17 March 2009

It

I read that there's going to be a new movie version of Stephen King's It. I don't see how they can possibly distill a book as epic and detailed as It into a 2 hour movie - the paperback is over 1000 pages! That's the problem with Stephen King (well, one of the problems): the basic ideas of his stories lend themselves really well to movies, but the actual stories he makes with that basic idea are usually too complex and large for movies. King is the master of the back story, even minor characters will have pages and pages of back story that you just can't convey in a movie.

The other problem with Stephen King, btw, is that when the poor bastard got hit by that van all the talent got knocked out of him and he hasn't written anything really good since. There's no denying that he was good before, he was a freaking master of his genre. I think I started reading him when I was in Grade 8. I started with Eyes of the Dragon, then I went right to The Stand. The Stand is one of the few books where after finishing the last page, I went right to the first and started reading it again. I've reread it many times since. The TV movie for The Stand, if I recall correctly, was 4 2-hour episodes (and starred the awesome Garry Sinise), and they still left out so much - and did that annoying adaptation thing where they merge characters. Grr.

So, I suppose my point is that a regular movie adaption of It will just not work. Also, they already did a movie version, how can anyone forget Tim Curry's Pennywise?

And that was a kickass movie, y'all. Look at the cast: Tim Curry, John Ritter, Harry from Night Court, Seth Green (Oz!), Emily Perkins (from the Ginger Snaps movies), and early 90s teen heartthrob [the late] Jonathan Brandis. Not to mention scores of Vancouver-based actors whom you've probably seen since in syndicated action series. That version was just so effective (when I was a kid, at least, I haven't seen it for about a decade), that I can't imagine anything better is possible. Unless they keep Tim Curry as the evil clown. Then they have a chance.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The one and only Stephen King book that I read was The Green Mile and the movie adaptation of it was pretty good, they really didn't leave anything out...and they followed the book really closely. The only difference I found was that in the book the clock falls over and smashes and in the movie it just shatters...

Ellie Fish said...

That's some attention to detail, Kimm-my. Having neither read nor seen Green Mile, I can't comment. I should point out, before anyone else does, that Stand By Me and the Shawshank Redemption (both very very good movies) were based on short stories, which, you know, are shorter and easier to adapt to movies.