Finished The Long Walks
Last night I finished reading The Long Walk by Stephen King, and then today I finished watching the movie! What a combo. The book is an order of magnitude better.
It's a weird one, though. The book is pretty clear about its themes: America's death drive, our hunger for real suffering and death in media, and our hero-worshipping, authoritarian love for strong-man leaders. The characters are all supposed to be, like, 17 years old, but they talk about life and death and suffering and some of these political issues the way adults would. When I learned that King started writing the book as a college freshman, I was not surprised. It does occasionally feel like a teen nerd writing the super cool protagonists!!!! of their self-published teenage novel.
I did enjoy it, though. It's a crazy read. Lots of intense sensory stuff, a huge focus on suffering and the mental experience of prolonged suffering. King clearly researched war crimes to write it - you can tell he'd probably researched the Bataan Death March specifically.
What's very funny about the story is that he clearly had NOT researched anything about what it is like to SUCCESSFULLY walk or run hundreds of miles in one go. Ultramarathons were probably not very common in the 1970s, so I don't blame him, but it is very funny to read a book about walking and not have a single character mention electrolytes or calories for the entire book. In 2026, I am sure that most twelve year olds on school sports teams have heard about electrolytes. They may even know what electrolytes do! But I am not sure King had ever heard of them when he wrote the book!!
In 2026, sports health science and materials science have gotten to the point where it is kind of weird to read a book about walking for five days where none of the characters know how to walk for one day. There's one character who pulls out moccasins at one point, and King treats it like an almost demonic, dark, threatening thing for this kid to know about walking with soft shoes. The shoes people run a hundred miles with today did not exist when he wrote the book.
A story like this written today would would have to include a barefoot walker, maybe, and numerous characters with specific, supposedly-scientific strategies for maintaining their health and strength over the course of the event. You'd have contestants putting cyclist chamois cream on their thighs and wearing jogging clothes and running belts and shit like that. In 2026, strategies for endurance sports are accessible to and interesting to teen boys specifically. But in the book - which King published in 1979 but started in writing in 1966 - none of the boys know how to walk. A lot has changed about exercise and health culture in the US in 60 years!
I keep forgetting how much fun it is to read King. I have not read a lot of his stuff, to be honest, and every time I read a plot summary of his weirder stuff, I find myself thinking: What the fuck is going on with this guy?? What is he doing??? But then when I actually read his books, I'm reminded that he does, actually, know how to pull off the weird dream-state sexual-fantasy unleashed-id swirling mental shit that takes his stories in such weird directions. The Long Walk has a lot of that stuff in it. And they leave all of it out of the movie completely.
I thought the movie was a huge downgrade specifically because of the two major things they leave out: that mental delirium, and the spectator audience. In the book, the characters spend nearly all their time within shouting range of a massive crowd of spectators lining the road. The walkers are television, and the American audience is right there watching them, mere feet away, in a metaphor so blunt and obvious that it earns its own respect. The way the walkers interact with the audience, and the way the audience's presence creates insane sensory experiences for King to describe - that all feels totally key to the entire thematic argument. It's a lot easier to make points about society when society is right there!
But in the movie, there's no audience until the last few moments. It's clearly a budget decision, but I do not agree that it was the right call. If you can't retain some of these scenes with the more intense crowd interactions, I'm not sure you're making an honest attempt to adapt the work. Sometimes cutting something out leaves nothing on the bone worth chewing.
I was also unimpressed with some really cornball scripting around the changes they made to the main character's goals and backstory. In the book, most of the characters find it difficult to articulate why they signed up, and figuring out what actually drove them to do it is character growth. The protagonist in particular struggles to articulate why he did it, and the blank slate he provides to his friends allow them to suggest some instructive and thematically productive possibilities. The book ends up being largely about how the American death drive is nurtured in the heart of teenage boys, how it grows there without them even really realizing that they carry it, and what they might think about it once it's revealed to them.
But the movie gives the protagonist a very clear goal and motivation. I hated this! And it was cornball as fuck!
The movie is IMO saved by David Jonsson, playing Peter McVries... which makes it the second horror movie I've seen that he's carried. (The previous was Alien Romulus. I disliked everything in it except his performance.) Someone needs to get this guy better roles. I was enjoying the movie while I was watching it mostly just because I like watching this guy act!
Anyway, I highly recommend reading the book. It's not perfect, and I frequently found myself annoyed by it, but King is just a hell of an entertainer, and the annoying stuff is fun to think about anyway. Meanwhile, this movie was merely a solid three out of five stars for me. Oh well!!!