Review: The Stand (2020 CBS miniseries)

Drive-by Review: The Stand. It doesn’t. Nope, the new CBS adaptation is as limp as a wet noodle. Doesn’t, er, stand up to the original 1994 miniseries. That adaptation had its share of cheese. But it also had an electric sense of dramatic pacing. Its opening scene—where the camera hovers over the instant casualties in a covert CBRN research facility to the tune of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”—how could you possibly top that? The answer is, you can’t. That scene burned in my brain—along with many others. I could multiply examples—to the point I could sit down and whip out a rough storyboard if so asked. The bad brains behind this latest adaptation didn’t want to go over old ground. They didn’t want to draw from Marvel’s outstanding comic book adaptation. They didn’t even want to give undead life to Rospo Pallenberg’s insanely great screenplay adaptation for a tragically unmade George Romero film. Nah. These geniuses wanted to take a fresh approach—which is to say they started the story in the middle and made a hash out of the various sequentially scrambled scenes. Their dialog bends over backward to avoid repeating the lines from Stephen King's original novel (or any of the adaptations listed above). The screenwriters in question (Josh Boone & Benjamin Cavell) also don’t dig the fact that “The Stand” is essentially a road picture (or “Lord of the Rings” ripoff) for most of the first third. There’s no sense of movement—no sense of scope, or a big, terrifying world surrounding the characters in their respective quests through the chaos. What’s left is an oddly cramped, static, claustrophobic vibe. And no sense of fear whatsoever. I’m only judging by the first episode, true. But I have no desire to see the next one. (That’s kindofa death sense for a miniseries, eh?) It only cost me 99 cents for my first month’s subscription to CBS All Access. But I want my money back.