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Kubrick no, Zac Efron yes: how Stephen King reconciled with the adaptations of his novels

2022-05-22T03:52:41.537Z


Famous for criticizing movies based on his works, the master of horror with movies based on his books has evolved to almost the opposite pole: lately they all seem commendable


“They have made it a family story and I love that.”

"I've seen it three times already."

"I think Zac Efron has done a wonderful job."

"I hope they do a trilogy."

These are just some of the enthusiastic comments that Stephen King (Maine, USA, 74 years old) made last week in an interview with

Vanity Fair

about the new film adaptation of his novel

Eyes of Fire

, released on May 13, with former teen star Zac Efron in the role of the girl's father.

During the exchange with journalist Anthony Breznigan, King also praises some details of the staging and even goes so far as to say that the script contains ideas that he wishes he had come up with himself.

The master of horror appears to be the biggest fan of the film, which has garnered a meager 12% approval rating among professional critics, according to aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes

, and opened at the US box office with less than $4 million, per below

Sonic 2: The Movie

in its sixth week.

Directed by Keith Thomas, a filmmaker who surprised just two years ago for the original combination of terror and Jewish folklore that he proposed in his first feature film,

The Vigil

(from 2019, but released in 2020), the new

Eyes of Fire

condenses the most of 400 pages of King's novel, published in 1980, in an hour and a half.

This production of the Blumhouse label plays with the spirit of its time and turns the journey of the main character, little Charlie McGee (a girl with pyrokinetic powers; that is, capable of creating and controlling fire with her mind), basically a narrative style of superhero origin stories, whose protagonist could easily fit into a future

crossover

with the X-Men.

It is not the first time that the novel has been adapted to the cinema: it was already done in 1984, with a very young Drew Barrymore, and many more objections from Stephen King.

"It's like a cafeteria puree," the author declared to the magazine of the

American Film Institute

in an interview at the time, where he pointed out it as "one of the worst" adaptations of his work, even being more faithful to the original source than the remake

“In recent years, the attitude that King adopts is more that of a sponsor who simply feels proud that his work continues to generate interest among filmmakers,” says Óliver Mayorga, editor of the

specialized

newsletter

La Zona , interviewed by ICON.

Dead

, dedicated to promoting the work of the writer from Maine.

Mayorga highlights the moment of

kingmania

awakened by the success of the modern adaptation of

It

(2017-19), the first installment of which became the highest-grossing horror film of all time and, of course, was effusively praised by King, despite some notable creative license.

Getting his blessing, however, no longer seems as difficult as it did in the days when not even Stanley Kubrick made the cut.

The most recent film based on his work and one that King has charged against, as he did with 1980's

The Shining

(to the displeasure of which he even personally wrote the script for a television remake in 1997, which follows his book almost verbatim). the lyrics), is from two decades ago: the vilified

The Dreamcatcher

(2003).

Later adaptations and with the same general rejection, such as

The Dark Tower

(2017), have received, however, very affectionate comments on their part.

Drew Barrymore in 'Eyes of Fire'.

“I was very young at the time,” the writer declares in the

Vanity Fair

interview when asked about his past visceral reactions to movies like the first version of

Eyes of Fire

.

Now, instead, he says: “I like it more than before.

I don't want to say anything bad about anyone, I never do.

If there's something I don't like, my policy is almost always to keep quiet."

“King's relationship with film has always been a complicated one.

The problem seems to come from how the texts are adapted and how they simplify the depth and complexity of their characters and themes”, considers, consulted by ICON, the American professor Jaron Mann, author in 2011 of the thesis

The Misery of Popularity: Stephen King in the Literature Classroom

(in Spanish

The Misery of Popularity: Stephen King in Literature Class

, a reference to his novel Misery), where he discusses how the massive scope of the Maine writer's work has led many scholars to downplay or dismiss it by default.

Mann believes that King is not so concerned with his adaptations being completely faithful to the books as with making "meaningful connections" between characters and viewers, which is why, in his opinion, the author seems to welcome better those that have a serial format, "which allow to go deeper into the details".

a new perspective

“I am the literary equivalent of the Big Mac and potatoes”, Stephen King famously stated about his work in an interview for

Time

in 1986. Due to statements like this, Professor Jaron Mann defends that King has never had the slightest interest in prestige or intellectual recognition, and rejects that his clashes with some directors and producers could be due, in this sense, to an old youthful aspiration because he was valued better or because he felt that he was being vulgarized.

In addition to the explicit popular vocation of the writer, in her thesis, another factor that Mann points out to explain why academics underestimate King is that he cultivates a genre that is not usually applauded by critics, horror.

Something that has its reflection in the cinema: the adaptations of his prison dramas

Cadena Perpetua

(1994) and

The Green Mile

(1999) received many more congratulations from critics and fans.

Both are the feature films based on stories by the author with the highest rating on IMDb, despite not belonging to the genre with which he is universally identified.

“People have a preconception that the term terror simply implies blood and guts.

As a result, when they see a movie classified as horror, that is the image they project and assume that it is not going to be good.

They miss out,” he argues.

Regarding the new perspective from which King approaches his contemporary adaptations, Mann points to the "feeling of nostalgia" that may exist in films such as the new

Eyes of Fire

, which act as a "bridge between generations", having "parents that they could have read the adolescent book or gone to see the [1984] film and now they want to share that experience with their own adolescent son”, although he does not think that this is “necessarily” the reason that justifies an alleged change of attitude of the author.

Nor, he adds, the aspiration to reach even more of an audience than he already has.

Óliver Mayorga, from the newsletter

La Zona Muerta

, opens another possible way of interpretation: the disaster of his first and also his last foray into the cinema as a director,

The revolt of the machines

(1986).

“I am sure that his eventful experience, which was also a failure at the box office, made him see the world of cinema differently.

And more so after having experienced first-hand the difficulties that a film crew faces day after day”, he considers.

Shot at the peak of his cocaine addiction, as King himself has acknowledged,

Rise of the Machines

is currently a cult title among fans of

trash

cinema due to the delirium of the ensemble, its unintentionally comic dialogues or the very dandruff scenes

gory

.

The film, which narrates how the machines come to life as a result of the passage of a comet near the Earth, begins by showing a drawbridge that becomes aware of itself, opens in the middle of a traffic jam and causes a full truck to lose its load. of melons, which cause a bloodletting by bursting on the heads of the drivers behind.

"He was very drugged and did not know what he was doing," confessed the author and director in the interview book

Hollywood's Stephen King

(2003), directed by Tony Magistrale.

The director of 1984's

Eyes of Fire

, Mark L. Lester, greatly upset at the time by King's criticism of his work, savored the failure as sweet revenge.

“At that time, he hated every movie that was taken out of his books.

Finally, Dino [de Laurentiis, producer of

Eyes of Fire, The Dead Zone

(1983), and

The Eyes of the Cat

(1985)] got fed up with him and said, 'Okay, you're going to direct your own movie.'

And well, it turned out to be the absolute worst Stephen King movie ever," he told the Dutch fanzine

Schokkend Nieuws

in 2014.

Despite the experience of

The Rebellion of the Machines

, Óliver Mayorga recalls that Stephen King has not creatively broken with cinema and cites the example of

La historia de Lisey

, a miniseries by Chilean Pablo Larraín that premiered last year on Apple TV+, with signed scripts by him, as it is an adaptation of “his favorite novel”.

Or his initiative

From him Dollar Baby

, which allows film or theater students to adapt their short stories paying only 1 dollar for their rights;

program that had among its beneficiaries a young Frank Darabont (responsible for The

Perpetuity

,

The Green Mile

and

The Fog

(2007).

Unless Stephen King's lawyers keep count - the practice has been around since 1977 - it's virtually impossible to know the number of productions that have been run under this system, but a simple glance at YouTube with the words "stephen king dollar baby" shows that many are still being filmed, perhaps more than ever thanks to their current cultural influence.

An influence also importantly displayed through apocryphal works or, as much as it bothered him before, adaptations that he considered failed.

This same May, the new season of Stranger Things

premieres on Netflix

, whose great heroine, Eleven, is not difficult to relate to Charlie McGee from

Eyes of Fire.

Its managers, in fact, made actress Millie Bobby Brown pose on a poster imitating Drew Barrymore in the 1984 film. In case anyone is really wondering, Stephen King has already said on more than one occasion that he loves

Stranger Things

.

Watching STRANGER THINGS is looking at watching Steve King's Greatest Hits.

I mean that in a good way.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 17, 2016

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-22

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