Streamin’ King: ‘The Green Mile’ Is The Unfortunate Zenith Of The Magical Negro Trope

Welcome to Streamin’ King, a series grave-digging through the myriad Stephen King adaptations available on your favorite streaming services. This time we’re watching The Green Mile, the 1999 adaptation of the novel serialized across six volumes in ’96. Spoiler-light until noted otherwise.

THE GIST: Present-day elderly man Paul Edgecombe has a story to tell us, set inside Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1935 Louisiana. John Coffey, an African-American gentle giant, is brought to Paul’s death row block, wrongly sentenced to the electric chair for the rape and murder of two young white girls. But John’s got miraculous healing powers (peep those initials), and there’s an adorable mouse named Mr. Jingles scampering about.

PEDIGREE: Written and directed by Frank Darabont, who five years earlier adapted King’s The Shawshank Redemption and would go on to make SK’s The Mist. Stars Tom Hanks, then (and now) a two-time Academy Award–winner, coming off his fourth nomination, for ’98’s Saving Private Ryan, and Michael Clarke Duncan, nominated here for Best Supporting Actor. His was one of four Oscar nods/losses, alongside Best Picture (American Beauty), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. On the deep bench of familiar faces are Oscar nominees James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, Graham Greene, and, in a cameo, Gary Sinise. Then there’s still Sam Rockwell, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Jeffrey DeMunn, and Barry Pepper.

WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? Like Darabont’s Shawshank or Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, the sensation here is of watching a super-fan bring King’s material to life as reverentially as possible, resulting in an adaptation of almost exactly equal greatness. But there’s a chance you’ll wish you’d spent the three hours embarking on a re-read.

WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? A common refrain in 2017 film criticism is that a movie running 130 minutes or longer is far too long. But The Green Mile, at 189 minutes, is the longest movie in the universe. Fortunately it’s sharply (if straightforwardly) made and successfully emotional, offsetting its stretches of ponderous heaviness and claustrophobia. Darabont and King are both experts at old-timey material and old-timer material alike.

If you love a Dolores Umbridge–esque villain who has you trying to jump across dimensions to personally stop them, Percy Wetmore is your man. It’s also fun seeing Forrest Gump and “Lewtinint” Dan shooting the breeze together on a porch for a minute.

7 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY

1. King has a long-standing Magical Negro issue, from The Stand‘s Mother Abigail to The Shining‘s Dick Hallorann to The Talisman‘s Speedy Parker, and Coffey is the zenith. Spike Lee laid into the film for helping repopularize the trope in late-’90s cinema and told an interviewer that Coffey’s refusal to accept freedom or use his powers to escape was “that old grateful slave shit.”
   
   Coffey’s the most well known instance in King’s bibliography, but the 1988 story “Dedication,” writer Scott Woods cringingly and accurately summarizes, is about a black housekeeper named Martha Rosewall, “nothing more than a vessel for the transformative powers of a senile racist’s skeet, magic so powerful that it can add talent to an unborn black baby actually seeded by her black husband.”
   
   What in the actual hell.
2. In On Writing, King quickly details his “deep interests,” a term he prefers over “thematic concerns.” The Green Mile is filed with Desperation and The Stand under “the question of why, if there is a God, such terrible things happen.”
3. The Green Mile was the No. 1–earning King movie of all time, grossing $137 million in the U.S. and $287 million globally, until It was released this fall. Pennywise’s big-screen debut has made $688 million, long ago becoming the highest-grossing horror movie in history.
4. Hanks was asked to star in The Shawshank Redemption but it conflicted with filming Forrest Gump, for which he won Oscar No. 2, the year after Oscar No. 1.

5. Before Green Mile went to Hanks, the lead was offered to John Travolta, which would’ve been crazy since King’s first movie, Carrie, was also Travolta’s major film debut. In a 2008 interview, Travolta gave a shady quote about it when asked if he had any career regrets: “Green Mile I probably should have said yes to and An Officer and a Gentleman. But I gave Richard Gere and Tom Hanks a career! What you turn down can be a gift to someone else. There is enough to go around.”
6. Jeffrey DeMunn and William Sadler were both in Darabont’s Shawshank as well as The Mist (ditto Brian Libby, more of a background guy). Other King adaptation veterans include Harry Dean Stanton (Christine), Gary Sinise (The Stand), and David Morse (The Langoliers, and later Hearts in Atlantis). Patricia Clarkson went on to play Margaret White in 2002’s Carrie TV movie, and James Cromwell was Father Callahan for ’04’s ‘Salem’s Lot miniseries.

ONE QUICK SPOILER…

7. For a little more perspective on how John’s healing touch affected Paul in the long run: in the book, he never gets sick again aside from a light cold every six or seven years. He doesn’t feel any serious pain at all for another 24 years, when he gets a gallstone.

CRITICAL CONSENSUS: Lost at the Oscars four times. Rotten Tomatoes legacy hangs at 80 percent, but sinks to 61 at Metacritic. Time‘s review won the long-movie critique contest, saying Darabont “wants you to share the agony of ennui felt by jailbirds whose only job is marking time while scheming to escape or waiting to die—just like the rest of us.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR THE GREEN MILE (1996): Fascinatingly published as a serialized novel over six monthly installments. Only one month after it ended came the dementedly mirrored novels Desperation and The Regulators (the latter “by” the long-outed pseudonym Richard Bachman), dropped on the same day, totaling almost 1,200 pages. Pretty busy year.

NEXT TIME ON STREAMIN’ KING: 1986’s Maximum Overdrive, a horror-comedy original written by King, and his first and last time as a director.

Zach Dionne is a North Carolina–based writer; he once abandoned a ‘Salem’s Lot re-read because it was ruining the Christmas spirit.

Watch The Green Mile on Max Go