I have been a HUGE Stephen King fan for twenty years and was naturally beyond excited when I found out that his classic novel (and my favourite of his novels) It was getting made into a big budget R-rated movie.
It was obviously already done before with the legendary 1990 made-for-tv movie, but given that it was made for tv, a lot of the more gruesome shit had to be left out. So when I found out it was being made into an R-rated movie for theatres, my big question was: will they include the gang bang between the 7 main 11-year-olds?
Well, I saw It tonight, and I am here to tell you that no, the totally weird sex scene from the book where the 6 main boys take turns busting their junior nuts in the 1 girl in their group doesn’t even come close to happening in the movie. In fact, a lot of the more messed up stuff from the book doesn’t occur in the movie, but, to be fair, I didn’t super expect it to.
The book It has a fuck ton of stuff that simply couldn’t translate onto film. I mean, from a legal standpoint, you probably can’t show a group of minors having totally weird group sex. On the other hand, a lot of the shit the kids see that scares them in the book would just look lame af on film because a lot of shit that scares kids looks pretty silly in real life.
For instance, when I was a kid I was scared of shower curtains. So don’t even get me started on how poorly that would translate into film.
In regards to my review of the movie, I give it two thumbs up, even though I was never actually scared. I mean, this Pennywise the clown was pretty dark and gruesome, but I never felt overly scared (maybe it’s because I recently re-read the book and was anticipating all the scary scenes, or maybe because I know under all that make-up Pennywise is actually MEGA hunk Bill Skarsgard), however, that doesn’t mean I don’t give the movie two mega thumbs up.
What it lacked in genuinely terrifying me, it made up for in just being a really great movie. The cast was phenomenal, it was drenched in nostalgia, giving me Stranger Things meets The Goonies meets…well…the original It, vibes.
It is expected to exceed expectations and make about $105 million at the box office this weekend, more than doubling the previous record for a horror movies opening weekend, which is super cool.
Was I terrified? No. Did I really enjoy it? Yes. Was I happy they left out the child sex scene? Dear God Yes.