It Chapter Two Ramble

This was the bloated incoherent mess I imagined it’d be. Come at me Horror Twitter.

I saw the first It three times in theaters, fucking loved it. When I heard It: Chapter Two was almost three hours, I immediately said fuck that. Remember how much the theater sucked? You’d sit through 25 minutes of previews. Sometimes it’s not even a three minute preview for a movie that looks terrible. I’ve seen Wal-Mart commercials in the preview block. I was missing movie theaters before writing this, now I say good riddance.

Some people have said regarding the runtime “well the book is 1,200 pages, the movie has to be long too!” The book is Stephen King’s magnum opus AND you can take a break from it. If you tell someone you watched 20 minute chunks of It: Chapter Two once a day, they’d consider you an idiot.

Let me say it again, the book is Stephen King’s magnum opus. It’s not a mediocre revolving door of “uhhhhh someone walks into an abandoned building, Pennywise goes ‘AHHHHHH BOOGA BOOOOGA!’ and they run away.”

It was interesting finally seeing the scenes people got their panties in a bunch about. The main one is Adrian Mellon. Poor sweet Adrian, he just clapped back at a homophobe by saying he had Meg Ryan’s hair, next thing he knows some clown is eating more than his ass.

How funny is it the people who watched a boy’s arm being ripped off before he’s dragged into the sewer are like “killing gays is problematic”? That one arm boy attempted to crawl away while screaming in agony, whatevs. Pennywise kills a gay man? That’s too much.

What if The Losers Club killed Pennywise by cancelling him? What if they’re in the sewer surrounding him while tweeting about how problematic this Lovecraftian god is for killing gays? Just imagine Pennywise sincerely crying out while deflating “YOU’RE TWISTING THINGS” as they tweet “Pennywise the Dancing Clown? More like Pennywise the Homophobic Clown #PennyNotSoWise #LoveWins”

That stupid scenario isn’t much different from how they actually kill Pennywise.

I think people also had problems with Beverly’s abusive husband? His depiction in the movie is so tame compared to the more problematic details in the book. If I remember right, Stephen King spends some time hinting at one of the reasons Beverly has a hard time leaving him because he makes her cum so hard with his giant dick. If you know the book, that’s far from the most problematic detail of Beverly’s sex life.

In the book Beverly’s husband also beats the shit out of her loud and proud feminist friend for info because she knows where Beverly’s gone to. Imagine if a cis white male worked over a woke feminist in a 2019 film. O the bloody tampons that’d be launched at the screen. You’d never get the aroma of pennies and ravioli out of the theater.

I’m always wondering “exactly what point in the post will I push it too far?” That might’ve been it.

I wish people who knew about movies were the ones talking about movies because when this movie came out, nobody focused on the one detail that actually matters. Since we’ve finally worked our way through snoozefest topics like hate crimes and spousal abuse, we can FINALLY talk about the peak of this film.

We get a cameo from Peter Bogdanovich playing a movie director! How cool is that? Have you listened to that The Plot Thickens podcast? He’s the fucking king.

While weathering this neverending experience I couldn’t help picturing a more entertaining version of this movie. For example, I kinda wish Stanley didn’t kill himself. I would’ve loved if Mike called him and Stanley was like “dude fuck those kids and tell Pennybitch the Pussy Clown to eat sewer shit” and hanging up.

Ritchie being gay, where to even start with this half assed shit. That part in the movie had all the sincerity of a credit card commercial in June showing two men holding hands for half a second.

There’s a ridiculous flashback where Ritchie is trying to put the moves on a kid who’s revealed to be a cousin of Henry Bowers. You already know they had little to no intentions of making Ritchie gay and that really gives it away. So Henry Bowers, this vile 80s bully, knows before any of The Losers that Ritchie’s gay and never targets him like he does the fat kid? A 1989 bully is just letting it slide a gay kid tried flirting with his cousin? The bullshit meter not just rang, it exploded into a million fragments.

Close to the last frame of the movie, they kinda throw it out there Ritchie had this 27 year old crush on Eddie. So much of this side plot smells like a straight man making some last minute woke additions. If they wanted this arc to not be gazebos, there should’ve at least been a scene where Ritchie’s like “hey it kinda feels like we’re drifting apart, I think I’m gonna have to bareback Eddie as many times as I want to keep our tribe strong for this battle.” If you can throw around that F slur, you can show steamy gay sex.

So the movie’s endless amount of abandoned buildings…

I find it ridiculous there was never a methhead sucking off their dealer for money in these grimy interiors while saying “are you fucking seeing this giant clown eating a kindergartner?” It could’ve been like one of those old fashioned comedies where the drunk sees something crazy and drops their bottle, but here it’d be a spoon and lighter they drop.

Is it wrong that I was cackling during the final battle? This fucking evil entity has been alive for thousands of years, and is instantly destroyed when 5 adults start screaming “YOU’RE JUST A FUCKING CLOWN!” WHAT??? That’s all it takes to turn a clown spider 20 stories tall into a deflated pancake?

It’s crazier when you take into consideration there’s a scroll of exposition about Mike hanging out with Native Americans and stealing sacred relics to learn how to defeat Pennywise. “I hung out with Native Americans and stole from them to learn how we’ll kill this centuries old creature by screaming hurtful remarks.” No comedian can write a joke that makes me laugh harder than this shit.

What does this film’s script look like? I imagine a stack of cocktail napkins that say repeatedly “one of the adults walks into an abandoned building alone, scary thing happens.” Then the bottom of the pile is “STUPID FUCKING CLOWN, YOU WISH YOU WERE BOZO YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS SHITHEAD, YOU COULD NEVER BECOME A BELOVED CELEBRITY IN CHICAGO LIKE BOB BELL!”

It: Chapter Two is a gigantic blob with so many flaws, but here’s a positive remark. The CGI monsters looked great. From a weird slug creature with an infant’s head in the Chinese restaurant to Pennywise’s giant spider form that’s the complete opposite of a made for TV puppet, this is some of the more creative and exciting uses of CGI I’ve seen in awhile, maybe ever.

Maybe I’m praising the CGI because this is what the first film gave me. 

 

This movie had me thinking about the history of CGI. Like when it was first being introduced people had to think “oh my god movies are gonna reach another level of creativity with this.” Cut to fucking 2017 when $20 million’s spent to cut out Henry Cavill’s mustache in Justice League and he kinda looks like a harelip Joker.

Besides some great instances of CGI (minus the wonky de-aging), It: Chapter Two is the most bloated, incoherent mess that hasn’t dropped two gallons of sweat in a rhinestone jumpsuit while singing “Burning Love.”