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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You assume that just because the military is doing all right in whatever little patch of land their car gets stranded on, humanity is actually going to fully regain control of the world. There's nothing to guarantee this. Oh come on, just because it isn't explicitly spelled out doesn't mean that wasn't the intent. It's the end of the movie, they lose all hope, and then they spent several minutes showing the military moving in and destroying everything in its path. That's the clear implication, and I haven't heard any of the film's crew say their intention was otherwise.
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Jun 18, 2009 20:51
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fishmech posted:They don't specifically say in the story, but we're able to tell where the mist reaches because areas within it seem to no longer be able to run radio broadcasts. The story mentions first the Bangor radio stations and then the stations down to Boston no longer broadcasting. However, when the main character runs out of gas and stops at a hotel at the New Hampshire/Maine border or somewhere around there, he hears a radio broadcast from Hartford, CT, which would seem to indicate the mist stopped somewhere south of Boston and north of Hartford. Right, but they just say that the signal *somehow* got through, if it was a signal at all and not just him imagining things. I took that to mean that where ever the signal was coming from was "misted over" as well and managed to squeek through by some unlikely shifting of the mist and that it was likely someone else, marooned, trying to call out, although I can see your side of it as well. Anyways, yeah I guess demon is the wrong word for the creatures-they're definitely mortal and the story goes a long ways in making them fallible (relying heavily on a highly attuned sense of smell, low intellingence, very much killable) but still, that doesn't account for the larger creatures the Nat'l Guard is assumed to have defeated in the movie rendition (tentacle horror, Goliath and the Giant Crab beast parked out front. It just seems like a quick fix. Either way, I didn't mean for this derail to turn into an argument about what ending is "correct" as the movie ending could easily take place after the end of the book...I just think it is a great story because of the amount of speculation the ending invites the reader to take part in. As to it just being a cheap shock-that's just me I guess, the original "cliff hanger" (if you want to call it that) seems more hopeless despite the last word being "hope". I always liked the thought that the mist was permanent, or if not permanent at least world changing. I'd never heard about The Mist being the event that ushers in the world of the Gunslinger, but if so that's pretty neat. Foppish fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jun 19, 2009 |
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Jun 19, 2009 00:31
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Foppish posted:Right, but they just say that the signal *somehow* got through, if it was a signal at all and not just him imagining things. I took that to mean that where ever the signal was coming from was "misted over" as well and managed to squeek through by some unlikely shifting of the mist and that it was likely someone else, marooned, trying to call out, although I can see your side of it as well. I interpreted the fact that he was just barely able to hear the radio from Hartford and indicating that he was both 150 miles away from there, and the mist was probably covering at least half of the distance. We "know" Boston is covered by it because they're not able to be heard at all. If the Mist just reached past Boston, that means that half of the route to Hartford is through the mist. Also there were larger beasts in the story, as the protagonist is driving down I-95 south, there's footprints big enough to swallow semis on the road... In my opinion, the ending of The Mist the movie feels like what Stephen King would have written if the story had been a page or two longer.
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Jun 19, 2009 00:50
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ScreamingNinja posted:(king sucks are writing realistic dialogue) I disagree, I think he has a good grasp of language for the most part; and I find his dialogue flows naturally and well. This is most obvious in It I think.
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Jun 19, 2009 06:05
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Foppish posted:As to it just being a cheap shock-that's just me I guess, the original "cliff hanger" (if you want to call it that) seems more hopeless despite the last word being "hope". I always liked the thought that the mist was permanent, or if not permanent at least world changing. I think it's the chilling fade-out that makes the book's ending so enduringly creepy, and the BANG POP WOW ending to the film that makes it almost forgettable. Like, you have this hour and a half of incredibly creepy, haunting film, documenting the breakdown of society on a small scale when presented with an immutable nightmare situation, and then the tacked-on fireworks. It just doesn't really work, and if the original ending had been kept I think it would be one of the better King adaptations and it would still be in the public mind. It's an almost juvenile kind of ending, something a thirteen-year-old would craft.
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Jun 19, 2009 07:12
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Hennergy posted:I disagree, I think he has a good grasp of language for the most part; and I find his dialogue flows naturally and well. This is most obvious in It I think. Yeah, it's one of the few things you really can not take away from King. He's awesome at writing realistic dialogue. IT is a great example. It's one of the few books I've seen where the 11 year olds talk like real 11 year olds.
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Jun 19, 2009 13:37
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Super Ninja Fish posted:Yeah, it's one of the few things you really can not take away from King. He's awesome at writing realistic dialogue. IT is a great example. It's one of the few books I've seen where the 11 year olds talk like real 11 year olds. I used to think that the dialogue for the characters in his stories was a little unrealistic, but then I spent a summer in Maine. It's actually really neat how he captures the feel of a Maine accent in his writing without resorting to unreadable phonetic stuff for accents like some writers I could name.
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Jun 19, 2009 20:45
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I don't know why but I thought Duma Key just sucked. I can't even pinpoint what caused this feeling.
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Jun 19, 2009 21:12
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An observer posted:I don't know why but I thought Duma Key just sucked. I can't even pinpoint what caused this feeling. It was the muchachos. So much loving muchacho.
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Jun 19, 2009 23:26
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Magic Hate Ball posted:It was the muchachos. So much loving muchacho. Or the amigos. I seem to recall that one being used to nausea-inducing levels too.
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Jun 19, 2009 23:32
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fishmech posted:I used to think that the dialogue for the characters in his stories was a little unrealistic, but then I spent a summer in Maine. It's actually really neat how he captures the feel of a Maine accent in his writing without resorting to unreadable phonetic stuff for accents like some writers I could name. And when he does write phonetically, like in Mrs Todds Shortcut it works pretty well.
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Jun 20, 2009 01:43
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Am I alone in thinking "The Long Walk" was the best thing he's written? I'd like to see a movie made of it, but can't really see it happening. My favorite as well. I loved all of the Bachman Books.
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Jun 21, 2009 02:44
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An observer posted:Or the amigos. I seem to recall that one being used to nausea-inducing levels too. I got about 2/3 through Duma Key (to the point where he was regularly visting the old lady's estate) and took it back to the library. I think it's the first SK book I haven't finished and I've literally read them all to that point, starting in the very early 80's. I wiki'd the ending. Kinda glad I took it back when I did.
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Jun 21, 2009 14:52
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NosmoKing posted:I got about 2/3 through Duma Key (to the point where he was regularly visting the old lady's estate) and took it back to the library. The ending was the best part! It took a turn towards horror and was actually interesting to read.
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Jun 21, 2009 15:09
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I think what you can take from this thread is that with the exception of a very few stores (The Dark Half), pretty much every Stephen King Story is worth giving a shot. Almost every one of his books has at least one fan here which, in my opinion, speaks pretty highly of him as a writer. It's obvious that he's "mass market" but he's leaps and bounds above Koontz, Cussler, and most other mass market guys out there.
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Jun 22, 2009 00:46
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Foppish posted:It's obvious that he's "mass market" but he's leaps and bounds above Koontz, Cussler, and most other mass market guys out there. A knock against Cussler! Please give me another Dirk Pitt novel where either an industrialist is loving with artifacts OR we uncover some old war weapon! Will Dirk Pitt save the day after racing his classic car and/or airplane? Will there be a swordfight? How LONG will Dirk have to spend underwater this time? Actually, the books from him that I love are the autobiographical accounts of finding shipwrecks. Those are actually quite cool.
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Jun 22, 2009 04:20
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fishmech posted:Also there were larger beasts in the story, as the protagonist is driving down I-95 south, there's footprints big enough to swallow semis on the road... Well the big walker in the story is pretty much identical to the one in the movie, except in the movie it probably still wasn't big enough. Or at least, since they could see all the way to its body it made it a little less scary. I think that would have made the film even better, if they could have somehow made the mist even thicker and obscuring. It's kinda beyond the ability of cg currently though, as you'd have to have a huge shitload of rotoscoped fluid simulations going on all over the loving place.
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Jun 22, 2009 09:18
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NosmoKing posted:Please give me another Dirk Pitt novel where either an industrialist is loving with artifacts OR we uncover some old war weapon! Will Dirk Pitt save the day after racing his classic car and/or airplane? Will there be a swordfight? How LONG will Dirk have to spend underwater this time? How long until Dirk Pitt gets totally hosed in a situation and then the author shows up to help him out. 
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Jun 22, 2009 14:48
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fishmech posted:I used to think that the dialogue for the characters in his stories was a little unrealistic, but then I spent a summer in Maine. It's actually really neat how he captures the feel of a Maine accent in his writing without resorting to unreadable phonetic stuff for accents like some writers I could name. hmm. I guess i never thought of it that way. As a native New Yorker, when i read his dialogue, i find it to be laughable, because i can't imagine a single person that speaks the way they do. At least in Cell (sorry, i've really never heard anyone say "the day before last") and bits and pieces of Needful Things. Then again, people have different ways of speaking outside of my box, i never really thought of it that way.
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Jun 22, 2009 19:48
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Women's Rights? posted:How long until Dirk Pitt gets totally hosed in a situation and then the author shows up to help him out.  moment as a reader.
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Jun 22, 2009 20:35
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Payndz posted:The very first Cussler book I read (perhaps not coincidentally, also the last) - the one about Vikings and the ridiculously-designed circular ocean liner - had Cussler turn up to get Pitt out of a completely hosed situation in about chapter 6. Utter As much as I hate Stephen King inserting himself into the Dark Tower series...well at least he's only done it the one time. But Clive Cussler apparently does it in all of the books he writes. I only know about two - Pitt had escaped a chinese ship and was drowning but Cussler's little boat was traveling by and Pitt and Lovely Female Companion climbed aboard and were taken to safety, and in the other one Pitt had been ditched in the desert and was going to die but Cussler happened to be living in the one house in the desert and gave Pitt a motorcycle to get him out of there or something stupid I don't know my mom told me about that one.
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Jun 22, 2009 21:14
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This thread has made me question my reasonably positive memories of a bunch of newer Stephen King books, so once I emptied my to-be-read pile I went back to my King collection. I reread Duma Key. I still liked it. It's definitely not without its flaws, and, well, as a dog returns to its vomit so does Stephen King return to his favorite themes, but I enjoyed the book the first time and I enjoyed it this time, too. Then I grabbed Lisey's Story. I got one chapter in and became aware of this dragging feeling of ugh I don't want to read the rest of this book again, which is odd, because I seem to recall more or less enjoying the book the first time. (Although even then I was thinking of it as Rose Madder II: Less Beating, More Can-Opener.) In conclusion, I still hate Dreamcatcher more than anything, but I'll now admit that you guys have a point about Lisey's Story. And now I'll just be over here with my copy of Hearts In Atlantis.
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Jun 26, 2009 10:46
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Anyone else really like his short story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band"? Nightmares and Dreamscapes will always be my favorite collection of his short stories.
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Jun 26, 2009 18:32
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I really enjoy all of his books that I've read, even if some of them weren't exactly "good". I hated The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, though. I somehow managed to finish it but haven't touched it since.
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Jun 28, 2009 15:18
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Foppish posted:I think what you can take from this thread is that with the exception of a very few stores (The Dark Half), pretty much every Stephen King Story is worth giving a shot. Almost every one of his books has at least one fan here which, in my opinion, speaks pretty highly of him as a writer. I think it works both ways. Every Stephen King novel is simultaneously his worst and his best. Most people seem to hate Insomnia, yet I think it's one of the few really interesting things he's written (the others being Misery, the first three Dark Tower books, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald's Game, The Talisman, and some other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting).
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Jun 28, 2009 22:07
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Tonight I finished The Gunslinger, and I've struggled with finding myself being entertained by him. Nearly everything I've read and finished of his has been kinda silly in some way. I kinda equate being entertained by Stephen King books with being entertained by Michael Bay movies. The ones I liked from either tend to be "popcorn" media, feature a lot of style and once I'm done with them, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit liking them.
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Jun 29, 2009 09:00
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Almighty Pod posted:Tonight I finished The Gunslinger, and I've struggled with finding myself being entertained by him. Nearly everything I've read and finished of his has been kinda silly in some way. Even the Gunslinger? Gunslinger doesn't have much in the way of silly. At least not in the original version, before King went back and remade giving it traces of DT 5-7 awfulness.
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Jun 29, 2009 13:45
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Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV). This is the flashback one that is oh so boring. I've been trying to get through it for about a year, and I'm still barely 100 pages in. Every time I pick up this book, it goes something like: "Hey, I'll read some more Dark Tower." Reads one paragraph. "Hey, there's some paint drying over there!" Puts book down. It's a shame, really, because I enjoyed the first few books and I'd like to finish the series (though everyone seems to tell me that I shouldn't).
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Jun 30, 2009 06:20
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Subfocus posted:It's a shame, really, because I enjoyed the first few books and I'd like to finish the series (though everyone seems to tell me that I shouldn't). King himself steps in at one point and tells you not to finish it. Take that for what its worth.
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Jun 30, 2009 07:07
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Subfocus posted:Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV). I felt the same way when I started to read it. After everything they'd all been through I didn't want to hear about poo poo that had happened in the past. Stick with it though, for me it was more than worthwhile and is probably my favourite book of the series now. It's one of the rare times I've thought 'holy poo poo!' to myself and had to stop reading for a few minutes! (Saying that though, I really enjoyed the last book too so I'm easily pleased!)
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Jun 30, 2009 10:54
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Super Ninja Fish posted:Even the Gunslinger? Gunslinger doesn't have much in the way of silly. At least not in the original version, before King went back and remade giving it traces of DT 5-7 awfulness. I'm not sure if mine is the original or remade. For what it's worth it doesn't say anywhere on the cover that it's "revised and expanded" like other copies of the same cover do. So I guess it's not the remade version. And I don't mean "silly" like slapstick or anything. I just mean it's hard to take anything he does seriously. His writing's just for entertainment purposes; I don't think I've ever put down a King book and said, "Wow, this has impacted my life in a meaningful way." Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that either, though. Just saying.
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Jun 30, 2009 20:47
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I just watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I'm pretty sure they make fun of Cell. The character of Sarah Marshall was in a movie where cell phones killed people as a metaphor for addiction to technology and the other characters deride it as a metaphor for a lovely movie.
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Jul 7, 2009 13:34
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Oh you think they meant Cell in that whole scene? I always thought they were making fun of Pulse, the movie with Kristen Bell where ghosts come through the phones. I just finished Gunslinger and out of every King book I've read, it has the least disappointing ending.
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Jul 7, 2009 15:30
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Zimadori Zinger posted:King himself steps in at one point and tells you not to finish it. Take that for what its worth. Yeah, but by that point any sane person would have considered stopping a dozen times already, and probably did. Although I eventually came to love the series, Wizard and Glass took me several tries to get through because of the flashback. When King tells you to stop it's what...twenty pages from the end? I was actually a little pissed off at that bit. I mean, the reader at that point has presumably invested a large amount of time reading the novels and waiting for them to be released (well, the first 4, before he started crapping out one every 6 months), and to have made it that far means they stuck through the thick and thin. So for King to waltz out and glibly tell the reader that they should put the book down lest they be struck dumb by how painful the ending is (  ) is pretty frustrating. The ending had better be painful, because you've only been building up to it for about 20 years. But instead, after all his hamfisted attempts to induce drama, he pulls all the teeth from his story by having Susannah go live in New York with Faux-Eddie and Faux-Jake.What an emotionally satisfying ending. Not.
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Jul 7, 2009 20:40
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Am I alone in thinking "The Long Walk" was the best thing he's written? I'd like to see a movie made of it, but can't really see it happening. If it hasn't been said already, Darabont has rights to it. This has to be the easiest movie ever to make. Been waiting for this one the second I finished the book years ago.
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Jul 7, 2009 21:18
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Pentaxium posted:Oh you think they meant Cell in that whole scene? I always thought they were making fun of Pulse, the movie with Kristen Bell where ghosts come through the phones. Haha, I'd never even heard of Pulse before now, but looking it up yeah, it probably was that.
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Jul 7, 2009 21:28
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DrRimbaud posted:"I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar." - Stephen King "I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." I agree mostly. But his demands to be the highest paid writer in the world make me wonder.
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Jul 7, 2009 21:42
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dantheman650 posted:I can't believe only one post in this topic mentions The Colorado Kid. That was the last SK book I've ever read. Unless another book gets super-hyped, I'll probably never read any of his post-accident material. It's good to see all of the love for TLW. Maybe a movie poster photoshop thread could garner some attention.
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Jul 7, 2009 22:07
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Subfocus posted:Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV). I think I'm the only one that enjoyed the flashback. It was kind of like taking break from the series to read a short fantasy novel, before picking up where I left off.
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Jul 8, 2009 08:35
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cheerfullydrab posted:Anyone else really like his short story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band"? Nightmares and Dreamscapes will always be my favorite collection of his short stories. Yes. "Popsy" and "Rainy Season" were also pretty fun, but "My Pretty Pony" was boring. From a Buick 8 is easily my least favorite Stephen King book. I don't understand it either. It's just as LONG as any other Stephen King book, but the thing doesn't have a real story. At best, you could take the entire plot of it and fit it inside one of King's short stories. There was no reason it needed to be a novel. There was no reason I had to read the entire thing to find out nothing really happens in the end. Incidentally, I liked Dreamcatcher. Sorry.
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Jul 8, 2009 09:06
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