Greetings, reader!
Literature Month II ended last week with a ranking of my favorite Stephen King books, so it felt like a fitting bridge back into my usual movie/TV themes to continue with a ranking of the best King adaptations on the big screen.
Now, there were a few different ways in which this could've been done. I could've done a simple ranking of the top 10 best overall movies that happen to be based on Stephen King books, regardless of how well they work as adaptations. Or, I could've ranked these purely based on how loyal they are to the book, regardless of how good of an overall film it is. I ended up doing neither (or both, depending on how you look at it), as this ranking is a mixture of both elements. You get points for being a good adaption, and points for being a good film, making this list a total of what I consider to be the best 'Stephen King movies'.
Oh, and I'm excluding the wonderful The Green Mile (1999), because I haven't gotten a chance to read the book yet, so I can't analyze its merits as an adaptation (it's a kick-ass film no matter what, obviously).
Here are my honorable mentions: It (1990), Pet Sematary (1989), Pet Sematary (2019).
10. It: Chapter Two (2019)
While I agree with the overwhelming popular opinion that the second instalment of Andy Muschietti's It films wasn't as good as the first, I still think that it was received a bit too negatively, as the flawed-but-decent sequel does many things right and is still loads better than the 1990 miniseries.
The flaws keeping the movie from greatness can be found from its arrogant and unsuccessful attempt to one-up the book's ending, and the over-use of humor as an element that really takes the edge off the spookier elements. But there are many strengths, chief among them the casting - from James McAvoy's Bill through Jessica Chastain's Beverly all the way to Bill Hader's Richie, they really found the perfect actors to play the adult version of the Losers Club (and it goes without saying that Bill Skarsgård continues to kill it as Pennywise).
The film also does a decent job with many cool parts from the book, such as the creepy reunion dinner and the tense under-the-bridge opening. Considering that it's adapted from a 1200-page literary behemoth containing a climax that would never quite work the same on the big screen, you can't expect this to be an absolute masterpiece. So, while It: Chapter Two was a bit of a let-down after seeing the first film, reading the book in between and going to see the conclusion in the cinema two years later, it still was far from being a failure.
9. The Shining (1980)
This one was tough to rank with my combination of factors for today's list. Is The Shining one of the greatest horror films of all time, and one of the top 3 best films that happen to be based on King's books? Yes. Is it a good adaptation of King's book? Well, not really.
As much as I love Stanley Kubrick's film, I completely understand why King himself hates it. It takes some wild-ass liberties, not just on the level of specific plot points, but on the level of themes, focal points, and overall atmosphere. The weird thing is that the film avoids the 'this film is bad because it's a bad adaptation' trope, because Kubrick just sort of happened to make a very different kind of masterpiece. His Shining is pretty much just as great as King's Shining, but for totally different and even unrelated reasons.
Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance is one of the greatest role performances in cinema history, but he's not playing the Jack Torrance from the book. Kubrick's peculiar directing style, fleshed out by the iconic and polarizing work of the set design, music and cinematography departments, creates one of the most unique and haunting atmospheres in horror cinema, but it's not the atmosphere from the Overlook Hotel that King wrote. In a nutshell, The Shining is only at #9 because it really isn't much of an adaptation, but it still makes it into the top 10, because it is an absolute classic that is (sort of) based on a King novel.
8. The Stand (1994)
Cinematically, this 1994 miniseries amounts to an absolute fraction of The Shining. But on this list, it's ahead of it, because it is a much more loyal adaptation, and pretty much the best possible big-screen adaptation that could be made of The Stand. Mind you, the miniseries isn't all that great, but I don't believe you could adapt that particular book much better, because so much of The Stand is material that works better on the pages of a book than on the big screen. Sure, the people who said The Lord of the Rings and/or Dune can never be properly adapted into a movie were proved wrong, but I will stubbornly claim the same about The Stand until someone does prove me wrong.
This miniseries is the best-case scenario - it's nowhere near as gripping, creative and mind-blowing as the book, but for someone who read the whole thing, it feels delightful to witness its wonderful characters coming to life via well-cast acting performances (especially Gary Sinise as reluctant hero Stu Redman, and a young and absolutely dashing Rob Lowe as a pitch-perfect Nick Andros). Some parts of the miniseries were boring as this type of story is riveting to follow as literature but falls a bit flat on the big screen - but other parts were dope and memorable, particularly the chilling opening montage set to Blue Öyster Cult's (Don't Fear) The Reaper.
7. Doctor Sleep (2019)
It's funny how The Shining's sequel Doctor Sleep is a much lesser book than the original, just as the Doctor Sleep movie is nowhere near the greatness of Kubrick's The Shining - yet this is the one list where Doctor Sleep gets the edge, as this film is the better adaptation of the two. Mind you, Mike Flanagan had his hands full with this one, as he ambitiously attempted to bridge it all together by making this film an adaptation of the 2013 book, a movie sequel to the 1977 book The Shining, AND a film sequel to the 1980 film. And somehow, he succeeded!
The parts that relate directly to The Shining are handpicked to be those parts that were similar to both the book and the movie, and therefore this film does feel like it's continuing both King and Kubrick's stories, no matter how different those were from each other. Ewan McGregor is just right as the all-grown-up Dan Torrance, and while the plot doesn't follow the Doctor Sleep book with exact precision, it is a much more loyal adaptation than The Shining was. A decent job, this one.
Sidenote: we're at #7 and I'm still only at "a decent job" instead of high praise, which really underlines how difficult King's writing is to adapt, and how there's less than a handful of truly great cinematic adaptations of his books out there.
6. Carrie (1976)
In terms of loyalty to the text, Carrie is up there as one of the most faithful King adaptations - the story escalates in a very similar fashion to the book, with hardly any extra material. The film was made just two years after the book's release, and it was directed by the steady hand of Brian De Palma, with the premise feeling less "let's make a CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE" and more "let's give fans of the book the treat of getting to see all this in movie format". An antithesis to Kubrick's The Shining, if you will.
The fact that Carrie is only sixth says something about the fans who always complain about movies-based-on-books taking liberties instead of being 100% faithful. Sure, taking too many is a problem and one should remain faithful to the book's spirit, but films like Carrie showcase why there's something to be said for some well-reasoned liberties - a book-based movie that remains very, very faithful is bound to feel a tad like a typical cover song, doing the same but just without the edge of the original. A movie based on a book can do its job with perfection without being a masterpiece, and if you want it to be a masterpiece, you arguably have to take one or two major liberties in order to make the film great in its own right.
5. Christine (1983)
Not nearly as good as an overall piece of cinema as many below it on today's list, and also based on a book far from King's highest tier, Christine is nonetheless one of the better adaptations of King's works. The plot itself even isn't all that faithful to the novel - definitely more faithful than The Shining or Pet Sematary (2019), but not as faithful as Carrie, for example. But the spirit of the book is captured into the film with excellence, and watching Christine truly feels like seeing the world from the pages of the book coming to life.
Of course, a horror novel about a haunted car must be easier to adapt successfully onto the big screen than the unique psychological horror of The Shining, the large-scope epic of The Stand or the psychedelic and otherworldly fantasy elements of It. But still, kudos to John Carpenter for sticking the landing with this project.
4. Misery (1990)
Mm, here we have one of those rare and delightful adaptions where the places, characters and events look just like you imagined them when reading the book, as the filmmakers really got to the heart of the book's milieu and managed to recreate it. The biggest factor in Misery's success as an adaptation is, without a doubt, the brilliant casting - James Caan is the spitting image of protagonist Paul Sheldon, and oh man, Kathy Bates's Oscar-winning performance as antagonist Annie Wilkes is up there with Sir Ian McKellen's Gandalf and David Suchet's Hercule Poirot as some of the best-ever instances of an actor completely becoming the character from the book to a staggering degree.
3. It (2017)
Being a good adaptation isn't necessarily the same thing as following the book's events word-for-word. For example, the 1990 miniseries It follows the book much more accurately than the 2017 film, but it fails to capture the spirit and atmosphere of the book. This film by Andy Muschietti takes its share of wild-ass liberties from the source material, but man, the atmosphere it 100 per cent Stephen King. Benjamin Wallfisch's score is pitch-perfect for the fictional setting of Derry, Maine, and the casting choices from Bill Skarsgård's terrifying Pennywise to Finn Wolfhard's hilarious Richie are pulled straight from the pages of the book.
Also, this movie is somewhat responsible for my whole Stephen King phase. Sure, I had seen a few movies based on his books before 2017, but I hadn't thought of them as 'Stephen King adaptations' specifically. I went in to the cinema to watch It, not having read the book but knowing that this is based on a famous Stephen King book - and I loved the film so much, that I had to read the 1200-page book. This left me with a simmering drive to read much more King, a project that I got around to starting last winter - and the rest is history.
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Of course the arguably greatest film of all time is based on a Stephen King book. And even thought it is one of the three only films that I've ever given a full 10/10 rating to, I still have to say that purely in the category of King adaptations, there is one that has to go above this one, even if it isn't quite as great as a whole cinematic product.
But, yeah. Frank Darabont really pulled a rabbit out of a hat with this one. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a very decent novella by King, but not quite among his best works - yet Darabont saw its potential, and made an all-time legendary film out of it. Most King books are stories that work much better as literature than on the screen, which is why there will probably never be a masterpiece-level movie of Pet Sematary or The Stand, and why It and The Shining had to change a bunch of stuff in order to work. But Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption isn't typical King, and out of all his stories, it's the one that begs to be made into a movie.
Pretty much everything from the book's little-over-100-pages length is there, plus a bunch of added material that fleshed the story out. Not nearly all of the film's greatness is attributed to King, because Darabont really made the story his own (as much as I love Stephen King's writing, Shawshank is the one case where I have to reluctantly agree that the adaption is the better work, similarly to how Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt is so great that the Nails stopped playing it live because 'it belongs to Cash now'). But of course, the author has to be thanked and praised for coming up with the premise and basic storyline, that allowed the possibly greatest film of all time to be made.
But what film deserves to be called an even better King adaptation than this one? Well, that would be...
1. Stand By Me (1986)
King himself considers this to be the greatest big-screen adaptation of any of his works, and I can see why. I saw the film in high school, and saw it again this year after I had read The Body, on which the movie is based, in between. Basically, Stand By Me checks every box of a perfect book-to-film adaptation: the story is very loyal to the book and the few minor liberties it takes are well-reasoned, the atmosphere completely feels like King's writing with much of his dialogue making it into the screenplay, and all of the book's best and most memorable parts are highlighted here as well.
Oh, and the casting? Ridiculously good. I didn't remember which actor plays which character when I started my re-watch, but having just finished the book, all it took was one glance at the main characters in the tree house sequence to immediately know who is who. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell all live up to their roles in some of Hollywood's all-time best child acting, as does Kiefer Sutherland as teenage dirtbag Ace Merrill. No other 'based on a story by Stephen King' flick has lived up to its source material quite as fully as Stand By Me.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I analyze this summer's Barbie/Oppenheimer double feature craze with 10 insights into this odd pairing of films that swept the world away.
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