We All Float Down Here - IT (September 2017)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > We All Float Down Here - IT (September 2017)

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

BiggerBoat posted:

Same. I honestly can't think of an ending that might be satisfying and not ridiculous and the ending of the book itself is already its weakest element. Gangbangs and space turtles aren't gonna work. I like the idea someone had in this thread where you wind up with some sort of clown spider and I can picture that - where Pennywise just keeps evolving into increasingly more monstrous forms culminating in this giant spider with a few weird, subtle clown elements.

Sounds like a Final Fantasy endboss.

:getin:

# ¿ Apr 14, 2017 16:03

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 12:30

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

It, the thing towards the end of the Dark Tower books, and the Crimson King are meant to be relatives. It would have helped if the Crimson King was developed better.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 00:13

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

Basebf555 posted:

The Crimson King seems to be some sort of demon spawn, and Stephen King always has made a distinction between the Prim, which is like his version of Hell and where demons live, and Todash space, which is like a dimensionless void between the worlds that is home to more Lovecraftian, incomprehensible monsters. A todash monster chases Roland and his group towards the end of The Dark Tower, and it bears a strong resemblance to the monsters that come out of the portal that is created by the Arrow Project in The Mist.

The Crimson King is like the Devil, he appears to rule over all the creatures from the Prim, but we don't really know for sure where IT and Dandelo(the IT like creature from The Dark Tower) originate from. Its very possible they're Todash monsters that aren't really directly connected with the Crimson King at all.

The comic series goes into a little more detail, showing flashbacks to Arthur Eld's court being corrupted by shapeshifters from the Prim. The Crimson King is the result of Eld getting in on with one of them, which is why he has a claim to be the heir of Eld and to return everything to the Prim.

The Prim is sort of weird, though; it's more a primordial magic that came before things had concrete form than something purely evil. But shapeshifters originate from it, and being that their nature is to be fluid in terms of form, that makes them hard to classify. There is a common association with spiders between It, the Crimson King, and Mordred, the King/Roland/Susannah's child.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 23:48

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

davidspackage posted:

Even if he tries, King's works don't really hold up to worldbuilding, so trying to puzzle it out is kind of pointless. I always took the cross references in his books as easter eggs, not parallels.

Also still kind of pissed that the last Dark Tower books discount Insomnia because he didn't want the Crimson King to be a threatening figure anymore

Insomnia's world building was pretty sweet; I like to think that level of metaphysical awareness is only accessible to the sleep deprived.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2017 06:43

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Why would a little girl even troll about that? There's nothing about that tweet that isn't deeply unsettling.

Her troll game is strong.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 04:06

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

davidspackage posted:

loving kids, how do they float

# ¿ Jul 28, 2017 00:48

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

Super Fan posted:

I had forgotten how weird it gets. That whole turtle/macroverse stuff is a little out there for my tastes.

Oddly enough, those are the best parts of Insomnia.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 22:15

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

Did I just miss it somehow, or does the clip not have the "we all float" line?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2017 08:26

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

All work and no play makes Yaws a dull boy.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2017 05:05

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

Omnikin posted:

It's because It IS Derry. He crash landed millions of years ago and when people settled they were tainted by his powers. Everyone there is slowly being brainwashed or something to that effect- they're all hosed up in base ways that don't require active intervention from IT to take over/convince them to turn a blind eye.

The kids are right about the age to be able to percieve It as Lavos during the final showdown as adults...

:getin:

# ¿ Aug 31, 2017 10:21

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 12:30

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 246 days!

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's important to avoid 'CineD Subtext Game' pseudo-critique where you take the basic plot and then play a mad-libs substitution. Like, the good kids are friends and murder a bad clown, so let's say the clown represents adulthood - or the opposite: let's say the clown represents immaturity. That the clown can be made to represent anything, in this way, is what bamboozles people ITT and gets them thinking that it's all a postmodern game (to be reacted against with a 'return to values').

The truth about IT is, instead, in IT's form/function. As Frederic Jameson wrote about JAWS, the shark does not represent nature or immigration, or whatever. It represents all those things, and yet none of them.

"The vocation of the symbol - the killer shark - lies less in any single message or meaning than in its very capacity to absorb and organize all of these quite distinct anxieties together. As a symbolic vehicle, then, the shark must be understood more in terms of its essentially polysemous function rather than as any particular content attributable to it by this or that spectator."

In other words, IT is a figure of a master-signifier that everyone seemingly agrees is real (and must be eliminated), and yet no-one can actually define IT. IT is a mix of contradictory, even incompatible traits - and there are only two explanations for this inconsistency: that IT is merely a person and/or that IT is ''The Jew", the figure from antisemetic fantasy.

"The function of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we can in a way trade all these fears for one fear alone. In this way, our experience of reality gets much simpler."
^-Zizek

Nobody talks about the scene where Ritchie gets locked in a room full of clown dolls and then slowly approaches a casket. This is because, first, it sucks. It's like a placeholder scene that you can tune out. But second, it's because the scene is a very banal illustration of fantasy at its purest: the fantasy of being present for one's own funeral - the fantasy of becoming a disembodied gaze and observing one's own nonexistence . Ritchie sees clown dolls (as opposed to actual people in makeup) because he is imagining that he has become a ghost and transcended humanity (so he can look down at his own corpse, bemused that he himself was such a pathetic toy).*

Of course Pennywise then jumps out and yells 'ooga booga', and it's almost deliberately idiotic. We trade all the anxieties for one big fear, right?

I haven't seen this version yet, but this is sort of King's explicit point with the character. The name gives "It" away; the creature is all the "others" which the adults of Derry (America) imagine to be threats to their children rather than identify the threat with themselves, or even as themselves, seen through the eyes of those children.

The closest thing to a single referent for It is moral panic. The threat to America's children is *checks notes* Satanic ritual abuse! Of course It is a shapeshifter.

Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Sep 29, 2017

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 17:40

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > We All Float Down Here - IT (September 2017)