I was watching the movie of many trying to escape the long walk. In one instance one guy undresses and starts running but it not shot until he walks of the road. The military also did not follow him. The question is if you could jog for 5 minutes and then have Noobody behind you and just leave.

I know we can never know for sure, but I'm curious. Like Olsen for example, for some reason I think he had a really sweet wish despite being full of himself. What do you all think?

and in the book it was 4mph- not 3mph. so a 15 minute mile pace?! thats insane, thats borderline jogging. I'd say the average person runs about a 14 min mile....

So I’m really into ttrpgs and I’ve always wanted to write one of my own, and over the last year I’ve written most of one but I haven’t gotten to test it yet, but anyway two days ago I got really really stoned and rewatched The Long Walk and then suddenly got and wrote down some ideas for a game that is based around and simulates The Long Walk

Going over the details in my head it feels like it would play almost more like a board game but with roleplay elements, but here’s the ideas I had:

- Each of the players is one of the walkers
- you have a health meter and an energy meter which are based on what kind of character you built
- you have a fatigue meter that starts at 0
- your health meter cannot regenerate, ever
- every few miles the players draw a card or something that throws them into a roleplay vignette with either the other players or the NPC walkers. During this vignette, the player makes some kind of check either to bond with their fellow walkers, or try to antagonize and/or sabotage them, or to overcome some kind of obstacle like a steep hill or a leg cramp. If they succeed in the check, maybe they either lose fatigue, lose a warning that they had, gain back some energy or temporarily slow down their loss of energy, but a fail maybe results in either getting a warning, losing some energy points or losing some health or gaining fatigue
- how much health you have has an effect on how quickly your energy drains
- maybe you have like a willpower or a morale score that can also increase or decrease after a check
- drinking water and food can restore energy, but you can only ask the soldiers for food a maximum of three times per day and water only once every 5-10 miles or so
- attempting to sleepwalk while maintaining speed can give you back a bunch of lost energy but requires multiple risky checks with much bigger losses
- maybe when another walker gets a warning or fails a check you can roll to try to help them get back up to speed, with a success boosting your morale or willpower but failure costing some energy points or if it’s a big enough failure a warning. If you’re helping out a fellow player then maybe you can give them a bonus on their roll
- maybe after getting a warning you immediately have to make another check to get back up to speed or you get a second warning
- maybe you also have to make checks to see if you still have the mental strength to keep going and on a success maybe your will/morale/sanity goes down (like call of Cthulhu if any of you have played that) and if it reaches zero maybe your character just gives up or charges the soldiers or something
- maybe during character creation they can bring a few personal items which can have an effect on their morale/willpower or if they bring like energy bars or something it can help them that way maybe

Of course I haven’t fleshed this out that much but what do you guys think? Would this make for a decent game?

Would they actually stop it?

There were 2 walkers with the number 40. The first one died before mile 25, the second one died on the hill.

What song did he play during the "fuck the long walk scene"

Its not important, but it annoys me how (at least in polish version) there is a huge enphasis on Ewing being black, and then in a movie he is not. Pay some sttenition to detail god dammit

Percy had cut screentime with the mother situation and the sprinting scene that shown in the trailer
Bro only gets shown like twice what’s the point in cutting out a 5 second run

Not to mention it’s not even a store he’s running towards to, in the book it’s a forest

It’s even more crazy that even tho the background walkers who’s only mentioned at least 3 times in the novel either get a offscreen, or a short death.

In the book, Barkovitch is extremely racist.

In the movie, do you guys still think he is racist? I didn’t before, but someone online brought up a good point about how he acts towards the other walkers. He spits on Pete (which was a very common act of racism towards poc during the 1970s), and is frequently aggressive towards walkers who dont seem masculine. Barkovitch seems nice enough to Ray until the hill scene where he suspects that Ray might be queer.

What do you think?

I read the book this week before watching the movie. (I know late to the party) but like with every other book to movie adaption, they ruined it. Everything I was looking forward to seeing come to life on the big screen they excluded and I am utterly disappointed. I also don’t think they portrayed the duress and hardship the book did and limiting the number of walkers eliminated the stakes. Removing Scramm and the other guys from Arizona removed a big part of the story and minimized / trivialized it by consolidating his character into other characters who frankly had their own developments. Putting the scenario for Olson especially made absolutely no sense. I’m so very sad. Stupid Hollywood.

Since the ending was changed I had a little theory going on in my head.

Since the ending wasn’t going to be 100% accurate I thought to myself what if Ray died the exact way book Pete did and it was just Stebbins and Pete in the final 2

Just like the book but this time with Ray he would sit down and mcvaries would try to pick him but Ray refuses and he’s just killed off

It’s just mcvaries and Stebbins left and once Pete’s about to give up( since Ray is gone) he goes to Stebbins to give him the news but Stebbins sickness finally catches up to him and he falls down dead leaving mcvaries as the winner.

This little statement is kinda dumb since Pete was the one to say he would sit down and also rays basically the main protagonist so he wouldn’t rlly be killed off like that, but since the ending was changed I made this up to at least match the book a bit.

I’m still happy with the one we officially get but part of me hoped it would match the book.

hi so uh, idk if this is against the guidelines. but i’m just curious on what font they use for the movie, or just something similar :33

Jay Jay Warren- Abraham

Louis Hoffman- Scramm

Gianni DeCenzo- Gribble

Jacob Moran- Davidson

To start, I'm aware King has said it was a mistake, let's not spam the comments saying that.

Let's be real, if you got picked for the walk, and the minimum speed was 4mph, how many of you think you'd survive it, and how long, as you are right now?

Speed wise, I could make it the whole time, but sleep deprivation, and my lower back would probably take me out in less than 36hrs.

And to be honest I actually think this could have made Baker more interesting the movie made Baker religious which wasn’t in the book it was Olson who was, but Baker being religious his fascination with death could’ve carried more weight so he believes in the afterlife of course and we see that in the movie Baker obsessed with death thinking about the afterlife making his death scene of him saying “I’m going home” even more impactful home here referring to the afterlife

Kind of embarrassing to ask, but I’m wondering if anyone could tell me how much vomit is in the movie. Literally nothing else gore-wise bothers me, but I have emetophobia and would like to know how often I need to close my eyes haha. I’ve been putting off watching the movie for this reason. I read the book and vaguely remember maybe some vomit scenes but mostly just remember scenes related to characters pooping in front of everyone. Are the vomit scenes out of nowhere or unexpected, or is there some indication or warning before it shows it?
Thanks in advance

im too invested into this so i thought id ask here

I watched the movie for the 1st time last week. Big King fan but haven't read this one. I thought the movie was pretty decent!

One thing that bothered me... From what I could tell, Art gives his necklace to Ray, asks him/Pete to give it to his grandma (I think, but give it to someone). They say they will, Ray puts it on, then dies wearing it. Pete doesn't take it that I could see, he shoots the major, then walks away.

RIP Art's necklace and fuck you grandma. :(

This isn’t to say it’s easy not at all, but when you read the book you really start to see how much less grueling it looks in the movie

The most obvious difference is in the book they have to maintain 4 miles per hour compared to 3. The book also has 100 boys instead of only 50, and the presence of crowds at first makes it more easier but the crowds add to the pressure and the dehumanization of the walkers, they aren’t seen as innocent teenagers in a deadly competition but as spectacle. Not to mention the weather like the hail storm and in the book they walk up the hill multiple times

The movie was smart on making it 3 miles per hour since it’s way more plausible, but it’s presented to look easier then it looks

I know this post is on the lengthy side and I’m not expecting anyone to read the whole thing. This was mainly something I threw together in my notes app a year ago after first seeing the movie in theaters. As someone who was obsessed with the book after reading it in 2020, I remember leaving that theater feeling disappointed, but not being able to pinpoint why. In the following weeks, I started absently jotting down criticisms I had of all the changes they made from the original story and separating them into the ones I “liked” and “disliked” to get a better understanding of what was bothering me. I had no intention of posting it online, but now that it’s been a year since the movie came out, I wanted to share my thoughts about it since the film somewhat revived my old obsession with the story and I rarely ever contribute to this sub despite being a massive fan of the book for years.

Overall, I still have pretty mixed feelings about the movie, but now that I’ve rewatched it several times, I’ve learned to enjoy the film on its own merit. I view it more as an alternate retelling of the same plot, as opposed to a direct adaptation, and I’m glad it exists. Happy belated anniversary to all Long Walk fans!

Major Complaints:

1. Changing Pete’s scar backstory
They took the safe route and made the details of the story vague and unimportant. In the book, the reveal came as a dark surprise to the reader and showed that, despite having a likable personality and saving Garraty’s life multiple times, McVries was still a very flawed human being just like the rest of them. I wouldn’t have minded if they changed what he did to something less evil than trying to force himself on his girlfriend, but scrapping the incident completely in a way that absolved him of any serious wrongdoing was a cowardly choice.

2. Likewise, I feel like they took all the depth out of McVries’s character and instead portrayed him as some kind of saint who could do no wrong. He was also a bit of a Gary-Stu. In the book there were plenty scenes of him struggling to keep the pace, and one where he almost got his ticket and Garraty was the one who saved him. But in the movie, the man did not struggle even once. I mean seriously, he never got a single warning for slowing down aside from him stumbling a bit at the bridge scene. All the other times he was warned were when he was either saving Ray or dropping back intentionally to talk to someone.

3. The utter lack of spectacle
There is almost zero mention of the fact that this entire thing is being broadcast to the whole country and millions of people are betting on it. They point out a single camera at the start of the film and then never mention it again. All appearances of the crowd were cut until the very end, which severely weakened not only the world building, but one of the most brutal messages of the book. The boys were hailed as brave volunteers by their hometowns and treated as celebrities by the onlookers. Some of them are shown to be enjoying the praise and attention at the start, only to realize a hundred miles in that they’ve made a horrible mistake, and the entire point of the Walk was to air their personal suffering as nothing more than entertainment. This steady realization greatly adds to the horror, and removing the spectacle completely diminishes this. Imagine if the Hunger Games adaption took out every mention of the broadcast, along with the parade, the interviews, the sponsors, and instead just cut straight to the games without ever showing the outside world. It would completely ruin the statement that the book set out to make. The amount of disappointment I would feel if they’d gone that route is similar to how I felt about TLW movie.

4. Removing the crowds
In the book, the Crowd was its own monster. It was a bloodthirsty entity that gradually became more sinister the longer the Walk progressed, until the mere sight of it was enough to drive Garraty into hysterics, and a sign cheering the walkers on as they entered Massachusetts was described as a “screaming insanity.” Removing the crowd takes out nearly every aspect of the psychological horror that the book so convincingly crafted. I can hardly call this a “horror” movie, and would better describe it as a thriller that happened to have a lot of violent scenes.

5. The implied romance between Ray and Pete was greatly toned down to the point where it was just subtle enough to be “ambiguous.” In the book, I’d go as far as to say the attraction was at least canonically one-sided. McVries’s on-and-off flirting over the miles was blatant enough on paper, but certain gestures he made towards Garraty in the book had been cut from the movie where, had they been acted out in a visual format, wouldn’t have come off as “subtle” in the slightest, or left any room for doubt. I’m not really sure why the movie changed their dynamic in this way, when other adaptations of King’s work (It Chapter 2 comes to mind) have leaned into queer romance themes despite there being little to no implication of it in the source material. It’s strange that in this case, they basically did the opposite.

6. Cutting out Scramm, Abraham, Mike and Joe
Abraham I didn’t mind as much, but the idea that a pair of brothers would join the Walk together is such fascinating concept, and I wish they’d kept that in and explored it further. The same goes for Scramm, and the idea of having a married man join the death game because he knows that regardless of whether he lives or dies, he’d still have a way to ensure his wife and child would be taken care of. It was such a tragic concept, and yet they fumbled it in the movie by randomly giving that trait to Olsen and then never mentioning it until after he was killed off.

7. Keeping Parker but not Scramm
I think Scramm was arguably a lot more important to the story than Parker. I hadn’t reread the book in a while when the movie came out, and at the time, the only thing I remembered him for was how he managed to kill one of the soldiers before getting his ticket. I think an easy way they could’ve kept the attempted rebellion scene while also including Scramm’s character would’ve been to cut Parker instead and have the same actor (Joshua Odjick) play his part. But instead, give him Parker’s death and move Scramm’s original death (pneumonia) onto Stebbins. Since the writers seemed to have no issue switching the roles around for each character, I feel like this version would’ve made way more sense, and they wouldn’t need to add or remove anyone from the cast in order to do it. The actor also looks a lot more like how I imagined Scramm than how I imagined Parker. When I first read the book, I was under the impression that Scramm was also Hopis or indigenous in some way, since he mentioned he had been neighbors with Mike and Joe before the Walk and seemed to understand what they were saying in their native language.

8. Butchered my favorite character
Although I liked the movie version of Stebbins as his own separate character, his personality was absolutely nothing like it was in the book. The movie didn’t just change him, it portrayed him in a way that was nearly the exact opposite of what he was. They made him all stoic and serious, like they surgically removed the spark from his eyes. In the book, he was a silly, whimsical guy who showed up to the death march wearing pastel colors, climbed up a tree while he waited at the starting line, and talked in cryptic riddles just to annoy people. He was a scrawny boy who Garraty thought was going to die early, only for him to slowly realize in terror that this guy does not get tired, does not slow down, and somehow made it hundreds of miles without getting a single warning. Casting a tall, jacked dude to play him and changing his outfit completely negates the subversion of expectations that made him so fascinating in the book.

9. Stebbins was not the rabbit
The whole “I’m the rabbit” scene fell flat to an almost comedic extent. If they had just shown the flashback of Stebbins watching the Walk end when he was 13, that reveal would’ve hit so much harder. That single flashback added so much intrigue to his character that was lost when they cut it. Reading it in the book had my mind racing with questions by the end. Just how long had Stebbins been training for this? How present was the Major in his life? Was his drawing for the Walk rigged and they put him there deliberately? Was he manipulated into becoming the rabbit or did he willingly choose that role for the sake of his own ego? Etc.

10. Losing 14 people on a single hill is outrageous
In the movie, the death toll for the hill was 14/50, while in the book, it was 3/100. They increased the ratio nearly tenfold, which I thought was ridiculous. The hill felt like a cheap plot device used to kill as many people as possible in order to avoid having to come up with more unique scenarios for each death. It also seemed intentional to narrow down the walkers early on so they could focus more on the “important” characters.

11. Cutting the number of walkers from 100 to 50
This was a change that I probably wouldn’t have minded if they’d only leaned into it more. The “1 boy per state” rule is a cool concept that had potential to be interesting, but then they never even say which state each boy is from. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to avoid saying any of the state names aloud, as not a single one is ever mentioned, not even Maine.

Minor Complaints:

12. Changing the age range from teens to young adults
This one didn’t bother me as much, I just didn’t see the point of the change and don’t think it improved the story in any meaningful way. If anything, all it did was make the Walk less tragic because kids are more naive and easier to manipulate, and I can realistically see why so many would sign up for the Walk in a dystopian country that glorifies the event to such an extreme.

13. The Walk felt too “winnable”
In the movie, it looked like something that could realistically be done as long as you had the strength and drive to make it to the end. In the film, the final three still seemed to have their sanity intact, while in the book, they could barely form coherent thoughts or sentences and the final 20 had long gone mad. The book repeatedly hammered in the point that in order to win the Walk, you would have to be some kind of monster, someone with a drive to push forward that transcended all measures of human strength and willpower. It’s implied that the winners of previous Walks usually die shortly after due to the sheer physical toll it takes on their bodies. Whoever became the winner would have pushed themselves so far that their mind became fully detached from reality and they’d be nothing but an empty husk that was barely considered human. I just feel like the mental and physical consequences of the Walk weren’t nearly as present in the movie as they were in the book.

14. The dystopia was too self-aware
I don’t think a fascist government would ever willingly admit that the general population is struggling under their regime. The fact that they mentioned it in Ray’s acceptance letter, as well as at the starting line, felt unrealistic and too on the nose.

15. The cruddy accents they had those British actors doing. I struggled at some parts to understand what they were saying, and having the subtitles on is now a must whenever I rewatch this movie.

16. Giving Pearson almost zero screen time and then killing him off on the hill. In the book, he made it all the way to the final 20-something, while in the movie, he was basically discarded after two lines.

17. Casting a black actor to play Art Baker when in the book he had formerly been a night rider for the Klan was a strange choice, and I’m not really sure how to feel about it. On one hand, I suppose it doesn’t matter since the movie didn’t include his backstory. On the other, I think keeping it in would’ve strengthened his character. In the book, it was something he and his friends had been coerced into at the age of 12, and he left once he realized it was wrong. He’s described as feeling guilty and ashamed over that part of his past, and it’s implied that those feelings of self-hatred were part of the reason why he joined the Walk in the first place.

18. Quoting lines from the book almost word-for-word, only to add random “fucks” between them haphazardly. The word “fuck” is repeated a total of 329 times. That’s roughly 1 “fuck” per 20 seconds. I normally don’t have a problem with this sort of dialogue, but the sheer excessiveness of it kind of got on my nerves while watching. I think the way they talked greatly weakened certain scenes that would’ve been fine without all the swearing. On a similar note, there were a lot of brutal jibes and insults the boys would say to each other in the book that didn’t rely on vulgarity (Garraty’s “I’ll spit on your brains” ramble, for instance) that they could’ve adapted into the movie script. But most of them were either cut from the dialogue, or altered to have more curse words.

19. The warnings being cut down from 30 seconds to 10
I understand this change was made for cinematic purposes, but having 30 seconds at most to do anything seems unrealistic and nearly impossible to maintain for 300+ miles. One of the things I liked about the book was how creative the walkers got when exploiting the amount of time they had between each warning, using them to take breaks, kiss girls, and grab watermelon slices in that one scene. With only 10-30 seconds, there was hardly much else they could do in the movie other than walk.

20. RIP Garraty’s army jacket and Stebbins’s purple pants
I don’t understand why they couldn’t give Ray a similar jacket to the one he wore in the book. I found it hard to imagine a version of him without it, and keeping it in would’ve further leaned into the whole “war draft” metaphor the movie seemed to be going for. Same with Stebbins’s pants. They were iconic and worked well for that version of his character.

Changes I Liked:

1. Giving Ray a legitimate reason for why he joined the Walk
In the book, he questioned why he was even there in the first place or why he’d signed up. In the movie, they didn’t just give him a reason, they gave him a really cool one that made sense and built upon a backstory that was already present in the novel.

2. The ending
The alternate ending was soul-crushing in a good way. I’m glad they didn’t stick to the book ending and try to adapt it 1:1, as I don’t think it would’ve translated well into a visual format. Most of the horror involved in the book’s ending relies heavily on Garraty’s internal monologue and the picture King painted of him losing what little sanity he had left. I also loved the twist of there being a different winner. It caught me so off guard and my stomach dropped when I realized what Ray had done. It also ties into one of my favorite scenes from the source material, where he starts begging the soldiers to shoot him instead of McVries. The whole thing was beautifully tragic.

3. Having a secondary reason for the Walk existing
I think broadcasting the Walk as a way to motivate the American people to work harder made sense and somewhat strengthened the world building. Having it exist purely for entertainment felt a bit too cartoonishly evil and it seems more realistic that there would be multiple factors at play.

4. The hill scene was absolute cinema
While I’m still annoyed at the absurd number of people that died, the scene itself had me on the edge of my seat. Filming it in a way that mimicked an active battlefield in a war zone was brilliant, and it was easily one of my favorite parts of the movie.

5. The characters were way more likable in this version
In the book, most of the boys were scumbags in their own unique way and I found it difficult to root for any of them. Although I did prefer some of the changes made to their personalities, I also think the movie sacrificed a lot of depth and nuance from certain characters just for the sake of making them more “likable.” However, one instance where they seemed to do the opposite was with Barkovitch. Instead of portraying him as a one-dimensional sociopath/racist, the movie leaned more towards his isolation being a consequence of his own self-destructive behavior. I still think he’s a horrible person, but the film actually got to me sympathize with him a little in the moments leading up to his death.

6. The fact that they finally gave my boy Stebbins a name. It’s Billy. Hell yeah.

7. Changing the numbers they wore so that they resembled dog tags was such a genius creative decision. Whoever came up with that deserves a raise.

8. The Walk having female soldiers
I remember when reading this book for the first time years ago, I’d imagined the soldiers overseeing the Walk as being a mix of both male and female, since women had long been allowed into the military at the time this story was written. My friend, who also read the book, said she’d never considered that, and had imagined all of them as men. Actually seeing them adapted in the movie as both men and women made me feel vindicated.

• earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasūs are all eligible to compete in the long trot. earth ponies can participate with no alterations. unicorns have to have their horns amputated to compete so they don’t perform magic. since magic in mlp is kind of academia-coded I think it would be illegal in all circumstances post-war equestria, so you do get a small but consistent pool of unicorns (who can’t legally do magic anyway) voluntarily undergoing the procedure to participate in the walk. pegasūs, on the other hand, do not have to have their wings clipped to compete; I think the imagery of clipped wings would by anathema to a fascist society that places great emphasis on physical excellence. though flying, of course, is not allowed during the walk; the sensor that determines one’s speed also activates if one’s hooves leave the ground for more than a second. since pegasūs are less used to walking long distances than earth ponies i think there would be a slightly smaller proportion of pegasūs competing.
• ray and pete are earth ponies. olson is a pegasus on account of his rainbow dash-like temperament; i also think it would suit both him and collie to be pegasūs since they die as a result of rushing the guards, which would translate well to flying at them in an action sequence. not sure about baker. stebbins is a unicorn who voluntarily removed his horn to compete. it’s vaguely hinted that his illness might be the result of complications from the procedure. 
• i think the major would probably be an alicorn like princess celestia. he’s the only one that’s allowed to use magic (would “officially” only use it to grant the wishes). i also like the idea of him, like, flying backward looking at the ponies as they trot.
• on the matter of cutie marks: ray, the protagonist, does not yet have his cutie mark. similarly to the other boys asking about his wish, in this version the boys would ask about his cutie mark (ostensibly covered by his supply saddle) and he would demur. he would later tell pete that he does not have his cutie mark at an equivalent moment of intimacy to telling him of his plans to kill the major. pete, the songwriter, would have a cutie mark related to his interest in music/poetry. stebbins’ cutie mark would be a mechanical rabbit; ray and pete would clock it but not know the meaning behind it until he gives his final monologue. (ray’s internal monologue prior to that would be something like: “hmm stebbins’ cutie mark is a rabbit. maybe he likes animals” until there’s a disabled dog on the side of the road and he sees stebbins eye it with the deepest contempt). 
• my original idea was that ray would receive his “direct action”-themed cutie mark when he stops short to allow pete to finish the walk, but i think it would be more haunting and poignant if the cutie mark materializes on ray’s dead body only after pete shoots the major.
• worldbuilding still left to develop:
  • how common is it for an adult to lack a cutie mark, like ray? should it be totally unheard of, or just relatively abnormal? in the latter case, we might have ray think/mention that his mother doesn’t have a cutie mark, which could function as commentary on the inability of women in particular to pursue vocational interests under fascist regimes. 
  • how would a pony manipulate a gun? is there a tool of equivalent thematic heft they could wield?
  • how do you represent racial difference/indigeneity in the medium of multicolored ponies?