Week 37: Why IT is both good and bad.

Long before I became a writer, I was a reader.  When I was young I loved books.  I’ve read all kinds of books, too.  I’ve read Fantasy series that I loved, a bit of romance, some sci-fi, and even a bit of horror.  One of my favorite series was The Lord of the Rings.  Only the nerds read that stuff when I was in high school, and so I was a nerd.  I loved the books anyway.  Flash forward from the 1980’s and The Lord of the Rings was made into three movies.  Suddenly a lot of other people decided they liked The Lord of the Rings.  A lot of people just like the movies though, and have never read the books.

Back in 1986 I was stationed at a small place called San Vito De Normani Air Station.  It was a really small base and one of the few highlights there for me was a tiny book store that they had.  I was in there all the time looking at things.  One day a hardback copy of a book called IT showed up in the store.  I don’t even remember how much it cost, but after looking it over, I bought it.  This was no small book, either.  It was absolutely huge!  But then I loved books and liked to read and the book would give me something to do.

I’ll be honest, parts of the book frightened me.  I can’t remember which specific parts because we’re talking about a book I bought and read about 31 years ago, but I do remember being frightened by a few parts.  I loved the story.  The character of Pennywise was more than just some killer clown.  He infested the town of Derry.  It’s a bit hard to describe the book. 

Now we move forward and IT has been made into a movie just like The Lord of the Rings.  If you’re thinking of seeing this film, I’ll warn you now, this is only “part one”.  Obviously there will be another part eventually.  And with a book as large as IT is, you would have to expect several parts, I guess.  Otherwise the film might end up being about eight hours long.  And I’m sure eight hours of movie would still leave out a lot of things!  But then movies based on books are always like that, aren’t they?  The books are almost always much better than the films.

Before I get into the movie, I had decided the read the book again now.  I’ve pretty much lost my hardcopy, but managed to buy myself a replacement paperback.  IT is huge, a whopping 1157 pages long.  It may take me a while to get through it, but I think it will be well worth my time to read again.  I was going to read the book again and then see the movie, but after reading just the start of the book, I decided what the hell, let’s go see the movie.  After all, I’ve already read the book years ago, so the story shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

I’m not sure the movie follows the book too closely.  For one thing, the kids in the book are growing up in 1957, in the movie it’s something like 1988.  I guess someone wanted a modern twist to the movie.  As a movie, IT was actually very good!  And I’ll tell you now, if you’re afraid of clowns, or jump scares, don’t go see this.  There were a few parts that scared the hell out of me and I don’t scare easily!  Sadly though, jump scares can only work for so long.  Toward the end of the movie they just weren’t frightening me as much as they were at the beginning.  If you want to see a really good horror film for this Halloween season, this would be a fantastic choice!  Take a date who scares easily and you’ll have a ball!  *chuckle*

Does IT work as a book adaptation?  Not real well for me.  There’s just too much to the book version of IT to put into a movie, I think.  There were so many more murders and disappearances and things that happened.  There was also a movie adaptation made of this book back in 1990.  That one sucked.  It was horrible and had horrible acting.  I like the actor Tim Curry, but he wasn’t a good Pennywise.  The new Pennywise is much more terrifying played by Bill Skarsgard.  So see the movie and read the book. 

So why is IT both good and bad?  Because the book and the 2017 film version are fantastic, but the 1990 film version was pretty bad.  Until next week, keep asking why and run away from clowns who want to give you balloons and have you “float”.