"It's almost pornography": Stephen King blasts superhero movies for sterilized violence and lack of blood

The last one adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk had one important condition from the author before the start of filming — he wanted a lot of “brutal violence” on the screen. Something that, in the writer’s opinion, superhero movies don’t offer.

In an interview with The Times UK, King criticized superhero movies from Marvel and DC for not showing “realistic and bloody consequences” despite the large presence of destruction.

Indeed, superhero movies usually avoid scenes of violence to appeal to a wider audience, including families and younger viewers. At the same time, there have been some that have been rated R —, such as Suicide Squad (2021), Craven the Hunter (2024), Blade (1998), or the Deadpool films, among others.

Steven says he didn’t want that to happen in the film adaptation of The Long Walk, and so he demanded that the authors “intensify” the depiction of violence and show, among other things, teenagers being shot.

“The Long Walk is a film based on Stephen King’s dystopian novel published in 1979. The plot tells the story of a group of teenagers who take part in an annual survival competition: they have to walk at a certain speed along a route; if someone slows down, they get a warning, and after the third time, they are shot.

The film was directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games) and written by J.T. Molner. The film stars Cooper Hoffman, Ben Wan, Judy Greer, Garrett Wearing, Roman Griffin Davis, Charlie Plummer, David Johnsson, and Mark Hamill, who appears as a psychopathic major who terrorizes the marchers. Wearing has previously said that he secretly tracked the number of steps on the set and determined that they had to walk up to 25 kilometers a day.

The Long Walk has already received its first ratings and reviews from specialized publications, starting with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film will be released in Ukrainian cinemas on September 11.

This year, Stephen King’s books have received a record number of film adaptations: we have already seen horror “Monkey”, science fiction movie “The Life of Chuck with Tom Hiddleston, as well as horror series “The Institute”. In addition to The Long Walk, we are looking forward to the prequel to Pennywise, Welcome to Derry and The Running Man with Glenn Powell.

Source: THR, Independent