All 4 It Adaptations, Ranked (with Welcome to Derry)

You'll float, too.

I know, I know. I should've published this right after Welcome to Derry. But I am currently in a Stephen King phase (which happens once or twice every single year) and I decided to buckle up and watch the 1990 IT miniseries for the first time. So I have now watched all of the adaptations of Stephen King's epic horror tale, and I want to rank them. Maybe it's because I'm in my Stephen King phase or maybe it's just because I love It. I actually considered including the book on this list, but it's such a different medium and it'd so obviously be number one that I can't put it on here. But if it were to be on here, it'd be number one. Anyways, here's my ranking of all four adaptations of It.

4. Stephen King's IT

Tim Curry is great, but this miniseries just does not hold up

Depending on the edition, the It novel is about 1,150 pages long. It typically takes a reader 40 hours to finish. So, naturally, this is what happens when you condense a story this massive into a three-hour miniseries. Now, nobody wants a forty-hour adaptation, but you simply cannot capture everything the book has to offer in three hours. On top of that, the budget ABC was given to produce this thing just did not do it any favors. This feels like a watered-down, PG-ized version of It, and for that, it's just tough to really call this a good adaptation. Where it does succeed is in Tim Curry's Pennywise, who is a really different portrayal from Skarsgård. In the book, Pennywise lands somewhere between the two movie versions: he's more human than Skarsgård and more alien than Curry, so it's nice that we have these two portrayals. Curry just commands the screen with this friendly charm that can so quickly turn to absolutely terrifying menace. He's so good at changing his face to scare you, and that really makes the character unsettling.

I also do think the first half of this miniseries is good. It's not great, but the kids do a good job of feeling like the Losers' Club and you get that sense of camaraderie and friendship that the book captures so well. I think it loses some power just becuase you don't really get this grand-feeling scale, but it's still solid. The second half? Different story. Some of the adult actors (looking at you, Richie and Bill) are rough and the whole thing just feels paced awfully. Like, all the Losers come back and Pennywise threatens them. Then they have the dinner. Then they basically just sit around and talk for an hour before fighting that absolutely atrocious stop-motion spider in the end. I think ths would be remembered more positively if the second half wasn't terrible, but as it stands, this is a very subpar adaptation of It.

3. It: Chapter Two

The second half of the story is still fun, but ultimately falls short in the execution

The fact of the matter is that the second half of It is just not as good as the first half. Or, rather, the adult story is not as good as the kid story (in the book, they take place simultaneously, which I think works best). The kids have this wondrous innocence to them that makes the whole story so much more powerful. The adults...ehhhh, not as much. And, of course, the ending of the novel is so wacky and absolutely inadaptable to the big screen, so the various movies have struggled to land the ship perfectly.

Where It: Chapter Two does work is in the performances. It is uncanny how well they cast these actors to portray the adult versions of these kids. James Ransone (rest in peace) looks disturbingly like an older Jack Dylan Grazer. And they are so good at feeling like the grownup versions of these kids, too. The movie is too long. It plays out very episodically. And the final battle with Pennywise is a different kid of bad than the miniseries. This movie probably could've been great: shorten the runtime, fix the awkward comedic beats, and give it a satisfying finale, and you've got a sequel that lives up to the hype...but as it stands, It: Chapter Two is a fun, if underwhelming, adpatation of the adult story.

2. It

The modern-day adaptation mixes the book's heart and horror beautifully

I think It is one of the best horror movies of the past ten or even twenty years. What this story does so beautifully is blend the coming-of-age aspect of something like Stand by Me with this existential, cosmic horror that is Pennywise. The Losers' Club is absolutely perfect in this film. Sure, Stan and Mike get the short end of the stick, but the other five feel like they are ripped right out of the pages of King's novel and on to the screen. The movie focuses on being a coming-of-age story first, and I think that benefits it in both the storytelling and the scares.

But what makes this film iconic and great is, of course, Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise the Dancing Clown. I have not been alive for the birth of many horror icons, but I remember when this movie came out and how terrified everyone was of this version of Pennywise. He is so unnatural in everything that he does and manipulates, and it just makes him one of the best (and scariest) villains of all time. If It is a great coming-of-age story because of the young cast, it's also a great horror movie because of it's titular evil clown. I wish there was less CGI in the scares and I think we could've honestly used more runtime to establish a few of the Losers better (*cough* Stan and Mike *cough), but otherwise, this is a great film.

1. It: Welcome to Derry

The perfect encapsulation of the themes of It...with the scariest Pennywise we've ever seen

It is one of my favorite books of all time, and nothing has captured the essence of the novel quite like Welcome to Derry. Sure, the movies do a great job of giving us the epic battle between the Losers' Club and Pennywise, but Welcome to Derry explores the deep-seeded themes that make the book so iconic. Derry itself is this decaying town that is basically controlled by Pennywise. He influences so much of the horrors that happen there...but he also feasts on all of the human horror around him, and Welcome to Derry is so good at making sure the audience knows that. On top of that, this is the scariest and most unhinged we've ever seen Pennywise. Skarsgård gives it his absolute all and delivers one of the most unsettling performances I've ever seen in this show. Even more unsettling than either movie.

I also love that this series did not shy away from being different. We spend almost five full episodes without seeing Pennywise, so there had to be creative scares, creative characters, creative ways to build tension. Now, of course, the show gets significantly better when Pennywise shows up, but it really did a great job of building out lovable characters and a believable conflict that gets even more horrifying when It takes the form of the clown. The entire Black Spot sequence was one of the best things I've seen on TV since Running Up That Hill. Like, it was just the perfect encapsulation of It and Stephen King in general. I cannot wait to see where they go with this show in the future. As it stands, it's my personal favorite of the It adaptations.