re: IT(2017) ***SPOILER THREAD***

Just got out. I really liked it, but I will say I hope they give the director a much bigger budget for the next one. Some of the CGI in the film was laughably bad. I was cringing during the Georgie scene, it looked so cheap.

i saw it last night. i thought it was a solid horror movie but wasn't particularly scary

i think knowing the kids have a second story as adults lowered the stakes to the point where i wasn't invested in any worry over them

also, i had to pull a "tell somebody to shut up" move during the movie (first scene in the scary house), so that may have affected things

It came out swinging, for sure. I also thought it fell off a little in the sewer, but I was really entertained overall. Some of the creep designs reminded me of Del Toro.

And poor Ben, that kid really has a set of hooters.

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also, i had to pull a "tell somebody to shut up" move during the movie (first scene in the scary house), so that may have affected things

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i did as well

row of like ten 12 year olds. i shushed them...then 15 minutes turned around and told them to shut the frick up. worked for 15 minutes but they kept whispering the rest of the movie.

I fricking hate going to the theater

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Their individual encounters with IT were chases or jump scares.

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yeah 100%

even my gf, who gets really scared at horror movies, after the fact said that it was mostly just jump scares

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I understand the time constraints the movie had to deal with, but I wish it could've captured the dread you have while reading the book. IT entranced the kids in disbelief, allowing IT to get closer, then attacked.

The book was chilling and terrifying, while the movie leaned more on comedy

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I just finished reading the book and watched the movie last night and had the same take on it. The movie wasn't bad, but it didn't capture the sense of dread that's in the cook. It/pennywise was menacing in the book and came off as ridiculous and incompetent in the movie. People would openly laugh after almost every one of his scenes in the theater. It felt like he was never a true threat and he got his arse kicked pretty easily. I understand why they didn't get into the turtle stuff, but at least that gives an explanation of how kids are able to confront such a powerful being.

Also didn't like the portrayal of Henry Bowers or Patrick Hockstetter at all.

Pretty disappointed after the high ratings and huge opening

Long...read or don't.

Damn...I guess I'm in the minority on being fairly upset with the changes here. I decided to blast through the book the past two weeks and literally finished the last 150 pages or so this morning so that I could bring my 15 year old son today.

There were so many things right. Pennywise was great when used like he was in the book. The opening scene was damn near right off the pages, and having just finished made me sad...and some shite got in my eye right around there. Derry looked almost exactly as I imagined it. The chemistry with the kids was great.

Now the complaints. I get WHY they may have felt the need to bring it up to modern day (the older versions I mean) but I think the whole thing would have worked better as two period pieces. King write what he knew, and that was being a kid in the 50's.

Again...I get WHY they cast the kids older, but as a parent of an 10 year old in 5th grade (slightly younger than the age of the kids in the Losers) the story makes so much more sense with them being younger. From the bullying, to the feeling of isolation, to that sense of being in love but not understanding it, etc. But getting kids that young to really be able to play those parts is always just near impossible.

Same goes for Henry and his gang. So much scarier having a 13 year old psychopath beating and carving up little kids than a teenage delinquent.

Why kills Mike's mom and Dad and shoehorn them into The Black Spot arson? Mike's Dad was so fantastic and such a huge influence. Losing that whole story line hurt.

I think my biggest issue wasn't what they left out, although leaving out the dam building scene and their summer spent in The Barrens seems really weird, but where they felt the need to rewrite perfectly good scenes with new ones. Why not have Bill look through Georgie's photo album and see the school picture move, instead of following his ghost down into the cellar and see Pennywise? Why not have Bill show the book to Ritchie to see the photos move? That was scary as shite in the book. Why imply that Bev had been molested by her dad when that had not happened in the book...yet? Wasn't beating her arse over and over bad enough...which they didn't show? Or him chasing her crazily through town after having tried to check to see if her hymen was intact after accusing her of fricking all the boys. You never got the sense that Derry and the people there didn't seem to give a frick about the kids...except for the car driving by while Henry was fricking with Ben...and then they felt the need to add the balloon.

And of course they dropped images of the turtle places, but then left out the entire cosmic stuff at the end for what amounted to them just beating him with sticks?

Sorry...don't mean to be a downer here. Had I not JUST finished the book and still felt so tied to it I might feel differently. Had I not read it at all, I probably would have thought it was a solid horror movie. But having read it, I just kept wishing that someplace like HBO or Netflix would have taken it and turned it into a two season 10 episode show...that actually followed the source material and had the young and old stories running in parallel. There's so much incredible stuff there and it seem a shame to not get that. And I KNOW I tend to be a dick about "source material" but I'll never quite understand taking a classic story and then changing things in it. Leaving things out due to time constraints...sure. But in a book that's almost 1,200 pages long, why would anyone feel the need to add scenes when you're also removing chunks because of so little time? At some point, you're no longer recreating the material and just using names, places, etc and telling a new story using familiar reference points.

I will say this...if you have not read the book and enjoyed the movie...GO READ THE BOOK! It's long as frick, and it took me about 200 pages or so to start to enjoy King's writing style, but once it hooks you it's fantastic. Well worth the effort.

Fire away...

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Agree for the most part. I made the comment today that it would have to be a three part movie to fit everything in or a streaming or cable series. To me the bullies were as terrifying as Pennywise and hated how their roles were minimized. The supernatural elements could be removed all together and Henry's gang could be the antagonist. Lastly wanted more dred out of Derry and hated the changes with Mike also.

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I've been thinking about this movie all afternoon, and the more I do the more I don't understand what I watched. Like you said, and I like I suggested, with a novel that's going on 1,200 pages the only way to get it into a 5 hour movie split into two parts it to cut tons of stuff out. While that sucks, both because it means having to cut out good stuff, it also sucks because it means simplifying a story that's really complicated and very layered. So...instead of really getting to know the kids well and really care about them because you like each of them and understand their lives, you get rushed into their story in a movie like this, etc.

The real problem for me though is not what they left out, but what they changed for no good reason at all. Think about it. Of the 7 kids, how many of them kept their original story of how they personally saw something supernatural take place?

In the book, Bill's encounter was in Georgie's room where he was flipping through the photo album George kept and George's school photo started movie. In the movie, they started that scene but you never see the album and then had him see Georgie and follow him into the cellar and see Pennywise.

Ritchie's encounter was the Paul Bunyon statue coming to life and trying to kill him. He also was in George's room with Bill when he came to see the photo album and they watched the photo of town move and saw themselves in it and then saw Pennywise in that photo. In the movie he makes the joke about only virgins seeing stuff like that. In the book they also see it as a werewolf.

Eddie saw the Leper at Neibolt, but saw it under the house not on the porch and never saw Pennywise there. He also saw it as the creature from the black lagoon.

Stan saw the bodies of the dead kids near the Standpipe (kind of what they forced onto the Patrick kid in the movie) yet in the movie he sees the painting woman...

Mike saw a giant bird, which also what his live father told him he saw at The Black Spot on his death bed four years after the encounter with IT in the sewers...in the movie we got the scene at the butcher shop.

Ben saw it as a mummy in the book...in the movie we got the scene in the library.

Only Bev's encounter was essentially the same...why?!?

Honestly...there are tons of these changes. Which means that not only was a ton left out because of time, but tons of changes to key scenes were also made. At that point...what exactly was this? It kind of reminded me of I Am Legend with Will Smith, in that I loved the book and was wildly disappointed because they changed everything that made the book great. In the end, they kept the name and the names of characters and then just told a similar kind of story...sort of. That's kind of what happened here.

Which makes the times when they did pull straight from the book and get it right seem so odd, because they were few and far between. Georgie scene at the beginning was beautiful. My guess is that was a must because it was always going to be the teaser trailer for the movie. Henry killing his Dad was close in ow he did it and how he got the knife, but because you got no sense of just how crazy his Dad was and how he tortured him his killing made no sense. Bev's bathroom scene was close. The pharmacy scene was close when Eddie went to get his meds, but the pharmacist told him his mother was making him sick, not the girl at the counter...which made it more powerful.

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Good.

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Which seems to beg the question...if the film maker needed to cut 80% of the source material due to time constraints, and then altered or changed virtually all other aspects except for the names of characters and places...why bother making this book into a movie?

If you're not going to stick to the source material of one of the most prolific and accomplished storytellers of all time in favor of allowing someone else to rewrite his story...why bother? Why not just make a scary clown movie and be done with it?

I say this as a guy that never had any interest in reading a King novel until 2 weeks ago and I burned through this beast in order to get ready to see this movie. There is an incredible movie to be made with this book...even if you have to cut it down to keep it in two movies, and at no point would it require rewriting additional scenes because the ones King wrote weren't good enough.