It is a novel written by Stephen King that has been around for 30+ years (the book was first published in 1986) and has had two live-action adaptations made. First, a mini-series back in the 1990s, and more recently, a pair of movies in 2017 and 2019. The book tells the story of a small town in Maine called Derry, which suffers from a series of child murders every 27 years. The adults are aware but mostly oblivious to what is going on, and it is left to a group of kids (who call themselves the Losers Club) to try and stop the monster, which at times takes the form of a clown named Pennywise (but also takes other forms), first as kids and then again as adults.
I will not go into too much of the story because chances are anyone looking to get the book by now is at least aware of the basic idea. But, I will say that the novel is very different from the live-action adaptations, which makes it challenging to even hard read at times, even for people who have good reading comprehension skills and are fast readers. There are a ton of characters in the book that get major ink devoted to them, that are minor characters in the movies or left out altogether. And, instead of telling the stories of the group of protagonists as children and then as adults separately, the book jumps back and forth between 1958 and 1985 (which was the present day when the novel was written), many times even in the same chapter, so it made following the story difficult, especially when reading at night getting tired (i.e., if you are one who reads before bed to help yourself wind down and fall asleep). And the story shifts, being told from different points of view, again sometimes within the same chapter. Those things, along with the book's length (1153 pages) and the fact that the lengths of the chapter breaks are inconsistent, make it harder to read than some of King's other novels. There were definitely things from the book that could never have been done in live-action and/or were just unnecessary to add to the movies. One of the biggest was the very controversial act of having all the boys have sex with Beverly when they were kids. That got turned into their blood pact at the end of the first movie because it would have been illegal to film and at least skeevy to even infer in a movie version.
It is hard to say how anyone will feel about the novel as compared to either the mini-series or the movies. That, of course, is totally subjective. I am generally a person who enjoys novels more than I do the live-action adaptations of novels because invariably, things have to get cut out, especially for movie adaptations, and especially when the novels are done first. However, I liked both the mini-series and the movie versions of It more than the book (possibly because I saw both long before ever reading the book) and totally understand why the things that were cut out in live-action were removed. That said, if you are a fan of King and/or a fan of the story because of either the mini-series or the movies, this is definitely worth at least trying to read to see how it compares.
I will not go into too much of the story because chances are anyone looking to get the book by now is at least aware of the basic idea. But, I will say that the novel is very different from the live-action adaptations, which makes it challenging to even hard read at times, even for people who have good reading comprehension skills and are fast readers. There are a ton of characters in the book that get major ink devoted to them, that are minor characters in the movies or left out altogether. And, instead of telling the stories of the group of protagonists as children and then as adults separately, the book jumps back and forth between 1958 and 1985 (which was the present day when the novel was written), many times even in the same chapter, so it made following the story difficult, especially when reading at night getting tired (i.e., if you are one who reads before bed to help yourself wind down and fall asleep). And the story shifts, being told from different points of view, again sometimes within the same chapter. Those things, along with the book's length (1153 pages) and the fact that the lengths of the chapter breaks are inconsistent, make it harder to read than some of King's other novels. There were definitely things from the book that could never have been done in live-action and/or were just unnecessary to add to the movies. One of the biggest was the very controversial act of having all the boys have sex with Beverly when they were kids. That got turned into their blood pact at the end of the first movie because it would have been illegal to film and at least skeevy to even infer in a movie version.
It is hard to say how anyone will feel about the novel as compared to either the mini-series or the movies. That, of course, is totally subjective. I am generally a person who enjoys novels more than I do the live-action adaptations of novels because invariably, things have to get cut out, especially for movie adaptations, and especially when the novels are done first. However, I liked both the mini-series and the movie versions of It more than the book (possibly because I saw both long before ever reading the book) and totally understand why the things that were cut out in live-action were removed. That said, if you are a fan of King and/or a fan of the story because of either the mini-series or the movies, this is definitely worth at least trying to read to see how it compares.
No comments:
Post a Comment