Author Topic: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)  (Read 1226 times)

K Frame

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IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« on: May 31, 2018, 10:02:23 AM »
OK, I finally saw IT over the week I was in Iowa with my friends. (the weather was so damned hot that we actually saw 4 movies to replace some of the outdoor stuff that we had planned).

I've wanted to see it since it first came out, but I was worried that it was, like a lot of adaptations of King's books, going to suck.

Boy was I wrong. It was absolutely fantastic.

It stayed pretty true to the book in most important aspects. As expected, a number of the kids aren't as fully developed as characters as they are in the book, but that's the nature of these ensemble movies.

They moved the timeline up from the 1960s to the mid to late 1980s, and there were a number of places where I thought that that didn't work all that well, but it wasn't a huge distraction. They also added some minor antagonist characters (bitchy daughter of the local pharmacist) that really did nothing for the story. 

Overall, though, the casting was really good -- the kids they got to play the Losers worked incredibly well together, and they guy who played the Pennywise was perfect. The kid who played the main human antagonist, Henry Bower, played the role of the sadistic bully with severe repressed mental issues that started coming out as the movie moved along absolutely perfectly.

The tension points throughout the movie were masterful, and a couple were actually quite frightening. In one that gave me chills a decapitated, smoking child in early 1900s Sunday clothing chases the one character through the stacks at the local public library.

I'm really surprised that it's only gotten 7.5 of 10 on IMDB.
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brimic

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2018, 10:46:07 AM »
Haven't seen it yet.
When it came out, I drove my son and 3 of his HS friends to see a late night showing of it.
They were all chatty and laughing on the way home...
When I dropped the first kid off (around midnight), he took two steps out of the car, then sprinted to the door and frantically tried to get into his house.
The second, the same.
The third, had to open a garage door to get inside, he nearly rolled himself under the opening door to get inside faster.
My son slept with the light on.

Must have been a good movie.  :rofl:
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TommyGunn

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2018, 10:50:08 AM »
Wasn't there a broadcast movie of this back maybe 15 years ago or so?   

Maybe when this is out on DVD .... in the Wal Mart $5.00 movie bin .....
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K Frame

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2018, 11:00:30 AM »
Wasn't there a broadcast movie of this back maybe 15 years ago or so?   

Maybe when this is out on DVD .... in the Wal Mart $5.00 movie bin .....

Made for TV two part miniseries, 1990 or so, I think. 

It was OK. Tim Curry played Pennywise the Clown.

It also had a pretty good cast, but the adult cast was better than the kids in that one.

Jon Ritter, Harry Anderson, Richard Thomas, Annette O'Toole, Richard Masur, and Tim Reid were the main adults.

Of the kids, only Jonathan Brandeis was well known at the time. Seth Green was one of the kids, as well.

It was originally supposed to be an 8 hour mini-series, but it was pared down to 3 hours, and the story REALLY suffered because of it.
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K Frame

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2018, 11:03:26 AM »
Haven't seen it yet.
When it came out, I drove my son and 3 of his HS friends to see a late night showing of it.
They were all chatty and laughing on the way home...
When I dropped the first kid off (around midnight), he took two steps out of the car, then sprinted to the door and frantically tried to get into his house.
The second, the same.
The third, had to open a garage door to get inside, he nearly rolled himself under the opening door to get inside faster.
My son slept with the light on.

Must have been a good movie.  :rofl:


That's awesome!

I tried to get my 18-year-old "nephew" to watch it with me and his Dad, but he refused... "I don't like scary movies, I'm afraid I'll cry!"

My response? "That's what I'm counting on, I want to post it to Utoob!"

 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

K Frame

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2020, 01:03:42 PM »
Resurrecting this because IT: Chapter 2 finally hit HBO this past weekend and I recorded it.

As I noted below, I really liked Chapter 1. I watched it any number of times on HBO. Really well done and quite scary in places.

Chapter 2?

Yeah... chapter 2... Not nearly as scary, it departed from the book in some really weird ways, and the ending in which they finally kill Pennywise sucked ass.

In that sense the miniseries was a LOT more true to King's book.

Overall, I wasn't disappointed, but I'm not really a fan of Chapter 2.
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2020, 04:46:01 PM »
Adhering to the book 100% would probably get King lynched nowadays.

I'm upset at the lost opportunity to really build a Crimson King Cinematic Universe.  Tying It to Dark Tower and The Stand and The Eyes Of The Dragon.  Have McConaughey play Randall Flag in all of those, link Pennywise to Mordred and the Crimson King, bring up all the stuff about Maturin and the Beams of creation and do the Breakers properly.
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K Frame

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Re: IT (the movie) (possible spoilers)
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2020, 07:32:55 AM »
They already had to make a huge change in the movie because of the book. Can't show the ending that King originally wrote.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.