A little over five years ago, Paramount delivered an ambitious Stephen King adaptation, which initially seemed to have all the right ingredients to succeed. Unfortunately, despite having immense potential, the series proved to be one of the most underwhelming takes on Stephen King’s books. After five years, the show has almost completely been forgotten, and rightfully so.

Based on Stephen King’s book of the same name, 2020’s The Stand seemingly had everything from a stellar cast to a decent budget. It was not the first major TV adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Before it, a four-part show in 1994 attempted to translate the Stephen King story for the screen. Still, viewers had high expectations of the new remake and hoped that it would do justice to the iconic Stephen King story.

Soon after The Stand premiered, though, most viewers and critics could not help but feel disappointed. The show still holds a below average Rotten Tomatoes score of 57% and is considered a deeply flawed take on Stephen King’s The Stand. While it had a few things working in its favor, its shortcomings significant outweighed its strengths.

Why 2020’s The Stand Adaptation Didn’t Work

The Stand‘s cast was stacked with big names like Alexander Skarsgård, James Marsden, and Whoopi Goldberg, among others. It was also backed by big budget, and Stephen King also wrote a brand new coda for the series. Owing to these aspects, it seemed like the adaptation was almost guaranteed to succeed and rank among some of the better takes on Stephen King’s books.

However, instead of leaving its mark, 2020’s The Stand struggled to tell a coherent story to new viewers and completely alienated fans of the original Stephen King novel.

One of its biggest shortcomings was its non-linear timeline. Unlike the book, the series does not show the world’s collapse from the overarching flu in real time. For some reason, its opening episode jumps ahead to the middle of the story before it features flashes of the outbreak. The show’s 9-episode runtime gave it the opportunity to walk through all major threads from the original story, but it seemingly wasted its potential.

Most creative liberties in the series also made little sense. For instance, instead of portraying Randall Flagg’s Las Vegas as a fascist setting, it turns it into cliché, 24/7 post-apocalyptic rave, totally missing the point of the book. Several other characters like Frannie Goldsmith, The Trashcan Man​​​​​​​, and Nick Andros were almost entirely rewritten for the series, which made them seem unrecognizable from their original counter parts.

Only a few subplots in the series eventually turn out to be memorable. The overarching story, however, barely makes progress and seems packed with too many inconsistencies.

The Stand’s ’90s Adaptation Is Better (But Still Not Great)

1994’s The Stand has an immersive opening that begins with epigraph from T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men: “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” The show then proceeds to show the haunting origins of the flu by walking viewers through a lab where all workers have suddenly dropped dead.

The opening scene is coupled with Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” which does an incredible job of setting the stage for the drama ahead. The ’90s take on The Stand is not perfect and was not even received too well when it first premiered. However, over the years it has gained more appreciation for being far more loyal to the original book.

Some of its visual aspects seem dated and its limited four-part runtime forces it to condense many crucial chapters of the book. However, even with its limited Network TV budget, the 1994 adaptation tells a more complete and cohesive story than Paramount‘s take on Stephen King‘s The Stand and is far more bearable to watch.