Comparison of the movie to the miniseries and which did you prefer?

I prefer the miniseries even despite its somewhat dated and made-for-tv production values. Tim Curry just knocked it out of the park. His pennywise still creeps me out after all these years. The new pennywise wasn't really scary and there was too much CGI.

Hard for me to compare...you just can't do things from the book in the mini-series...but the R rated movie did do it justice...liked what they changed and what they left in...pumped for chapter 2...hell,they do it right and they could have 3 maybe 4 chapters

I think the film is overall better than the miniseries but I thought Curry's IT was scarier or more traumatizing as he does come across as a genuine clown one minute and a creepy psychopathic IT the next. I also liked Brandis as Bill than the newer one (though Jaeden was good too, I just think Brandis would've been better) and wonder how great he would've been if he came out in this film at his age in 1990. But the 2017 film's character development overall is better and liked the development of the character Richie in this newer version as well as the setup for the characters of Beverly and Ben, as well as the others. The one flaw 2017 IT has is it simply isn't scary, aside from the opening scene with Georgie.

I just don't think kids today would be as traumatized as most kids were when we first saw IT the miniseries on tv.

I never liked the miniseries but It's been 20 years since I saw it. Now after seeing the movie I'm interested in checking out how the miniseries has held up, not well I suspect. I loved the movie and I'm very excited about the second part.

I think both the first part of the miniseries and the movie are equally great (if you ignore the adult sections, which are cheesy as hell for the most part).

Tim Curry's performance in the miniseries is iconic and can't be beaten. Though it was refreshing to see the way Bill Skarsgård played a sort of 'updated' version of the character. Both are scary in their own way! Tim makes the miniseries genuinely unsettling in places, and you truly believe the kids are scared of him. Certain scare scenes in the miniseries are also iconic in themselves, like the Eddie scene where the shower heads attack him and Pennywise comes out of the drain. Tim's voice and laugh are also amazing. Though the whole cast for part 1 do a stellar job. The casting of the kids was as perfect as the movie.

The two areas the movie easily beats the miniseries is humour and emotion. The movie was a lot funnier than anyone was expecting! Like when all the guys are just staring at Bev like she's an alien from another world. :p and Richie's dialogue is funny, unlike in the miniseries (and, indeed, the book) where he is mostly annoying. I also really liked the way they did the Ben/Bev relationship.

Damn, my answer for this is long...Oh well. Main thoughts - movie = just okay, miniseries = great and holds up, book = not relevant here.

The mini-series is made up of a great balance of small intimate moments that either highlight the characters’ personal and very real issues and/or their inner fears, and scary moments. It does so much with so little and that's what made it scary. With just sheets on a clothesline and a fallen tricycle, you get such a strong impression of how terrifying IT is and can be – and you see nothing. A balloon in the back of a car or a deck of cards holds so much meaning.

The film didn't have those kinds of moments. The kids are barely friends and are really underdeveloped as characters - except for Beverly. It could have been renamed Beverly Marsh and the Creeps of Derry and that would have been a fitting title. It was bleak, moody and atmospheric with some interesting effects, but not scary. The kids not being scared really killed any stakes, which killed any hope of payoff.

It follows the coming-of-age summer movie formula, where friends sit by a lake for a bit, meet a 'hot' girl, have a fight, and make up at the end for no real reason and are somehow "changed". But there also was a killer clown no one cared about and loads of crass jokes that were funny, but out of place. Usually the kids in movies like this are teens - these kids seem kinda young.

The miniseries was all about what drives our fears, and how friendship helps us overcome them. The movie was about how kids need to grow up fast to survive the lack of humanity in the world - which, however true, is impossible given that most kids aren't even allowed to go outside on their own for a majority of their childhood.

I tend to wonder if I would have cared if any or all of the kids had died at the end of the movie. The answer is, scarily, no.