IT (2017)

[girlofprey]

Well. It...well. I don't know if I'm being way to harsh, because I just read the book, and I'm judging it by that, and it was never going to be the book, but it was not good. It...I don't know. It wasn't a terrible film, I guess, I never felt bored or like I wished I wasn't watching it. But compared to what was in the book, and how good the book was, it just felt weird and bizarre and all over the shop. They took random bits from the book and threw them in, frequently without other bits that would have explained them, or built up the atmosphere. They ignored other bits. They changed the character's backstories around, by which I mean they gave all of Mike Hanlon's adult stuff to Ben. All of it. Mike just had a black grandad who believed in curses, if you can believe that. His character was basically reduced to 1) being an outsider and being treated like one, 2)having a bad home life, 3) having a tragic past that it was heavily implied was because of racism, 4) bringing a 'gun' to the final fight. That was it. He barely even got to talk. I guess they were frustrated by the idea of having to give a black kid something to do, when there were so many white characters to characterise.

Every scare in the film was just a loud noise. They just played an uncomfortable, startlingly loud noise whenever anything sudden happened. The kind of noise that would make you jump if it was in a family comedy or a romance film. They never built any atmosphere, so a lot of the scares were just them throwing things from the book in all at once. Stephen King, in the book, really built up the idea that when things happened to the kids they were so terrified they could barely move or scream. That didn't happen here, because they had to keep the action moving, so frequently it was just a bunch of kids doing nonsensical things - and no reaction shots or scenes, to explain why they would do that, or how they could forget about it afterwards. They ignored the rules of IT in the book - the kids frequently got split up, and none of them instantly died. George Denborough didn't instantly die of shock from having his arm ripped off. He just crawled away. I frequently felt like laughing in the film, and not in a good - scary - hysterical fear kind of way. And it featured the most radical departure I could possibly imagine in the book by suggesting that Henry Bowers was ever in a school play.

I read TheMarySue.com sometimes, because I like to read things about video games and pop culture on a site that doesn't automatically hate women, and recently I saw an article linked on there called 'The Unexpected Subversiveness of Beverly Marsh'. I was already rolling my eyes at the Mary Sue over their constant defense of the sexualisation of Wonder Woman, but here's the subversiveness of Beverly Marsh:

1. Everyone at school thinks she's a slut, for no apparent reason.


2. She gets hit on by a much older man and treated creepily by her own dad.


3. The second time the boys see her, she's in a bra and underwear because they're going skinny-dipping - a scene which was not in the book. The boys are all wearing giant, nappy-like underwear, and after swimming they all stare at Beverly in her underwear while she's sunbathing.


4. There's what really appears to be an attempted rape scene with her and her dad.


5. She gets kidnapped by It, putting her in the damsel role.


6. She gets kissed twice without her consent. The first time while she's catatonic, when she can't give consent, by a boy who has a crush on her and already violated her privacy once (WHICH BEN HANSCOM WOULD NEVER DO), and the kiss wakes her up from her deadlights-induced catatonia.


7. She is the only girl in the film we sympathise with, and one of barely any female characters on screen.

I mean, it's not like Stephen King was great about Beverly in a lot of ways, but he did better. She wasn't bad in the film, she had a great actress and it felt like the film treated her like a human. But it also kind of felt like the film treated her like a human because she was very, very beautiful.

Idk. I didn't hate it. The actors were all really good. I find it really weird they set it in the 80s, it kind of makes sense since it was written in the 80s, and I've been thinking since I read the book that it fits in really well with the whole Goonies/ET vibe of kids on bikes, and even the more recent Stranger Things - and by the way, the Goonies were fools to go into the sewers. I feel like the film did a better job of establishing Pennywise as a character and the ultimate thing they had to face, more than It, and that more was made of their whole trip into the sewers, which is what I was kid of looking for. But so much of it was bizarre. And I know that some of it was because I was going in after reading the book, used to the pacing of the book, but still. It was like reading the book was like watching Coronation Street (old-style, good Coronation Street), and watching the film was like watching Hollyoaks. It was like when someone makes a really good, really beautifully-crafted film, and then Universal Studios makes a ride out of it.

In conclusion, my thoughts are:

• Why?


• Why must we as a species be so intent on taking everything good and ruining it?


• Why is life so full of heartache?


• Why is life a cruel joke played on the pure of heart?

My other thoughts from going to the cinema:

• A film about a man killing women to send a message to another man, starring Michael Fassbender, yes, just what we need.


• A film with a huge male cast with just one woman in it: for when you really hate women, but you don't want people to think all your characters and everyone who would go see the film are queer or something.

Comments

[breyzyyin]

Ahh, I sometimes read The Mary Sue as well, but I skipped that article (I usually get curious about their video game stuff). You and the site make some good points about the Beverly character. I'm curious now about whether or not you'll like the 90s miniseries more than the film, as people seem to be either/or about those two adaptations (and a lot in my geek circle seem to like the book better than either). O_o

[girlofprey]

Ah, I might have not made it clear I didn't read the article - I just saw it linked and that headline, and was a little unconvinced about just how 'subversive' Beverly Marsh would be, given what I'd read in the book. Based on what I saw in the film, I don't think she's that subversive. Good female character, well-acted, but still very much the object of desire for a lot of the male characters, and her arc was still done involving a lot of sexist tropes. Maybe the article acknowledged all of that and had other things to say, but I don't know if I have the willpower to read it, just in case they didn't.