FIRESTARTER is a Trash Fire | Explained 

This is one of Stephen King's most straightforward and to-the-point novels I don't quite understand how hard it is to get right. Stranger Things nailed a similar concept.

"Teacher sees kid get bullied and does fuck-all" is probably the most accurate thing in this movie.

don’t feel old, but….. highschool musical was 16 years ago.

Having your main character kill an animal for literally no reason is a good way to get me to want that character to die horribly.

Fun fact, in the closest scene to the cat one in the book it’s actually a teddy bear and the lesson is “You shouldn’t use your powers because this is what happens” not a Palpatine “Do it”

All I have to say is the Zefron as a father is both something that I refuse to accept and something that I need to mention to my therapist as to why I like it

Honestly, the dodgeball bully scene was pretty accurate to American schools. Something similar happened to my friend in gym class, I almost started a fight with the bullies over it, and the teacher was more worried about my friend leaving class without permission and not the fact that she ran out crying after being chased by bullies in the first place.

I mean, the trailer had her say “Liar Liar, pants on fire” I wasn’t expecting it to be good.

What happens a lot with SK adaptations is that his books are about the people and about their relationships, but the movies are about the monsters 😕

Stephen King adaptations are either cinematic masterpieces or complete garbage. There is no in-between. By the way, the book does a much better job of explaining the experiments. And no. Rainbird did not have powers. He was just a creepy psychopath with an obsession. Idk why they changed the ending. The Rolling Stone thing is how the book ended by the way 😅

As to the teachers not caring, that was my exact experience. In middle school (when I was eleven), we were playing kickball in the gym. I kicked the ball, but got confused because everyone was yelling and I didn't know what to do. One of my teammates (a long-term bully of everyone) started screaming at me to get to first base. He marched up to me, backed me up against the wall, and screamed into my face as I tried to hide behind my hands while I cried. The teachers, who had been watching the whole thing, made me sit in the bleachers because I was too upset and it was keeping the others from continuing to play. He got no consequences. I got humiliated with no guidance or comfort. Welcome to the American public school system.

King's Critics: He always has the same boring, stereotypical bullies in all his books. Stephen King: *doesn't add any unnecessary bully characters to 'Firestarter'* Firestarter '22: *Literally adds unnecessary bully characters*

I mean, the first movie came out in 1984. Doesn't feel like enough time has passed for a remake, it's only been... Oh. Oh no.

I got big "have you tried NOT being a mutant?" vibes from ZacDaddy... But I was too bored to do anything more than roll my eyes.

Charlie isn't 8 in the remake, just the original. Here, she's 12. This explains a lot of the issues.

The dad telling Charlie to push her powers down and hide them is the same advice Elsa's dad told her as a kid. Worked real well 🙄

As someone who got jumped in PE as an elementary student, I can vouch for teachers not giving a fuck. The coach was watching me the entire time. Three people kicking me in the spine. I was bedbound for a few weeks. Was the only one who got in trouble and no one called my mom. I got pulled out of that school after that.

"Don't kill the bad man!" "Why not?" *Looks at camera* "Because nobody ever thinks about the families of evil henchmen."

Love it when a protagonist only decides not to kill people when face to face with the main antagonist

In my region of America we didn't dissect frogs until 7th grade. The most we dissected in elementary school was like owl pellets.

I felt sorry for the little girl. Being a kid, she’ll probably blame herself for the fact it flopped. Hopefully one day she realizes it was the adults in charge who made the wrong decisions. She still got that paycheck tho, and none of the pressure that comes with fame and popularity, so in my book she’s winning. I hope she’s gonna be okay ☺️

Pertaining to Zac Efron as the dad, I felt the exact way about Julia Stiles in the remake of The Omen. I couldn't believe, for a second, she was that child's mother.

I read the book this movie is..... Weird Like the mom is dead way earlier and a huge part is spent on the run with the dad and Charlie actually showing their bond and slowly ratcheting up the tension, then they both actually get captured and spend a few months in captivity sperated with the dad drugged into complacence and Charlie having her powers tested and pushed under the coercion that she'll get to see her dad if she listens until the final attempted escape attempt where the dad dies and Charlie completely destroys the facility. It's also a huge part that charlie can't control it. Once she activates her powers she has to use up the energy but the more often she uses it the more power. At first she can use like a sink of water but by the end she evaporates a whole lake after burning down the facility. She also doesn't get any of her parents powers.

My initial reaction to Efron being cast was that he is way too young, but then I realized people do, in fact, have kids in their early 20's...

The way the teachers ignored the bullying was exactly my experience. I'm glad people have had more positive experiences to the point where they find that unbelievable. But for me, it was the most realistic part. I was once doing group work in the classroom, and I was put in a group with a bully. I got detention for running out of the classroom crying. Bully got nothing, even though the teacher heard it all. So yeah, completely real.

Rainbird doesn't think he will get powers in the book. He thinks he can fully understand death by looking into their eyes as they die.

18:08 "Then they toss in a little prayer at the end for the mom - in case you forgot she died." *cuts to corpse thumping on the floor* lmao, comedic gold

I can't think of a better time to use the term "Zaddy" than when a Zac is being a father. Perhaps the only acceptable time...

"I could never be scared of you" "Yeah lady we'll see" and "she runs off before she makes the rest of the kid match his hair" and "Evil Matilda" Better than the entire movie

Okay so why didn't the dad...just hypnotize his kid in the beginning of the movie to not...be a destructive pyromaniac?? Since he can stop smokers? Edit: oh my god he's just an idiot. At least it's an explanation.

The Hanged Man in a tarot card reading is associated with surrender, but in a releasing kind of way, not in this dude's aggressive way. More like, letting go, taking a pause, and getting a new perspective (hence hanging upside down). I guess it's the closest to what he wants. Cool tattoo tho.

The funniest thing was listening to all the middle aged women in my mom's stephan king fan group talking about how bad the trailer looked and making fun of it. And when the fan groups are calling a Stephen King adaptation lame you know it's gonna be bad Glad to know they were right

For me, the magic of Stephen King's work comes from his writing style and the scene building he does masterfully. I think a lot of the issues with modern King adaptations are they try to modernise the tone and feeling, wrapping in a lot of what has become modern horror cliche, while losing the original charm the books had. I know its common for screen writers and directors to want to put their own stamp and flare on their projects, but when so much of what works about a subject is the style the original author put into it, you're playing a huge gamble on an adaptation when you start cutting away at it

Every time someone I went to school with gets married or pregnant I’m like “but why? We’re only 17!” And then I remember I’m 30…🤣

I like to imagine that the casting director heard that people on the internet have been calling zach Efron daddy(especially since his documentary series from a while ago) and they thought "oh so he's giving off father figure vibes, let's cast him as a literal dad".

"Its la push baby la push" Is my absolute favorite twilight quote lmaoo be whispering that shit to myself all the time and just cackling

That "Evil Matilda" bit, as short as it was, killed me. Love it.

The secret scientific experiment facility is honestly one of my least favourite tropes, because I want to say at least 60% of the time they don't even bother to explain what the purpose of the experiments is. It's just like, "Well, why *wouldn't* government scientists spend a bunch of money just kind of messing around with stuff to see what it does, with no real aim or goal in mind?"

I am in agreement with everything you said. If it's bad it's one thing. But when it's boring? It's a crime.

The trailer for this unwanted remake annoyed the Hell out of me. Reading the synopsis only made me hate it even more. The only thing it managed to accomplish was convincing me to go out and find a copy of the OG 80s movie with Drew Barrymore (which I did - because that movie was epic and didn't stray far from the source material). Why Hollywood insists on remaking classics and tampering with the plot/characters in order to make it edgier confuses the Hell out of me.

I think one thing about SK movie remakes, from what I've seen, is that they don't make use enough of the different setting. Like in this one, the most we get of technology is that the family doesn't use it for fear of being tracked and Charlie gets bullied because not having a smartphone makes her weird. It's like they used that so that they could write out technology completely, when it could've been used in a lot of ways. Like if Charlie used it to tell her story without having to find an unbiased media outlet like in the books, or if after destroying the lab, Charlie becomes a bit of a cryptid where people keep spreading videos and pictures of her around the country using her powers to the point that people are unsure if she's real or not. Also in Carrie (2017), the most technology is used is as a bit of the icing on the cake of the prom scene (with the video of Carrie's being bullied) and Carrie doing research. Could've used cyberbullying or social media in some way, like Carrie finding a community online that feeds into her want for revenge, leading to the prom massacre (like those mass shooters who get radicalized online). Or maybe show how after the bully is suspended, the school's online community shifts their entire opinion to Carrie's side and begins to bully the bully while Carrie becomes much more popular, and the bully did the pig blood prank to turn the tables back, because the popular opinion online changes sides so easily. Point is, there's a lot of ways for technology to add to the story if you ask how the story would change if it happened in a different era. But directors/writers don't make use of that, besides some throw away lines/scenes that if omitted, you could believe the story was still set in the 1980s. It makes the remakes redundant even if they had been good movies.

"Look, I'm sorry but Jesus doesn't want to hear from you today" killed me!

I've learned from Amanda. One look at the Blumhouse logo in the trailer and I knew it was going to be a waste of time. I also knew it was only a matter of time before she made a video on it. Our queen is nothing if not reliable.

one of the biggest issues is that there's not one person that would buy Zac Efron as a dad. He's just too young looking, I feel the general public could buy Zac as the cool uncle who takes in his niece after she burned his brother and sister-in-law to death in a house fire more than him being her father. I also agree with it being boring, I dipped within the first five minutes.

There’s also the made for tv one that follows Charlie as an adult. Firestarter Rekindled, I believe. You can’t miss that one.

As another commenter put it, movie adaptations of Stephen King stories are either good or awful-in-between isn't really an option. As someone who enjoys King stories, it always fascinates me how flim/TV adaptations can go so wrong. On the bright side, this is giving me the temptation to actually find Firestarter and read it for the first time~

Seeing Zack play a dad was real disconcerting considering I just saw him play a kid in a re-binge of firefly

It’s terrible. It looks VERY cheap. The ending made my theater erupt in “huh?!” I only saw it because I have a Season Pass for Alamo Drafthouse.

They could have done a profound movie about the fathers and daughters bond despite the overly destructive traits of her powers that the father can’t explain or understand because of his own powers that only affect people internally but instead they went with the most cookie cutter plot line they could think of I can’t with Hollywood anymore

omg can't wait for this! ever since i saw the trailers i knew it would be a dumpster fire, sooooo cheesy

By the time I was forced to read Firestarter, in high school, I had already read it a dozen times. It baffles me that no one can even get the basic themes right, never mind actually make a functional adaptation of the novel.

It's my understanding that dissection is being phased out due to the relatively low effectiveness as a teaching resource vs. the comparatively demanding logistics, set up, and emotional turmoil associated

Missed opportunity to have the title "FIRESTARTER is a Dumpster Fire" sounds better off the tongue

It's Stephen King in the 80's, the antagonist didn't need a personality, it was cocaine wearing a mask the whole time.

“Tough luck Charlie” + Zac Efron makes me think this is a spin-off to Good Luck Charlie

As soon as I saw the trailer and heard "liar liar, pants on fire" I knew this movie was gonna be a 10/10 masterclass in cinema

The reason the road trip with Irv is a highlight of the novel is that it plays to King's strength as a writer - character building and making us care about the people in the story before burning it all down (in this case, literally). In the book it's paced brilliantly.

The hanged man means getting a new perspective. He wasn’t hanged by others, he put himself into this position to see everything up-side-down. That’s at least the explanation I know of this card.

Amanda, I freaking love that you always find a way to bring even the most innocuous things back to Twilight. "La Push, baby." I do the same thing but with The West Wing LOL. It's my touchstone.

I thought the girl wasn’t a great actress, especially if she was supposed to pull off that childlike innocence instead of more sociopathic instincts. I also didn’t think there was enough pyrokinesis in this movie about a pyrokinetic. Also, on the teacher/bullying situation: I called the teacher out on the gym scene too, but then I remembered that when I was in high school someone bullied me right in front of the teachers desk while she was sitting there and she didn’t say anything.

That's such a heartbreaker. I actually got into Stephen King BECAUSE of the first FIRESTARTER movie. Looking back, it was clearly cheesy as fuck, but my dad showed it to me when I was a little kid in the early 2000s and I loved it. Started watching more of the movies based on his works and eventually reading his books because of it. Was really excited for this remake. It's a bummer they did a classic so dirty like this.

The dodgeball scene is pretty accurate…I one time got hit in the face with a ball so hard in the face that It broke my glasses and the teacher kinda just pretended he didn’t see it.

“Psychic fire abilities.” Ah yes, the rare fire psychic type Pokémon. I remember how Victini was a big deal when they were announced, and the pairing is still pretty rare.

The mom in this remake, played by Sydney Lemmon, she also plays Satan’s Daughter, Satana Hellstrom, in the MCU. That is a MUCH better “good girl with bad powers” take. Helstrom, on Hulu. 😍

I read that book! I was glad they made another movie, but now I’m pretty bummed out Thanks for not talking about the cat thing too much. It really bothered me just to hear that short bit about it

...I dissected a sheep and cow's eye and pigs lung, heart, and trachea in elementary school...the US is unhinged, but the education system was really unhinged back in the day. Especially because we also used to play dodgeball with those plastic ass balls that would leave welts

It’s probably still the best dark Phoenix movie

Every once in a while, that peeled apple on the wallpaper starts to look like an eyeball and I'm weirded out for a second until I remember what it actually is!

Watched this movie because I was bored... First thing I thought was "damn I'm definitely old now if zac Efron can be believable in the role as a dad to a 10 year old now." Then the rest of the movie nothing else happened as there was a surprising lack of fires being started.

I am 37, happily childless but every time that I see actor/ess younger than me that I remember being teenage/young adults stars now playing somebody older/married/with children, I am utterly confused.

I got to watch this with someone. Neither of us could understand why it ended it the way it did. And I'm not a book purist/OG movie either.

When I saw that all the trailers were always the girl screaming and then fire I knew it wasn’t gonna be good

Firestarter is one of my favorite Stephen King novels and holy shit this was SO bad, they changed and cut out so many things.

My mom and sister wanted to see it. I think thatgirl actor is awful. I don't want to watch however long of a child screeching to summon her powers and "liar liar pants on fire'? What cringe. She was awful in American Horror Story too

"I'm on board with the good doctor's child murder plan." - I need a t-shirt 😂

I don't know which line was better 'before she makes the rest of the kid match his hair' or evil Matilda 🤣

When I saw the first trailer I already knew it was going to be bad.

“I’m sorry, Jesus doesn’t want to hear from you today.” Fucking dead 😂🤣😂🤣

Does anyone expected this to be good? The moment Blumhouse was announced as producer, you know it's not gonna be any good. Their track record in horror has been pretty bad lately

note: zac efron is playing father to an ELEVEN year old, not an eight year old. even more egregious.

I am glad you watched this so I didn't have to. I LOVE this book and reread it a lot, and the 80s version with Drew Barrymore was thankfully much closer to the source material. The bond between Charlie and her dad was the most important thing about the book. The fact that they've written Zefron's version to be more antagonistic toward her completely undermines that but doesn't replace it with anything else. Also the friendly connection she had with the old couple was very important for the ending. Sad that yet another Stephen King remake was altered to be crap.

Drew Barrymore in the 84' adaptation, she and Art Carney do not go to Rolling Stone magazine. They go to The New York Times. Other than that mistake, I agree with everything else you said. Just thankful I did watch it on Peacock rather than spending money in the theater. And even on Peacock, I feel it was a massive waste of time.

Thank you for mentioning the cat :( I was going to watch this movie and I am glad to know to avoid it. I have EXTREMELY adverse reactions to animal cruelty in movies (especially cats), so this is very appreciated. Also good to know I'm not missing much, lol

I remember watching the first trailer of this movie and only thinking: oh,another movie about a kid with powers that goes evil... Yay... (that's what the trailer told me it was) So I'm glad you're covering it,I was slightly curious but I truly don't wanna watch it

I attended an elementary school near Boston, and my parents had to write me a note so I could skip the frog dissection in science class

The only trailer I saw was one on instagram and it looked like a super low budget, super hero kids movie from the 90s.

Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning are in a film called *Push.* It's a damned shame this film never got a sequel. The "push" power, the experiments, the agents... Same cinematic universe? 🤔 Amanda, I know it's not a "new" film exactly, but if you haven't yet seen it, go watch Push.

I think we, as a society, need to move past the "super-powered child with incompetent parents" trope. It peaked with Frozen, and it just went downhill from there.

The evil Matilda part got me laughing so hard...........

Amanda: Why are 8 year Olds in an elementary school dissecting frogs!? Me: *Dissected owl pellets in elementary school*

Firestarter was one of my absolutely favorite movies as a kid.

In my class, we dissected frogs in 5th grade (age 10-ish). When they showed us the frog ovaries and eggs, that was pretty much the only sex education we ever got... gotta love the USA 😅

Holy shit I had no idea this remake was out yet. Funny to see that they didn't improve on the original.

Just wanted to let you know that we actually do have dissections of animals in elementary school. I did owl pellets in 4th grade and dead fish in 5th.

"I'm stil young!" Me turning 30 this year. I'm supposed to be an Adult but I don't know how to do it xD

This wasn’t even one of SK’s better books, so of course the movie adaptations were going to be pretty awful. I remember seeing the previews for this and just kind of going “Why?” I was so disappointed by both the “Dark Tower” and “The Stand” that I never even bothered to watch this one.

I think I might have been better off not knowing there was a recent remake an hour ago.

In the book, Rainbird has no powers nor does he want Charlie's. He develops a fascination and perverted sort of love for her. He wants to see her die. That's it. Yes, when they meet the farmer, it is a highlight. They have to get a ride with him, because the company is right behind them. Also, Charlie is never perverse. Not ever.

I've heard the stupid "liar liar pants on fire" line SOOOO MANY TIMES on RU-vid ad trailers 😭😭 On a side note, I think Amanda should consider watching the new She-Ra. It's a nice change of pace in the aspect that it's actually good

I'm old enough to have read the book back in the late 80s. I quite liked it.