It: Chapter 2 (Muschetti, September 2019) Movie • Page 26

It's worse

 

Read it read it read it.

 

Thought this was good. Is the opening part of the book? That was brutal.

Overall a little long and less scary but I enjoyed my time with it. The cast was great

 

Chapter 1 in the book is Georgie, Chapter 2 is Adrian Mellon, and Chapter 3 opens with Stans suicide. Book opens bleak as hell

 

I like how funny this was
I’m still laughing at James McAvoy yelling at that kid to leave town
Hader and Ransone were so awesome, they really mirrored their younger selves
Overall, this was fine. If it was 1/3 shorter I’d like it way more, there was just too much crammed in. Hated the cgi. Also the narrations were corny as hell, was not a fan of that

 

to those who have read the book: is the whole “making it small” by yelling “you’re a clown!” actually part of how they defeat it?

 

it's not... but the ending of the book is also rough and problematic haha, so while this isn't the best take on it, they did the best they could with what they had haha.

the meta jokes of Bill's book endings sucking were great, especially when you have that amazing cameo join in on that haha.

 

it's more a literal translation of one of the ideas of the book in that Pennywise is only as powerful as they make him. so no they don't actually yell at him to make him smaller in the book, but it's about as well as you can adapt that idea to the screen without going full dream sequence/cosmic turtle in your blockbuster film, imo

 

Smashing the heart was in the book though, only in a less Temple of Doom way.

 

I finally got to see this whole thing, admittedly under not great circumstances - I had to leave partway through and finish it at home in a low-quality stream. I suppose it felt like a continuation of Chapter 1 in that it had a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses of the first part, only this was the part of the story that was always going to suffer more from the decision to split the timelines the way they did. My biggest gripe with the entire adaptation is what they did to the character of Mike. I haven’t read the book in about 20 years and I don’t have any real emotional attachment to it, but the choices they made with that character are truly fucking baffling.

I know I need to watch this uninterrupted to get a true feel, but for me, the whole middle section of this film seriously lags. As much as I enjoyed seeing some things we didn’t get to see in Chapter 1, just sorta ramming them into this one really hurt the flow of Chapter 2 and lead to this film having a very wonky structure. Having the adult Losers split up and go on missions to find artifacts was a dumb idea and ended up being very repetitive and boring. Whether the characters were adults or children, the Losers all interacting with each other and bouncing off of each other is some of the most enjoyable stuff here in my opinion. Keeping them together on screen as much as possible seems like a no-brainer to me.

In general, I tend to like less CGI in my horror movies as I don’t tend to find it very scary. Subtle use of CGI can be very creepy and unsettling, but using a lot of CGI usually causes me to completely check out of the film and what is happening on screen and just kinda critique the FX work and think about the budget. Muschietti probably does about as well as anyone else in mainstream Hollywood of making CGI scary enough. The only person who jumps to mind as being a lot better at it for me is James Wan. Sometimes it works alright - like the Paul Bunyan statue attack - but other times it just comes off as silly, such as Mrs. Kersh’s naked attack on adult Bev, the latter of which is doubly disappointing because it really seems to miss the entire point of that scene, only paying quick lip-service to what is going on for Bev psychologically before devolving into CGI-augmented geriatric nudity silliness. The scene immediately following, which is just a close-up of Bill Skarsgard acting creepy AF with a little bit of makeup on, is 1000x more effective and so much scarier and more unsettling.

The opening with Adrian Mellon was extremely well done as a scene, but the film really fails to tie it into any overall theme about Derry, which is very disappointing. Also, I found it odd that the filmmakers were not afraid at all to use VERY hateful language in regards to sexual orientation, but completely and utterly avoid the race issue with Mike.

This came out a lot more negative than I meant it to. I did enjoy the film overall about as much as I did the first part. The cast is great, it is enjoyable overall, it is really funny, the ending was surprisingly emotionally affecting, and its was pretty scary in parts. I really do hope that Muschietti goes back and does a re-edit and turns the whole project into one long thing instead of two separate parts. It will not solve the biggest problems I have with what they have done here, but I do think it would improve both of the parts that we already got to see and make the whole thing a lot stronger.

 

I’ve thought about this a lot too.

 

I enjoyed this well enough, other than Bowers. I guess that is a complaint with the book tho. Also missed part of the ending due to everyone believing a shooter was in the theater. Fun times.

 

What didn’t you like about Bowers? Because depending on the issue it could very much be a movie problem instead of the book.

And that’s really awful about your showing, I’m so sorry you went through that. I feel like those fears/close calls are coming up all the time here lately.

 

How did Bowers get out of the well?

 

He floated out of the drain with all those other bodies, and I guess it’s up to the audience to figure out if that was Its doing or just bad luck after the battle. The teasing of his death is a pretty weird choice now that we know they were going to keep his story the same.

 

Yeah I definitely thought Mike killed Bowers in the first one

 

Oh duh, remember that now, had idiots talking so probably lost focus then.

 

The escape itself was fairly blink and you’ll miss it. I actually really liked that shot even if it was pretty headscratching.

 

Hader asking the kid if he wanted an autograph and the kid just going “I think I’m good” got a big laugh from me. That little dude was perfect

 

I honestly feel like they could have removed Bowers from the second film altogether and the film wouldn't have really suffered for it at all... Patrick Hoffstetter looked kinda cool in that storyline, so missing out on that would kinda be a shame I suppose, but otherwise...
I definitely need more viewings however, because one of my other main issues with the way they handled these stories is that I think they absolutely needed to make Derry more of a character itself and make its presence felt much more effectively than they did, so I don't really want to lose one of the only pieces of connective tissue that we did have.

I feel like both chapters could have been greatly improved if Muschietti trusted his very talented actors a little more - particularly Skarsgård - and relied on other types of gimmickry a little less. A lot of the CGI work is actually very good, and there are some extremely effective scares. Even a lot of the ‘jump scares’ so-to-speak are actually very well done - but by the end of the second film it gets to a point where, if I never have to see another scary-faced character jump quickly towards the camera while the soundtrack assaults my eardrums and the camera convulses wildly ever again as long as I live, I would be perfectly fine with that. That particular trick is very well played out by the time the credits roll on Chapter 2, and the few times where Muschietti doesn’t employ this tactic stand out as some of the most effective parts of these films.

I also missed how Bowers got out.

 

I found myself predicting the jump scares or reveals down to almost the second by about halfway through. That felt much more repetitive than part one.

Also, Patrick looked super creepy, and the car being included made me happy, but it was one of many examples of a scare that was only visual instead of including any dialogue or other dimensions to that fear.

 

patrick looked like a joke imo. literally a weird and jerky version of a cartoonish walking dead zombie. really bad. when he was behind the wheel i laughed at how dumb it looked.

 

Considering Bill referenced Indiana Jones in the beginning, I was expecting Richie to yell, “KALI MA, KALI MAA, KALI MAAAAAA!!”

 

So a lot of people reference the town of Derry itself being underrepresented in these movies and as someone who hasn't read the book and couldn't care less about spoilers, does anyone mind elaborating?

Like, is the whole town actually aware of Pennywise and just willfully ignore his existence? Do kids' parents look the other way when something happens to their children, while knowing the real truth?

 

They completely got me with that bleacher scene though. The way they held that unsettling close-up of his face for an extra beat or two was masterful I thought. It was juuust long enough where I thought maybe I had it wrong and then BAM.