“The Long Walk” - Walk it off.

By sheer coincidence, I attended a screening of The Long Walk just two days after walking around Disney World for three days. If you have never been to Disney World, I can assure you that however much you think people walk there, you are vastly underestimating. As luck would have it, I know approximately how far I walked because both my wife and our friend wore fitness watches counting our steps.

I figured the final tally would be somewhere around ten miles over those three days, fifteen miles tops. I wasn’t even close. Turns out it was a literal marathon, somewhere between twenty-six and thirty miles (more than 59,000 steps). Now, imagine doing more than ten times that, but with no breaks. That’s what the contestants do in The Long Walk.

My recent experience is only a fraction of The Long Walk, but it’s a useful starting point. After my first day of walking roughly twelve miles, my legs were dead tired, my calves were sore, my back was stiff and achy, I was dehydrated, and I was developing blisters on both of my little toes. I did what I could the next two days to avoid worse blisters and pulled muscles. On the flip side, all that walking was constantly interrupted by standing in line for rides, riding those rides, standing in line for food like Mickey pretzels, and sitting down to eat those pretzels. Don’t worry - I’m not looking for pity. I know where I was.

In other words, I have an inkling of what the The Long Walk might feel like. However, unlike the characters in The Long Walk, I didn’t have to maintain a three-mile-per-hour walking pace. I didn’t get warnings for slowing down (they get a maximum of three but can erase a warning for every hour they go without an additional warning). I didn’t have to try to sleep while walking. Or poop while walking. And I certainly didn’t have to cope with anyone in my group being gunned down because they ran out of warnings and slowed down again. Even in Florida.

On the positive side, like the characters in The Long Walk, I shared the experience with friends (and family). Being able to talk to people is a great distraction from the monotony of walking miles upon miles. In the film, there are several characters that get plenty of screentime, the two most prominent being Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson). The two form a bond just before the walk begins, eventually leaning on each other through the walk like brothers, if not lovers. Complimenting these two are Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot) and Hank Olson (Ben Wang), forming a friend group that easily makes the viewer forget the walking for several lengths of time.

It's not all high-fives and bro-hugs, though. Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) and Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) are adversaries to Ray and Pete’s quartet, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call them villains. Stebbins is all but a machine and kind of a dick and Barkovitch is a loose cannon. Think of them as that squabbling family yelling at one screaming child while shoving a stroller haphazardly in the middle of the Epcot walkway. You silently curse at them, desperately willing them to park the stroller, shove a churro in the kid’s mouth, and get out of the way. Trigger-happy soldiers pacing us doesn’t seem like the worst idea at that point. Again, Florida.

When my Disney trip was over, I was quite satisfied, despite my blistered toes. I did not feel the same way when The Long Walk cut to credits. A little of that is my fault. I read the original Stephen King story (same title) thirty years ago and I’ve been waiting that long for an adaptation. Along the way, I think my memories of the story drifted a bit, along with my expectations for a film version. Don’t get me wrong, the film is decent. Good, even, if you really like character- and dialogue-driven stories where the tiny bit of action is mostly on the sidelines. Think Stand By Me, but without the leeches.

But most of my very mild disappointment is the movie hasn’t been updated for our times. As one person pointed out in a post-movie discussion panel, the story can be interpreted as an allegory of the Vietnam War. A platoon of conscripted young men on an endless walk, constantly in danger of being shot, and doing so for a very fuzzy reason. I understand historical dramas, but why make an exceptionally faithful adaptation of an allegory of something that happened fifty years ago whose commentary won’t even be recognized by anyone under the age of sixty?

I was also mildly disappointed that the film didn’t give us anyone to really root against. Stebbins and Barkovitch are developed such that they still inspire plenty of sympathy. The Major (Mark Hamill) responsible for conducting the Long Walk is a classic bully, but he’s really more of an idea of a bully; a voice from off-camera that inspires little more than an eyeroll as he barks military cliches at the walkers. And the crowds of people who line the streets in the book, hoping to glimpse death, are removed from the film altogether. So, when the final walker is eliminated, there isn’t much resolution because they didn’t really overcome anything. It’s just...done.

In other words, it’s one of those times when a film probably needed to wander a bit more from its source material. I don’t mean anything crazy like the 1987 The Running Man adaptation. But it could have leaned into a character or two hallucinating from sleep deprivation (not unlike me after 3 days at Disney), in addition to a little more villainization. Hamill wouldn’t have to go full Darth Vader, but a little more Jafar would have been nice. A bit more of the verbal psychological warfare to emphasize which of them really only cares about the prize awarded to the last man standing. And bringing the spectators back to emphasize how far the world around them had fallen. This would have given the end of the film much more weight and satisfied the audience. Even the ones who were just at the happiest place on Earth.

Rating: Ask for five dollars back or a Mickey pretzel.