IT: Chapter Two

Is Eddie still a fabulous queen?


  • Total voters
    10
Oh I agree about the length, I was getting very restless in the cinema. But what a great cast. James and Jessica were both excellent and the scene at the start had me shook.
 
I know I'm being somewhat hyperbolic giving it a 10 but I'm just SO happy with how that turned out. I can totally understand how these 5 star reviews are coming in.

It's just a thousand times better than the first. The scares are nearly all on point, it feels menacing and Pennywise feels less...silly (or maybe I'm just used to him now). Every single one of their flashbacks/token collecting scenes is brilliant.

And the adult casting is perfection - they all look like their child equivalents in some way, even now-fit-not-fat Ben, the face is weirdly similar. Somehow even mental and podgy Henry Bowers looked like his younger self. I actually gave a shit about all of them too. POOR Richie and my god at some of the Stan stuff :( A lovely little addition at the end that was fitting for the character and made him part of it all.

They did their best with the ending and it worked well enough for me. There's no easy way you can realistically convert the novel ending to tv/film accurately but they did a really good job and everything they added themselves was for the better. I loved the sheer amount of expensive set pieces too - the Beverley blood scene was beyond extravagance and fabulous for it.

It makes me want to read the book again and I feel DELIGHTED for everyone involved in this because the game was stepped up 1000% and it paid off.

Yeah it went on for nearly 3 hours, but it's a book that's over 1000 pages long. Only thing that pissed me off was making every Eddie scene 'funny'. Sometimes it worked but in the Henry Bowers scene especially every bit of tension was lost..
 
Also for a film to make me laugh as much as it did bit still feel scared/engrossed in the scenes, is quite a feat...

Beverley visiting her old house did all of that at the same fucking time. God I love Jessica Chastain
 
Having so many flashbacks to the kids did a disservice to the present timeline as it reminded us how strong they were.

Like the first one it had way too much silly CGI to ever make it scary, and I don’t usually mind long films but this felt LONG.
 
I can totally understand how these 5 star reviews are coming in.
tenor.gif


It currently has 64% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the previous film's 86%.
 
I know Empire gave it 5 stars. I'm sure there were others I saw, somewhere :D I know they've been more mixed in general though. Both have similar scores on imdb if that means anything.

I mean the tone of both is similar and it's done by the same people, I can't see why critically there's more of a gulf. I agree with some reviews that the first is held up by the nostalgia factor. This feels like it gets down to the nitty gritty more for me, it has a bigger emotional impact and the scares/cgi fests are far more rewarding.

But people will take it how they want. It's probably because I adore the book (and wow at the opening scene, I thought that was long forgotten) and understand that it HAS to be nearly 3 hours long to try to tell the story. This is about the best it can be from a movie perspective - the only way to do it full justice is to chuck a ton of money at a 10 part tv series split into seasons (the same for The Dark Tower).
 
Stellar first week at the box office on its own merits but disturbingly 26% below the opening of the first one. Given that horror and sequel audiences tend to be strongest in the opening weekend, I'd say this has a rocky road ahead. It will be a hugely profitable for sure, but probably swiftly forgotten.
 
This was punishingly long (just like the book), in a way they did both since we got so much childhood stuff.

Good cast but bad film, they got high on the success of the first one and just didn’t bother editing this into a watchable movie.
 
I went into this completely blind, having never read the book nor seen any of the previous iterations...and I was a bit disappointed.

The main issues for me were the sudden shift from the first movie. I know they were never explicit about Pennywise's origins, but I was a bit surprised that the strategy was suddenly to obtain "tokens" to sacrifice and then stand around an old pot chanting to defeat him. That really came out of nowhere.

Plus, given that each member's retrieval of their token was the MAIN bit of action, it all felt a bit...laboured. The first few were good, but then it became entirely predictable; even down to the way, they kept faking a jump scare, then following it up with a real one. Plus, I TOTALLY agree with @jivafox that the CGI became a bit silly; some of the transformations (i.e. the old lady) looked like they belong in Lord Of The Rings or Harry Potter.

And I really, REALLY hated the opening scene. It made me feel sick. I understand that it was from the novel and of COURSE, stuff like that happens in real life. I had to read a bit more about it after the movie, and it seems at least in the novel, there was some consequence to it. Here, there was nothing; it felt utterly gratuitous. It seemed like it was trying to make a point, but rather than make it towards the perpetrators; I took it as a warning shot towards the victims. I found the whole tone of it to be WAY OFF and genuinely think they got it completely wrong.

The saving grace was the cast; both adult and child casts were PERFECT (particularly happy to see Jack Scully from Neighbours popping up in a lead role). My favourite bits of the movie were the more whimsical parts that had little or nothing to do with Pennywise. Agree also with @Raining On Me about the weird tone with the comedy. Out of context, there would be nothing wrong with it. But in the grand scheme of things, it felt muddled. Thinking particularly about the door scene towards the end; that could have been lifted from any generic, family-friendly comedy movie.

That's possibly the biggest gulf from the first movie; the humour from the childhood scenes happens very easily and naturally; I guess that IS how kids banter. Most of the stuff in the adult scenes, on the other hand, was placed and pointed and much less organically occurring.

I'm sure somewhere between the two movies; there is ONE good movie. But the second movie, for me, is not the pay-off that the first truly deserved.
 
It was a'right. I enjoyed the comedy a lot more than in the first one, mostly because Bill Hader is a lot more tolerable than Finn Wolfhard.

Agree that it dragged (obviously) and while Richie was fun, I was disappointed they made him straight when he was such a fabulous little queen in the first one. Between that and making the fat kid transform into a six-packed hunk before he was allowed to get Jessica Chastain, it all felt very conformist.

The main problem I have, weirdly, is that I don't think Pennywise is a very good villain - not this interpretation of him anyway. He's just a bit crap.
 
They more or less say that Richie was closeted and in love with Eddy.

In the book it is implied that Eddy is closeted and has married a woman who’s essentially his mother (in the movie his mother and wife are played by the same actress).
 
Loved it. Bill Skarsgard has been inspired casting throughout. The entire adult cast were great choices. Agree it was way too long, at least by about 20 minutes, thank god Audra had such a small part, she was insufferable in the mini series.

LOVED the Stephen King cameo.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom