Looks like the next Stephen King to grow up into something the majority can consume is The Mist. According to Wikipedia, The Mist is the longest story in Skeleton Crew. I can’t actually verify this, because I can’t find my copy of Skeleton Crew. This is not a happy thing, not even a little bit.

Here. Have a trailer:

I saw the trailer a few weeks ago. Ish. And, for some reason, I read a whole bunch of comments on the post that led me to the trailer.

I know why, sometimes, websites don’t load as quickly as they should. There are idiots clogging the tubes. Literally. They’re all standing in one spot shouting stupid things and bashing their faces against their keyboards repeatedly.

In this case, everyone seemed to be gathering at this one popular movie website to convey how very much they did not like movies, especially movies by this director, and especially Stephen King anything. In a display of unbelievable multitasking skills, they demonstrated their ability to complain about how horrible it was that every bit of media was poured directly into their brain against their collective will AND their complete lack of ever having read anything. If that doesn’t make sense, it’s because I lost track of what I was trying to say because I’m multitasking right now, and I don’t have their amazing abilities. I’m also not forced to watch every new release the instant it comes out. Some crazy free will thing I’m trying….

There were a few complaints that kept coming up over and over again — complaints other than “OMG KING SUCKS” and “OMG CG SUCKS”. The two big ones that got to me came from people claiming to be familiar with the story, but…obviously weren’t all that familiar….

To paraphrase:

That ‘cut and run’ line never happened. It’s just another stupid movie trying to make a political statement. They’re making fun of Bush [or whatever political type you want to use instead of Bush]. I’m so sick of movies doing this!

Ahem.

“Listen, David. You come back. If anything happens… anything… you come back. Cut and run if you have to. Not for me, what happened last night was nice, but that was last night. Come back for your boy.”

Assuming the copy I’ve obtained from a questionable internet source is correct, it is in the original story.

Funnily enough, that line is right in the middle of the other complaint. I’ll be paraphrasing again.

Another dumb movie making christians look crazy. Christians are the only people you can make fun of anymore, so everyone just writes them in all crazy and stuff. It’s not fair. They even changed the location to make it more likely that there’d be crazy religious folk. And they just had to go all the way. There was no talk of sacrificing anyone in the story!

I don’t know which version everyone else is reading, but Mrs. Carmody starts talking about blood sacrifice almost immediately, and at the end of the chapter just before the one called ‘The End’, she gets shot because she and her little group of people who’ve decided to listen to her are demanding the boy and the chick who said ‘cut and run’, because, “From their number the blood of expiation!” Or something.

Is it really too hard to read this story? I’m starting to think that it is. It’s only a novella, and it’s not exactly terrible. Yeah, sure, I know. “Oh, but it’s Stephen King. He’s so awful. And he’s still alive. But even if he were dead, I still wouldn’t read him, because he’s awful and boring and mass-market. No, no thank you. I’ll stick to proper reading, like Shakespeare.”

Just shut up, okay? Not just about your snobbery, but about your opinions on how political and antichristian movies are becoming, and how you know these things weren’t in the original story you’d never read anyway.