Thoughts on Stephen King?

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Larry being black doesn't bother me, and I can see Whoopi Goldberg working well as Mother Abigail.

Skarsgard as Flagg however bugs me. Might be an unpopular opinion, but I find him a really shitty actor. Flagg is supposed to look and act like an everyman as well, the kind of guy you'd have a few beers with and shoot the shit and not even realize he's corrupting you the whole time. Jamey Sheridan was great as Flagg in the '94 miniseries for that (dodgy CGI demon effects non-withstanding) Flagg isn't this suave pretty boy or maniacal cackling evil.
 
Autumnal Equinox said:
Larry being black doesn't bother me, and I can see Whoopi Goldberg working well as Mother Abigail.

Skarsgard as Flagg however bugs me. Might be an unpopular opinion, but I find him a really shitty actor. Flagg is supposed to look and act like an everyman as well, the kind of guy you'd have a few beers with and shoot the shit and not even realize he's corrupting you the whole time. Jamey Sheridan was great as Flagg in the '94 miniseries for that (dodgy CGI demon effects non-withstanding) Flagg isn't this suave pretty boy or maniacal cackling evil.
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Agreed. I'm hoping Alex Skarsgard can pull this off but I'm not holding my breath for it either.

Honestly, if I were to cast someone as Randall Flagg, I'd probably go for someone like Topher Grace now that he's older or get an unknown actor.
 
Miel67 said:
Stephen King honestly is talented in horror, but he's not Edgar Allan Poe. His critique of "The Twilight Saga" was honestly justified and not that bad, as he had more than 30 years writing and Meyer, frankly was a beginner and ran on inspiration/Linkin Park lyrics based off of a dream sequence. The "Amazing Book" whale/Fangirl's reaction was comedy gold for ranting around 13 minutes on that.
Oh, and I heard that he pokes fun at Dean Koontz in some novels. Honestly I don't see why one should poke fun at the other as they're both prolific as hell, both blend different genres....can't they set aside their differences and collaborate?!
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Neither one can keep their politics out of their stories. King is woke, while Koontz is vaguely conservative / libertarian. They'd never get past which strawman to use as the villain.
 
Well what do you know?
Looks like they turned Flagg's Las Vegas community into exactly the clichéed anarchistic whore-infested sleazepit we have seen in a thousand apocalypses before. Because the book's version of Las Vegas, where the inhabitants are regular people living in a functioning (if kinda fascist) society doing normal jobs to survive and rebuild, isn't exciting enough.
 
I only really like Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

When I looked in to IT to see what everyone was on about (reading Wikipedia summaries), I was pretty disappointed to find out the clown is actually a weird cloud interdimensional space entity that lost to a large turtle instead of just being a regular demon. He also lost me at child orgies. Crack addiction indeed.
 
Finished reading 'Salem's Lot the other day. I read it a million years ago but memory is short, so it was essentially new to me now.

This one's pretty solid.

Yes, it's about vampires which means it's kind of ridiculous. But it's a damn effective type of ridiculous.
Count Dracula Kurt Barlow moves into a little town in Maine and starts doing his thing. Soon the place is overrun by fanged undead and it's up to [insert name of character who happens to be an author] and his pals (including a clever kid, of course) to stop that no-good, coffin-dwelling creep.

Well paced and really exciting near the end (daylight can be REALLY precious!)

Written in the 70:s, so certain things have aged a bit.
Everyone smokes all the time. This wouldn't be a problem if King didn't feel the need to tell us what brand of cigarette every character is smoking, what they use to light it with (match or lighter) and how they go about putting the cigarette in their mouth and then lighting up.
Kind of tedious, but then again smoking was a part of the culture back then so it may not be that strange.

It may seem like I'm ripping on this novel, but I had a great time with it. Nice take on the vampire/haunted house tropes.
 
Lungmos said:
It may seem like I'm ripping on this novel, but I had a great time with it. Nice take on the vampire/haunted house tropes.
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The mini-series of this fucked me up when I was a kid. I was afraid of vampires for years. I had to close the curtains before I went to sleep every night out of fear that I would see a vampire hypnotizing me out of the second story window. And if I forgot to do that, I had to turn away from the window and would be afraid to look at it.
 
AnOminous said:
The mini-series of this fucked me up when I was a kid. I was afraid of vampires for years. I had to close the curtains before I went to sleep every night out of fear that I would see a vampire hypnotizing me out of the second story window. And if I forgot to do that, I had to turn away from the window and would be afraid to look at it.
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Would that be the 2004 or the 1979 mini-series? I haven't seen either of them, but the 1979 one (directed by Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) seems to be well regarded by people.

The Nosferatu-esque design for Barlow in the 1979 TV-version still looks awesome and scary (in the book he's more of a well-manicured Bela Lugosi type of vampire.)
 
King's stories are always exciting adventures that end in a wet fart. And he has terminal TDS. And he's probably a chomo.
 
Shield Breaker said:
Neither one can keep their politics out of their stories. King is woke, while Koontz is vaguely conservative / libertarian. They'd never get past which strawman to use as the villain.
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Unironically I wonder if it was caused by the accident. Before it happened he really wasn't too bad for that lefto shit, or if he was, he did a fine job of keeping his personal business to himself. After the accident was when he suddenly turned into a Twitter warrior out of nowhere. Head trauma?
 
Lungmos said:
Finished reading 'Salem's Lot the other day. I read it a million years ago but memory is short, so it was essentially new to me now.

This one's pretty solid.

Yes, it's about vampires which means it's kind of ridiculous. But it's a damn effective type of ridiculous.
Count Dracula Kurt Barlow moves into a little town in Maine and starts doing his thing. Soon the place is overrun by fanged undead and it's up to [insert name of character who happens to be an author] and his pals (including a clever kid, of course) to stop that no-good, coffin-dwelling creep.

Well paced and really exciting near the end (daylight can be REALLY precious!)

Written in the 70:s, so certain things have aged a bit.
Everyone smokes all the time. This wouldn't be a problem if King didn't feel the need to tell us what brand of cigarette every character is smoking, what they use to light it with (match or lighter) and how they go about putting the cigarette in their mouth and then lighting up.
Kind of tedious, but then again smoking was a part of the culture back then so it may not be that strange.

It may seem like I'm ripping on this novel, but I had a great time with it. Nice take on the vampire/haunted house tropes.
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Agreed, also, Cycle of the Werewolf and it's movie adaptation Silver Bullet are great too.
 
To me, his best works are The Stand, Dolores Claiborne and Rose Madder.

those are the ones I can still vividly recall even after two decades have past since I read them.
 
He's a great storyteller and a bad writer (prose is for shit.)

He's a fucked up soul.

He used to show up to his kid's high school rugby games drunker than a whore on payday.
 
I never read IT and just watched the meme-worthy 1990 miniseries a really long time ago. Is the novel worth the 1000~ page read?
 
Rupert Bear said:
I never read IT and just watched the meme-worthy 1990 miniseries a really long time ago. Is the novel worth the 1000~ page read?
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It’s one of his better books right up until the ending where a bunch of 12 year olds have an orgy in the sewers. Granted this was the era where King was coked out of his head most days but still no reason that should have been in the novel. Aside from that it’s definitely one of his more visceral and disturbing books
 
Rupert Bear said:
I never read IT and just watched the meme-worthy 1990 miniseries a really long time ago. Is the novel worth the 1000~ page read?
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No. It really isn't worth reading. Go with The Stand if you want to subject yourself to a tome of sex pervert shit.
 
Rupert Bear said:
I never read IT and just watched the meme-worthy 1990 miniseries a really long time ago. Is the novel worth the 1000~ page read?
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I liked it. If you start it and like it then finish it, if you don't like it, read something else :)
 
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