The Stand (1994)

TV miniseries based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. It was a lengthy novel (either 823 or 1152 pages, depending on which version you have), so a miniseries made a lot more sense than a regular feature length movie.

I haven't read the book yet, so I can't comment on casting or get upset about how faithful it is (or isn't), but the teleplay was written by King himself, so I'm going to assume the characters are at least pretty close to his original text.

It's a traditional story of Good Vs Evil. The battleground is America (just when you thought it was safe to go back to Maine!), and the armies are the survivors of yet another unimaginative post-apocalyptic event.

It's split into four feature-length parts. Parts I and II were good. The many characters each get time to develop; it helps if you're already familiar with King's method of character building, because you'll recognise the types.

It was during the first half that I got to thinking that TV is where Mick Garris should be focussing his efforts, but then Part III happened. With everyone in their proper place and motivations established it was time to get to the meat of the story, but things started to unravel. A weighty action is undertaken that serves no purpose other than to enable a quick fix to be pulled out of thin air in Part IV. Did it make sense in the book? If so, then it lost that sense when it made the jump to film.

By the time Part IV got underway the situations were becoming ridiculous, the motivations unnatural, and the pace, which should've increased and become more critical, slowed to a soupy crawl. Both the story and the production quickly plummeted. It turned into a steaming pile of religious shit stacked as high as the hill of Golgatha, with a neon sign atop.

4 parts, approx 90 mins each (366 mins in total inc. credits)

2 biblical failures out of 5