If you want to get in good with the fans of a certain author or story then the best bet is to make a show or film that follows the source material as close to the letter as possible. Among literary fans those that follow Stephen King and his numerous works are among the most discerning and tend to get a little bent out of shape when the story that’s produced on screen isn’t considered to be on par with what they’ve already read. There are a number of his works that have been adapted to both the big and small screen that fans have absolutely destroyed. The TV version of The Mist is just the latest in a long line of them.
But why are fans so hesitant to accept it?
There’s too much back story.
The Mist was a novella at very best when it came to its original form. It wasn’t intended to be a full-length novel or much of anything other than a spooky story of otherworldly things encroaching upon this dimension. The human response to this strangeness was a big factor of the story and drove the plot more than the actual creatures that eventually appeared and were considered to be the unknown aggressors. Putting in more and more back story for the characters was bound to overload the series despite the fact that it’s typically needed to create a workable series. The main issue with it is that the original story soon gets lost in the bid for survival as the remaining folks find the need to do anything and everything to survive. In the original story the feeling of being adrift and essentially lost was the whole point of the movie. Hope was the only thing that kept them going, and even that seemed to get lost in the mists by the end.
It didn’t stick to the source closely enough.
Fear was a very pervasive feeling in this story. It was what drove people to do the things they did, and dictated what would happen with each passing moment. The fear of the mist drove the people into the buildings, the fear of what could be out there kept them inside, and eventually the fear of what the mist represented drove them to start turning on each other. In the movie and the book that same fear drove a wedge between the two different factions and kept them at odds with one another until the final climactic scene that most fans were waiting for. In the series however the fear is less than the need to know, the need to explore, and that’s part of what kills the entire show. In the story and the movie they soon realized that to venture outside was to court death. In the show that seems to be a minor fear, and it essentially kills the entire dire feeling of the story.
In short, The Mist wasn’t really meant to be a series, and it should have by all rights been left as a movie. The film wasn’t perfect but it was at least closer to the story than the series could ever be.
Follow Us
