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WattsvilleBlues posted:I thought Jonathan Brandis was a better Bill. Such a shame about the guy. Jonathan Brandis was one of those dudes that I felt like would have had a pretty good chance of showing up as a supporting character in some rando Tarantino flick, and getting enough juice from it to have a bit of a second-stage career.
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Sep 20, 2017 05:31
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Saw this last week, they've really captured the feel of certain 80s movies. Strong influences of Stand By Me, E. T., Goonies, The Explorers, Monster Squad, and others. I thought that Skarsgaard did a good job as Pennywise and created a wonderful bully of a character. One the subject of George's death, I felt it didn't match the tone of the rest of the movie. Most of the film had a somewhat jokey tone to it, and Pennywise didn't feel all that dangerous. By being explicit with George's death and lingering on his suffering, it was like the movie was trying to establish how much of a threat that Pennywise is, but it didn't come off that way in the rest of the film. If we'd seen Pennywise killing other people in a manner as graphic as the way he killed George, it would have worked. As it is, the scene sticks out as the movie using the equivalent of smashing a kitten with a hammer to generate an emotional response. Now, kitten deaths in movies can be used to comedic effect, see the The Brothers Grimm and Drag Me to Hell for examples, but this had no subtlety to it. Comparisons have been made in the thread to 1988's The Blob , but that movie didn't limit its gore to just children. The Steve McQueen stand in meets a horrible on screen fate, as do many other characters, so the child's death is more of an escalation of the horror rather than a singular shocking event. I'm very interested in seeing how they cast the adult versions of the characters. The TV movie did a pretty poor job with the adults, I didn't buy about half of them as the grown up versions of the characters we saw in the 50s. Also interested to see how the advent of smart phones will be worked into the plot as that is one of the epochal shifts in society since the late 80s. The TV movie actually includes a scene of John Ritter's cell phone losing service when he crosses the Derry city limits, but such a thing wouldn't come off as believable in 2018. So, 3 out of 4 balloons for IT, and they all float.
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Sep 20, 2017 05:33
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SimonCat posted:If we'd seen Pennywise killing other people in a manner as graphic as the way he killed George, it would have worked. As it is, the scene sticks out as the movie using the equivalent of smashing a kitten with a hammer to generate an emotional response. See, this is interesting to me, because I've seen it brought up a couple of times from different people. I wonder how differently people would have responded to that scene if there were other equally violent acts in the latter half to balance things out more. What's weird is that the book has a built-in excuse to do just that with the deaths of Belch Huggins and Victor Criss (and Patrick Hockstetter earlier on) at the hands of IT, but the film chose to forego those opportunities to streamline Henry Bowers' already barely-there narrative.
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Sep 20, 2017 05:41
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SimonCat posted:Also interested to see how the advent of smart phones will be worked into the plot as that is one of the epochal shifts in society since the late 80s. The TV movie actually includes a scene of John Ritter's cell phone losing service when he crosses the Derry city limits, but such a thing wouldn't come off as believable in 2018. I feel like it might not be that big of a deal, I'm not sure how cellphones will be empowering when they can't really talk to anybody but each other about what's happening. Haven't read the book though.
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Sep 20, 2017 05:46
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Georgie's death in the movie- and to a certain extent the book- works a bit like the first death in Jaws- it's deliberately dragged out and viscerally unpleasant, something that's meant to really make you feel uncomfortable. There are a lot of horror scenes that do that, that specifically test your tolerance- whether it's as simple as the vomit gag in The Exorcist, the head explosion in Scanners, or the long scene of the ghouls gut-munching in Night of the Living Dead, it's sort of a challenge to the audience, word spreads between horror fans, "No, really, can you take this?" I mean you wanna talk tonal shifts, Jaws goes from monster movie scares to high seas adventure at a few points.
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Sep 20, 2017 06:04
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I had no kids in the theater, but two seats over were two guys with one constantly pointing out book stuff to the other and overexplaining poo poo. It was annoying, but not half as annoying as I imagined it was to the guy's friend, who never said a word in response.
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Sep 20, 2017 06:35
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Eifert Posting posted:I saw From Dusk Til Dawn when I was 9 ssssooooooo... Quietly watched The Silence of the Lambs around the corner from my living room when I was seven. If anything that got my brain attuned to images as storytelling early. warez posted:Lucky you. We had a woman talking during every suspenseful moment to say “no, get out, no one asked you to go in there, this just ain’t gon work for me, lord.” To each their own, especially where theater experiences are concerned, but I love this kinda poo poo. One of my favorites was during the opening night of Signs at the theater I worked at a shade over five years. Buncha yelps when the alien walks on the video, woman yells, "God mercy me," cue laughs. SuperMechagodzilla posted:The correct choice is actually Epic by Faith No More. drat this is good. Great way of dealing with question about what Pennywise is.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:09
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:It's absolutely an unpleasant scene to watch, but I feel like it's necessary to the movie. It establishes stakes by showing what happens to a kid who Pennywise catches (they die very messily), and establishes that Pennywise is an actual threat and not just a creepy clown going OOGA-BOOGA at the kids; the old miniseries could get away with showing less because they had Tim Curry's performance to lean on, but this movie doesn't have Tim Curry so it has to go a little more in the brutal direction. Going back to this; One thing this adaptation arguably botches is the idea, clearly expressed in the miniseries, that Pennywise and IT are distinct characters. To the extent that Pennywise is 'real', in the miniseries, he is clearly the ghost of a dude killed by the IT and forced to do IT's bidding. When he says "we all float down here, and you will too!", Curry plays Pennywise as blatantly embittered and jealous of the living - who still get to go around playing games and getting married or whatever. He hates his job; floating around as a ghost sucks. When Pennywise brags about devouring worlds, he's bullshitting. All he can really do is taunt people and toss ghost balloons full of ghost blood. The logic is very clear, even as things get really abstract and Pennywise appears on the moon: Pennywise is the one who makes the illusions, while IT is the one who kills and eats. In this new version, where digital morphing effects make it absolutely clear that Pennywise is just a spider in a skin suit, the characterization is a lot less interesting. It reminds of the villain in Men In Black. Why's he dressed as a clown? Like, why bother? Very few people would be unafraid of a giant flesh-eating spider that can teleport around. IT goes through all the trouble of turning into a painting and doesn't even kill the kid. He's right there. The only way to read the film is to say that IT doesn't actually 'eat'. Desperately lonely, what IT does is recruit friends. Being bitten is like a baptism, and now you're in the floaty club. IT is a clown because he legitimately wants to be a clown. Like, that's his ideal career. He's just being held back by species-ism. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 08:12
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Going back to this; Alternately, for a being that wants to eat children, disguising itself as a clown to lure them in is a better tactic than appearing in full spider form and going "HEY KIDS WANT SOME SPIDER CANDY FROM THIS GIANT FUCKIN' TALKING SPIDER IN THE SEWER" e: like, I think you're onto some interesting poo poo with your reading but you have a weird tendency to either miss or ignore the blindingly obvious, and it's in full force here
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Sep 20, 2017 08:14
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Alternately, for a being that wants to eat children, disguising itself as a clown to lure them in is a better tactic than appearing in full spider form and going "HEY KIDS WANT SOME SPIDER CANDY FROM THIS GIANT FUCKIN' TALKING SPIDER IN THE SEWER" How is it 'blindingly obvious' that this magic spider needs to lure people? IT could easily use IT's powers to blind IT's enemies (darkness illusion!), grab them, and then teleport them directly into the nest where they can be webbed up and tortured with impunity. If you try to be tactically realistic, poo poo falls apart very quickly. IT isn't being tactical; IT wants friends.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:22
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Georgie is pretty much the only one It lures in using the clown.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:24
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It reminds of the villain in Men In Black. It's very weird that you never refer to yourself.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:37
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Renoistic posted:Georgie is pretty much the only one It lures in using the clown. And this luring is totally gratuitous. George practically shoved his head in the sewer without anyone asking. And IT has stretchy arms! He can reach clear across a street. The film is very clear that IT actually does run his own circus, made up of kids who 'blew away in a storm'. IT is befriending George. IT offers the boat as a pact. And though the bite is painful, we are later shown that George has indeed become IT's friend. A similar blood ritual ends the film. Magic Hate Ball posted:It's very weird that you never refer to yourself. It's not that weird; I do not actually exist.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:37
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Another one of IT's species shows up in the Dark Tower books and it feeds off of forcing people to laugh. Clearly they're natural born entertainers and human beings can't take a joke.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:42
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Mantis42 posted:Another one of IT's species shows up in the Dark Tower books and it feeds off of forcing people to laugh. Clearly they're natural born entertainers and human beings can't take a joke. I guess the box office has finally decided the whole "Roland Deschaine vs Pennywise" debate.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:43
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:How is it 'blindingly obvious' that this magic spider needs to lure people? because this is what we are directly shown in the Georgie scene. it does not just scramble out of the sewer and grab him, it lures him closer and gets him off his guard. given that we are then explicitly shown Georgie's arm getting torn off, followed by the arm dragging Georgie into the sewer drain, either the film is lying (a non-starter for any reading of a film- if you throw out the text you have nothing), it has a very loving strange idea of what "making friends" means, or it's not actually trying to make friends, but is instead, as we're shown, trying to eat children. e: also, as we're again explicitly shown, it is pretty vulnerable to things beating the crap out of it, so keeping a low profile is probably in its best interest compared to going Full Spider.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:44
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How are they going to bring back Henry when he fell down 300 ft of sewer pipe? Im not sure I like new Bev. I think goony awkward 95 Bev works a lot better than 2cool4school 17 Bev.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:50
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banned from Starbucks posted:How are they going to bring back Henry when he fell down 300 ft of sewer pipe? Im not sure I like new Bev. I think goony awkward 95 Bev works a lot better than 2cool4school 17 Bev. My guess is that if they don't just go with "Henry was found in the sewers and sent to Juniper Hill for the murder of his father", that he'll be kept in some kind of suspended state by IT until it's time to set him loose. Henry's kind bad in the film, but I don't think anyone will care in the sequel. Or sequels. I've got even money that we'll be hearing about the IT trilogy by the end of the year.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:54
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:it has a very loving strange idea of what "making friends" means Exactly, you got it. The spider is not trying to avoid getting beat up; how is a five year old going to beat up a giant spider? Remember that IT's got fuckin' hypnosis powers. IT has more powers than Superman. And obviously nobody else could have saved George; IT is invisible to adults! IT appeared in the middle of a busy library, chasing the Egg Boy around. IT's basically omnipotent, therefore it behaves as it does (inefficiently) due to loneliness. IT talks solely because IT wants someone to talk to.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:57
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:either the film is lying (a non-starter for any reading of a film- if you throw out the text you have nothing), it has a very loving strange idea of what "making friends" means, or it's not actually trying to make friends, but is instead, as we're shown, trying to eat children. From this perspective I don't think SMG's too far off in one specific way. Bullies or traumatized people who turn their aggression/trauma outward instead of inward can have a screwed up way of "making friends." Overly aggressive, hurting "friends" and smiling like it's a joke, stuff like that. If we look at It/Pennywise as a manifestation of the trauma of Derry constantly revisiting itself and producing/enticing this thing, then I see how that could work. Same if you consider the overarching visual perspective the town or It itself, "Hey kids, abandon your abusive parents and play games with me" where It's idea of playing games has mortal consequences.
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Sep 20, 2017 09:01
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If IT is lonely and wants someone to talk to, why appear as a clown at all? Why not appear as a non-mutilated kid or some trustworthy authority figure? What is the primary function of a clown? IT is a bully who takes Georgie because he finds it funny. That's why it stalks Ben in the library instead of eating him and why IT does its little dance at Eddie instead of just lunging at and eating him. IT appears as a clown instead of a giant spider monster because IT wants to have a good laugh. IT targets kids for the same reason as Henry, because they usually don't question the logic of the abuse and are unlikely to fight back. Yeah, IT needs to eat, but eating by itself is just a little boring. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 11:53
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I'm now thinking of the chances of a Steven King Cinematic Universe.
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Sep 20, 2017 13:25
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Lampsacus posted:I'm now thinking of the chances of a Steven King Cinematic Universe. If it wasn't for the Dark Tower debacle I'd say a million percent.
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Sep 20, 2017 13:29
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Steve2911 posted:If it wasn't for the Dark Tower debacle I'd say a million percent. Yeah that's basically what the Dark Tower (books) are about lol
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Sep 20, 2017 14:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:To the extent that Pennywise is 'real', in the miniseries, he is clearly the ghost of a dude killed by the IT and forced to do IT's bidding. When he says "we all float down here, and you will too!", Curry plays Pennywise as blatantly embittered and jealous of the living - who still get to go around playing games and getting married or whatever. He hates his job; floating around as a ghost sucks.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:43
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The correct choice is actually Epic by Faith No More. Hahhaha. banned from Starbucks posted:How are they going to bring back Henry when he fell down 300 ft of sewer pipe? Im not sure I like new Bev. I think goony awkward 95 Bev works a lot better than 2cool4school 17 Bev. I have the exact opposite opinion, '17 Bev looks exactly like a young girl from Maine that can't wait to get away from her lovely hometown, '95 Bev looks like Pippi Longstocking. She looks like she should be carrying a bindle and eating beans out of a can with the Apple Dumpling Gang. Just ridiculous. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 14:51
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They got some great acting out of Sophia Lillis. Finn Wolfhard was great too, but Sophia was phenomenal. They could have done a better job getting her "wrong side of the tracks" poor upbringing, but a movie with adequate time for the kids would be ... well, a miniseries. I'm still pissed how tacked-on Mike felt. His backstory in the book was particularly well-done, in my opinion. For some reason I really liked how King characterized Mike's parents.
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Sep 20, 2017 15:33
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They do get the essential broad strokes correct though. The other Losers live in houses, she lives in a tiny cramped apartment. The other Losers are stymied at the pharmacy, she leads them to shoplift. She smokes, they do not. Greta's posse, obviously socioeconomically advanged, dumps literal wet garbage on her.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:18
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Lampsacus posted:I'm now thinking of the chances of a Steven King Cinematic Universe. There is the upcoming JJ Abrams/Hulu show CASTLE ROCK that's basically that. And it has a killer cast (Including Skarsgard, though he's not supposed to be playing Pennywise this time).
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Sep 20, 2017 17:54
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QuoProQuid posted:If IT is lonely and wants someone to talk to, why appear as a clown at all? Why not appear as a non-mutilated kid or some trustworthy authority figure? Because IT likes being a clown. IT is a clown. Pennywise is IT's 'fursona'. Look at the carefully-constructed stage, complete with pyrotechnics. That stuff couldn't fit in the sewer. IT built that stage just so it could do a stupid little jig for kids like Bev. IT put a lot of work into IT's makeup. Being a professional clown is IT's goal in life. If we insist on interpreting IT as a literally-existing animal, then the unavoidable conclusion is that IT is just a stupid human, with human dreams and aspirations. The people calling him pure evil are being speciesist. IT may be, biologically, a spider - but IT is a human spider-person.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:If we insist on interpreting IT as a literally-existing animal, then the unavoidable conclusion is that IT is just a stupid human, with human dreams and aspirations. The people calling him pure evil are being speciesist. IT may be, biologically, a spider - but IT is a human spider-person. Like Spider-man?
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Sep 20, 2017 18:11
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CopywrightMMXI posted:Like Spider-man? Spins a web any size, catches children just like flies.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:16
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's not that weird; I do not actually exist. amazing
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Sep 20, 2017 18:35
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Lampsacus posted:I'm now thinking of the chances of a Steven King Cinematic Universe. The Stand is almost definitely gonna get made now.
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Sep 20, 2017 19:41
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LesterGroans posted:The Stand is almost definitely gonna get made now. this sucks, bc matty mac really was the perfect casting for randall flagg but given the dark tower's reception I doubt he or they would be interested in bringing him back to reprise the role well, also bc the stand is pretty overrated, whereas IT is like one of the only good king books that isn't a short story they've already adapted Baku fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 19:43
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Yeah if I recall the book properly there's no specific point in Derry's history where It decides to take the form of Pennywise the Clown, no specific reason- it's just a thing It is. Like I assume It had to wait until clowns were actually invented (spoiling because I don't think the film has yet let slip that this thing is primeval), but who knows, maybe It gave mankind the idea. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 20:15
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The whole thing was basically a plumbing problem. A few hundred gallons of foaming pipe snake would've sorted it out fine.
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Sep 20, 2017 20:19
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Lampsacus posted:I'm now thinking of the chances of a Steven King Cinematic Universe. The beginning of Cat's Eye has the protagonist cat getting chased by Cujo and then it almost gets run over by the Plymouth Fury from Christine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCoqPrPYcJc I'm hoping the Castle Rock tv series is pretty much this.
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Sep 20, 2017 20:30
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ruddiger posted:The beginning of Cat's Eye has the protagonist cat getting chased by Cujo and then it almost gets run over by the Plymouth Fury from Christine. Cat's Eye is a fun bad movie, making it better than a lot of King adaptations, which are just bad movies (sometimes bad books, even)
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Sep 20, 2017 22:00
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“Why don’t they come out into the open?" “Because they don’t trust us. Because what we don’t understand we want to destroy. ... That spider. Why are you afraid of it? Because it has eight legs? Because its mouth moves from side to side instead of up and down? If it came at you, what would you do? ... You'd destroy anything you didn't understand. Don't you see, Matt? That's why they've been hiding behind other men's faces, until they can clear out!" IT is really blatantly inspired by It Came From Outer Space.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:18
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