Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Absolutely the worst movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The unabridged version of the stand is 1,152 pages. How do you film that? How do you capture everything? This 1994 miniseries - originally airing from May 8 - 12 of that year - made a valiant effort.It's nearly impossible to get in every character from the book, but that doesn't mean that these guys didn't try. With a screenplay by King, Mick Garris stepped into the director's chair, armed with a huge cast that does a great job of capturing their roles.The hard part of The Stand is that there's more than one hero and multiple casts to follow. I guess Stu Redman (Gary Sinise) would be the main hero, but you could also argue that the deaf and mute Nick Andros (Rob Lowe, who is deaf in his right ear) is the hero. Or maybe singer Larry Underwood is. When you're reading the book, you can determine who the protagonist you like best is, you can also see them as you want in your mind. With a film, it's not so simple.As Captain Trips, a weaponized flu virus, sweeps across America, the end of the world takes shape and Mother Abagail Freemantle (Ruby Dee) gathers the forces of good against Randall Flagg and his followers. Flagg, otherwise known as the Walkin' Dude, the Dark Man, the Ageless Stranger, the Man in Black and the Hardcase (as well as Walter Padick, Nyarlathotep, Rudin Filaro and a ton of other names), is the villain of more than one King story. He shows up in The Dark Tower, Hearts in Atlantis and The Eyes of the Dragon. His character goes all the way back to a poem that King wrote in 1969.Amongst his forces are the bonkers crazy Nadine Cross (Laura San Giacomo), criminal rat eater Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer), the explosive loving Trashcan Man (Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer, who has appeared in more King adaptions than anyone else), the Rat Man and so many more. But the good guys also have Judge Ferris (Ossie Davis), the worst dressed heroine ever in Frannie (Molly Ringwald), her wannabe boyfriend and potential traitor Harold (Parker Lewis Can't Lose star Corin Nemec), simple-minded Tom Cullen (Bill Fagerbakke, Dauber from TV's Coach), wise Glen Bateman (TV legend Ray Walston, who was also Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and many, many more.This is a film packed with stars, even in small roles, like Ed Harris as General Starkey, Kathy Bates as Rae Flowers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a man proclaiming the end of the world and King, Sam Raimi, Tom Holland and John Landis show up in cameos. Even Joe Bob Briggs is in this!The four parts, The Plague, The Dreams, The Betrayal and The Stand, tell as much of the story as possible. I was kind of let down by the casting of Flagg, but it's hard to find anyone to live up to the ultimate evil that he's presented as in the book.The fact that the film was finished is a testament to the production team. With 460 script pages that were shot across 100 days in 6 states, that meant that the final project is nearly 8 hours long. They had to figure out how to dress 95 shooting locations on their budget, including a cornfield and a decimated Las Vegas.I hope however they remake this, they make sure to get better outfits for Frannie. I realize that this mini-series is 24 years old, but her fashion taste has not aged like a fine wine. Every single time she appears, her sartorial splendor - or lack thereof - takes me out of the movie!

Having read the book, I can say that The Stand is a fairly decent adaptation for what it is and the time in which it came out. A good many of the cast portray their characters well including Gary Sinise as Stu Redman, Rob Lowe as Nick Andros, and the standout performance of Mother Abigail by Ruby Dee who was everything I wanted out of her. She WAS Mother Abigail. In fact, most of the actors portrayals of these characters are good enough that when I picture the characters from the book in my head, these actors are the faces of them. The story is much more dark, sexual, and brutal than what you get from a TV show produced in the mid 90's, but the key details and basic storyline of Stephen King's greatest work are still there and it is much more accessible than the 1100 page monster of a novel. While the novel would take a multitude of hours to reconquer, I can revisit the world whenever I would like in the much easier 6 hour time frame of the series. In the nearly 40 years since its release, Hollywood has tried to put together a big budget adaptation of this great American epic, but have yet to get passed the initial planning stages. So, for now, The Stand mini-series is all we have and I must say that I am fine with that.

This is one of Stephen King's most epic stories, there are others, but this one is probably one of the first. It is the forever-told story of the battle of good versus evil but without CGI, gimmicks and unrelatable characters. This story frightens you to the core because of how real everything seems to be. It could in fact happen tomorrow, to all of us, any of us. King is not an overly religious man, from what I have read but his ability to tell stories with religion deeply ingrained, amazes me. He does it from a standpoint rarely seen, if at all, and doesn't force the reader/watcher to believe any one thing but to just, think, perhaps deeper than they ever have before. However, don't be put off by the 'deepness' of it all, it's got enough comedy, action and adventure to still be an 'easy to watch' film with mates on a Friday night.

The Stand is an epic tale between the forces of good and evil battling for control on the verge of civilization's collapse.While a made for television production, The Stand managed to weave a great caste into a six hour format allowing time for us to get to know the characters and watch as they develop for better or worse.As the survivors of a horrifying deadly plague gather in two camps one lead by an Antichrist like figure Randall Flagg and the saintly mother Abigal both vying for the occupation of the world for generations to come.The story isn't all black & white as their are traitors and deserters among the ranks. Two stand out Harold Lauder who's felt like a big fat loser all his life and Nadine Cross an earth child with a mysterious mystical link to Flagg.These two characters bring out a lot of morality questions like how far does free will reach over selective destiny? Are they sacrificial lambs for the slaughter or was the choice to decline offers already in place?But that's what good story telling can accomplish by making you think and feel.The music hit the mark each time and the editor better have gotten overtime for the natural flow of scene changes from beginning to end.The Stand was Stephen King's Lord of the rings that's never been topped.