[IT] Chapter 2 Out Now!! (Closed Spoilers for now)

KoopahTroopah

'IT'
Director: Andy Muschietti
Writers: Chase Palmer (screenplay),
Cary Fukunaga (screenplay),
Gary Dauberman (screenplay), and
Stephen King (based on the novel by)

Cast:
Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough
Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom
Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh
Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier
Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon
Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak
Wyatt Oleff as Stanley Uris
Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise
Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers

Current Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
Current Metacritic: 71

'IT' is a remake movie based on a novel written by Stephen King, and follows a young group of outcast kids called "The Losers Club". Kids go missing in Derry, Maine and The Losers Club are out to investigate what the cause is. An unspeakable evil who takes the form of Pennywise the Clown haunts the kids individually by taking a form that the kids fear most.

New movie is out today! (September 8th, 2017)
Old movie came out in 1990, and was made for TV starring Tim Curry!

It hasn't aged well, but is historically known as scaring the shit out of every kid for the past 20+ years.

There's also a book, which both adaptations are based on, written by Stephen King:

This is a thread to talk about the 2017 Chapter One remake of It, as well as the new 2019 Chapter Two sequel. As Chapter Two just came out on the 6th of September, this thread will remain closed spoilers for at least a couple weeks. This includes book spoilers related to the second movie. Chapter One and book spoilers related to Chapter One can be open. You have been warned!

KoopahTroopah

Koopah's review:

It's definitely one of the best remakes I've seen in recent memory. The modernizations and changes from the novel/old movie worked great. The effects look good even though it's mostly CGI. Both the losers and Pennywise play really well, Pennywise especially. He's both awkwardly funny and intensely creepy without relying on too many modern horror tropes. Though, there's some stupid... Like a few too many jump scares, and I don't really get scared at those anymore. In fact the scenes that did end in a jump scare and cut to the next scene without resolving what's going on, left me wanting more time in those scenes. There's also some plot armor/forced action for narrative, where you're left wondering why a character would do something, or how did they end up there again? Like they were obviously written to do that or be there against the character. But there's tons of creepy imagery done right, tons of great scenes that are full of dread, and great performances by both the kids AND the clown. It's surprisingly good. Not great, but good.

I want Finn Wolfhard in every piece of media.

Favorite scenes include:

• All of Pennywise appearances, specifically the fridge, the flickering photographs in the garage, and the puppet Georgie in the basement
• The cliff jump with Beverly showing up the boys
• The rock fight
• Richie discovering his lost poster
• Henry being egged on by Pennywise's Children's Show

RT800

IT has always been my go-to movie whenever idly thinking about what movies should be remade. Guess now I'll have to think up a new one.

Probably gonna go see IT today.

jimb213

Bringing this over from the movie thread.

Harry Dresden wrote: »

Richie gets some of the best lines.

(paraphrasing) "First you hit me, then I have to walk though grey water and now I have to kill this fucking clown."

He was an interesting character all told. Half the time he was a sexist douchebag to Beverley, but that was the point.

It's interesting, because the kids are terrible in the book. Richie does a bunch of flagrantly racist voices (which we got a tiny bit of in the movie, but nowhere near what it was in the book). Bowers and the bullies throw around the n-word when tormenting Mike, there are lots of anti-semetic comments, sexist comments, etc, and not just from the bullies.

I think setting it in the 80's rather than the 50's forced them to tone things down just a bit, but I also think that today they just couldn't get away with some of the horribleness that the kids displayed in the books.

Burnage

I pretty much wrote this film off a few months back when I first heard about it - I assumed it'd be a mediocre horror remake like so many others, and King films don't have a great track record anyways.

But the word of the mouth is so positive that I'm actually really hyped to see it now!

KoopahTroopah

Especially off the heels of The Dark Tower's crash and burn, this is the type of adaptation that I wanted from IT. I was concerned when it was first announced, but had more confidence from the first trailer. It's definitely worth the praise it gets.

If only we could get the director and screenwriters to make Nightmare on Elm Street remake 2 (Dream Warriors remake). I would 100% totally be okay with that.

jimb213

KoopahTroopah wrote: »

Koopah's review:

It's definitely one of the best remakes I've seen in recent memory. The modernizations and changes from the novel/old movie worked great. The effects look good even though it's mostly CGI. Both the losers and Pennywise play really well, Pennywise especially. He's both awkwardly funny and intensely creepy without relying on too many modern horror tropes. Though, there's some stupid... Like a few too many jump scares, and I don't really get scared at those anymore. In fact the scenes that did end in a jump scare and cut to the next scene without resolving what's going on, left me wanting more time in those scenes. There's also some plot armor/forced action for narrative, where you're left wondering why a character would do something, or how did they end up there again? Like they were obviously written to do that or be there against the character. But there's tons of creepy imagery done right, tons of great scenes that are full of dread, and great performances by both the kids AND the clown. It's surprisingly good. Not great, but good.

I want Finn Wolfhard in every piece of media.

Favorite scenes include:

• All of Pennywise appearances, specifically the fridge, the flickering photographs in the garage, and the puppet Georgie in the basement
• The cliff jump with Beverly showing up the boys
• The rock fight
• Richie discovering his lost poster

Yeah, I think my favorite scene, and probably the scariest to me, was the slide projector in the garage. The jump scare actually got me in that one.

Diplominator

I liked how their one carefree day was in a lake with turtles, and that a kid with a lego turtle wasn't in danger until it broke.

Rius

The entire garage scene was awesome, and headless egg corpse kid was fucking awesome. The whole theater last night was a mixture of uneasy giggles and fear responses.

Badablack

Gonna drag my sister to go see this later today. It'll give us something to talk about later when we get trapped under a roof beam during the hurricane.

KoopahTroopah

Oh my god. The TV egging on Henry was also a great scene... I gotta edit that into my review of favorite scenes.

Just a really good rendition the more I think about it.

Rius

That was the second TV thing, too; there was an earlier scene where it was on in the background talking about how clowns were awesome and something else I can't remember right now.

Trace

KoopahTroopah wrote: »

Oh my god. The TV egging on Henry was also a great scene... I gotta edit that into my review of favorite scenes.

Just a really good rendition the more I think about it.

The only way this movie could be better would be if Tim Curry played IT again.

KoopahTroopah

Rius wrote: »

That was the second TV thing, too; there was an earlier scene where it was on in the background talking about how clowns were awesome and something else I can't remember right now.

Bev is walking into her apartment past her dad who is asleep on the chair before her bathroom scene, and the TV is on in the background talking about how great clowns are, and "You should get all your friends, and go down to the sewer!"

Another unrelated easter egg, but Bev had a book in her room when Ben was snooping around during the bathroom cleanup. The Frog Prince. Some allusion there to Ben waking her out of her dead-lights comatose.

Great attention to detail here and there.

Doctor Detroit

From what I remember, (book spoilers from the other half)

There's gonna be some issues with the plot for the grown-up half.

Cell phones are gonna make it harder to artificially increase the tension. Splitting up the characters to explore the town isn't as bad when they can be in constant contact. I think the hotel scene leading to the climax also involved calling the wrong room or something like that.

Badablack

If the magical clown can hijack television signals throughout Derry then he can jam all their cellphones. Or more likely, someone tries to make a call and gets a good ol' patented jape from Pennywise.

Inter_d

The kid who played Eddie was amazing and he meshed so well with Ritchie. They felt like real friends the way they traded insults and I especially love the scene with Eddie's broken arm and Ritchie telling him he has to snap it back in place and the PERFECT reaction of,

"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME!!"

jimb213

Inter_d wrote: »

The kid who played Eddie was amazing and he meshed so well with Ritchie. They felt like real friends the way they traded insults and I especially love the scene with Eddie's broken arm and Ritchie telling him he has to snap it back in place and the PERFECT reaction of,

"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME!!"

I've broken bones with friends around, and was basically my reaction to anyone coming near me. It's not fun when your leg is bent where it's not supposed to bend...

I was just on IMDB reading up on It, and Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise and is much younger than I thought he was, is in the Castle Rock show being produced by/for Hulu. According to IMDB, though, he's not playing Pennywise in the show.

see317

Doctor Detroit wrote: »

From what I remember, (book spoilers from the other half)

There's gonna be some issues with the plot for the grown-up half.

Cell phones are gonna make it harder to artificially increase the tension. Splitting up the characters to explore the town isn't as bad when they can be in constant contact. I think the hotel scene leading to the climax also involved calling the wrong room or something like that.

I don't know, I seem to lose connection on my cell phone enough even without an eldritch abomination living under my town (well, at least as far as I know we don't have one of those here).
But given the powers IT exhibits in the books, I wouldn't think that jamming (or hijacking) cell phone transmissions would be outside the realm of possibility.

jimb213

see317 wrote: »

Doctor Detroit wrote: »

From what I remember, (book spoilers from the other half)

There's gonna be some issues with the plot for the grown-up half.

Cell phones are gonna make it harder to artificially increase the tension. Splitting up the characters to explore the town isn't as bad when they can be in constant contact. I think the hotel scene leading to the climax also involved calling the wrong room or something like that.

I don't know, I seem to lose connection on my cell phone enough even without an eldritch abomination living under my town (well, at least as far as I know we don't have one of those here).
But given the powers IT exhibits in the books, I wouldn't think that jamming (or hijacking) cell phone transmissions would be outside the realm of possibility.

Modern Telecom as it applies to the other half of the book

yeah, cell reception sucks in small towns anyways. I've been plenty of places where there's practically no signal. They can play up the "Derry's a podunk shithole" angle, maybe drop a line about economic stagnation, before even getting to Pennywise messing with their phones.

Inter_d

I gotta say pennywise seemed way more alien in this than in the original 90s run. Tim curry was a character but Bill Skarsgard's pennywise felt more like a primal force.

I think in the very first scene with him when he stopped laughing with Georgie was IT like, rebooting because he swung too far with innocent disarming act that Georgie stopped being afraid of the strange clown in the sewer. Same as when he stopped trying to eat Eddie because Bill and Ritchie challenged the scares upstairs.

Rius

You know, I didn't like the third third as much as the first two. I blame Pennywise changing his profession from Dancing to Exposition.

Badablack

That was a pretty rad movie that was hampered by having a ton of supporting characters and no time to explore them. Also in regards to the end:

Were all the floating kids assumed to be okay? Or just a bunch of corpses already sucked dry? I liked the little preview of the Deadlights, and the empty gun still hurting it because of belief. There was a lot of really subtle stuff going on.

Astaereth

I'm seeing this on Wednesday but I do want to say that (book spoilers)

the controversial scene where the kids have sex with Beverly is weird but not nearly as bad as it sounds out of context. Too often people just go "oh they run a train on her" but the actual scene is both rather sweet and one of the character and thematic lynchpins of the novel. It's easy to dismiss the scene as perverted or whatever, but harder to actually engage with what it's saying about the intersection between the sexual underpinnings of horror and the coming of age process.

RT800

This movie was alright. Felt like it suffered from what a lot of movie adaptations suffer from - too much material to squeeze into a 2hr film. They really only seemed to flesh out a few of the characters, while others were left hangin' - Mike, Stan, and Henry in particular. The ending was kinda lackluster.

Also it was kind of a bummer that they cut out (book spoiler)

the entire dam-building story in the barrens

and replaced it with... skinny dipping?

It did a decent job overall on the scares, but the only scene that really gave me chills was Patrick Hocksetter's death.

Him wandering around in the sewers and suddenly coming across the missing children's silhouettes with just his lighter as a light was creepy as fuck.

"You found us, Patrick..."

Badablack

I do wish they'd added the part with the underground base, if only so the fat bully could sit on it while they're hiding inside and let a big one rip. Hearing that in Dolby Surround Sound would have paid for the ticket on its own.

Ziggymon

Just come back from watching this. Loved it. Nailed a lot of Stephen King's themes very well.

Spaffy

Rius wrote: »

That was the second TV thing, too; there was an earlier scene where it was on in the background talking about how clowns were awesome and something else I can't remember right now.

Once in the background the TV host was saying that sewers are a really fun place for kids to play in and explore. Super creepy!

Spaffy

So my expectations were different from what I got. I thought I would be more scared because of the effect the books and original series had on me as a kid, but I also didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did for just being a good movie. The whole 'coming of age' part was really well done and entertaining and I found myself forgetting I was watching a killer klown movie on several occasions.

I also really enjoyed the new interpretation of the clown. In the original and in the books, IT was a highly intelligent being with focus and purpose. In this movie IT was pretty much a wild animal fighting for survival that could only barely hold it's human impersonation together. The Swedish (?) accent added to this effect, although I found it distracting in the opening sewer scene. Every action it took had only one purpose - to generate the fear that sustains his life force or whatever.

I thought that really worked, especially as IT became unhinged at the end when the kids all fucked him up and he started losing control of his shapes, turning into the wrong fear for the wrong kids and randomly becoming half lobster for a second.

Also here in the U.K. this is rated 15, and he fucking bites a 5 year old kid's arm clean off in the opening scene. This ain't the way ratings used to be, yo.

Bloods End

This movie needs an extended cut
Just of bonding time with the kids.

Doctor Detroit

Spaffy wrote: »

Also here in the U.K. this is rated 15, and he fucking bites a 5 year old kid's arm clean off in the opening scene. This ain't the way ratings used to be, yo.

Actually, that sounds exactly the way ratings used to be.

Schadenfreude

Thought this was a really good film, but an okay adaptation.

Seriously funny though.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Spaffy

Doctor Detroit wrote: »

Spaffy wrote: »

Also here in the U.K. this is rated 15, and he fucking bites a 5 year old kid's arm clean off in the opening scene. This ain't the way ratings used to be, yo.

Actually, that sounds exactly the way ratings used to be.

Die Hard was an 18 when it was released and I'd be surprised if it wasn't a 12 by modern standards.

Badablack

Yeah this had the thing I LOVED in Stand By Me, Goonies, Stranger Things, Lost Boys and Super 8 off the top of my head with funny well-acted kid actors acting like actual kids in their background banter. I will unashamedly lap up that friendship nostalgia no matter how bad the actual movie is. And this one wasn't bad.

Drez

Just one question - should I read IT or watch the existing adaptations before seeing this? Or better as a virgin?

Badablack

There were a bunch of subtle references to the books that wouldn't stand out if you hadn't read them, but they weren't really crucial to the plot or anything.

see317

Drez wrote: »

Just one question - should I read IT or watch the existing adaptations before seeing this? Or better as a virgin?

Unless you're a really, really fast reader you'll probably want to see the movie first.
Otherwise, you're going to be getting it from a redbox.

The book is a doorstop.

Psychotic One

see317 wrote: »

Drez wrote: »

Just one question - should I read IT or watch the existing adaptations before seeing this? Or better as a virgin?

Unless you're a really, really fast reader you'll probably want to see the movie first.
Otherwise, you're going to be getting it from a redbox.

The book is a doorstop.

I think the Audible version is either 44 or 60 hours long. I forget as I have a lot of King books in my Audible collection. But IT was not a short story by any means. King was on a lot of blow when he wrote the book and its hyper detailed and creepy fetishist in parts.

RT800

It's been a long time since I read the book, but

In the book, didn't IT not really need people to be afraid?

I was always under the impression that IT would kill and eat just about anyone - adults and children both.

But IT preferred that its victims be afraid because it made them taste better.

And IT preferred children because their fear was most potent.

see317

RT800 wrote: »

It's been a long time since I read the book, but

In the book, didn't IT not really need people to be afraid?

I was always under the impression that IT would kill and eat just about anyone, regardless - adults and children both.

But IT preferred that its victims be afraid because it made them taste better.

And IT preferred children because their fear was most potent.

I think that IT preferred children because their fears are more tangible.
I mean, how is the fear eating eldritch god beast going to turn into "What if I'm a bad parent?" or "What if I get fired tomorrow?" or "Dying alone and unloved"? These aren't really fears that are easily manifested, and if they are they wouldn't really spike the emotions of the victim.

By comparison, wolfman or creepy clown or whatever are pretty easy to conjure into being and have the benefit of increasing the fear response(which I seem to recall made them tastier).

It's influence on adults was more to make them forget the terrors of their childhoods and turn a blind eye to the odd way there's a sudden spree of missing children every 27 years or so.

I could be wrong on all of this though, it's been a long time since I read any Stephen King, let alone IT in particular.

Badablack

Regarding It's preferences

There was never really a consistency to its eating habits. Sometimes it ripped a hunk off like Georgie or Adrian Mellon, other times it turned into a monster and killed someone like that creepy kid that locked animals in old fridges. Usually it made people look into the Deadlights first, so it was probably about eating their soul with the odd bit of flesh just a tidbit, but sometimes it just killed people. Maybe to increase the overall dread in Derry and make the rest of them taste better. Or It might have just been a fucked up spider monster that liked hurting and killing people.