Back in late-March, director Mick
Garris said in an interview that a blu-ray release of his cult
favorite 1994 TV miniseries of Stephen King's The Stand would almost
certainly never happen. He explained that, while the 6-hour
apocalyptic epic was shot on film, it was then converted to SD video,
cut on tape using the linear editing technology of the day, and
completed with very standard-def early CGI. In short, for it to be
released on blu-ray, the edit would have to be re-created from
scratch using the original negatives and all-new CGI work, which is
certainly possible - it was done beautifully with Star Trek: The Next
Generation - but is very expensive and very difficult to get right.
Even in the case of the wildly popular Next Generation, the remaster
wound up being barely worth the extravagant cost, and Buffy The
Vampire Slayer was victim to a famously horrible attempt to do an HD
remaster on the cheap, which was aborted after scathing responses to
the remaster's numerous and major problems. Garris said he was pretty
sure that Paramount would not be interested in spending the large
amount of money and effort that would be required.
Just over three months after that
interview, the internet was shocked today when Paramount announced an
upcoming "Brilliantly Restored" blu-ray set of King and
Garris's The Stand, due for a September release. Given that a new
high-profile series adaptation is in the works, it is only natural
that Paramount would want to capitalize on the inevitable interest in
the original series by giving it a fancy new disc release. But given
how sure Garris sounded just a few months ago that this was utterly
out of the question, it is a massive surprise that Paramount is
willing to spring for a blu-ray remaster, rather than just a new DVD
set.
Of course, we don't really know what
"Brilliantly restored" means. One would hope that it means
the most obvious and honest thing: a fresh 2k or 4k scan of the
original 16mm negatives, remastered from the ground up with reworked
CGI. And since The Stand's weakest point is undeniably its very, very
bad primitive CGI, one would hope that, like the Star Trek: The Next
Generation blu-rays, the discs will offer brand-new, better-looking
CGI as an option, with faithful-to-the-original 1994 CGI as another
option for the purists. However, some shows, like the classic seasons
of Doctor Who that have recently been released, have hit blu-ray with
remasters created by upscaling the original tape masters as well as
possible... which is certainly better than nothing (in the case of
those Doctor Who remasters, they look shockingly good - but there was
also no alternative, because the negatives of the shot-on-film
portions of that show are known to mostly no longer exist), but not
nearly what one would hope for in this case. A tape upscale would
certainly not qualify as a brilliant remaster, so if that is what
Paramount is doing, they are opening themselves up to accusations of
very deceptive advertising. An official announcement will likely come
very soon to clarify exactly what "brilliantly restored"
means; our bet is that it does indeed refer to a thorough, expensive,
and honestly pretty improbable 2k or 4k restoration from the
negative, but until we hear it from Paramount themselves, we're not
quite sure just how excited to feel about this. We're excited - The
Stand is a solid miniseries that could really use some love - but if
this remaster is what we hope it will be, we'll be very excited
indeed.
As for the miniseries itself... is it
worth buying on a swanky new blu-ray set? I would say yes... with
some caveats. It's a series that is definitely best appreciated in
the context of what it is. For an early-90s network TV event series,
The Stand is great. It's better than the majority of television of
that era, from before the premium cable boom and the new golden age
of television that it ushered in. An epic tale of cosmic good versus
evil, with embodiments of both sides building armies from among the
desperate survivors of a world-ending pandemic, The Stand is one of
Stephen King's most unique tales – certainly his most expansive
outside of the Dark Tower series – and Mick Garris's series does as
great a job of adapting it as the small screen possibly could have
before the rise of premium cable. It's wonderfully ambitious, it has
a great cast, it really pushed the envelope of what TV could do at
the time, and while there are some early-90s TV shows that are better
- it certainly can't touch Twin Peaks, for one - it's definitely
towards the top... within that context. But it really must be
emphasized, within that context. There are things about it that are
really, really cheesy when viewed today; not just its CGI, but
aspects of its production values and acting as well. It really feels
like early-90s network TV, because it is; though in my eyes, that
doesn't make it worse, it just means that you need to watch it with
its context in mind. For modern viewers, the biggest problem with it
is definitely the terrible computer graphics, but again... it was
1994. And again, I hope that Paramount will announce that they are
doing the same thing that was done with the Star Trek blu-rays, with
new and original CGI as options. Hopefully we will know soon.
Cheesier aspects of its early-90s
television nature aside (which are things that I think viewers should
be forgiving of, or at least mindful of context), The Stand is a
solid King adaptation, and probably Mick Garris's best. It certainly
deserves more love, having long languished on cheap DVDs which are
basically just dupes of its original late-90s disc release. This is a
very exciting announcement, and the details of what exactly this
remaster entails shall be eagerly awaited. Hopefully it will allow a
new generation to appreciate this unique entry in Stephen King's
cinematic canon free of the hindrances of some of its technical
limitations.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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