Tag Archives: Reviews

Oct 31 2025

Making The Perfect Stephen King Adaptation

One would think that adapting any of acclaimed author Stephen King’s literary works into a top-tier film or television production would be fairly simple. But it’s not. So, why is it so difficult to successfully adapt a Stephen King work? There are a few that can be considered, but it basically boils down to these two reasons.

Translation to Screen

While King is the master of prose when it comes to horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and non-genre subjects like crime, it is not easy to translate what he writes into a visual medium. Sometimes the dialogue which flows like water on page can come off as stilted and clumsy, especially if a character goes off on a rant. A narrative tool that King uses a lot is internal dialogue and narration to convey the characters’ thoughts. This technique is hard to pull off in visual medium where showing is prefered to telling.

Other times the prose is let’s just say a bit too much for a visual story. IOW, given the amount of screen time available in a film, putting TV aside, there is only so much material that can be adapted. Many of King’s best known works like It, The Stand or the Dark Tower books run over thousands of pages. Turning epic novels like those into two-hour plus films is nearly impossible. It is one of the main reasons why attempts to turn his classic novels like The Stand failed to make it out of the gate as a film despite many attempts because there was so much material to cut out that the result would be a poor adaptation of the source material. Just look at The Dark Tower film that came and went a few years ago. To most, the film was an ill-conceived attempt to adapt the multi-book epic about the Gunslinger Roland and his mythic quest across worlds and realities. What The Dark Tower did was give viewers a truncated sprinkling of Roland’s quest that left many feeling dissatisfied with an unfinished story.

The more successful adaptations like The Shining, Carrie, The Dead Zone, Cujo, Stand By Me (adapted from The Body), The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist were based on more typical novels that were just a few hundred pages. Also, in the case of The Mist, Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, those were based on novellas which seem to be the perfect amount of story to translate into screen.

One viable option is to adapt mammoth epic novels into two-part films as was done with It. While the film versions of It differed in structure, the adaptations more or less captured the essence of the novel with the first film focusing exclusively on the main characters when they were children while the second film picked up the characters as adults when they confronted the evil entity Pennywise. This approach would work best for The Dark Tower Saga or any of King’s narrative which can be quite long and involving.

The other obvious option, which has been done to some success, is to adapt his works into television mini-series or shows. Some of the best examples include ‘Salem’s Lot, The Stand, 11/22/63, The Outsider and Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Adapting The Dark Tower Saga into this format is honestly the only viable way to present the expansive storyline and do it well.

The Skill of the Translators

One important reason as to why it is so hard to adapt Stephen King works is due to the quality and skill of the filmmakers and showrunners and scriptwriters. While many gifted behind-the-scenes creators successfully adapted King’s works like Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, Frank Darabont, Rob Reiner and Andy Muschietti, far too many inferior creators took a hand into mangling and ruining King’s classics. It is lamentable that someone like Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan or Scott Derrickson never helmed a Stephen King film (there were reports that years ago, Spielberg was involved in an adaptation of The Talisman, but that never came to be). Just think of how something like Under the Dome, Cell, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon would have turned out if James Wan or Robert Eggers or Ari Aster were at the director’s chair with the projects.

But sadly as we know all to well, it is very difficult to line up the best writer, director, producer or actor to fit in with a King work of art. Reasons for this are all over the place and tend to be due to timing and budget. These days it is not likely that a studio can afford to hire Spielberg to take on a King book. There is also the possibility of dueling visions. A more high-profile director can and will take liberties with the source material much to King’s detriment. The most famous example was Kubrick’s version of The Shining, which King detested even though it is considered not only one of the best King adaptations but a classic horror film.

The same goes for television productions. All too often King’s works whether they’re long-form epics or short stories wind up becoming inferior TV shows or limited series. During the ’90s, the heyday of King TV adaptations, many of his more famous stories became big event TV mini-series with mixed results, but hardly any of them stood out as masterpieces. The best adaptations were for The Stand, although that limited series had its issues, ‘Salem’s Lot, which came out in the ’70s, It, and original productions like Storm of the Century. Other works like the more faithful adaptation of The Shining and The Langoliers failed to impress viewers. If only someone like Vince Gilligan or Terry Matalas could spearhead a proper TV adaptation of The Stand or The Dark Tower Saga.

Despite many failed attempts, the versatility and durability of Stephen King’s stories guarantee that eventually the right team will come along and created the best version of his works. This happened with the It films which were immediately better than the original TV mini-series and may happen later this fall when the second film version of The Running Man is released (being that is directed by Edgar Wright, there’s a decent chance it will outshine the original film). It has been possible to get cinematic masterpieces based on King’s works and it has happened, so it will continue to happen.

José Soto

Oct 19 2025

Zombies Refuse To Die!

It is all too easy to write off the zombie sub-genre as being dead and buried. After all, zombies have fallen out of favor with the public ever since The Walking Dead TV show was cancelled years ago. Before its cancellation, The Walking Dead and zombies in general were at their zenith in the 2010s. There were zombie TV shows, films, comics, novels, etc. all over the place. But inevitably the popularity of zombies declined as too much product was put out and the quality and uniqueness of the zombies faded. Casual critics were ready to write off the zombie sub-genre and move on to their next target, but somehow, the zombies refused to die.

Yes, The Walking Dead TV show and the comic book series that inspired it are both long gone, but there are many TV spinoffs of The Walking Dead like The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live that are still around and slowly gathering buzz about their quality. These shows wisely chose to focus on popular characters like Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes and even the villainous Negan, which partly explains why the shows have done well. Of course, these TV shows have not reached the numbers and heights of popularity as The Walking Dead did in its heyday, but they have their devoted followers and are doing well enough.

Other zombie-related TV shows, films, comics and more are still coming out strong and many are very popular. Just take a look at the slate of current and upcoming projects that are related to zombies. The most recent examples were The Last of Us (technically not about zombies but the infected humans behave just like zombies) and the animated TV show Marvel Zombies, which was based on the Marvel Comics mini-series (and currently has a new mini-series Marvel Zombies: Red Band out in stores and digital platforms) and was a spinoff from the animated What If…? TV show.

The Marvel Zombies comics are still going strong with its many limited series and the TV show was well received with talks of a new season underway; hopefully that will happen given how the last episode left us with a cliffhanger. Not to be outdone, DC came out with its own comic books starring undead versions of its DC heroes and villains, DCeased. No word yet if DC Studios will make an animated version of DCeased but they should consider it. Also even though the comic book series ended years ago, The Walking Dead are still in comic form with the color reprints The Walking Dead: Deluxe.

Meanwhile, there are many high-profile zombie films and TV shows on the horizon, such as 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (a direct sequel to this years’ 28 Years Later), We Bury the Dead, Twilight of the Dead, which will conclude the George Romero zombie film saga, Return of the Living Dead, and an American remake of the classic Korean zombie film, Train to Busan. How well received they will be is anyone’s guess, but they demonstrate how popular the zombie genre is.

So, why does the zombie sub-genre refuse to die? There are many reasons. For one, many zombie properties go hand-in-hand with our fascination with post-apocalyptic/survival stories, which fit in well with zombies. These zombie stories also engage us as we face our fear of death and decay and more recently with infection. We like to watch and read these zombie yarns and wonder how we would behave in a zombie apocalypse. Most of us would probably be zombie food minutes into the apocalypse, but its still fun imagining ourselves turning into stoic and heroic warriors like Daryl Dixon, who in his life before the zombie apocalypse was a nobody.

The sub-genre also helps engage with unexpected human dramas that test our notion of family and friendship. Examples of this include the films Maggie, Cargo and Warm Bodies. While the latter film was an offbeat romance with a zombie twist, the first two films dealt with the main characters facing the inevitable. Maggie featured a father coping with the fact that his teenage daughter would soon turn into a zombie and his agony about having to kill her. Cargo was an agonizing film about a doomed father who was desperately trying to find someone to care for his infant before he turned into a zombie.

It can be said that on the surface the zombie sub-genre appears to be limited in story, but can be quite versatile. As long as the zombie story whether on film, video game or on print, is presented well, the quality will stand out and keep us engaged. That is why the zombies refuse to die.

Jan 25 2025

A Look Back At Star Trek: Voyager

It has been 30 years since the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager debuted, yet it is still fondly remembered today, especially when it is compared to many modern Star Trek TV shows. Let’s take a look back at Star Trek: Voyager as its 30th anniversary is celebrated.

Flagship Show

Star Trek: Voyager was the flagship TV show of the fledgling United Paramount Network (UPN) that launched on January 16, 1995, with the airing of “Caretaker” the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager. When the TV show premiered it was largely anticipated though many fans had reasonable reservations about yet another Star Trek TV show. After a decades-long drought, fans were inundated with TV shows starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), which was followed by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), and then Star Trek: Voyager. It was supposed to address complaints Paramount Pictures executives had about DS9 for straying too far from standard Star Trek.

Showrunner Rick Berman, who also ran TNG and DS9, was reportedly hesitant to produce another Star Trek TV show that would run concurrently with DS9. However, the Paramount Pictures executives were adamant about creating another Star Trek TV show that more closely followed the standard starship-visiting-planets formula to help launch UPN. Given this task, Berman and his associates sought to differentiate Star Trek: Voyager from other Star Trek TVshows.

A Lost Crew in Space

The premise was fairly simple, a starship called Voyager from the United Federation of Planets and Earth is flung to the far corner of the galaxy (the Delta Quadrant) with a crew made up of Starfleet officers and renegade Maquis freedom fighters (more on them later). With limited resources and on their own, the Voyager crew has to find a way back home while exploring on the side and encountering strange new worlds, yada yada.  

Kate Mulgrew starred as Captain Kathyrn Janeway, who commanded the Voyager and was dedicated to upholding Starfleet’s ideals while protecting her crew. At the time of her casting, there was a lot of hoopla and celebration because the main character of a Star Trek TV show was a woman. Other characters included the ship’s first officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran), the leader of the Maquis and a former Starfleet officer, Tuvok (Tim Russ), the ship’s stoic Vulcan security officer, Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), a disgraced former Starfleet officer who gets his chance at redemption by serving as Voyager’s helmsman, B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), a half-Klingon Maquis member who became Voyager’s chief engineer, Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), a young Starfleet ensign on his first assignment, and the Doctor (Robert Picardo), a holographic medical program that performed the duties of the ship’s chief medical officer.

At the end of “Caretaker”, Voyager picked up two alien shipmates who are native to the Delta Quadrant and bring needed knowledge about the local space. They are Neelix (Ethan Phillips), a Talaxian drifter who ends being the ship’s cook and ambassador of sorts, and his girlfriend Kes (Jennifer Lien), an Ocampan who operates as the Doctor’s medical assistant and helps the program develop a personality. As the series progressed, it added Jeri Ryan to the cast as the former cybernetic Borg drone called Seven of Nine while Lien departed the series. Seven of Nine became the show’s breakout character thanks in part to the performance of Ryan as she served as the show’s version of Spock. In other words, a stoic outsider who questioned humanity while discovering her own.

Essentially, the TV show combined aspects of the original Star Trek and Lost in Space, and it worked for the most part. Yet, there was glaring issues with the TV show which turned out to be a harbinger for the creative drought the Star Trek franchise was beginning to suffer from at that time.

Continue reading →
Jul 20 2011

Star Trek: The Exhibition at the Kennedy Space Center

The traveling exhibit Star Trek: The Exhibition is currently running through this summer at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as part of the Center’s Sci-Fi Summer. Showcasing the world of Star Trek, the Sci-Fi Summer program presents how the science fiction world of Trek helped to influence the development of our technology. It’s a great place to go if you are a Star Trek or science fiction fan not just because of the Trek-themed exhibits and attractions but because it melds that sci-fi aspect to NASA’s real life world. You get to see where we’ve been and how far we have to go.

Star Trek: The Exhibition features a scale model of the Enterprise, and the actual props and costumes used in the Star Trek shows and films. At the KSC, the exhibit is broken up into two different buildings. One where IMAX films are shown (and is currently presenting Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 3D) has a room dedicated to the original Star Trek series, though props and costumes from the Kirk-era films can be seen. The highlight is a well-detailed replica of the original Enterprise bridge complete with dedication plaque, consoles and the captain’s chair that anyone can sit on for golden photo opportunities.

At another building near the tour bus terminal is a larger exhibit room dedicated to Star Trek: The Next Generation,  as well as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. This exhibit displays a mock-up of the Reman Scorpion fighter craft seen in Star Trek: Nemesis and partial recreations of the Enterprise D’s sickbay and engine room. There are models,  numerous props and costumes worn and used by the actors and a Klingon chair that you can sit on (there are also captain chairs from the Enterprise B and D but those are roped off). Additionally one side of the exhibit’s wall has a mural with a detailed timeline of NASA and Trek history. The opposing wall displays the costumes. A nice touch to this exhibit were two actors dressed as Vulcans from the far future who stayed in character and interacted with visitors. The uniforms they wore were the ones worn by 29th century Starfleet officers as seen in the Voyager episode “Relativity.”

The KSC has Trek costumes and factoids peppered throughout the facility with several famous delta shield symbol on the grounds that act as arrows to guide visitors to Trek-related exhibits and attractions. For example one path lead sto the rocket garden where a floor painting shows how large the Enterprise ships are in comparison to the horizontally displayed Saturn 1B rocket. It’s staggering to consider how large the Trek ships are when you walk the length of the rocket. There was so much to see at the KSC that one could easily spend an entire day on the grounds. Continue reading →

Jul 7 2011

Falling Skies Ahead


Last month, TNT premiered Falling Skies,  the new Dreamworks sci-fi series executive produced by Steven Spielberg about survivors of a modern-day alien invasion.

Unlike what its teaser commercials suggested, Falling Skies’ pilot did not feature the typical initial alien arrival, contact and pyrotechnic invasion scenario. Rather it begins several months after the aliens (called “skitters”) have wiped out the world’s armies and have laid waste everywhere. This is clearly not Independence Day  or even Battlestar Galactica in terms of big budget effects scenes. This can be disappointing for some but it’s a different take and risky, while also being budget conscious. And it largely works.

Why? It’s a good hook for audiences who have to be able to catch up with what is going on. Here’s the skinny, the show takes place in and around Boston and focuses on the efforts of a ragtag group of civilians, soldiers and recruits who form a militia group called the Second Massachusetts to fight back against the aliens. Apparently the humans in the show are just as much in the dark as the viewer is when it comes to knowing who the aliens are or why they came to Earth. To its credit the show gives out adequate morsels of information about the situation and characters to keep you interested.

Jumping into the middle of the premise helped draw me into the characters’ storyline since everything wasn’t laid out. Unfortunately, this approach was used to a much greater effect in AMC’s excellent series The Walking Dead.  That show had more engaging and memorable characters. Also, at times Falling Skies gets a little too preachy or sentimental. Additionally, some of the military stuff seems far-fetched specifically when it comes to logistics (having soldiers sleep indoors but not civilians? Nice way to sow resentment, plus doesn’t that leave civilians more vulnerable to the aliens?).

As the main character of the show, it falls on Tom Mason (Noah Wyle), a widowed history professor and second in command of the militia group,  to be the reason why audiences tune in. He’s got an interesting story, his wife was killed recently by aliens and one of his three sons has been kidnapped and turned into a zombified slave for the aliens through a horrifying biomechanical device attached to his back (in the show, children are being taken by the aliens and turned into a labor force through these devices). So his driving focus is to rescue his son. Yet it can be a challenge to be invested in Mason. I think it’s because sometimes he comes off as too moral, too optimistic while everyone around him is all doom and gloom. He spouts off analogies about history showing that invading forces are always repelled by indigenous populations but no one seems to take him seriously when he does that, not even histwo other sons. This doesn’t quite gel with the survivor mentality that pervades many of the show’s characters.

But in Falling Skies’ defense the characters are already becoming more fleshed out. Mason has shown a grittier side, and it appears that he probably projects this image for his children’s sake (though being that his youngest son already wants to join him on missions makes me wonder how successful Mason is, but I get the feeling that will be explored). Also, some of the other characters are beginning to stand out. Chiefly Moon Bloodgood’s Anne Glass, a pediatrician who becomes the group’s chief doctor and moral compass, Will Patton’s Captain Weaver, the no-nonsense commanding officer of the group who struggles to keep his people (and especially Mason) focused on the larger goal of winning the war, and Colin Cunningham’s John Pope, an ex-convict and former gang leader who was captured in the pilot for kidnapping Mason and others in exchange for weapons. In lots of ways, Pope comes off as a loose but effective cannon in the same vein as was Michael Ironside’s Ham Tyler in V.

The production values are remarkably good, effectively conveying a destroyed landscape that just barely resembles towns and cities. I also like the attention to local detail in regards to Boston’s geography which adds authenticity. The special effects are top notch and a blessing considering how poor they were in some recent TV shows.

It’s really great that the skitters are shown to be non-bipedal creatures, a rarity for TV shows, and are an excellent special effect. However, the mechanical soldiers that the skitters use look more like obvious CGI. Many scenes are too dark and sometimes hard to follow. But it does add to the tension that’s sometimes felt in those scenes. Perhaps it’s to hide the budgetary constrictions but hopefully this will change in the future.

On the whole, I think Falling Skies is a good, entertaining show with potential. The growing pains are obvious.  It doesn’t hit the ball out of the ballpark like The Walking Dead did but it feels like a solid score. At this point early into the series, making a final judgment is premature however I’m devoting time to keep watching and see how it plays out, and that’s a good sign.

J.L. Soto

Images courtesy of TNT, cast photo by Frank Ockenfels