hey pal i NEED to talk abt the long walk with someone who Gets It. like i had the passing thought in AUGUST of “hmm. what if they change it to make pete the winner?” and then brushed it off. then saw how many reviews/promotional material focused so much on david jonsson and was like 🧐🧐. finally saw it today and…holy shit. my mouth was HANGING open. i still don’t know 100% how i feel about it but?? i’d love to hear further thoughts from someone familiar with the book bc i (1) cant tell if the change to his backstory was to make him more sympathetic a character in general or to bump him up as a heroic figure so we’d want him to win. (2) loved the openness of the novel’s ending sm and even though they kinda kept the spirit of it it just felt so different? esp given the abrupt change from ray’s pov?? (2a) am now considering the possible interpretations of the NEW ending….
ah, yey!! i am more than happy to talk about my feelings for the long walk! the necessary context before i get into it: the long walk was, i think, the first stephen king book i ever actually read as a kid? king was always an author i saw on my older brother's shelves and i just wrote it off as teen boy stuff until i was about 12/13/14 when i asked him for a recommendation before a family vacation. i'm not a big sci-fi/supernatural/alien person, so he took a moment. thought. then he plucked the long walk off the bookstore's shelf, put it in my hands, and told me to give it a shot.
and i loved it.
have loved it ever since, have read many more king novels since, but this is the one i've probably re-read the most. and for years i've wanted someone to make a film adaptation, while at the same time being VERY apprehensive about what a film adaptation of this story would look like. the book, as you know, is very introspective. it's a lot of ray just...walking and thinking and walking and thinking on repeat. which i'm sure might be surprising for any new fans coming to the book after seeing the movie, which is very dialogue heavy. which makes sense! and i don't knock it at all. in fact, i'm SUPER impressed with what we got.
some other context: i tried to go into the move as fresh as possible. i held off on re-reading the book for over a year so i wouldn't be tempted to compare the film to the book at every turn. after i saw the movie (with my older brother!), i went home and BURNED through a re-read of the book within less than day. and then later that week i went back and saw it a second time to see what it was like in comparison, this time with a friend who had read the book for the first time only a year ago, and another friend who had ever read the book.
now spoilers:
THE OBVIOUS:
i think a LOT of the changes made for the movie made sense. cutting it down to 50 boys is obviously a practical choice for the production costs—they don't have to pay and feed and house so many more extras while shooting—but it also makes sense story-wise bc it allows the audience to focus on a much smaller number of boys. raising the age makes sense, again, for the sake of filming—you're gonna end up casting older anyway, and if you don't and try to cast age-appropriate teens you're gonna limit how many hours you can film. 3MPH vs 4MPH is just more believable—poor king himself has admitted he just plucked 4MPH out of thin air and had no idea what it really looked like.
THE UNQUESTIONABLY GREAT:
other changes that i thought were really successful: i loved olson becoming more intwined with the musketeers and getting larger role. i really appreciated the lighter touch for barkovitch—he's much more sympathetic in the movie, but also way more empathetic. everyone's been that person in their life, at least once: trying to fit in with a group of people and accidentally saying the wrong thing and getting defensive and lashing out. i really liked the decision to have ray enter the walk single, and to focus the freeport scene on his mother's horror and his guilt. that was WILDLY effective for me. the hill scene was SOOOO good, and when i re-read the book i was shocked to realize the hill scene wasn't there!
similarly harkness's broken ankle is, to date, the most chilling and horrifying visual of the entire movie. if you hear the snap on the hill and watch his ankle roll, you can't take your eyes off of him throughout the following scenes and francis lawrence played that up so well. he kept him the back of the following scene just quietly limping. if you DIDN'T catch the break, then the slow pan down to him walking on the side of his ankle is just as jarring and violent—so fantastic! and it's not in the book! these are the type of edits that worked so well because they FELT true to the horror of the narrative.
i LOVE that other than those 2 brief flashbacks to the night his father was squadded, the movie IS the walk. we are with the boys on this dreary terrible march to death, and there is no escaping it. i loved how the movie didn't shy away from some of the more gruesome moments of the book, and i thought the soundtrack was soooo beautiful. when i re-read the book, i listened to the soundtrack on repeat.
i sobbed during olson's death, the freeport scene, and baker's death both times in theatres. those are also three of the four points in the book that i sobbed as well. we'll talk about the fourth time, and why it was missing while watching the movie, later on...
THE GOOD MOVIE CHOICES, BUT MID ADAPTATION ONES:
i don't really understand the decision to scrap scramm and divide his traits between olson and stebbins. the first time i saw the movie, it had been so long since i'd re-read the book that i couldn't remember some of the character's names, just more general traits. (actually: when i saw the stills from the film, i thought barkovitch might be stebbins bc i remembered that in the book stebbins had long blonde hair and wore more hippie-ish clothes—so barkovitch in the movie, with his long blonde hair and the bandana, was reading as more stebbins-coded.) so the first time around, i thought the changes—especially to stebbins—were weird, but not like. totally distracting? like it didn't pull me out of the narrative and i could make due.
after reading the book, it made less sense to me, and i'm still a little puzzled. they CLEARLY liked the character of scramm—why else would they keep so many of his characteristics? but i think dividing it up between other characters kind of watered it all down. in the book i really love getting to see everyone find out about scramm's wife while he's still alive. and getting to witness the sure-fire favorite, who was also the most confident in himself, break down steadily overtime KNOWING he was married with a baby on the way, really worked for me. the second time i saw the film, i was more bothered by the change.
for olson, i don't think it's quite a big deal—the reveal that he was married doesn't even come until after he's died, so it almost feels like an after thought. if anything it just bothers me on a writing standpoint bc it feels like a waste. for stebbins, it's more frustrating. in the book he's more of an underdog who surprises everyone by how unaffected he is by everything the further the walk goes on. i don't think the rabbit speech works as well in the movie, when we've been watching him fall apart for the whole movie and you realize pretty early on he's not going to make it to the end.
on a somewhat related note, after i saw the movie i saw someone online point out that in the movie the last five or so boys all get to choose their own deaths with some semblance of autonomy and dignity. this is drastically different from the book, and while all of the deaths are very emotional in the movie and really hit me in the heart...as an adaptation, it (again) somewhat frustrates me.
i think maybe one of the biggest changes between the book and the movie is that—despite how bleak everyone is (accurately) calling the movie—the movie is nicer. way nicer. and as a huge fan of the book, i really miss that bleak, almost mean, edge that was at the heart of the story. and those final deaths really pack a punch! some comparisons:
olson's death in the movie is pretty similar to the book, but not nearly as grotesque. olson in the book is practically the walking dead for ages, and when he finally gets shot, his intestines literally fall out of his stomach and he picks them up so he can keep walking. this isn't that big of a deal: the movie version is still very effective, and i LOVED baker running back to try and save him and ray having to save him.
barkovitch's death in the movie plays more as though he's denying the soldier's the chance to kill him? so it feels almost like an act of protest, right? like him taking his autonomy back. in the book his death is way meaner, and he seems to mentally fully break down before he claws his own throat out with his bare hands. not to MENTION the book has that extended scene where garraty falls back just to pick on barkovitch and bully him shortly before his death.
collie parker's death in the movie is probably one of the larger examples of a character getting to choose his own death. in the book, parker successfully steals a gun and tries to encourage the other boys to help him. but they're all so far gone that, other than a forever manic mcvries, they're barely able to conceive what he's asking of them. parker gets shot and killed for his acts as punishment. this is VERY different from the movie where, despite getting shot, he takes his own life and denies the soldiers another kill.
baker's death is flawless in the movie and the book. other than adding pete to that final conversation, and a few other slight dialogue changes, it's pretty true to the source material.
stebbins' death is also a big departure from the book. it comes earlier—he dies third to last in the movie instead of second to last in the book. that makes sense to me, because the movie leans so heavily on pete and ray as the main characters, that it makes sense for them to be the final two (of course, one of the things i love about the book is the subversion of that expectation by having garraty finish the walk with a guy he's hated from the beginning). but in the book, stebbins drops dead from literal exhaustion, and in the movie he chooses to stop walking as almost an act of rebellion against his father and a—deliberately stated!—choice to die with some dignity. it's a prime example of the movie being much nicer to the characters than the book.
i also wish we'd seen an abraham-death in the movie—the horror of him coming up with the idea to make everyone agree not to save each other anymore, only to then be the next one to die bc everyone refuses to help him when he's missing a shirt at night in the rain?? so cold. so cutting. sooooo bleak.
but again. i understand most of these death choices, they work very well in terms of the movie. it's just in direct comparison to the book where i'm like: ehhhh. i definitely prefer one (the book) over the other (the movie).
THE FRUSTRATING DECISION:
ok so. if you've gotten this far you have probably been waiting for it but: i Do Not™ like the ending. the fourth scene that makes me cry in the book is the ending—basically the entire final chapter. from the moment baker dies at the end of the penultimate chapter, through mcvries' decision to sit down, to garraty trying and failing to pick him up (all while begging the soldiers to shoot him instead!), to him deciding to give up only for stebbins to die instead, to the gloriously bleakly horrifying ambigious open ending—i cry every time and on this recent re-read i WAILED (i was v worried what my neighbors must have been thinking since i had my windows open lol).
and the first time i was watching the movie, i was waiting for that ending. the book ending has been one of my favorite's since i was a kid. it has stuck with me for over twenty years. so i was anxious to see what the movie would do. you're right, they'd really built pete up and made him a more sympathetic character (especially changing his back story), and they'd made him a much more mature and gentle figure. i was both dreading and anticipating his death, knowing it would hit just as much, if not harder, when he chose to sit down. i had some quibbles with choices earlier in the film, but i was ready to see how they'd translate the ending on the page to the screen. i didn't mind the decision to kill stebbins third-to-last for the reasons i said earlier, and i thought pete sitting down would be potentially more effective this way given their tight bond in the movie. through the entire last third of the movie, i basically had a running mantra in my head going "oh my god, they're doing it. oh my god, they're getting this right. oh my god, it's perfect." even with all the changes. all the quibbles. i was right there with the movie in lock step.
through that final stretch of walking my chest kept getting tighter and tighter and when pete went to kneel down my eyes started to water and then—ray pulled him back up? and i was like. ok they're stretching it out. and then ray pulled back. and then he kneeled. and then he got shot. and then pete asked for the gun and shot the major and turned away and i—
was totally not with the movie anymore. it completely pulled me out of the narrative.
and i thought, after the first viewing, that it was just bc of the surprise? but then i re-read the book. and then i saw the movie again, knowing what was coming, and i hoped that maybe—maybe—it wouldn't bug me as much.
and unfortunately, my issues with the ending just kind of extrapolated. and became bigger issues with some of the larger changes they made. mainly: ray's motivation.
(i also think it's interesting that in the book i really do think of him as garraty, vs in the movie i think of him as ray.)
re-reading the book, i'm even less a fan of ray's movie motivations now after a second viewing. there's just something about garraty as our every man, just as confused and unsure as to why he volunteered in the first place. the passage when he really starts to realize he fucked up, that he made a mistake, is soooo good. it feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of the story to give ray an actual purpose for joining the walk. the horror of the novel is that it's pointless. it's THAT the walk is full of volunteers, boys who sign up without any real conceptual understanding of what they're agreeing to, what they're risking. some sign up as a lark! they all think they're going to win!
there's a passage about a third of the way in the book and i fucking love it for really understanding what's happening here:
he wanted to do it all over again, but differently. now, when he thought of the major's tanned face, the salt-and-pepper mustache, the mirrored sunglasses, he felt a horror so deep it made his legs feel rubbery and weak. why am i here? he asked himself desperately, and there was no answer, so he asked the question again: why am—
answering that question just. ruins it.
that's why i feel so strongly that the kill-the-major-for-revenge-and-to-change-things doesn't work. garraty is not The Chosen One™. he's not special or different or smarter than these other boys. his father tried to show him the horror by taking him to the walk as a kid, tried to inoculate him against society's thirst for blood and entertainment, to show him the light...and he still volunteers. he still thinks he can win, despite having witnessed first hand the grim reality of this death march. he still doesn't realize what he's throwing away.
so the movie making ray have this personal motivation for revenge, already hating the walk, already feeling disenfranchised, just doesn't work for me? it also makes the world feel so much SMALLER. in the book, the major is this larger than life evil figure looming over them. in the movie, he's just...the random soldier who conducts executions of random fathers in maine? what? i think that flashback scene with the father is actually the weakest moment in the whole film—it feels the most tired. the most cliche. the most paint-by-numbers dystopian YA bullshit.
similarly, changing pete's backstory and making him so much brighter and hopeful and good also causes some problems. i don't argue with the decision to change how he got his scars—but i think they could have found a different back story that could have also caused him distress. bc at the end of the day i don't understand why pete signed up for the walk in the movie. i GUESS the movie is trying to hand wave it away with ray's speech at the beginning about how signing up for the walk isn't really a choice, but that removes the intimacy from pete's motivations. in the book, mcvries feels so much guilt and shame and hate for his actions that he basically signs up for the walk on a death wish. he WANTS to die, and the only real motivation that keeps him walking as long as he does is his hatred of barkovitch and his love for garraty. but when he reaches the end of the line, he sits down. he gives up. he gets what he wants. the book also reveals that he was pulled from the back up list last minute—he barely had any time to really understand that this was real.
movie pete? the decision to sign up feels so wildly incongruent with the character presented to us. i love him, don't get me wrong! but he feels too mature. too together. this is a character who feels v secure in his choices, in the life he's building for hismelf. he says he wants to help people, but i just don't buy that THIS pete, who saw so much bad in his childhood and actively chose to appreciate his second chance at life, would be naive enough to think he could win. it just doesn't quite fit.
and i cannot separate those choices from the ending. i'm not against changing the winner to pete. i do kind of like that subversion of expectations—following one boy for 99% of the story as your POV only to find out at the very end that he's just like the others. he dies too. that's v effective!!
but tying it up with ray's personal vendetta plot and the lack of real coherence regarding pete's motivations...hate that. i feel like they were trying to eat their cake and have it too—trying to end the movie vaguely open ended with pete turning away to keep walking, but leaving the audience with the implication that he's potentially made some difference, potentially ended the walk. like sure, maybe he's lost his heart, his goodness, his hope for the world, and maybe they shoot him as soon as he turns his back but. it all just feels way more muddled for me. it's trying to do too many things at once.
i think the book ending is a masterclass in storytelling and it fits the story so perfectly. endings are hard to get right, and when you do, i just don't think it's possible to swap in another in its place. it changes the story fundamentally.
the new ending doesn't feel like it's the right ending, just that it's the twist ending. the surprise ending that the writers get to call their own and surprise fans of the books who would have expected to know what they were getting.
TL;DR:
this feels like a lot of nitpicking. i want to be clear: i loved the movie. but at the end of the day, i think i'd land on this: it's a good, maybe even great, movie, but it's only a good adaptation, nowhere near perfect. on my letterboxd account, i gave a 4.5/5 stars. even with all the other changes, right up until ray kneeled down, i was in love with the movie. but that ending, and my larger issues with the changed motivations for ray and pete and how that ties into the ending, are what keep it from being perfect for me.
anyway that was v long. hope this was interesting to read (if anyone bothered to read it)!
hello hello!! just wondering: would you happen to know which version of "don't let me be misunderstood" is used in the redemption trailer? i'd really like to have it on my summer playlist, but none of the versions i've come across have sounded the same...
left this in my inbox for a few days in shame because I don’t know what it is either 😫😫😫
like mr rogers mr devlin, drop the remix pls it’s so good
🎵-for each of the Greendale Seven (or just your faves...)
faves would be everyone excluding pierce gkfjd
annie - these old wings by anna nalick because i used the lyrics to title an annie-centric fic years ago and the association has been strong ever since.
jeff- i’m a mess by ed sheeran honestly? for the alcoholism vibes
britta - rat a tat by fall out boy. i will not expand because i don’t feel i need to
abed - baby fratelli by the fratellis because of the way season two starts and how it’s like he cued that song up for us idk
troy - hold it in by jukebox the ghost is the “troy defeats his shame over his wild emotionality” anthem
shirley - now, this is a weird one but run for your life by the fray because the first verse has always just sounded like it’s in shirley’s pov to me. this one desperately needs expounding upon but i simply don’t have an explanation thanks for understanding
if you’re up for it-could you do the parent/child relationships on both shows with “you’ll be in my heart” from tarzan? i just love all these families so much
Hi, I just posted it but I’m having trouble tagging you in
FRIEND i’m so steamed i just realized that not only did they take what SHOULD be eddies storyline and give it to richie re: his sexuality but they also LITERALLY did it re: being the one to kill henry bowers and?? the Disrespect is real we thought 1990 did eddie wrong w/cringy last words but we were wrong 2019 did him way worse
im emo abt stozier let's take a sec to think abt the beginning of the school year richie noticing stan trying to comb his hair over his face to hide the scars from the painting lady and just. fukin pulls him aside and kisses his cheeks right over where he got bitten and? and?????? im fuckin dying
✨ ba-daa ✨ and just like. it’s a wholesome, simple little moment but the way that luke is introducing his pals with such fanfare captures the essence of the show...celebrate friendship...find little ways to be musical...
Send me a show, and I will tell you a specific moment from that show that I love with all my heart.
