Stephen King is on his soapbox again to criticize superhero movies to all who will listen, and this time, he kind of makes a valid point. King, of course, is the author of more than 50 novels of the strange and unusual, the bulk of which have been turned into successful, and not-so-successful, films. His latest adaptation, The Long Walk, is set to hit theaters on Sept. 12, 2025, and thus far it’s been receiving high marks from critics, who praise it for being “brutal and unforgiving in its execution.”
Speaking of brutal and unforgiving, it’s that subject that King recently addressed to The Times UK, telling the outlet that he had one condition for director Francis Lawrence before he adapted The Long Walk: He wanted to make sure the movie showed teenagers getting shot. “I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie,” he commented. It’s kind of a surprising condition when you consider that King is a staunch believer in gun control, and has refused to ever allow one of his most controversial novels, Rage – about a teenager who takes his classmates hostage – to ever be made into a movie. To hear that he’s all for kids getting shot on screen in The Long Walk is almost contradictory, but, honestly, how else would you have made the movie and still have it be as impactful as it is?
King pointed to superhero films as an example of pictures that water down their violence, saying that’s not what he wanted The Long Walk to become. “If you look at these superhero movies, you’ll see some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks, but you never see any blood,” he told The Times, adding:
“And man, that’s wrong. It’s almost, like, pornographic.”
King Has a Valid – Albeit Misguided – Point
By referencing pornography, we take King to mean that many superhero movies push things to the brink, without actually crossing the line to show the effects of getting punched in the face by a being with superhuman strength. In the real world, that would turn anybody’s face into something resembling ground beef. Instead, they’re more like those soft core movies with Shannon Tweed in them that we used to watch on Cinemax when we were kids. Sure, there were boobies, but we had to imagine everything else.
Therein lies the rub: Superhero movies don’t take place in the “real world.” Yes, they tend to depict real locations like New York, California, etc., but think of it as an alternate universe where blood doesn’t flow as freely, and you never have to concern yourself with who foots the bill for rebuilding the Empire State Building. It’s a fantasy. We might get R-rated movies like Deadpool and The Suicide Squad every so often, but even in those the gore is so over-the-top that it’s almost impossible for anyone to consider it real.
King does have a valid point, of course, but he’s missing the bigger picture. Superhero movies like The Avengers and Spider-Man are meant to appeal to a wide audience, hence their PG-13 rating. They’re for adults and kids, meaning they can’t cross over into bloody territory unless they’re meant to. Imagine taking your child to see an X-Men movie and Magneto uses his powers to remove some poor souls pacemaker from his chest just for kicks, and they actually show the skin ripping and tearing as the device is extracted and all that’s left is a wide open cavity filled with blood and gore? Doesn’t sound very kid-friendly, does it?
That type of stuff is best left to movies like The Long Walk, while most superhero films remain safe for all to watch. That’s the beauty of cinema: There’s always going to be something for everyone. Not everything has to emulate real life, otherwise, what the heck would we watch to escape from the horrors we see on the news every day?
The Long Walk
- Release Date
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September 12, 2025
- Runtime
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108 Minutes
- Director
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Francis Lawrence
- Producers
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Roy Lee, Steven Schneider
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Cooper Hoffman
Raymond Garraty / #47
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David Jonsson
Peter McVries / #23
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Garrett Wareing
Stebbins / #38
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Tut Nyuot
Arthur Baker / #6
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
