u/Alive_Ice7937

In the second half of Primer, Abe and Aaron start using their discovery to travel back in time leading to a tangled web of cause and effect that starts an unravelling of spacetime with clear signs of divergence in the timeline. (Abe hears a different version of events on a recording of a conversation that he is witnessing on the basketball court). A lot of people have tried to make sense of this half of the film in the last 20 years. (Despite the film telling us “the permutations were endless”)

At first it appears that this fracturing resulted from them using the machine for time travel resulting in duplicates, paradoxes and broken symmetry. But I think they actually caused a rupture much earlier in their initial test with the weeble. They first try the machine using a plate. (Not quite sure exactly what that means). When they do this, they notice the weight of the weeble starting to drop. Excited by this progress, they decide to move from the plate to the box. (Again, I'm not quite sure what that means, but the specifics don’t really matter here). When they do this, the machine takes off and we get shaking and screeching noises with the two of them panicking until the machine peaks and shuts down. My theory is that this noisy test in the “box” was the first rupture of space time caused by their work. The reason I think this is because of what happens in the next scene. The next scene shows Abe waking up disorientated on the floor of his apartment. If you watch closely it’s a mashing together of two similar but not identical scenes. We hear two variations of Aaron’s dialogue on the phone “Abe it’s 7”/”Abe it’s 7 at night”. We see a messy and non messy version of Abe’s apartment. I think what we are seeing here is a ripple caused by their earlier experiment exposing divergence in the timeline. Given how micro budget this film was, with the scarcity of tape being a particular concern for Carruth, I don’t think it’s an accident that he has these two distinctly different takes added in there. Not retakes but deliberately different takes with variations on the set dressing and Abe’s actions. (He throws a shoe in one take but not the other). That cost them time and money, but he pushed it through because it was important. So I think even if they hadn’t gone on to use the machine the way they did, that initial test “in the box” caused a fistula in time that resulted in Abe’s disorientation in this scene.

(I’m not sure if the "protein growth” on the weeble talked about later was from this specific experiment or if they’d run the weeble through the machine a few more times)

The Long Walk is one of my favourite King books. I've read it at least 3 times. (Possibly 4). I usually have little interest in adaptations so didn't watch TLW when it released in theatres. But it popped up on Amazon Prime and I gave it a watch. Here's my thoughts. (Spoilers for book and film ahead).

Passion. There is a very clear passion for the book in this film. Almost all of the dialogue and scenes in the film are lifted from the book in some form. They really tried their best to recreate various deaths from the films as exactly how they are described. The production design of the half tracks, wrist trackers and food/canteens was excellent. The juvenile banter from the books wasn't toned down. The theme of facist extremism ran through the core of the film without being preachy. The companionship of the characters felt genuine. All of the actors gave solid performances. As a fan of the book, I quite enjoyed the retake on the ending which felt a bit like a twist from my perspective. I kinda wish McVries shooting the Major was left ambiguous. But I was really pleased to see him walking on for the closing credits.

Now moving onto what I wouldn't call criticism but rather issues with the film that are personal to me. I really can't fault them for their efforts given the restrictions in budget and the medium they were working in. Truly an fantastic effort.

The first issue is me. I know that book inside and out so it definitely made me viewing detached. I'd be interested to know what someone who hasn't read the books made of it. I'm guessing it probably couldn't make much of a splash in the post Squid Game landscape.

Another issue was crowds. Crowds are a huge part of the book. The slow build from families at their homesteads on the first morning to deafening noise on the final day makes it a character all on it's own. This was clearly a choice made for budget reasons so I understand. But it's something that was sorely missed for me.

Time. It's hard for a short film to really get across the gruelling sense of time passing that the book has. A big part of that was down to the film trying to cram in key moments of dialogue from the books. That meant there was little room for all the mundane details and worlding that are in the book. No space for any proper lull or scope to really try and get across the weight of time. (Having the crowds would have given structured visual and sonic progression of time)

Degradation. This is obviously a function of budget. But they didn't look like they'd been walking for 5 days by the end. The book is so descriptive of the pains and wear and tear that they struggled with. The film just wasn't able to go there. (I doubt starving the young cast was ever on the cards)

Garrity. Hoffman did a great job portraying Garrity. But a big element of his story for me is one that just isn't easily translatable to film. Garrity's internal thoughts. So much of the book takes place in Garrity's mind. His thoughts on what's happening. His mental struggles. His fixations on random memories from the past. The blurring of all of these as the walk progresses. I don't think the absurdity of Freaky Dialslo's eyes or Garrity's fixation on the arc the bb gun he threw are things that can be translated on screen well enough to justify their inclusion. There's a whole second character defined by Garrity's thoughts rather than actions. I appreciate that the film didn't try to himfistedly shoehorn it in there. The film is lean in a way that's well considered.

So overall I was very impressed with the film. It didn't manage to really evoke my experience of the book. But it clearly respected the book in so far as the filmmakers were able to.