could someone run for a while and then slow down as long as their average is OK?
No. IIRC if you slowed down below the 4MPH, you got a warning, and if you stopped, I think you got a warning every 30 seconds after that. 4 warnings, and you’re done.
this is how they got their bathroom breaks. Right there, in the road, in front of the crowds lining the march route.
Walking for an hour or something like that, erased one warning.
Are they allowed to eat/drink (as long as they keep moving)?
Yes. They received daily(?) meal rations they carried with them.
It’s not based on an average. If your speed at any point drops below the minimum, your timer starts counting down from 2 minutes, and you get warnings at certain points during the countdown (the warning points are actually inconsistent in the book). Your timer stops counting down once you get back above the minimum, and each hour you stay above the minimum clears one of your warnings.
I was quite impressed with Hamill in Fall of the House of Usher. I’m really enjoying his renaissance, though I haven’t seen Life of Chuck yet. Like Travolta with Tarentino, Hamill with Flanagan was a perfect match.
However, you earn back warnings by not getting one for an hour. A competitor has no actual limit in the number of warnings they could get; they just can’t have more than three at any point. If the competitor has three warnings, he can burn them off by avoiding further warning for three hours.
Early in the book, one of the characters - Stebbins, I believe - deliberately picks up a few warnings right away. It’s noted he is deliberately testing where the limit is, knowing that since they just started, it’ll be easy for him to earn the warnings back, and now he has physically learned where the limit is.
Also WRT rations, the food rations are daily, but water is unlimited and provided on request.
Some early reactions are being posted by critics who have seen the movie (it will be released Sept 12 in the US). Maybe the Hollywood Reporter is cherry picking, but if these are truly representative then it’s sounding pretty good.
The Long Walk easily one of the most intense emotional wallops of the year. I’m exhausted — and the movie earned it. You can tell the source material was adapted by someone who really gets it.
The Long Walk [is] one of the most powerful Stephen King adaptations in recent years. Francis Lawrence pulls no punches, driving home the book’s themes of how authoritarianism continues to eat away at today’s youth.
I had an hour-long drive home after my screening of The Long Walk, and I couldn’t listen to music or an audiobook; I just had to sit in silence with the knot in my stomach. It’s a powerful, gripping and shocking film that is a perfect adaptation of the Stephen King source material. Unforgettable.”l
Visceral, gripping, emotional & provocative, a brilliant Stephen King adaptation & 1 of the year’s best films. A towering achievement reminiscent of The Outsiders & Full Metal Jacket.
I thought this was a joke, but it’s apparently really happening: a theater in LA is holding a special screening of the movie where the audience is on treadmills. Audience members must maintain a 3 mph pace or get kicked out of the theater.
At first it sounds stupid, but (A) that’s amazing publicity and (B) what a unique experience for the moviegoer. Definitely a great story to tell people about later.
It’s very doable. Despite my age and decrepitude that is my usual treadmill speed. I get bored before I get tired. I might have issues going the entire length of the movie but I’m old. A young healthy person should be able to do it easily.
Not planning see it, but I did read the plot summary of the novel on Wikipedia, and I have a question: Why the FUCK do the authoritarians want this event to happen? Also, why the FUCK would anyone join?
Also, what the FUCK is wrong with the “guards,” that they’d go along with something like this?
To possibly win a big prize that will allow them to improve their lives (and those of their family) and escape their current shitty situation.
Why do people risk their lives trying to illegally cross the U.S. southern border? Why do people with little money or income spend so much of it (relatively speaking) on lottery tickets?
Science fiction and speculative fiction often take real-world situations (like present-day lotteries) and explore scenarios in which the situation in question is taken to an extreme. Thereby presenting a mirror on current society.
The Long Walk takes lotteries to an extreme. The potential reward at the end is life-changing wealth, and the potential cost is one’s life.
There’s a reason the book and movie are set in a dystopian setting. No happy, well-off person with better options would volunteer for this extreme lottery.
Yup. Also note that the competitors all seem to be young men in the movie.
(In the novel, they were definitely all young men. There might have even been an explicit age/gender restriction in the novel.)
Anyway, young men have the bravado of youth and think they are going to live forever. Look at the young men who have willingly enlisted to fight on the front lines in wartime.