Firestarter Movies and Book Review

I saw a commercial on Peacock for the new remake of Stephen King's Firestarter, and it looked fantastic. I love science fiction/fantasy movies. I had never read the book, and decided to order it on Amazon after watching both the 2022 movie and the 1984 movie that afternoon. 

The premise of Firestarter is that a secret government agency called "The Shop" performed experiments on college students with a drug called Lot 6, which gave participants paranormal psychic abilities. Some could read minds, or got telekinetic powers. Two of those participants got married and had a child- Charlie. She can start fires with a single thought (pyrokinesis). Eventually The Shop finds them and kills her mother. Charlie and her father run for their lives, and Charlie will need to harness the powers she is afraid of in order to stay alive.

Like the 1984 Firestarter, this 2022 movie also did poorly in the box office. If you are deciding which Firestarter movie to watch, then you've come to the right place.

For starters, Stephen King had widely criticized the 1984 movie, mostly for the casting. While he thought that the actors had talent, he blamed the director for their acting being "flavorless." I agree entirely. While the original movie strayed closely to the book itself, I couldn't stand David Keith (the father) at all. Zac Efron has changed since his Disney days, and his interpretation of the character was much more sincere and actually believable. The emotional conflict in Ryan Kiera Armstrong (2022 Charlie) was more in-depth and raw compared to Drew Barrymore's (1984 Charlie). How Barrymore summoned the fire itself looked very... uncomfortable, and strange with gusts of wind blowing up her hair. The single biggest factor in watching a movie, in my opinion, is fondness for the characters. Armstrong and Efron had that in spades, along with a believable chemistry. 

For the complexity of the original book, the 2022 remake left a lot of the original story out, mostly the middle of the book. The first movie seemed to pack in a lot at once, and the new Firestarter chose to hone in on some of the most important scenes and relationship between father and daughter. I much prefer the new movie over the first movie and the book. I felt impatient to get to the end of Firestarter. About a hundred or so pages could have easily been left out, and the book actually seemed boring at times. I haven't read Stephen King before, so I don't know if super drawn-out plotlines is just his writing style.

The 2022 movie was only 1 hour and 34 minutes, even shorter than the 1984 version, which meant that many of the 564-page book's events had to be cut. Besides things being just left out, the biggest actual plot change came from the ending. Personally, I prefer the newer movie's ending over the book. The character Rainbird changed the most from the book and movie to the new one. In the originals, he is more of an evil psychopath, whereas in the new movie he is just another misunderstood and misguided experiment. I have zero idea why in the world the original movie decided to make him an old white guy when in the book he is specifically written as Native American. 

I highly recommend that you watch the new Firestarter movie on Peacock, and before you read the book (if you haven't already), or instead of the book. I fear that those who watch the movie will be too caught up on the differences from the expectations of the book to appreciate it, which is one of the reasons why movies based on books have challenges in the box office. 

I would rate the book 3 stars, the original movie 2 stars, and the new movie 5 stars.