Lionsgate’s The Long Walk marched into Hall H with a mission: to make a tough subject matter too enticing to resist.
The Comic-Con panel not only revealed the newest trailer for the adaptation of the Stephen King novel, that has at its heart a downer of a conceit, but it also showed the first 22 minutes of the movie. The story focuses on an annual contest in which 100 teen boys set out on the titular journey under the watchful eye of hard-driving army commander played by Mark Hamill. The walk ends with just a single survivor.
The assembled crowd of over 6,500 fans was given plenty of warning from the moderators that the some scenes may not be suited for all audiences, on top of the usual warnings of curse words. How intense was the open section? Well, the audience never truly found out because the scene showing the first death was blacked out.
“They say you shouldn’t make friends on the long walk,” announces the character played by David Jonsson at the trailer’s beginning. “But I sort of like you three.” With images of a poor, rural and militarized America as a backdrop, the trailer shows a group of young men, focused on the characters played by Cooper Hoffman, Jonsson, Ben Wang and Charlie Plummer, face the hardships as fellow contestants and they, too, crumble and fall during the walk, putting their relationships to the ultimate test.
With director Francis Lawrence not on hand for the proceedings (although he did send a video of himself with actor Yang), screenwriter JT Molner took on the torch to assuage the King faithful and Hall H crowd that the movie kept the brutality.
“We wanted to the beauty and love and story of friendships, and brutality and hopelessness,” Mollner said. “If this book got into the wrong hands, the wrong studio, it could have been neutered. We kept the teeth.”
He continued, “It definitely has bite. It needs to. It wouldn’t work if we didn’t go all the way. It is an unrelenting and brave film.”
Actors Jonsson, Tut Nyuot and Gareing talked about the friendships that are at the heart of the movie.
It was Hamill, the actor who has been celebrated in geek and Comic-Con culture for decades thanks to his playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, that received the loudest reception. Hamill plays The Major, the unyielding commander overseeing the walk.
Hamill said he based his performance on his experiences growing up on a military base in Japan, where he witnessed extreme behaviour by commanders. The officers would make soldiers suffer under the blazing sun and “if you vomited, forced you to eat it. I saw it first hand.”
When he read the script for the part of the Major, he said, “I know this guy.”
Hamill also recounted how when shooting started in Saskatchewan, he wanted to bring all the boys together for a meal at the hotel. He was informed, however, that Hoffman didn’t want to attend because he didn’t want to meet him. Hoffman was afraid he might like him and that would affect his performance.
“So I canceled the lunch,” Hamill said.
