Hear, hear. There's only so many times you can see a gelatin "corpse" get cut up while spurting red dye #5 and still find it even remotely interesting, let alone scary.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

No, not at all. I like intelligent unhappy endings just fine. I mean, my Gods, someone who likes Hamlet half so much as I cannot be said to dislike unhappy endings. This one is just pointless. It's not unhappy because that's the way the story's pointing; it's unhappy because someone thought it was a better idea than the ambiguous ending King left it with.

He's wrong if he thinks it's tragically ironic, certainly.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yeah, that's what I was getting at with my earlier comments. Hard to without spoiling the ending. The original ambigous ending would have been a good ending in my opinion. This one seems to try too much to make a more defined, less ambigious, ending that's "sad" too.

Grr. I'm not going to fix any ttypos or grammer errors this time around, for some reason my computer has lagged to the point aht I'm typing half a post ahead of the screen showing it. Time for a reboot.

Oh, and another advantage of that.

You can watch it on basic cable when it comes around without it being carved into a trailer because of the censors.

King didn't call the new ending tragically ironic, I did. The fact remains that King liked Darabont's ending better than the ending that he wrote for the novella and has said so in public.

"Just last week Stephen King was out promoting The Mist and at a press conference (via Cinema Blend) he went on record as publicly saying that he approved of and even "loved" the new ending. Here's King's official statement:

Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.

It's rare that authors really go out and state that they approve of a movie to begin with, but to say they approve of and even loved a massive change, especially to the ending, is pretty incredible. This means quite a damn bit for Frank Darabont and The Mist. Although a different genre, Alan Moore won't even acknowledge that his graphic novels (V for Vendetta or Watchmen) are adapted. And this statement coming from someone as well-known and powerful as Stephen King is definitely a good thing."

http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...%2F&frame=true

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Yes, but Stephen King generally has a poor opinion of his own work; I'm not surprised to find that he prefers someone else's version of his story--especially Frank Darabont, with whom he's worked successfully before. Now, obviously, it isn't always the case (see also The Lawnmower Man, though that can't remotely be said to be a "version" of his story), but the fact is, you're not going to convince me that King's ending isn't better. Neither is he.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Fine and you won't convince me of your point of view either.

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

This a curious position given that you've stated you didn't like the novel and you have no intention of seeing the movie. I'm not saying your position is wrong, I'm just saying it's curious.

I think both endings work perfectly. The novel's ending works for the novel. The movie's ending works for the movie. I think the novel's ending in the movie would have been an underwhelming disappointment.

Put me on the side with Stephen King. I'm recommending this movie to everyone I know, particularly if they are fans of King's work.

My problems with the original work (it isn't a novel; it's a novella at most) have nothing to do with the ending, which I think is the best ending these characters can get. And, of course, half the reason I've no intention of seeing the movie is that the ending is ridiculously corny. I wasn't sure, before I found that out. Mostly, it's that I prefer Stephen King's more thoughtful stories, not just giant bugs from (presumably; the characters have no way of knowing for sure) another dimension.

I'm also enough of a purist that, in my opinion, if you can't make a major aspect of the plot of a source work on screen, you shouldn't adapt it to screen in the first place.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Gillianren,

It would only be fair to actually see The Mist before passing judgment on the "ridiculously corny, cliche" ending.

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Again, I'm not trying to dogpile on you; I'm trying to understand your position. You say you don't like SK's monster stories, and as Mist qualifies as one of those, you didn't like the novella--but you did like the ending. Likewise, you don't like SK's monster movies for the same reason, PLUS you think the ending is 'corny and pointless.' Not that all unhappy endings are corny and pointless--just this one in particular.

I suppose this would be similar to me saying, "I can't stand Shakespeare, and the ending of Hamlet is particularly bad. I mean come on, the hero gets killed exactly as the villains planned it? How lame can you get?"

I guess I'm enough of a realist to acknowledge that condensing multi-page novels into movies is tough enough without taking liberties. What movie would you praise for following the source text precisely? Plus, it has to be mentioned--not all novels make workable movies. Stephen King's Gerald's Game would make a very uninteresting movie, in my opinion. Watch a half-naked woman strapped to a bed for two hours while her imagination runs wild? With about twelve words of dialogue? No thanks. Maybe as a indie-aspiring grad-student project, but for a major release? I doubt it will ever happen unless some serious plot changes are made. But that doesn't take away from the novel itself, which I enjoyed.

What rankles me is when I read a review that says, for instance, "I can't stand epic fantasy, and this latest novel is a perfect example of why not." If you're going to approach the genre squinty-eyed and arms viciously crossed, well, don't expect me to give your opinion much weight.

I much prefer single-page novels - they are so much quicker to get through!

Flippancy aside, that was a thoughtful post.

My main issue is with films (and any other adaptation) being faithful to its source material (usually a book or short story).

It occurred to me that an adaptation would be best judged as a response to the source material. Few adaptations follow the original work closely, but there are good reasons and bad reasons why that is.

The main good reason is that a scene that works in print might not work so well in film.

Bad reasons include: the film maker has not understood the original text, or has decided he knows better.

Alternatively, the film maker might be setting out to tell a story that is inspired by an existing work. I think Blade Runner got away with doing this partly because it was very good in its own right, and partly because it wasn't actually called Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Well, after all, I do know how the movie ends. And, yeah, I did like the ending of the original novella. I liked the idea that there was a possibility of a solution, but it wasn't as simple as, say, the Army rolling in. And Gods know there's plenty of unhappy endings aside from the movie version that are corny and pointless; I don't want to seem as though I'm just pointing a finger at this. I think, however, that the film's ending is a copout. I think we've seen it before, and I don't think it's ever been done well. I don't think it can be done well, but I also think it fails to ring true with the character that King established. I think he would choose a chance at life for his son, no matter how slim.

I don't see that at all, actually. In Hamlet, by the fifth act, there is no other possible solution. By his own actions--and inactions--Hamlet has worked himself into a corner wherein he must die for the story to be fulfilled, and any other ending would be cheating. Remember, please, that my problem with "The Mist" and what I understand to be true of the film adaptation are actually two different things. My problem with "The Mist" has more to do with its concept, and so no, I probably wouldn't have seen the movie anyway. However, in changing the ending, they presented me with what I believe to be a problem with how the characters interact with their universe, which is entirely different. I just don't believe that the main character would behave the way he does in the end, and I think that the deus ex machina which follows is ridiculous and unnecessary; if he is to make the sacrifice he does, let it mean something.

There is a very strong morality in Stephen King's writing. It's not that there's no pointless death, and I don't want to imply that there is. However, each death can be made to serve a higher purpose. The pointless deaths in, say, The Stand lead up to the morality play that is the whole point of the story, for example. I feel that the movie ending of The Mist takes away from that and just gives us an ending that we can believe is ironic, whether it actually meets the definition of the word or not.

Right. But because it would make a bad movie as written, they shouldn't make it into a movie. Where is it written, after all, that every good work of literature--or even just pulp writing, if you want to listen to King's opinion of his own work--should be made into a movie? I'm not saying that liberties can't be taken. I'm aware, for example, that they had to cut almost all of the backstory out of The Princess Bride because otherwise the movie would be about twelve hours long. However, you don't need the backstory in order to make a workable movie. Removing bits that don't drive the story as much is different from changing things because you don't think they can be filmed. And, in fact, there are changes that get made to books wherein I believe it's acceptable. But, so far as I'm concerned, if you can't make a decent film without changing major plot points--such as, yes, the ending--you should look elsewhere for source material.

And that's fine. But again, I'm not arguing against the movie because it's a Stephen King giant bugs movie--or, indeed, a giant bugs movie at all; it doesn't need to be Stephen King to fail to interest me. Were that all, I might have merely commented that I don't like giant bugs movies and moved on. However, they have changed the bits that do interest me, the character interaction, and that bothers me.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Late, like usual, but I think it's funny that you say that. I know we've spoken breifly before about King, and I know my view of him differes very much so from yours. But the Mist was one of my favorite shorts from him. Like most of the other stuff I've read, there were some "flaws" (wrong word I suppose, but just elements that really bugged me). But overall, I liked it.

Although I have no interest in seeing the movie either. I just feel like there's no possible way that actually seeing the events on screen could be as suspensfull as it was reading about them. Besides, my intense dislike for movie-going means I only go see things that I really, really want to see. (I haven't even seen the Simpsons movie yet, and I can practically recite most of the episodes by heart).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Now that I'm older, landscapes terrify me. Like the most dangerous roads link here somewhere. Still images of large waves in black and white. Aspects of The Fog and the Shining.

The Mist is a wonderful movie.

Greetings, All....

New here, but wanted to let those fans of the ORIGINAL ending (such as myself) to the great King novella 'The Mist' know that there is a Fan Edit version ('The Novella Cut') being worked on that will adhere more closely to the structure/tone of the source material...not that Frank Darabont didn't MOSTLY do a great job on this movie, but that ending...hell, it just COMPLETELY alters the message and the feelings you are left with after the story wraps up...

Anyway, check out my site for more info and please leave feedback or email me with thoughts on the project, would love to hear from you all...

http://www.karcreat.com/MistNovellaCut.html

Thanks!
Kevin Karstens
kkarstens@cableone.net