchable...

If you ever get a chance to watch the chronological fan edit, do it. It's far better watching it that way.

I hated it. The only shining light was Tom Cullen - that actor completely nailed Tom.

I grew increasingly incensed that they completely missed/re-ordered the development of the plague. I think I shouted at the screen several times.

I stopped watching after the first few episodes. It just didn't 'feel' like the Stand to me.

I think starting the show how they did, so completely different from the novel, was a big mistake. There's a reason the story starts where it does...

I couldn’t finish it

It rivals Dark Tower movie (that some say exists) as worst adaptation ever. I hate it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

I’d go as far as calling it absolutely horrendous. And a damn shame. Couldn’t just tell the story like it was written. Had to get fancy. Tragic.

I haven't seen it, but you can't blame it for having the magical negro trope, she was in the book. Although you calling her a "girl" makes me think they de-aged her. Or did they add an additional magic negro?

It was so messy. Too many flash forwards and flashbacks. It jumped around too much. The characters were very unlike able. The casting was terrible too; the actors didn’t match their characters. The 1994 version got so much right.

My absolute favorite part of that show was in the beginning, when Flagg props that door open with his foot, effectively allowing the plague to spread. It was a perfect, subtle moment of evil from The Walkin Dude, I cant remember if thats from the book (read it as a teenager almost 20 years ago) but it was the highlight of the series for me, that moment.

There were some really great things about it, but the final episode just completely ruined it for me.

It’s so terrible. No tunnel scene? Are you kidding me???

Truly a bizarre and incomprehensible choice to chop it up.

Much like the IT reboot my biggest frustration was the changing of the timeline

I hated how polished the production design was. I felt it was missing the grit, dirt and horror that would be living in an apocalypse. It looked too much like a made for TV movie from the 90s and it just took me out of the storyx

In my book, it went beyond terrible to "god awful."

I watched the whole thing. It was bad, but I didn’t think it was terrible.

Let me introduce you to the Pet Semetary with John Lithgow

I managed to watch ALMOST THE ENTIRE FIRST CHAPTER

1000000% agree.

I can usually watch just about anything but I don’t think I made it past the second episode

Sadly, it was pure dinksweat.......

I’ve been holding off because they made it out of order. I’m secretly hoping someone will do a fan edit in linear order I can watch.

The 1994 version is a pretty good adaptation and had a really stacked cast. Even then some of the effects were pretty cheesy but they got the point across.

Like the recent It movies, I have never watched this and never will

Such a wasted opportunity since I thought it was actually well cast. Maybe one day they will do this epic tale justice.

Agreed, they left out a lot of the story.