Stephen King's "IT"

[Totenkindly]

First IT Reactions: Best Stephen King Adaptation Of All Time? << Rotten Tomatoes – Movie and TV News

The social media embargo for Stephen King’s IT lifted last night, releasing the first wave of critics’ reactions into the world. While nobody has reviewed the movie in full yet, we’ve got a consensus on the horror adaptation and it’s quite positive....

here's hoping.

 

[Lark]

I would like the latest adaptation of IT to work, I remember the TV serial film trying to make points I remember from reading Salems Lot and also reading interviews with King about his books.

I remember some stuff about how IT was not just a monster, not just the Clown, or the spider, I've not read the book so I dont know if the spider was a case of that popular internet meme "This isnt even my final form" (which I remember from the PS2 video game God Hand but it might have been old by then, I dont know) or something like used to happen in Dennis Wheatley books I read years ago when the action would transfer to another plane of existence, the astral plane, which sounds a little new age but Wheatley was writing during the interwar years and just after the second world war so far as I know.

Anyway, there was stuff about the town itself, the townspeople, their willingness to be complicit in crime, to look the other way, a lot of failure to step up to the plate when evil or amorality was afoot.

In Salems Lot King wrote about the idea of the "shunned house" and said in interviews that it was meant to be classic ghost story he was writing or a haunted house story, it was only after that that he became the "vampire writer" or "vampires author", I thought of King that way as a kid and all the book PR was about vampires when it came to King, I think its a little different now but I've seen other authors even continue to reference him as the "vampire author".

Anyway, King said in interviews that the "shunned house" idea to him was meant to be about why were there buildings or towns even which seemed to be magnetics for evil, was it about people around abouts who tolerated it or made it safe for them to operate, I'm not putting it right because it was something more than what I'm making it sound like because the way I tell it "evil" could be something as mundane as a bunch of hoods deciding the house at the end of the row is a good place to set up a meth lab or something.

Those are some of the things I like about King's writing that dont translate to well to film I think, besides that he wrote about how he thinks there is such thing as objective evil, I dont hear that often these days, I mean something besides merely human wrong doing or moral ambivalence or moral ambiguity and what I'd call wickedness. I liked needful things' antagonist and his talk about "we'll make headlines" because he was the source but it was people that were doing the evil if you know what I mean.

I'm watching The Mist, so far I'm not sure about it, I loved the film, absolutely and I loved the moral message about despair, but so far I'm not sure any of it really is transfering well to the TV series.

 

[Totenkindly]

I would like the latest adaptation of IT to work, I remember the TV serial film trying to make points I remember from reading Salems Lot and also reading interviews with King about his books.

I remember some stuff about how IT was not just a monster, not just the Clown, or the spider, I've not read the book so I dont know if the spider was a case of that popular internet meme "This isnt even my final form" (which I remember from the PS2 video game God Hand but it might have been old by then, I dont know) or something like used to happen in Dennis Wheatley books I read years ago when the action would transfer to another plane of existence, the astral plane, which sounds a little new age but Wheatley was writing during the interwar years and just after the second world war so far as I know.

Yeah, a spider was "as close as our limited human minds could perceive IT" according to the text. Although if anything, the Internet memes came from IT and similar things, since it was published in 1985 and the Internet really didn't start going mainstream until the early '90's and certainly graphic quality was very limited.

Anyway, there was stuff about the town itself, the townspeople, their willingness to be complicit in crime, to look the other way, a lot of failure to step up to the plate when evil or amorality was afoot.

There is a lot of stuff that happens in Derry, which King tracks through the 30 year cycle over a few centuries in the novel, and it's kind of like Pennywise and the town are complicit in some ways... the clown colors the town's attitudes and then natural human evil feeds the clown.

But "the small town going bad / being messed up" is a common theme in his works. every town has its stories and its secrets. So there was Tommyknockers, and Needful Things, and IT, and Under the Dome, and The Mist, and other works of his that hits on the small-town underbelly phenomena.

In Salems Lot King wrote about the idea of the "shunned house" and said in interviews that it was meant to be classic ghost story he was writing or a haunted house story, it was only after that that he became the "vampire writer" or "vampires author", I thought of King that way as a kid and all the book PR was about vampires when it came to King, I think its a little different now but I've seen other authors even continue to reference him as the "vampire author".

Interesting. I mean, King tackled vampires in Salems Lot but he was typically just leaping around from one paranormal/supernatural topic to the next in his books, mainly to explore various themes.

Anyway, King said in interviews that the "shunned house" idea to him was meant to be about why were there buildings or towns even which seemed to be magnetics for evil, was it about people around abouts who tolerated it or made it safe for them to operate, I'm not putting it right because it was something more than what I'm making it sound like because the way I tell it "evil" could be something as mundane as a bunch of hoods deciding the house at the end of the row is a good place to set up a meth lab or something.

yeah, it's not an explicit relationship. I think the "magnets / hot spots" of darkness is one way to refer to the concept. Those locales draw out the worst instincts of people, and our ability to look the other way because we don't want to be bothered or we also are tainted is another contributing factor. It becomes a tacit dark marriage of some kind.

Those are some of the things I like about King's writing that dont translate to well to film I think, besides that he wrote about how he thinks there is such thing as objective evil, I dont hear that often these days, I mean something besides merely human wrong doing or moral ambivalence or moral ambiguity and what I'd call wickedness. I liked needful things' antagonist and his talk about "we'll make headlines" because he was the source but it was people that were doing the evil if you know what I mean.

I always liked that about him -- maybe there are some externally evil things in his stories, things from outside humanity, but evil also comes from within. Good and heroism also come from within, although maybe there are some external sources of good as well (like The Turtle). Typically his characters are all fubar in some way, or at least have some taint -- what otherwise is known as "our humanity" -- but there's also wellsprings of good. Why do some people fight evil and why do others give in or even marry themselves to evil causes? You can even look at the good kids (the Losers club) in it, and the Bullies Club (or the completely fubar psychotic one-man club of Patrick Hockstetter, who is amoral and on his way to becoming a serial killer until IT gets his hands on him). The Losers club kids feel just as lost and victimized as the Bullies, yet they ally themselves with the good and the Bullies use their power to hurt others.

Apt Pupil did not get a good movie translation unfortunately; it was kind of interesting, I feel like Kurt Dussander (the old Nazi commander) gets a little more introspection than Todd Bowden, the young golden child who -- when he pieces together that the kind elderly Denker is actually a Nazi war criminal -- does not turn him in but instead blackmails him to feed his own dark curiosity. I could track Dussander a bit better; but Bowden seems to be a person who feels fair on the surface but is rotten in his core even as a child, and this rot finally grows to swallow him.

I'm watching The Mist, so far I'm not sure about it, I loved the film, absolutely and I loved the moral message about despair, but so far I'm not sure any of it really is transfering well to the TV series.

I was going to look at the show but my enthusiasm was deadened by lackluster reviews. I will probably watch an episode or two anyway.

I thought the film did a decent, albeit imperfect, job of capturing the novella; I just wish the special effects had been a bit better, they looked kinda like "discovery Walking With Dinosaurs" to me. It's really hard to capture King because sometimes he resorts to clichés (like the shrill old school religious nutjob) -- the thing is, those people are REAL, I have known a few in my life time especially growing up in Small Town USA, but King has a talent for writing them on paper that doesn't work as well on the screen if you do a literal transference... they just sound nutty rather than horrifying. It's one of the pitfalls of translating King to the screen, he's just got a way with the pen and he's really a literary, not screenwriting, talent.

[In comparison, a guy like Charlie Kaufman is a writer who works in scripts -- he writes and thinks in terms of script, not book.]

 

[Totenkindly]

In an interview, 6/7 members of The Losers Club (Jaeden Lieberher was absent) were asked who they would choose to play them in the second film. The cast list ended up as: Richie: Bill Hader Bev: Jessica Chastain Mike: Chadwick Boseman Eddie: Jake Gyllenhaal Stan: Joseph Gordon Levitt Ben: Chris Pratt.

Oh, I could see Hader as Richie, Chastain as Bev (although she's kind of overused and a more emotional Bev might be better, Chastain tends to be too controlled), and Gordon Levitt as the more uptight Stan, it's not much different from his character in Inception in terms of personality.

Joe Morton is too old for Mike as an adult but he was someone I was thinking more along the lines of for Mike. Boseman might be too powerful a presence.

Pratt's not really a great casting for Ben, in physicality or persona. You need someone with a bit more sensitivity than "bro" and with a skinner bone structure, to play against Ben as a kid.

I'm not sure who I imagine as Eddie; he might be the character I had the most ambiguous mental image of while reading.

And then there is Bill. When I was younger, I always pictured him more like a balding Ron Howard; not sure who I would picture him as now.

 

[Lark]

Yeah, a spider was "as close as our limited human minds could perceive IT" according to the text. Although if anything, the Internet memes came from IT and similar things, since it was published in 1985 and the Internet really didn't start going mainstream until the early '90's and certainly graphic quality was very limited.



There is a lot of stuff that happens in Derry, which King tracks through the 30 year cycle over a few centuries in the novel, and it's kind of like Pennywise and the town are complicit in some ways... the clown colors the town's attitudes and then natural human evil feeds the clown.

But "the small town going bad / being messed up" is a common theme in his works. every town has its stories and its secrets. So there was Tommyknockers, and Needful Things, and IT, and Under the Dome, and The Mist, and other works of his that hits on the small-town underbelly phenomena.



Interesting. I mean, King tackled vampires in Salems Lot but he was typically just leaping around from one paranormal/supernatural topic to the next in his books, mainly to explore various themes.



yeah, it's not an explicit relationship. I think the "magnets / hot spots" of darkness is one way to refer to the concept. Those locales draw out the worst instincts of people, and our ability to look the other way because we don't want to be bothered or we also are tainted is another contributing factor. It becomes a tacit dark marriage of some kind.



I always liked that about him -- maybe there are some externally evil things in his stories, things from outside humanity, but evil also comes from within. Good and heroism also come from within, although maybe there are some external sources of good as well (like The Turtle). Typically his characters are all fubar in some way, or at least have some taint -- what otherwise is known as "our humanity" -- but there's also wellsprings of good. Why do some people fight evil and why do others give in or even marry themselves to evil causes? You can even look at the good kids (the Losers club) in it, and the Bullies Club (or the completely fubar psychotic one-man club of Patrick Hockstetter, who is amoral and on his way to becoming a serial killer until IT gets his hands on him). The Losers club kids feel just as lost and victimized as the Bullies, yet they ally themselves with the good and the Bullies use their power to hurt others.

Apt Pupil did not get a good movie translation unfortunately; it was kind of interesting, I feel like Kurt Dussander (the old Nazi commander) gets a little more introspection than Todd Bowden, the young golden child who -- when he pieces together that the kind elderly Denker is actually a Nazi war criminal -- does not turn him in but instead blackmails him to feed his own dark curiosity. I could track Dussander a bit better; but Bowden seems to be a person who feels fair on the surface but is rotten in his core even as a child, and this rot finally grows to swallow him.



I was going to look at the show but my enthusiasm was deadened by lackluster reviews. I will probably watch an episode or two anyway.

I thought the film did a decent, albeit imperfect, job of capturing the novella; I just wish the special effects had been a bit better, they looked kinda like "discovery Walking With Dinosaurs" to me. It's really hard to capture King because sometimes he resorts to clichés (like the shrill old school religious nutjob) -- the thing is, those people are REAL, I have known a few in my life time especially growing up in Small Town USA, but King has a talent for writing them on paper that doesn't work as well on the screen if you do a literal transference... they just sound nutty rather than horrifying. It's one of the pitfalls of translating King to the screen, he's just got a way with the pen and he's really a literary, not screenwriting, talent.

[In comparison, a guy like Charlie Kaufman is a writer who works in scripts -- he writes and thinks in terms of script, not book.]

I like the kind of cyclical thing King does with the novels too, or at least that is what I see it as, GRR Martin does the same with the GOT universe, although the cycle is eons long.

I read a good interview with King in which he got vexed about being "the vampire guy" but also got equally vexed by being "a horror writer", he wrote about wanting to be taken seriously as a detective writer and said he thought of himself as primarily a fantasy writer, which is curious, Terry Pratchett wanted to be thought of something other or more than a fantasy author, he asserted his own belief that he was a sci fi author.

My own reading of King is that he does coming of age, circles of friends/friendship, and good versus evil the best, although you could not say that those are genres or sub-genres.

I really liked apt pupil, I thought it was a great adaptation, a better Stephen King film adaptation and at first I didnt make the link with the change of the seasons story, its a little like Stand By Me, I meet people still who dont know that that is a Stephen King story.

 

[Totenkindly]

Currently at RT 92% (53 reviews) and probably around a 4/5 consistently on the average review rating.

It (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

 

[Totenkindly]

Pennsylvania police department ‘terrified’ after finding red balloons tied to sewer grates

A police department claimed to be “completely terrified” after spotting red balloons tied to sewer grates, similar to the horror film "It," in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Police took to Facebook Tuesday to “respectfully request” local pranksters stop the gag, despite applauding the tricksters for their creative way of promoting the film, which is slated to debut in theaters nationwide on Friday.

“We want the local prankster to know that we were completely terrified as we removed these balloons and respectfully request they do not do that again,” the post read...

Lititz. heh. Been there a few times. Maybe I should avoid the sewer grates next time I go.

 

[Totenkindly]

They were giving out commemorative tickets (probably to promote the movie -- you can participate in a contest if you take a pic of your ticket and post to social media with a hashtag). It looks like they sent 500 to each theater, at least in Regal. I could have had the first ticket from my area probably, since I got there early, but ended up going in later. It's okay -- I got 13/500 ... I figured lucky 13 was appropriate considering the movie.

My basic assessment matches what the majority of reviewers have said. Thumbs up, and a good movie, but not a great one. I think part of it is the difficulty in translating even half that book to a film -- you just lose a ton of the nuance that creates all the Feelz. Oh, there are some decent scenes that either are out of the book or are modeled in the spirit of scenes from the book, and generate that kind of emotion, so that's a big positive. But it seems that with seven losers, it's just hard to do back stories that really do them justice. (and then you have to devote a little time to the bullies too, like Bowers).

Also, since everyone's wondering -- Bill Skarsgard is great. He nailed any scene they gave him -- especially the opening with Georgie. Yes, Pennywise is creepy, that's the easy part; Skarsgard pulls off in that opening scene the 'clown' part, you can tell George is weirded out by this person who shouldn't be in the sewer but Pennywise endears himself to the kid while still just feeling "off". he was charismatic enough that I even felt the tug of him, even knowing he was a fraud. It's pretty great and their interaction is pretty close to the book and lasts quite a decent amount of time. Any flaws with Pennywise are more in regards to scripting, not Skarsgard.

You just get a lot of scenes especially in the opening sequences where they are trying to set up all these characters, and as typical King stuff can get, sometimes it doesn't quite ring true on screen because lines that work well on the page when you've already gotten pages of background and internal monologues and all the context can come off a bit odd when they're all you get.

The kids' interactions are great. Like I had said, I figured they would be because Muschietti did such a great job with the kids in his last movie -- he knows how to direct them. Even the kid playing George was really good. There was also some continuity here, because yes, there will be another chapter... the adult chapter... and it's pretty clear Stan is already pretty fragile after all this.

They also made the right call with the R rating, but that's kind of obvious. Even with that, the movie is expected to meet around $70-75 million this weekend. Pretty impressive for an R rated picture.

I think if I had one complaint. it was:

it's not really clear what gives the kids any power over IT except sticking together. In the end, here, it all seems to resort to them gangbanging IT until IT flees, because they are not afraid of IT. Kind of banal, I kind of wanted something more transcendent. It's hard to believe this huge evil could be chased off by kids with clubs and pokers or the equivalent. It's not clear why IT flees the first time either; he gets beat up badly but should have really killed one or more kids, which of course isn't how the book goes.

Some of this is King's "fault" for writing something that isn't literal / incorporating an alternate sense of logic into the narrative, or the movie's fault for not having the balls / skill to do what King did. For example, for the longest time, I expected Eddie to spray his inhaler in IT's face and for IT to recoil. Nope. They didn't go the route of the individualistic elements of the kid's lives having some level of magical potency, it was all just pretty mundane. He Thrusts His Fists Against the Posts did make an appearance in the movie but not in the mystical way it became in the book.

Anyway, without that, the "rules" governing IT are pretty vague. It's not clear what could hurt him or kill IT, although it's clear eventually that IT feeds on fear. And so the ending was kind of less than other parts of the movie.

General tidbits about the movie:

- Richie gets off a lot of good ones.
- They do the bathroom scene with Bev, and having to clean up the blood.
- A version of the rock fight is in the movie.
- Bowers actually DOES carve up Ben's stomach. Damn, they did it.
- Like I said, they really did a good job setting up Stan's suicide to open the Adult story. It's pretty clear he's too fragile to come back.
- Ben's poem is in the movie significantly. But they do nothing with the architecture thing.
- They do drag the history element in, and the various "waves."
- Mike's whole backstory is changed. I don't feel like I know him well from the movie, he was very vivid in the book.
- They cast Beverly well. And yeah, she's kind of a Molly Ringwald type, she's endearing in her own unique "normal" way.
- The boys gape over Beverly a lot, and it's not clear whether she's oblivious or not. It's just interesting and highlights this male/female dynamic thing again -- the boys almost view her as a dream girl, and they have to find the courage to engage her as their story, while her story is just wanting to have someone interact with her like a real human being and to be respected as a person, since her dad is a lech.
- The Deadlights are in the movie, in an altered form.
- Lots of Barrens, we even get a shot of the full Barrens once.

 

[anticlimatic]

Compared to most movies from the last 10 years or so it was good and unique, but you can definitely tell it was written and directed by committee. I wish all those piece of shit producers would leave directors alone to fulfill their singular visions. I'm tired of leaving modern pictures with that bland generic Hollywood taste in my mouth. Unlike the Losers, "strength in numbers" does not apply to art.

One aspect I really missed from the book/TV series that was omitted was the adult cast having traumatic flashbacks to childhood. It gave the whole story a depth and scope that without also much in the way of lore or mystic elements this new adaptation could have really used.

2.5/5

 

[Totenkindly]

One aspect I really missed from the book/TV series that was omitted was the adult cast having traumatic flashbacks to childhood. It gave the whole story a depth and scope that without also much in the way of lore or mystic elements this new adaptation could have really used.

2.5/5

I miss that aspect of the book. (I mentioned it in my letterboxd review.) I understand why it's very difficult if not impossible to do in a 135 minute movie, even if it's just part 1 of a duology... so we won't see the adult part until Chapter 2 comes out in 2020 or something.

It's one of my favorite aspects of the book, where the main story is with the adults, who have forgotten their past interaction with IT but then slowly start to remember, which is the creepy part. So as THEY remember, WE remember with them. It was just a cool way to structure the book. And I like not knowing what's going on. Now we already know what happened when they were kids. Plus there's just the reinforcement of the loss of innocence and power of childhood, in order to grasp adult power... which is far more explicit but channeled at the tangible, whereas for a child the power lies in imagination and lack of calcification and not being bound by the rules that we're expected to follow when we want to "grow up."

Again, it would also be a scripting nightmare and definitely would not allow for closure at the end of Chapter One -- it would be a blatant "To be continued" because each story (the adult and child) would only be half-finished. Audiences tend to hate that, they didn't like it with Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2, and Allegiant, and other franchises (the Hobbit?) that have tried that. I guess The Lord of the Rings got away with it, but that was already three books.t

I missed the mystical elements too. Again, hard to define on screen when everything has to be visualized; King has the benefit of being able to explain things on the page instead, which is easier for that kind of thing; but I wish there had been more of that.

 

[Totenkindly]

It looks like they planning to head more in that direction (along with the cross-timeline elements) in the second movie. I guess we'll see.

IT 2 Will Explore Cosmic Dimension and Return to 1989 - MovieWeb

 

[Totenkindly]

Here's discussion of Cary Fukanaga's script for IT and the differences with Muschietti's release.

I also believe I have found a copy of Fukanaga's script (last link) -- PDF format. Cheers.

I Read the Cancelled “IT” Remake Script Starring Will Poulter; Here’s What Might Have Been
Death Of A Great American Horror Film: Cary Fukunaga’s IT | Birth.Movies.Death.
Download IT-by-Chase-Palmer-Cary-Fukanaga.pdf from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

 

[Polaris]

I just saw the movie, and I have a little bit of commentary that will contain spoilers.

The first encounter with Pennywise was the only one that I found particularly effective. He gets some actual characterization in that scene, very good characterization that manages to balance somewhat manic creepiness with friendliness perfectly, unlike the rest of the movie where he is just this crazed, feral entity that is scarcely clownish except in appearance. The first movie's Pennywise, by contrast, had a lot of good lines and a very distinct, compelling personality. What I found effective above all about the scene is what happens to George. It didn't scare me so much as it disgusted me intensely and filled me with a sense of great pity for the boy, who is portrayed as a quintessential sweet and innocent child that you would never want anything bad to happen to. The feeling of disgust and pity remained with me for several minutes afterwards.

The scariest scene is easily the one that takes place in the bathroom with the sink.

In general, I felt that the story lacked development. It felt like a lot of things were being skimmed over, particularly with regard to Pennywise, who doesn't get a lot of screen time. It could scarcely be otherwise, though, given the limitations on movie length and the huge amount of material in the book.

I found the characters very likable, especially Ben and Beverly.

The visuals were great. The various manifestations of It were for the the most part genuinely horrifying to behold.

Overall, I would give the movie a B for its grade. It was good but not as good as it could have been. I think the original, although dated in many respects, is more memorable.

 

[anticlimatic]

Here's discussion of Cary Fukanaga's script for IT and the differences with Muschietti's release. I also believe I have found a copy of Fukanaga's script (last link) -- PDF format. Cheers. I Read the Cancelled “IT” Remake Script Starring Will Poulter; Here’s What Might Have Been Death Of A Great American Horror Film: Cary Fukunaga’s IT | Birth.Movies.Death. Download IT-by-Chase-Palmer-Cary-Fukanaga.pdf from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

That first draft sounds worse than what we got.
I wish they had made an 18 hour miniseries out of it instead of two 1.5 hour movies. Tone and pacing is everything that makes the source material work. You need to be drawn in and fully absorbed by the small town coming of age story, and only then and from there introduced to the deep existential terror that lies beneath- both literally and figuratively. That's what really made the book work. They knew that and really tried to do it in the movie but with that many characters and a 1.5 hour time limit they just didn't have enough of it for the right pacing. IT was always about terror; "the creeps" (terrible/terrific) not jump scares; horror (horrible/horrific).

 

[Totenkindly]

That first draft sounds worse than what we got.
I wish they had made an 18 hour miniseries out of it instead of 2 1.5 hour movies.

Yeah, I think nowadays the TV show format is very viable for the right properties, if a network wants to invest the necessary capital and advertising. It would have been a winner for them.

(correction on the movie times -- the first was 135 minutes, not 90 -- but yeah, still... you'd get a lot more story with the TV format. American Gods only did about a third of the novel in an eight-episode season as well, and that book is smaller than IT.)

 

[anticlimatic]

One more complaint while I'm on a tear here-

Nothing about the late 80s period setting worked for me. Sure some of the clothes and some of the hairdos were at least decent parodies of the style of the times, and there were a few throwaway references to pop culture back then, but the general tone and feel of the dialogue and conversation and overall antics involved felt more like an odd blend of the 50s era source material (even Steven!/paper boats in the rain/bills antique of a bike) and modern times. As someone who was exactly that age in that time period nothing about it felt familiar or nostalgic. I felt a similar way towards stranger things- it might be nit picky but I remember one of the kids calling someone a 'douche' which is an insult that didn't start getting used until around 2000. IT left me with similar annoyances towards period continuity.

 

[Totenkindly]

One more complaint while I'm on a tear here-

Nothing about the late 80s period setting worked for me. Sure some of the clothes and some of the hairdos were at least decent parodies of the style of the times, and there were a few throwaway references to pop culture back then, but the general tone and feel of the dialogue and conversation and overall antics involved felt more like an odd blend of the 50s era source material (even Steven!/paper boats in the rain/bills antique of a bike) and modern times. As someone who was exactly that age in that time period nothing about it felt familiar or nostalgic. I felt a similar way towards stranger things- it might be nit picky but I remember one of the kids calling someone a 'douche' which is an insult that didn't start getting used until around 2000. IT left me with similar annoyances towards period continuity.

I kinda had the same issue with Stranger Things, a lot of people seemed to like it just because of tossed in 80's references but those things didn't do much for me... it all felt superficial. Anyone can toss in pseudo- 80's references, especially without understanding it. (like the whole bit with demogorgon... a D&D reference, but if you know the monster, then the game they were playing didn't make much sense.)

They were kind of stuck with some things. For example, they wanted to keep the boat-waxing in the story since it was so instrumental in the book, but that's not something I ever did in the 80's... I didn't even know about wax you could melt/burn. There were things that might more passable in the 70's -- a lot of that 50's junk was still floating around, heck, I was using my parent's old wooden tennis rackets and we still had their old Silver-esque bikes hanging in our garage -- but not by late 80's.

I guess I was 18-19 in 1987 when they set this film. (Weird side note: I read IT in the week around my 18th birthday.)

 

[anticlimatic]

I kinda had the same issue with Stranger Things, a lot of people seemed to like it just because of tossed in 80's references but those things didn't do much for me... it all felt superficial. Anyone can toss in pseudo- 80's references They were kind of stuck with some things. For example, they wanted to keep the boat-waxing in the story since it was so instrumental in the book, but that's not something I ever did in the 80's... I didn't even know about wax you could melt/burn. There were things that might more passable in the 70's -- a lot of that 50's junk was still floating around, heck, I was using my parent's old wooden tennis rackets and we still had their old Silver-esque bikes hanging in our garage -- but not by late 80's. I guess I was 18-19 in 1987 when they set this film. (Weird side note: I read IT in the week around my 18th birthday.)

So did I. I never lived through the 50s but reading the book really took me there, with all the rose colored nostalgia King obviously had for it. He really did a good job of selling it and staging the atmosphere. It was one of the major facets of the story that appealed to me. It's possible to do in movies too, but you really need that eye for detail and good writing- plus at least a few people who, like king, have a genuine love for the period involved and a solid cache of memory for the differences in how people were then compared to now. Donnie Darko is a great example of an 80s period setting done right; the philosophy of the smurfs, the political debate on Michael Dukakis between father and daughter, all the right slang (he thinks he's so rad! You wanna 'go with me?'), etc. I feel like nobody involved in the IT remake remembers anything about the period and acquired most of their knowledge on the matter from internet lists and memes.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

One more complaint while I'm on a tear here-

Nothing about the late 80s period setting worked for me. Sure some of the clothes and some of the hairdos were at least decent parodies of the style of the times, and there were a few throwaway references to pop culture back then, but the general tone and feel of the dialogue and conversation and overall antics involved felt more like an odd blend of the 50s era source material (even Steven!/paper boats in the rain/bills antique of a bike) and modern times. As someone who was exactly that age in that time period nothing about it felt familiar or nostalgic. I felt a similar way towards stranger things- it might be nit picky but I remember one of the kids calling someone a 'douche' which is an insult that didn't start getting used until around 2000. IT left me with similar annoyances towards period continuity.

Stranger Things is kind of a stupid, albeit mildly entertaining show. It wouldn't be half as popular if not for the nostalgia factor, which is poorly executed. I know most people aren't going to nitpick it as much as me, but there's a lot of little anachronisms like using songs that weren't out yet in 1983, etc. Great, it's ET meets John Carpenter, whoopty shit, I just can't help feeling it's more about a fake nostalgia for viewers who were too young to actually remember the early 80s (or not born yet), and therefore have based their entire impression of the era upon the music, movies and TV shows they've encountered from the era. It reminds me a bit of the Anchorman films which are more of an exaggerated pastiche of the campiest elements from every year of the 70s than they are an accurate representation of the era.

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, Fukunaga was born in 1977 and raised in California amid some multi-cultural elements. So he was 10 in 1987. Curious to finish reading the script and see how it compares to Muschietti.

Muschietti is not American. He was born in 1973 in Argentina, of Italian descent. I tried to find more bio on him (like, when he came to the USA), but ... no idea. Growing up in the 80's outside the USA could explain some of it, if that is the case.





Apparently there are deleted scenes. I don't know what they would contribute. Obviously they wouldn't be effects shots, because you don't waste money doing effects for stuff that you're likely to cut.

Interview : Andres and Barbara Muschietti – IT – Moviehole





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eh. Looks like they are trying to produce the story "The Jaunt." It's a scare short by King that is pretty effective as a short story, but... really? It's power was in being a short throwaway story. If you try to expand it, it's not going to reflect the short story and also just might not have enough to carry a movie.