Stephen King calls superhero movies “almost pornographic” with city destruction violence; “You never see any blood”

Our Editor-in-Chief and resident film critic, Chris Bumbray, raved about how the new Francis Lawrence dystopian film, The Long Walk, doesn’t shy away from the shocking violence from its source material. He mentions in his review, “In an era where so many films are watered down, it’s refreshing to see a movie like this come from a legit studio.” Lawrence had also tackled a dystopian future with his Hunger Games films, and while the concept of the franchise should showcase equally horrifying sequences, the violence is toned down for its demographic audience.

Stephen King, who wrote The Long Walk, was emphatic on the violence being key to the film, saying that superhero movies don’t show the gory consequences of the collateral damage. Variety reports that King recently told the Times UK,

If you look at these superhero movies, you’ll see some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks but you never see any blood. And man, that’s wrong. It’s almost, like, pornographic… I said [for ‘The Long Walk’], if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”

In The Long Walk, the movie is set in “a future dystopian America ruled over by a militaristic dictator, and the titular event is an annual contest in which 100 teenagers must keep a steady pace of at least four miles an hour under strict rules until only one of them is left alive. The winner receives ‘The Prize’: anything they want for the rest of their life. The story follows Raymond Garraty, a 16-year-old from Pownal, Maine, as well as a group of other teenagers with good, bad, and mysterious intentions.”

Bumbray also points out in his review, “Indeed, The Long Walk is a movie that feels tailor-made for the era we live in. With unemployment something a lot of people have to grasp for, a future where the majority of the population struggles to make ends meet isn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination, making The Long Walk feel uneasily timely.” He also says, “The Long Walk is perhaps a little too grim to catch on in the same way as something like IT, but like the best King adaptations, it’s rich in characterization and wildly entertaining.”

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