IT, CHAPTER TWO
I finished this last night, jotted down my notes today. Yes, I watched all five hours on the same day.
Obvious spoilers in this, so... be warned.
Casting for the Adult Losers:
- Good: Bev, Richie, and Eddie. They all fit the book characters well, plus align with the kid cast. Bill Hader is like a perfect cast for Richie.
- Adequate: Mike, Stanley, Ben. I might budge to Good for Ben, as he actually COULD be the kid Ben from film #1 if he thinned out, in terms of appearance. He's just so different from book Ben.
- Bad: James McAvoy as Bill. I am not sure how others feel about it, but I felt like he only got cast for the name recognition. Two different names that come to mind are either Michael Shannon (who is actually just outside the right age but unfortunately usually looks older) OR Tobey Maguire. I think Maguire would have had the low-key charisma to pull off the role satisfactorily. There are probably others. I still don't understand why someone thought "McAvoy" when this film was cast, aside from maybe him coming off his victory in Split.
The scene
the gay couple is attacked on the Derry bridge is pretty close to the books and horrific.
The
openings (Mike calling each person in turn) is condensed in this film from the books but typically does capture the essence. They even manage to get the tone right for Bev, and Chastain shows both vulnerability and strength, hinting at how she fell in with an abusive partner but could still win herself free. In particular, Bev's and Eddie's partners are very much like their respective parents (in fact the same actress who plays Eddie's mom also plays his wife); when abuse situations aren't resolved, people tend to gravitate back into similar relationships out of familiarity because it's what they know even if it's worse, due to the need for predictability.
The table banter at the
Chinese restaurant is really great, I laughed naturally along with it; the way it's scored and shot has overtones of the Blood Pact scene. I think the film might oversell the mess with the fortune cookies; it's good but maybe a little much and almost moves into absurdity.
A new scene (I think?) occurs with
victim Rebecca lured under the bleachers by IT; it is particularly horrific because (1) she susses him out as untrustworthy, because she's smart, so (2) IT plays off her compassion to get her to come back, and then also offers her something she really wants so she can fit in. It is so well done but it also leaves me feeling sick to my stomach. It's kind of on par with Doctor Sleep where the psychic vampires snuff the baseball kid in terms of visceral reaction.
The smokehouse scene from the book got translated into a drugged vision instigated by Mike, revealing IT's origin and "The Ritual of Chud" -- although the ritual is changed for the film from the book. They even included the Hatch room where the smokehouse was carried out, so not sure what gives.
This is the point where the film series to me skids off the rails. There are some notable changes from the book which I am semi-okay with (like Mike not being laid up in the hospital by Bowers, so he can go with them into the sewers -- although the purpose in the book was to ratchet tension as the Losers are dwindling in number, the Circle broken further). However, it feels very much like they wanted to just put their own stamp on King's story, so they threw out stuff that existed for stuff that didn't really add anything new or useful. Why exactly?
The "quest for individual tokens" is useful in bringing in at least two scenes from the book,
Bev visiting her old apartment, and Richie seeing Paul Bunyan -- I think both of these happen in the book but before they meet for dinner at the Chinese restaurant, but they've been placed here instead. I don't recall whether Eddie's scene in the drugstore basement was in the book or any of the others, but they typically run way too long honestly. Splitting up the Losers after they are brought back together really kills the pacing of the story and makes for a semi-tedious middle of the film.
Also, these tend to use the same repeatedly horror elements we've already seen + the typical pace of Muschetti's jump scares, so they become predictable and not much fun.
I think the whole subplot with Bill meeting the kid in the streets + then him stupidly running off on his own to the Hall of Mirrors is entirely dumb and should have been cut. it adds nothing new to the story. Was this a condition of McAvoy being involved -- that he get his own scenes or something?
So after a kind of underwhelming middle, they get into the sewers finally and head through the wooden door. In this case, the finale action takes place in the impact crater of IT's ship millennia prior. This leads to another stupid plot point involving Mike deceiving the group -- which is jarring, undermines Mike's character, and doesn't seem like him in the least because he's the most reliable and methodical of all the Losers as the group historian and the Derry watchman. It's just lame.
Next, the deadlights come down (again, I get the difficulty in determining what the deadlights are -- it reminds me a lot in the book of something from Jack Kirby's New Gods comics decades ago with the huge wall at the edge of Eternity behind... what exists?) and IT appears. It's a giant spider/crab monster in form here and this part becomines a chase + another series of moments where they are thrown individually into their own private horrors to overcome. Bill and Bev get out together to escape their feelings of always being alone; Bill overcomes his own guilt over Georgie's death, realizing it's the boy in him that is always accusing him of something he actually had no control over, and all he was in the end was human if anything; and so forth. The thing is, all these sequences tend to be way overblown and melodramatic, and I didn't realy feel much while watching aside from maybe laughter (like when a bunch of faces from Bev's past try to break into the bathroom stall she is in).
Eventually we get to Richie putting IT on the ropes, then getting deadlighted, then Eddie skewers it with an amazing spearcast, but then he virtually poses on a downed Richie crowing about his victory for long seconds until IT skewers him (duh). So now we're in the final endgame with Eddie down.
This final squence, I'm actually cool with -- it makes sense, IT is susceptible to whatever form IT is in (and has been a clown for a LONG time), and in the end clowns are just fake empty laughter and have no real ability to scare if it's truly understand they are just veneer with nothing substantial underneath. IT also is revealed to thrive on fear and response, so when things stop fearing it, it can't survive. The clown is an entertainer after all, but without a believing audience, what power does it have? So as they deride and humiliate IT, it shrinks and dwindles until it's just a pathetic little mewling creature, until they squish its heart like in the book. (In this case, IT's final words are actually good compared to the first film.)
After this brief glimpse of goodness in the finale, things start to swing down again. Another visit to the quarry (Good), an admission from Richie (a change from the book but still fine, and it also mirrors THIS film's opening), but then at the end:
1. They DON'T forget this time. (This feels like a huge cop-out, a huge feeling of bittersweetness of the book is that you can't go back, you can just know that at one point you were a child and had friends you loved as life itself). It's amazing how one line of dialogue can completely make a film no longer feel like an adaptation.
2. Worse, the Stan apologetics retcon him into a hero -- somehow, as terrified as he was after the phone call, instead of suiciding in despair (this is a huge premise of the book and one of the first real big shocks contributing to how awful IT must be), he has time to write individual letters by hand to a bunch of people who he didn't even remember ten minutes earlier (with addresses, even!) and drop them in the mail somehow (like the police and his wife wouldn't get these letters back to see what he was doing that night?) to explain why he was rationally taking himself out of play as a strategic move, as to not undermining their battle with IT since he didn't think he could hack it. WTF?? This is all meant to somehow make Stan into a good guy, but it undermines so much of the narrative and his personality and the tone of the film.
Stan could not handle ambiguity; Stan was terrified; Stan wussed out repeatedly as a kid and was a timid adult; Stan killed himself to avoid a hell he had once experienced as a child and was now even less suited to handle. what is with this crap?
3. Finally, as the film ends with Stan's monolog from his letter, he talks about how they are losers and will always be losers. This is supposed to be.... meaningful somehow? But as the last line of the film, it doesn't have the proper tone and actually doesn't feel inspiring at all. It feels like the film is calling them all loser as in being losers.
It's pretty rare to see an adaptation with some really decent stuff that so much drops the ball in the final part of the story, but hey here you go. I don't know WTF they were thinking, and it makes it hard to invest emotionally in a film that ends poorly. I'd rather they botched the middle and nail the end, if they need to mess up something. Audience response shows this.
King had 1100 pages of material. A lot of the changes were unnecessary or made no sense. And don't change the tonal ending. At least the TV show ended with the right idea, even if the last ten minutes felt rushed and silly at times.
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