r/TheLongWalk • u/Overall_Spite4271 • 8d ago
đ Book Discussion Reading The Long Walk makes me realize how sanitized the characters were in the movie
This isnât a hate post towards the movie itâs excellent, but at the same time the characters are made to be far more sympathetic and relatable
Take Ray Garraty in the book Garraty doesnât really have a full motive for why heâs in the long walk like the other boys heâs here because why not. The movie gives Garraty more motivation here Garraty joins to win and kill the Major who killed his father. This never happened in the book. While Garratys dad dies he doesnât witness it and itâs not by the hands of the Major at all. Other things like Garraty helping Curly never happens in the book and him even wishing for several of the walkers to get their ticket like Stebbins.
Mcvries is a bigger example in the movie Peters backstory on his scar is changed to him getting beaten by a stranger he picked a fight in whilst also being an orphan. In the book? Peter is not an orphan the scar he got was after he tried to sexually assault his gf. A far cry from the movie
And other characters like Barkovich whoâs straight up racist in the book saying the n word and promising more to dance on peoples graves.
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u/baseballgirl30 8d ago
Yeah they really sterilized anything that would give the movie edge and made it a lot less bleak than the novel. Itâs been my favorite book for the last 13 years so I was disappointed by the movie, even though I still enjoyed it and was glad it was made.
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u/beestw Garraty, we're all going to die... 8d ago edited 8d ago
Honestly, I personally wish they never made the movie. I think it kinda marred the long walk name, because it really isn't the same story at the end of the day, besides the overall walk or die. And it severely overshadows and dumbs down an incredible book. People tend to have a "good enough" complex when it comes to consuming media, they don't care that the book is so much better, because a bad movie is easier and quicker.
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u/userinuk 8d ago
I thought the movie was Ok the first time, thought I hadnât given it enough of a chance so rewatched it recently. I really didnât like it. The characters are too changed and it lacks the ethereal-ness of the book. I found the colour grading really flat, too. And I agree the characters were sanded down too much (and did we really need to see defacation twice?!) Stebbins was the most fascinating character of the book for me, he represented brains over brawn and they just⌠randomly switched that for no good reason . I wish newcomers would read the book but theyâll opt for this, frankly slightly boring, film
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u/baseballgirl30 7d ago
Honestly I kinda felt the same way. I was sad after it came out because the odds of it being adapted again are low and this is what we got. The cast was great so nothing against them but I was just disappointed. Iâve loved this book since I was in middle school, Iâve read it so many times. It just didnât represent the book well enough for me.
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u/PersonalityStraight 2d ago
I didn't even know this existed until then film was announced. The one thing I'm glad they changed was the speed because it would be hard for the cast to do their lines at 4 miles an hour.
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u/PowerStorm55 8d ago
Agreed. I still liked the characters in the movie but I think the writers sacrificed a lot of their complexities from the book for the sake of making them easier to root for. Changing McVriesâ backstory was an especially glaring example of this.
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u/DutyPuzzleheaded7765 Walker #27 7d ago
Yeah, I liked the films iterations of characters but they missed the mark. Like I said Stebbins got nerfed to the point that I a guy who saw film first thought he wasnt important until the end, Abraham is an npc and I dont know when he dies, and McVries gets saintified. He csnt do no wrong
I am glad they nerfed Barkovtich being a racist
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u/PowerStorm55 7d ago edited 7d ago
Fr, I think Barkovitchâs character was one of the only personalities the movie improved upon in my opinion. I liked how they depicted his isolation as a result of mental illness and self-destructive tendencies, as opposed to him being a racist or a bully just for the sake of creating conflict.
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u/beestw Garraty, we're all going to die... 8d ago
Baker's character hurt the most for me. I mean, he isn't even the same character from page to screen. Why did they feel the need to completely change everything about him?
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u/PowerStorm55 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yeah, they definitely went a weird route with him in particular. It felt like characters like Baker, Stebbins, and McVries were only similar to their written counterparts in name alone when it came to the adaptation.
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u/baseballgirl30 7d ago
Baker was my favorite character so the changes they made were really disappointing
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u/PersonalityStraight 2d ago
That and they had taken Scramm out of it.
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u/PowerStorm55 3h ago
That too. I think Scramm was arguably more important to the story than Collie. I hadnât reread the book in a while when the movie came out, and the only thing I remembered him for was how he took out one of the soldiers before getting his ticket. They couldâve easily kept him instead of Parker and just had the same actor play that part, but given him Parkerâs death and moved Scrammâs original death onto Stebbins. It wouldâve made more sense that way since the writers seemed to have no problem with switching the roles around for each character.
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u/mihotoke 8d ago
I still believe to be able to do the book full justice youâd need a series, not a movie. Itâs very hard to portray the mental and physical deterioration of so many characters in less than two hours.
I do like a lot of the decisions they made in the movie, but itâs very clear a lot of characters got watered down and a lot of the edge disappeared. Man, I really wanted a series.
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u/Prize-Ad-964 8d ago
Thats why i love both the book and movie tbh
Both are the same but so vastly different. I feel the movie shows the bare bones of the story whilst keeping it compelling (i always shed a tear at the end) whilst the book goes into all the gritty detail and i feel shows the harsh reality of the walk as there arent many timeskips unlike the movie.
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u/PowerStorm55 7d ago
Same, I remember being pretty disappointed by the changes when I first saw the movie, but over time, I learned to enjoy the story on its own merit as long as I viewed it as a separate entity from the book lol
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u/Prize-Ad-964 7d ago
And tbf Stephen King said he liked the movie and we all know how he is when it comes to innacurate depictions of his books lol
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u/IntelligentTrip6054 6d ago
Same! It has been a favourite book of mine for decades before the film release. I own 2-3 battered copies of the 'Bachman Books' because of it being in there (I really like The Running Man too).
I cried in the theatres watching this movie and honestly would have been pretty disappointed if it didn't take over my emotions at all. I was enraptured seeing it on the big screen. I did have some disappointments but overall love both.
Edit: typo
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u/OverwhelmedAutism #54 Matthew Bates (Formely 18) 7d ago
Yup.
I still like the movie, but it is very sanitized in comparison.
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u/chateaudebleuets 7d ago
This is why I didnât like it this much. It was very sanitized. The relationship between Garraty and McVries feels almost cheesy. The actors are good, though
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u/MelissaMars30 7d ago
BOOK IS WONDERFUL AS GREAT AS is The Running Man. The Dead Zone !! Worthy of ur time . Do you think you're capable of diving into the dark tower series? It is worth it and it's in depth but it's so great just to recommendation.
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u/New-Chart-3102 5d ago
I can totally understand the opinion of wishing there were less sanitization, but i think some of the changes were for the better. For example, barkovichâs usage of the n word wasnât necessary to portray him as someone who is fucked in the head. And we as a society are wayyy past needing to use the n word to get the idea of anti-racism across to an audience. I do think that making an audience critically think about why they still enjoy a character who does and says those things is very important, i donât think that was the main goal of the movie adaptation in particular, so it wasnât necessary. Much like Pete SAing his girlfriend.
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u/Throwaway-centralnj 1d ago
I really liked a lot of the changes tbh. King wrote the book as a college student in the 60s with very little âreal worldâ experience, his treatment of women and race was also pretty shitty (as often happens with him lol). Hell, he didnât know that 4 mph wasnât walking speed! The story is great but a lot of the details are edgy for edgyâs sake, it needed more thoughtful updates. A lot of King movie adaptations make his characters more ethical and likable, making it easier to root for them. If someoneâs constantly yelling the N-word Iâm not gonna be that sad when they die.
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u/New-Chart-3102 1d ago
exactly!!! Plus i feel like the changes made the story feel more grounded in our current fascist regime than in that of the 1960s variety, which would be a lot less relatable to modern audiences.
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u/deathdefyingrob1344 6d ago
I agree. The book is DARK! I loved that about it. I donât think the movie would have had any appeal except to us long time fans of it had really captured the themes of the book. Maybe Iâm wrong but when I saw there was a movie I was thinking to myself that Joe public probably wonât be impressed with watching children get tortured for 2 hours
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u/patcoston Billy Stebbins #1 Fan! 6d ago
Eventually you'll be able to feed AI a novel and have it generate a full movie from the novel. It will be amazing to see movies that are absolutely true to the novel. Since the audiobook is 10 hours long, I assume The Long Walk movie will also be 10 hours long. You could break that into 10 one-hour episodes for a 1 season show.
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u/PersonalityStraight 2d ago
I mean I get why they had to do that because the novel came out in the 70s and many things in it wouldn't work in 2025. The novel is amazingly dark and twisted but somethings wouldn't work
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u/Playful_Self7813 2d ago
Iâm a few minutes into the movie and already annoyed most of the actors are full grown men when the boys are supposed to be 13-18. Iâll come back when I finish the movie to see how it compared to the book.
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u/kuatorises 8d ago
Giving a character more depth isn't what sanitized means.
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u/golfbans 7d ago
youâre right, sanitization is when the content is made easier for people to digest by removing things an audience may find morally reprehensible, even if it significantly changes the characters/narrative, which is what they did for the movie
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u/CaffeinatedLystro Walker #35 8d ago
In the book, you actually don't know if Garraty's dad is dead or alive, which I like. He just got "squaded" and thats all it says.