It: Chapter Two

It ends.

Reviewing a film based upon my favorite horror book of all time can be a pretty tricky task. On the one hand, you have 1,138 pages of Stephen King's magnus opus, and on the other, a groundbreaking Argentinian filmmaker that hit the jackpot with It three years ago. Let's remember the author himself said "I wasn't prepared for how good it really was". In addition, if you were a fan of the made for TV It movies from 1990, you now know those two films were slayed to death with this fine update.

Although Stephen King's IT novel is more of back and forth from adult to kid and back and forth from adult to kid and so on, It: Chapter 2 should be looked at like it's the 2nd half of one big story, which is exactly what it is rather than a sequel. It's really not a sequel. Just like the 2nd half or "adult half" of the 1990 TV Miniseries/movie is not a sequel, it's just the 2nd half of one big story/movie. Let's face it, unless they're the Godfather Part 2, Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, and maybe a couple of other big time hit sequels, the sequel almost always gets hated on, critiqued to death, disregarded as "unoriginal", "same old same old", "not very creative", treated like the "intruder", etc etc....it's the same for 90% of remakes..but people need to realize and understand that IT : Chapter 2 is not a sequel and that IT : Chapter 1 and IT : Chapter aren't remakes to the 1990 TV minseries/movie either.

The losers club is forever...

...after.

Secondly, almost every negative review on Rotten Tomatoes or YouTube or on the Internet somewhere have complaints about the runtime of 2 hours and 49 minutes and that it's "too long" and "there are no superheroes on it". I don't see how you can make this whole story put to film not be at least 5+ hours long (Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 combined)..at the VERY least. The novel is over 1,100 pages long ! 1,138 pages to be exact. "IT" should have been a 10-15 1 hour episode series on Netflix to be done properly, to be honest..but if you go the cinema route with it (and they did, obviously), between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, it has to be, at the very least, 5 hours or so if the Director or Writers want to be even remotely faithful to King's novel and make fans of King and the novel at least somewhat satisfied. And you also have 7 protagonists..SEVEN..6 of which are main protagonists. That's A LOT character developing and character story arcs that have to be told and take place unless you want a lazily and poorly directed and written film with terrible story telling and bad or no/next to no character development.

This film delivers great character development and great character and story arcs for all of the main protagonists/characters of the film. This film is really entertaining overall. There are pacing issues but those really seem minor when you step back and look at this film as a whole. This film was really good on it's own and holds up very well on it's own. Yes, it relied on Chapter 1 some, obviously, because Chapter 1 is part of the overall story (Again, it's NOT a sequel. I'm really talking about how well Chapter 2 is made when saying "it's really good on it's own) but when you put Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 together and make it one big story/film like it should be, it's AWESOME. Pennywise is also at his most serious and gruesome in this one. This one doesn't cut away just as someone or a helpless kid is about to get bitten or eaten until after you see and hear plenty enough, if you know what I mean. More gore in this one. It definitely earns every bit of it's R rating. Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, Bill Skarsgard, and James Mcavoy are excellent, especially Hader and Skarsgard. Nobody was bad though..everyone was, at least, good. The CGI was also much better in this one..of course it would be though because it had a much bigger budget to work with than Chapter 1 did.

Red balloons are coming.

I've missed you losers.

Horror wise, there really isn't much to scare a 37 year old adult. However, this film not only made me jump off my seat four times, but also made my brave wife get a few scares as well as everyone in the theater. Although these scenes rely on the unexpected, they seem to work pretty well for me. Especially in how they devised the concept of scary intertwined with universally disgusting special effects. Still, this film is more about personal fears than actual monsters from outer space. Which leads me to a confusing question, is the film better than the book? or is the film as good as the film? To me it's a difficult question to answer. On the one hand we have an already established world by Stephen King's immense talent. On the other, we have Andy Muschietti's bullseye visual realization of the earlier. I could go on for hours, but I'll just say that this is probably one of the few films where you get something new that is as good as the source material.  The losers club is obviously the best part of both the book and these films. I cannot help but to be transported back to the 80's where My friends and I lived some of the coolest adventures kid can live. We'd visit parks, build forts, walk under bridges to find treasures, hunt imaginary monsters in abandoned houses, ride bikes, believe we were more grown up than we actually were and more importantly, stick together and try to make each other's lives happier and complete. 

It chapter two, it's not really a horror movie. Like the book, it's about growing up and discovering that the monster under our beds, it's actually very real, very human made. Conquering our fears it's the most human task we face throughout our lives, and this film clearly has that love for what once made us innocent kids, and eventually for what made us grown ups who should remember what matters.

Clowns?, again?

Nope, nope, nope.

Plot wise, the movie takes place (just like the book does) 27 years later, and the losers club have all moved out of Derry to lead relatively successful lives. Mike's the only one who's stayed in town, and it's the one to make the phone call to bring back the team to finish what they started. Nevertheless, and like the in the book, Derry plays a key role in the film as well. Prejudice, stereotype and hate speech are the very foundations of this small town, and here's where the book deserves its masterpiece label: Don't we humans fear what we don't understand? Of course we do! And this is where both the film and novel bring their most important lesson: Conquer your fears or be consumed by them forever. If you're afraid, you'll never move on, you'll never be free. Once every losers club member returns to Derry, they have to perform the Ritual of Chüd.

Following the Losers’ Club reunion at the Jade of the Orient and their discovery that Stan has died, in a scene that diverges from the book, Mike takes Bill to the library in hopes of convincing him that it’s possible to defeat It once and for all. Once there, Mike drugs Bill’s drink with a hallucinogenic root that was given to him by a Native American tribe he visited to try to learn more about It. He goes on to reveal that he spent several years chasing down every possible lead on It, a search that led him to the descendants of the Native Americans who inhabited the future site of Derry at the time of It’s arrival.

Back in business.

Do you want a balloon?

Mike then pulls out a Native American artifact that he stole from the tribe, which is covered in markings that reveal the origins of It. What follows is a trippy animated sequence in which Bill sees a vision of It crash-landing on Earth in an event similar to an asteroid impact. Although It arrives in its true form of the Deadlights, Bill watches as It transforms into a bird before rapidly shifting between a number of grotesque forms while preying upon the ancestors of the Native American tribe that Mike sought out. The tribe is then shown standing around the artifact as a fire burns inside it, signifying that they are performing the Ritual of Chüd. Unfortunately, they are only able to trap It with the ceremony instead of killing It for good. (Or so Mike says — more on that later.)
Mike is convinced that if the Losers recreate the ritual, they will be able to stop It’s reign of terror forever. But to do this, they first need to each collect a token from their childhood that they can burn inside the artifact. These "tokens" are nothing but a symbol to what they held on for too long. In order to make it, they have to "let go" of these things. In a way, they're saying goodbye to a part of their childhood so that they can make room for newer adventures in the adult life. 

The scene from the movie in which Mike explains the Ritual of Chüd to Bill is based on a chapter in King’s book in which the child Losers decide to perform an “Indian ceremony” that involves filling up their clubhouse with smoke to create a “smoke-hole.” Once the others can no longer endure the smoke, Mike and Ritchie are left alone inside the clubhouse, and both experience a vision of It’s arrival on Earth. In the book, there are no Native Americans who teach Mike about the Ritual of Chüd. It’s only mentioned in passing that the idea for the smoke-hole came from a book about Native Americans that Ben was reading while researching It.

Cycling to the red carpet.

The ending sucked.

Now, if there's a couple of changes I didn't like, I'd say it'd be not having Audra & Tom. Audra's presence in the novel is key to portraying the way in which Bill never got over his childhood crush on Bev, to the point that Bill wondered if Audra's resemblance to Bev is why he married her. She was taken captive by the IT-controlled Tom, and her rescue guided Bill's increased compulsion to destroy the evil entity. Not to mention the novel's epilogue featured Audra being pulled out of her coma after Bill took her for a bike ride on Silver. In IT Chapter Two, Audra is shown during Adult Bill's intro, in which she poked fun at the endings of his books...and that's about it.

While Audra's absence can be justified for the live-action adaptation, it was a much bigger movie sin to chop out so much of Beverly's abusive husband Tom. Don't get me wrong, his intro scene was a disturbing slice of domestic anti-bliss that didn't need to be echoed ad nauseam, but removing him from the bulk of the adult characters' stories definitely weakened Bev's character development. Movie audiences aren't fully able to comprehend Bev's cyclical life choices, and why she would end up marrying someone whose barbaric actions so closely resemble those of her father Al. As well, Tom's absence waters down the importance behind Bev's choice to finally leave him behind to return to Derry.

Do you want a picture?

It through the looking glass of despair.

The other big change, somehow linked to the above mentioned absence of Audra is the little to no use of Silver the bike. The first film did a decent-if-not-great job at relaying Bill's dependence on the bike, and his belief in its overall power. However, even though IT Chapter Two sets up Bill rediscovering Silver at a pawn shop – which features one of Stephen King's most prominent film cameos – the bike is more of afterthought mode of transportation as opposed to being Bill's re-strengthened connection to the blinded imagination beliefs of childhood that were so vital to weakening IT's power. Plus, viewers also missed out on the novel's sweet visual scare when Bill and Mike were putting playing cards in Silver's spokes.

Throughout the film, there are a couple of references to Bill not knowing how to give  a proper ending to his novels. This, was one of the biggest critiques Stephen King received for It. The novel ending was somewhat bittersweet for its surviving protagonists, in that defeating IT did not stop everyone's Derry-related memories from fading away once they got farther from the disturbing small town. Ben and Bev became romantically involved, which was a win, but it was made clear that they would all once again forget about IT's reign of terror, as well as their once-in-a-lifetime friendships. Meaning there might not be anyone to mourn Eddie's death in the weeks and months that followed. That notion is avoided during IT Chapter Two, which sets up that the survivors maintained their memories in the time after everyone had moved on from Derry. After all, that's how Bill and Mike were able to grasp the importance of Stan's self-sacrifice, which would have been the most random letter to get had no one remembered who Stan was. Perhaps it's a shame that they all have to live with those supernatural traumas for the rest of their days, but hopefully they can find equal amounts of happiness knowing that their actions changed the world.

It's called toothpaste, have you heard of it before?

Unicron? never heard of her!

Overall, It Chapter Two is a more than welcomed closure to a successfully unexpected remake that brought Andy Muschietti into the world of the most interesting film makers, and let's not forget he never works alone. His sister Barbara, produced both It films. While the future of It is sealed. Muschietti's future looks bright as he's directing DC Comics long awaited & postponed The Flash live action film. Robotech? You know that can't happen, so let it die already.

Teaser:




First trailer:



Second trailer: