02-16-2021, 12:20 AM
N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
I finally got around to finish watching it ... without any spoilers, I can say that it ended much, much better than it began. The last episode was written by King himself, and it shows. (For those who haven't seen it, the last episode is essentially a new ending to the story, though it shares elements from the book.)
The series as a whole definitely had serious problems (especially the writing, editing, and direction), but there were some decent performances despite some pretty lousy casting choices. (I didn't care for the actors they got for Fran Goldsmith, Nick Andros, or Lloyd Henreid... on the other hand, the ones they got for Julie Lawry, Larry Underwood, and Flagg were excellent, and Greg Kinnear was surprisingly good as Glen Bateman.)
Mainly, I took issue with the writing leaving out whole portions of the story that were critical to character development and/or the story making sense, and also the choice to change certain story elements -- not always for the better. Also, there were times when I thought that it would make no sense to someone who either hadn't read the book or watched the 90's version of the miniseries -- which I still think is superior, but this version just came up a bit in my opinion, mostly on the basis of the last episode.
Ars Technica's reviewer takes essentially a completely opposite view of it than you do: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/02/r...e-landing/
Wow, I think she's completely missing the point. Most of the reviewers on iMDB echo exactly what I've said, that using a flashback approach in the earlier episodes was a huge mistake, that while some of the casting choices were good, a number were miscast, and that the writing is such that you don't really care that much about what happens to the characters.