The more eagle-eyed among you (those with chemically enhanced
powers of observation, unnatural mutant abilities, a small black plastic lever
in the back of your necks or just those with average reading and comprehension
skills) may have noticed I am for the most part quite unkind about remakes and
reboots. 'Quite unkind' here having the meaning of 'savage'. There are, of
course, exceptions to the rule but they're few and far between and if we're
being honest usually only average at best. I only bring this up because unless
your neck lever is stuck or broken, you may have swivelled your eyes across the
new trailer for Stephen King's IT.
Now, I've seen
people proclaiming it to be the scariest trailer they've ever seen (it really
isn't) and warning people not to watch it before they go to bed (you really
can, it's OK) but although it doesn't make me want to rush out and pre-book
cinema tickets, I will admit to being intrigued. Intrigued enough to crack out
the Tim Curry version from back in the day and get on a bit of a nostalgia
trip.
It's probably a
good job I was thinking all this in the middle of HMV, because up until
yesterday I didn't actually own a copy. Call me a purist, or old-fashioned or
whatever but I still buy DVDs. This streaming malarkey is all very well and
good until you get a shitty cam-copy at a weird angle with Russian subtitles
and a running commentary from the guy sat next to the camera who doesn't
understand that you have to shut your Stroganoff hole for the duration of the
movie. Anyway...
Two things I hadn't counted on, or at least I'd forgotten. One:
the run time on this thing is an enormous 180 minutes, because it was a TV
mini-series not a movie. Which makes sense when you watch it, there's a
definite TV vibe going on. That led to unexpected old school moment number two:
dual disc DVD. I haven't even seen one of those things for years, let alone had
to flip one over mid-way through a movie. 180 minutes is a lot of ropey early
nineties TV acting to get through in one sitting (apparently in the 90s the
universal sign language for both fear and despair is randomly dragging your
hand down the side of your face whilst staring wistfully into space like a
Vietnam veteran who spent too many nights sleeping under the bullet-ridden
corpses of his own platoon), but quitting is for losers. Unless you're quitting
drugs. Or while you're ahead. Quitting is mostly for losers then, except for
some notable exceptions. My point is that it made me wonder what the plan is
for the new version, but current trends indicate it won't be far off that run
time I'd have thought.
The first thing
that struck me is that IT hasn't really aged well at all. It's a real product
of its time, at least in as far as the grown up section is all fluffily-quaffed
hair, cuffed leather jackets and wedge-nosed Corvettes. Ironically, things have
turned full circle it seems as you could probably do an IT themed fancy dress
party by exclusive shopping at Urban Outfitters. Double irony, in that most of
the people who shop at Urban Outfitters hadn't been born when the clothes
they're wearing (probably ironically) were initially fashionable. Is that
triple irony? Tri-rony? The mind reels.
IT, to borrow a sporting analogy, is a story of two halves and by far the better half is the origins story when they're all kids in the 50s. It's reminiscent of Stand By Me to an extent; group of kids discovering themselves by bonding to overcome a mutual threat. Only this time it's a creepy supernatural clown rather than a switchblade wielding douchebag with a bad haircut (although there is one of those too). Pennywise is an archetype in his own right nowadays and kind of the standard against which most other evil clowns are compared. Thanks to Tim Curry, he's also pretty creepy 30 years down the line. In all honesty, the special effects are gash, even for the 90s but there's still something unnerving about a child-snatching clown who lives in the sewers and knows exactly what scares you most. Kids in Stephen King novels tend to be a fairly resourceful bunch and true to form, they get themselves some cojones, a couple of random lumps of silver and a catapult, traipse off into the sewers and hunt themselves a clown. All's well that ends well, coulrophobes across the globe rejoice, happy days.
And that's where
it should have finished.
It dawned on me,
as I dutifully turned the Dual Disc over, that at an hour and a half in we were
only half way through. So now we have the adult side of the story where the
Losers Club has scattered, but IT's back killing kids so he can make them into
ice cream floats or whatever and our heroes promised to return should that ever
be the case. Two problems with the second 90 minutes: firstly the adults are
pretty dull and not even remotely as inspiring, crippled as they are by the
weight of being grown-ups. Secondly, Pennywise turns out to be some sort of
shape-shifting demonic spider and the collective groans of disappointment could
probably have been heard on the other side of the globe. It's such a massive
downer across the board; the kids' story is all triumph and hope, the adults'
story is all spousal abuse, suicide and poorly judged self-sacrifice. Even when
they kill IT and somehow remove its heart through the power of a good ol'
fashioned shoeing it still feels like a grim affirmation that regardless of the
victory, your life sucks because you aren't a kid anymore. Which is true, but
still. It's not the filmmakers' fault that the source material hasn't exactly
got the strongest ending (it's Stephen King, of course the ending is crap) and
I guess a demon spider is better than a cluster of orange lights. Barely.
So where does that
leave the reboot? Obviously it remains to be seen and I guess we'll find out in
due course. Chances are though, controversially, this might be one that
surpasses the original. It all hangs on how they send in the clown.
Slight aside; you can follow me on twitter if you feel like a slight more abbreviated slice of spleen-venting: @angerinamansuit
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