The first half of It looks to be bloody good. Besides the horror, the filmmakers also include the real life horror of adults failing to protect their children which is at the heart of the book.
The film opens 9-8
Just reread the book, not really interested in the movie for some reason.
Also… the “heart of the book” is childhood and friendship. “Adults failing children” isn’t at all a theme in the book, other than as a reflection of how It affected the residents of Derry.
I have to re-read the book, but the first time I read it, in my early teens (I think), I remember thinking that the parents in the book just ignored and brushed off the things their kids told them, which allowed It to keep coming back.
I couldn’t disagree more. Most of the kids in the book had parents who were not properly caring for them; a few outright vicious. When the troubles began they couldn’t go to their parents and had to trust on each other. Remind me why Henry Bowers was evil again? Or why Eddie was a hypochondriac? Or why Bills parents seemed to care more about George?
I disagree with that. I always considered It to be a story on two levels, one level of which is the evil clown-thing and on the other level of which the evil is really the adults of Derry: Bev’s Dad in particular but in a more general way there was a sense that the kids were on their own and the adults would look the other way and let bad things happen.
Well said. I totally agree. The movie is said to reflect this which I am excited about.
Of the 7 sets of parents, only 1 was abusive and only one set was “dismissive”, for want of a better word, and those parents just lost a child, so their reactions, while wrong, were understandable. Richie, Mike, Ben, and Stan had normal parents, Eddie’s mom was domineering (and in no way could Ms Kaspbrack could be called out on “failing to protect” Eds), only Bev and Bill had parents that could fit the OP… and, again, in Bill’s case the parents just had their 6yo murdered by means of his arm being ripped off.
Sorry, but I stand by my post. The influence of It made the parents, when It needed them to, be dismissive but they were not so in and of themselves.
The major theme of the book was childhood and the loss of innocence and wonder caused by growing up. Which, written by a 38yo King, was probably top of mind to him at that age. Well, that and the cocaine.
Nope. The kids elected not to tell for the standard “but nobody will believe us cause we are kids” trope. There was no scene where Ben, for example, laid all this out to his mom, only to have her ignore them.
Not a single one went to the police, not even Mr Nell. Nobody told parents, cops, adults, even other kids of their suspicions. You even had a scene with Bradley (a friend of Bills from a speech therapy program) where one of the 7… Richie, I think… understands he’s not one of the gang and therefore cannot be trusted with the secret of It.
Don’t want to spoil for people who haven’t read the book; but, Ben, Eddie, Brb and Bill had dysfunctional parents. Mike was the victim of Henry’s Dad. We never learn enough about Stan to make a judgment either way. But many of the victims of It were only victims because of parental indifference/abuse. The bullies were victims of their parents. King allows those who would normally be outcasts to become heroes.
By any stretch of the imagination, Ben did not have a dysfunctional family. Gonna want a cite on that.
Bill’s family is undergoing the shock of a murdered child and, other than that, is not at all dysfunctional.
Including Henry’s dad’s effect on Mike is really a stretch in making the case the 7 all suffered from parental neglect. Rejected.
Eddie had an overprotective mother, which flies in the face of “the parents didn’t protect their kids” point.
“Adults are really mean to kids” was not one of the themes in the book. It is something that occurred, to some of the kids some of the time, but was not a theme.
How did they depict the entrance to the waterworks(?)? In the tv movie it was improbably grand, and with no barriers of any kind (as far as I could tell), it would have been (IRL) an irresistible kid magnet.
Ben’s parents equated food with love and allowed him to become obese. It was only when he was away from them that he lost weight. His mom used food to bind him to her.
That’s… quite a reach there, Madris.
He only had his mom, btw. And he lost weight as a teenager, while still living with his mom. By the time he went to college, the weight was off.
Not quite. At some level, the kids know no adult in Derry can really see It or anything done by It and that is why nobody will believe them. Mike Hanlon became the first adult to really put it all together through his research.
Ben’s relationship with his mom was ten different kinds of fucked up. She was deeply terrified that, as a single mom, she would fail Ben in some way, but she expressed this fear by refusing to recognize when her kid was in trouble. And I don’t mean “evil clown” trouble. He’s being viciously bullied at school over his weight (even by one of the teachers!) but his mom keeps over feeding him. When he decides he wants to lose weight and goes to his mom about changing his diet, she completely melts down. She’s literally in denial that her obese son has a weight problem at all, because if her son is fat, that means she’s a bad mother.
Bill’s parents certainly aren’t bad people for being so totally destroyed by the loss of their youngest son, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re neglecting Bill in their grief over what happened to George. Their reaction is understandable, and from an outside perspective, entirely forgivable, but it’s still hurting Bill.
Eddie’s mom isn’t just “overprotective.” She’s making him take medications for conditions his doctors keep telling her he doesn’t have. He’s carrying around an inhaler filled with water because his mom flips out when the pharmacist points out that her kid doesn’t have asthma. He can’t tell her about any bad thing that happens to him (again, not just the evil clown stuff) because she’ll restrict his free time even more out of terror of something happening to him. Next to Bev’s dad, Eddie’s mom is by far the most actively destructive to her kid’s life and well being.
The idea that the adults in the novel are unable to accurately perceive the threats in their children’s lives - even the non-supernatural threats - is absolutely a theme in the novel. How this neglect/ignorance manifests isn’t always the same, and isn’t always based on “meanness,” but all of the kids in the book are being failed by the adults in their lives in a pretty fundamental way.
IMO the adults in the book are that way due to It’s influence. ISTR King outright says it at some point. Derry being Derry. All of the long time residents are that way. Remember when the murders start again Mike Hanlon mentions the newcomers are moving away. Mike’s parents are the only Losers Club parents that are not abusive/neglectful in some manner.
ETA: The parents didn’t ignore the kids because the didn’t care, they ignored the kids because that’s how Derry works.
Yes. See King’s time-travel novel 11/22/63 for another visit to Derry in the late Fifties/early Sixties. It’s a seriously messed-up, unpleasant and creepy place.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve been so excited about a movie. I too am rereading the book after first reading it when it came out. I’m amazed at how much I’ve forgotten about it; it’s like reading it for the first time. Rewatched the 1990 (?) TV production too and I think the film is going to bear very little resemblance to it.
No offense to Mr. Curry, whom I adore, but Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise is going to blow his campy version right out of the (sewer) water. The scene with the slide projector scares the dickens out of me.
And I agree that a major theme is how the kids were unable to count on those that were supposed to protect them. Even if some of their parents weren’t *overtly *abusive or neglectful, I feel it speaks to larger issues that it never occurred to them to confide in their parents. Admittedly, I’m probably projecting my own childhood experience but I remember the feeling of knowing I couldn’t turn to my parents (for various reasons) and that’s about the saddest place for a kid to be.
In the book, Ben makes it clear that his Mom was fine with him eating lots of salad - she was just so worried she would fail him, if he was eating a lot, she felt like she was providing.
In the trailer, there is a distinct scene when I think Henry and his gang have Ben (maybe the knife scene), and a car with adults drives by and although they look directly at the boys, they don’t see what is going on…once the car passes, you see the balloon in the backseat.
That definitely seems like the movie reinforces that the adults are complacent because It won’t let them see the issue.
Oh, come on. How many times, just on this board, have people who were kids in the 1950s and '60s said, effectively bragging about it, that their parents never noticed aaaaaaanything they did, and neither did any other adult.
But there were a few instances in the novel of adults trying to intervene. Henry and his gang were menacing Eddie outside a store (before they chased him and beat him into a hospital stay). The storekeeper comes out and yells at them to knock it off – and Henry is so menacing to him, an adult, that he hightails it back into the store, stumbling on the way. Secondly, Henry and co. cornered Beverly on the side of some road (a couple of scenes before the kids went into the sewers), and a woman driving by pulled over. Same thing: “What are you doing to that girl?!” Henry, still dragging Bev by her hair and pulling some of it out, curses at her and kicks in the car’s taillight, and she drives off.
One of the guys, I forget which one, reflects that this usually doesn’t happen. Adults rarely notice if a kid is being bullied, and at most, they might break stride for a moment, mildly suggest, “Why don’t you leave him alone?” and then keep walking without waiting to see the reaction. But if adults are stopping what they’re doing, that means Henry “had gone above that sightline,” plus which, if these adults are intimidated by how he reacts, we’re really talking about a psychopath.
That said, it’s not just Derry being evil. There really was no mechanism in those days for stopping abuse. There’s a long sequence about two kids, Eddie and Dorsey Corcoran. Eddie was killed by IT (presenting as Godzilla) and Dorsey was killed, earlier, by his (step?)father. Dorsey came to kindergarten one day with his arm in a sling. The teacher gave him some baby aspirin so he could at least use crayons, and said afterwards to a reporter, “I was so glad I was able to give him that little bit of happiness that day.”
Instead of the lifetime of happiness you could have given him by intervening? one thinks. But…how to do that? Report it? Report what, to who? Parents could punish their kids any way they saw fit. Many adults were simply incapable of seeing the line between corporal punishment and abuse. And if a child was removed from their home, where would they go? An orphanage, for institutionalized abuse? The good ol’ days. :mad: