My (Matt Hughes) concerns, nit-picks, and downright objections to IT: Chapter Two are, conveniently, in two parts.
Beef: Chapter One
The movie itself, how it was crafted, shot, and written.
IT: Chapter Two starts relatively well with a delightfully faithful rendition of Adrian's beating at the carnival and unceremoniously dumped into the canal by his attackers. The shot of Pennywise from under the water, the hundreds of balloons, and the screams of Adrian's boyfriend as a monster from beyond the stars devours Adrian's flesh were all spot on.
Then it started, and continued, to go very wrong.
Before each of the adult loser's establishing shots ended, I could already tell that we were in store for some egregious casting missteps.
The Old Spice guy started calling his childhood friends and from then until the end of the movie that's all I saw on screen, the Old Spice Guy. Despite the best, and not unimpressive, efforts by the make-up department, I was still waiting for him to tell me he was on a horse for the entire (lengthy) run time.
Casting one of the two obvious red-headed female actors working today as Bev seemed lazy. As if the casting director had never visited a prop closet and discovered the existence of wigs. So we ended up with Murph in a role that seemed to be either emotionally out of her reach or too blue-collar for her refined sensibilities.
Bill Hader has been, for a long time, my dream casting for adult Richie, and he did not disappoint. Except for the times when he was too funny. Too funny in a moment that should have been scary, but the wind was taken from those sails by an out of place gag.
James Ransone, an unknown entity to me before this movie, was an inspired piece of casting. In look, tone, and delivery he matched himself to Jack Dylan Grazer's young Eddie excellently. Ironically, however, the director failed to match young Grazer to himself in some heinous digital de-aging and poorly placed ADR.
Jay Ryan, as Ben was one of the worst choices I've seen in a while. From the moment we saw him complaining about adding walls in his design from the safety of a skype call in his giant glass-fronted house, I was not hopeful. He looked like a guy who used to stand outside Abercrombie and Fitch, and that that was all his acting experience.
Then we get to Macavoy.
I love me some Macavoy: Professor X, Split, The Last King of Scotland. There's no denying that he is a GOOD actor. Unfortunately, he was a crappy Bill Denbrough. From his strange non-specific accent to his (just like in part one) misplaced motivation, we ended up with someone designated as the leading man who did little to lead, either the Losers or us as the audience.
After a brief interlude of seeing our returning heroes together (minus Stan Uris, well played by Andy Bean) we spend the next hour slogging around Derry following one after the other in a constant drudge of cheap vignettes.
With that, we come to
Beef: Chapter Two
I love this book, in my top three King books, in my top five books of all time, for sure. I had some lingering concerns from Chapter One as I headed into the theater. I was confident that if the omissions and slight changes that had been present before were the levels of deviation I was about to encounter, all would be well.
All was not well.
My list of book to movie comparisons is long, and I am aware, tedious. Below are just some of the more egregious missteps I was privy to that fateful Thursday night.
We were teased and enticed from the get-go with some of the weirder, more cosmic, aspects of IT (the book) and IT(the creature) 's history.
Straight away, the filmmakers shied away from the esoteric. The smoke lodge sequence (a personal favorite from the book) got a watered-down and ineffective acknowledgment. Heck, we even got some semi-skimmed version of Chud in the same scene. Why spend all that time building the clubhouse and shooting the kids in it if not to establish the arrival of IT in the 80s? Was it a decision made once the kids got back on set and the true extent of their advancement through puberty became evident?
After throwing away one of the book's most magnificent set pieces, we limped along into Act 2. About a third of the movie's run time demanded that the cast of our ensemble movie be completely alone. All in the name of discovering a non-book plot point token for the ritual of Chud. Again, there's a time in the book where the adults go off to 'remember,' but it was a colossal mistake in pacing, along with excessive padding, to have it take as long as it did on screen.
The best part of an hour was spent watching adults break into dilapidated movie theaters, wander the halls of abandoned high-schools, and get stalked by a naked grandma. All while flashing back to scenes of their childhood selves. Scenes that held no fear or suspense as we knew that their child self survived the encounter to become this returning adult. Most of the scares offered up in these vignettes were silly, not scary. None more foolish than Eddie's battle with his leper. Culminating in a rousing swell of Angel of the Morning as he got covered in a fountain of black-green leper barf. If it wasn't bad enough that our disgust and fear was stolen, Deadpool 100% owns all gags with that song.
Finally, the Losers were back together (after pulling the punches of Henry Bowers' attack on Mike in the library, an attack that in the book puts Mike in Derry Home Hospital) and back down in the sewers. Not before once again forcing Bill to act rashly and on his own, a trait so far from the book's Bill it was almost less ridiculous than Pennywise's loony-tunes tongue in the hall of mirrors (FYI, that skateboard kid is in the book, and his survival and future safety are a point of triumph for the completion of Bill's character arc.)
Back together again, and things start to look up. We're there; IT is there, the symbol is on the door, Chud (albeit a weird and crappy version) is happening, and failing. Here we go, big spider time!
WRONG!
Before things can go the way I've been dreaming of, we have to take a detour to fix Bill again. At this point I'm so over Bill's mopey pity party I couldn't care less about him facing himself in his flooded basement, even though it was a joy to see Jaeden Martell back on screen.
While Bill is puppeting his dead brother around, Eddie and Richie are back in front of the three doors from Niebolt street. This moment, like so much else in the film, was inexplicably played for laughs. Why oh why did we need that Pomeranian to morph into the freaking Thing? We got an excellent nod to The Thing early with Stan's spider-head, this was just dumb. Butting that up against the real fear of drowning in blood, and being buried alive, made no editorial sense to me. Are we that worried about relieving tension we need a Lauryl and Hardy moment between Eddie and Richie during the finale? Why can't we just be scared?
Finally, we're down to brass tacks, of course not before Eddie tells himself at least three too many times to believe in the fence spike, and wings it into Pennywise's gaping maw. Good, Richie is back out of the deadlights (an honest to goodness welcome nod to the events of the book), and Pennywise is dead.
Except IT isn't, we now get to witness the surviving members of the Losers Club start bullying Pennywise to death. Five adults yelling clown until IT's head deflates like a five-day-old birthday party balloon. They crush its heart and leave (leaving Eddie behind, unlike in the book where they give a crap about their friend's corpse.)
Then they go home, forgetting everything, just like before. Oh, no, my bad, that would be an excellent ending full of melancholy and loss, just like the transition from childhood to adulthood. No, this screenwriter gave audiences a happy ending, and I can't even be mad about it. They told us it was coming the first time we met Bill on the film set.
Doesn't mean I have to like it (IT.)
Author: Matt Hughes
