Reposted with an update at the end.
One of the saddest things in life is when something doesn’t live up to your expectations.
My earliest memory of a big disappointment was in the summer of 1966. I was 16 that summer, and I had been looking forward to the movie “Modesty Blaise,” a spy spoof starring Monica Vitti and Terrence Stamp.
The movie came out the day before I returned home from a stint as a camp counselor and I decided to go see the movie that very afternoon
Big mistake. I was completely exhausted. I fell asleep five minutes into the movie and slept all the way through.
About 40 years later, I got the opportunity to pick up a DVD of the film, and I watched it right away.
Meh.
I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t 16 anymore, or if it was never any good, but I was disappointed.
So much for great expectations.
I have actually had two similar disappointments since, including one this very year. Both are much bigger disappointments, because they were disappointing parts of things I really liked.
The first one came in 2015. I had become a huge fan of writer Greg Iles, particularly his books about Penn Cage. After reading “The Devil’s Punchbowl” in 2009, he announced that his next novel would be Cage defending his father for a long ago crime.
A year or so later, Iles said the story had become so big it would have to be split into two novels.
No problem.
But in 2011, Iles was in a horrific auto accident in which he suffered a ruptured aorta and had a leg amputated.
He recovered, but was unable to work for a long time. The two novels became three, and the first of them — “Natchez Burning” — wasn’t released till 2014. It wasn’t bad, and I was looking forward to the next one.
“The Bone Tree” came out in 2015 and was a big surprise to me.
It isn’t that it was poorly written, but the story was so dark, including killing off one of the main characters, that I was hugely disappointed.
Iles got back on track for me with later books, including the 2017 conclusion to the trilogy, “Mississippi Blood,” but the other book was one of the biggest disappointments me my reading life.
Worse than “Modesty Blaise.”
Which brings me to the biggest disappointment of all.
I became a fan of Stephen King in the mid ’70s, and it was 1978 when I read “The Stand.” It immediately became one of my favorite books ever, and I was seriously thrilled in 1990 when King put out an expanded version of the book.
In 1994, the four-part miniseries starring Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald came out. It wasn’t bad at all, but I felt like the six hours devoted to the story left a lot out.
For the next 25 years or so, there were rumors about a new, expanded version of the story for television, and finally it came to pass. Starting in December 2020, CBS All Access had a nine-part miniseries with each part roughly an hour long.
Boy, was I excited.
Boy, was I disappointed.
I have seen eight of the nine episodes. Part Eight was essentially the climax of the story, and there is a coda still to be seen this Thursday. I cannot imagine it will redeem what has gone before.
People have complained that the story isn’t linear, but it’s worse than that. They essentially blew off the first third of the story, and numerous characters had their gender or race changed simply to have fewer white guys in the story.
Setups are ignored and the payoffs then don’t make sense. One of the main characters has arthritis and takes powerful pain pills, which is never mentioned in this version. So when he gives the pills to a character who broke his leg and has to be left behind, there’s no reason he had the pills in the first place.
Another is changed from white to black and made a drug addict for no reason at all.
The main thing that bothered me, though, is I cannot remember watching anything that was filmed to look so dark. Whether it’s night and shadows or pouring rain, so much of it is difficult to see.
I’ll finish it Thursday night, and I may even watch it again at some point, just to see if I’m not being fair.
But I can honestly say, there is nothing as disappointing as shattered expectations.
Nothing at all.
***
2/13 UPDATE: I did watch the last part, which Stephen King had touted as a new ending to the story.
It was more an expansion than a change, but it was entirely appropriate and lifted my overall opinion of the story. Still disappointing overall, but the expanded ending at least meant it finished well.