I bought Under The Dome when it was part of those Amazon vs. Walmart low-price wars; I think I got it for five bucks with free shipping. I never finished it, though; at over 1,000 pages in hardback, it's a bit difficult to hold up in bed, which is where I do my serious reading, but more problematically, it was a paragon of a trend that ultimately makes Stephen King a very frustrating author for me to read. His habit of cleanly dividing the world between the forces of the unrelentingly evil assholes and white knights who can do no wrong has always seemed to be the most fantastic aspects of his books; the real world certainly has awful people in it, and some very nice ones, but King's efforts to place everyone into good or evil tribes has always struck me as frustratingly simplistic.
Under The Dome was one of his more indulgent books in that sense, perhaps coming in second only after The Stand among those that I've read. There's no real conflict for the reader; it's not like you're ever going to choose to be sympathetic to the rapist/murderer/meth dealer faction in the novel. It wound up coming across as a fairy tale, to me, which is too bad, considering the rest of the ideas in it were pretty interesting: a small town gets caught inside an impermeable, invisible force field, preventing anyone from going in or out. No one knows precisely what the force field consists of, no one can break through it, and tensions begin running high. It'd be a fine idea for a novella, but of course King has to make it into a battle between Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil, as the town's deputy mayor goes crazy and starts to treat the area under the dome as his own personal fiefdom, recruiting his murderous son and his friends as a privatized police force, etc., etc.
The novel, of course, sold millions of copies (again: five dollars), and like everything else that King creates, is now going to come to a screen near you. Interestingly, though, the plans for it are apparently for a series, not a mini-series. Showtime announced today that King and his old collaborator Steven Spielberg are going to work with Dreamworks TV to produce an on-going series based on the book, which I presume would start airing sometime next year if they're announcing it now.
It's curious that they're announcing this as a series instead of a mini-series, but I suppose they can string along the people in the town for as long as they like before getting to the meatier revelations at the end of the novel, or simply come up with a new "ending" as they see fit. The plot could wind up being a bit reminiscent of the early parts of Jericho, should the producers decide to go that route, but knowing the track record of King adaptations, I'd expect a goodly amount of cheese on your plate. Which makes me think: has any other King novel ever been adapted as an ongoing series? There've been plenty of movies and mini-series, but my mind is blanking.
This might be the motivation I need to finally get beyond the first couple of chapters of that book.
@Atwa said:
This.
I still haven't finished Under the Dome yet, although I did use it as a fourth leg on my coffee table.
I thought the evil characters in this novel were so unlikeable it made the book hard to read. There were parts where it was clear the baddies were going to come out on top in the short term, and it was so frustrating to see them happy. Am I wrong in my interpretation of the book, or did it seem to anyone else like it was King getting out some of his anger towards Republicans and Fox News types.
I'd like to see if a tv series can have the same type of bad guys. They are basically tea-party members running out of control as the population is too scared to stand up to them. The big bad guy even has a photo with Sarah Palin as his most prized possession.
Well if it's anything like the book it's be good up till the end where it takes a dive off a cliff. But that's just my opinion.
@Atwa said:
My first thought on the subject.
As to turning it into a series, you just have the characters trapped in the dome for four or five seasons, and then you place the big reveal in the final two or three episodes of the series and everyone groans.
Speaking as a long time King fan, this is certainly one of his lesser works. Nevertheless, I read this beast in just under four days. It was a long weekend. I suppose I enjoyed it, but the polarization of the 'warring' factions, as Rorie indicates, is very stark and somewhat boring. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't watch the hell out of a serialized version of the story, which is predictable and ridiculous, but pretty fun as well.
Oh, and I propose John Goodman as Big Jim Rennie. Just sayin'.
@strings19: Yeah, they were so villainous it actually made the book unpalatable to me. I never actually finished it; I got halfway through and just read the rest of the summary on Wikipedia. Kind of glad!
@SomethingFaster said:
You can definitely count The Dead Zone. And that's all you can count, because that's the only series based on a Stephen King book.
Unless it isn't, I don't know.
@Rorie: The TV show Haven is based on on Stephen King's The Colorado Kid. Never seen the show but I have heard it's pretty good.
@Rorie:
So Rorie just wrote that the Trash Can Man was not sympathetic. Nor was Harold Lauder? How about Flagg's baby maker Nadine Cross? Hell, even she is sympathetic, despite being villainous and bitchy. No, these characters can't be sympathetic, despite witnessing their side of events, despite understanding their point of view, despite their desperate attempts to do the right thing only to be thwarted by those they desire acceptance from. No, these aren't sympathetic villains at all.
It baffles me that someone has an issue with The Stand for the primary villain being evil. Of course Randall Flagg is evil, Rorie, he's the fucking Devil*. Oh, the good guys are "too good"? What about Stu (an all around cool guy) getting over protective and strutting around like an alpha male that puts off half the survivors in the Free Zone about mid-way through the book? Oh, right, that doesn't count. In Matthew Rorie's world the Free Zone was a fluffy little town with green pastures and shiny rainbows, where everyone was nice to each other and played with puppies on their lawns. Oh, the whole "having to dispose of corpses from Boulder to make the city livable" thing? Let's just sweep that under the rug. Or, how about, you know, most of the survivors in the Free Zone being too distraught and broken (you know, about the world ending?) to really be dicks to each other. I'm honestly amazed that after a world-ending event like the Superflu, Rorie expects people to still want to stab each other and give each other the finger while threatening to fist-fuck mothers and sisters.
Oh wait, that does happen, on the journey to the Free Zone.
What about Flagg's army in Las Vegas? According to Rorie they had absolutely no positive or redemptive qualities at all. Like the guy who Flagg found starving to death in a prison, and saved him. His unwavering loyalty to Flagg wasn't because he was "EVIL", it was because he felt he owed a debt to the man/thing that saved his life. Toward the end of the book, this man's conscience begins to get the better of him, seeing what Flagg is actually doing, and catching glimpses of what he actually is.
Or how about the people living in Las Vegas? The last place to find clean water, good food, warm beds, and beautiful electricity? Yeah, the ordinary people living in Las Vegas were totally EVIL and not just regular people--survivors--trying to stay alive and get back some shred of normalcy in their world. Nope, no grey areas at all.
Fuck, next thing you're going to tell me is that IT wasn't scary because the lead bully got jerked off by a retard.
*note that this is the interpretation of Flagg we're expected to take away from The Stand. His appearances in The Dark Tower and cameos in other novels have no bearing on the fiction presented in The Stand.
I'd rather have a CELL tv series...
This was something King meant to write since the 70's. It took a while, but I finished it in a few weeks when it came out and enjoyed it. I hope the series is good.
Awesome! I really enjoyed this book as well. I liked seeing the asshole villains get their comeuppance and I kinda liked the ending. I was long past the mystery of trying to figure out was the dome was and was totally into the main characters.
Rorie said that Spielberg was an old collaborator of Stephen King's. Am I missing something? What have they worked on together in the past?
Also, I've not read Under the Dome yet, but I've found that the majority of King's human characters are fairly grey in regards to good or evil. His characters feel very real and flawed to me, though King's dialogue is far from realistic(yet still entertaining). It's his obviously supernatural characters that seem to exude pure evil.