Ep 59 - It Chapter Two (2019)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: It. [00:00:00] Speaker B: Chapter 2, 2019. A handful of 40 somethings forgetting they were losers may be the only thing standing in the way of a devilish shapeshifter with a penchant for clowns who has been feeding off of fear and children in the town of Derry for hundreds of years. To new releases. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Movies. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Let's start the show. [00:00:53] Speaker C: Hello everybody and welcome back to our Rating the show where I get together with two of my buddies, we take a movie franchise, break it down by movie, give an overall score and throw it back on the board to see where it lands. This week I'm joined by Brian and Will to discuss it. Chapter two. Brian, how are you doing this week? [00:01:08] Speaker A: I'm tired, Dan. I'm real tired. [00:01:10] Speaker C: Not gonna lie. I feel you on that one. How about you, Will? You bringing the energy this week? [00:01:14] Speaker B: I'm tired of three hour movies, Dan. I'm tired of three hour movies. [00:01:17] Speaker C: Well, I don't know that's gonna get better next week, but yeah. All right, this is it. Chapter two. Obviously we went over Chapter one two weeks ago because we had Moon in there. We've all seen this franchise before though, right? This is not a first time viewing for any of us. [00:01:32] Speaker B: This is my second and hopefully last time viewing. [00:01:35] Speaker C: You say that a lot on this show. Makes me really wonder what we're torturing you. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Honestly, I'm, I'm with Will on this one. This is my second time seeing this and I, I, I don't think I have any desire to come back and revisit it again. It just maybe because I've just been saturated by Stephen King. We were talking about this behind the scenes and if you guys want to show up live to the Twitch streams and see the behind the scenes stuff, [00:01:57] Speaker B: we get here a little early. [00:01:58] Speaker A: We goof around, we talk about stuff. I've probably watched more Stephen King in the past month than I have in my entire life and I'm just kind of saturated with it. Maybe that has to do with it. I really enjoy Skarsgard. I think he does a great. His version of Pennywise is also very good and I enjoy that. But yeah, I'm kind of done with this and I think after we go through it and dig through it and piece this apart, I'm probably going to be able to put the lid on it. [00:02:28] Speaker C: All right, well, since we're all just throwing it out there right away, I also didn't enjoy this movie as much as the first one or as I did the first time around, so that's interesting. I don't Think it has anything to do with being oversaturated? Because I haven't seen anything Stephen King in a while other than I guess it Chapter one. And this movie just was absolutely not doing it for me. My wife and I took two sessions to get through this one, which I hate to do. And by the end of it I like looked over, she's like going to bed. I'm just like, did that do anything for you? And she's like, no. I'm like, yeah, I just didn't resonate with almost anything. [00:02:58] Speaker A: Like, yeah, I didn't have much fun on this one the first little bit. [00:03:01] Speaker C: Like kind of until they go to the Chinese restaurant. I was relatively into it. And then pretty much everything after that I was trying to think of like, when did I fall off? And I think, I think it was like then, like right then and there where they're all like, I want to go home, I want to go home. I was just like, yeah, go, just, just go home. Just like, let's all just go home. Just pack it in, call it a day. That is probably one of my least favorite tropes in TV shows or movies or anything when a character is like, I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this. Just, just sign me out. Especially if it goes on longer than like two minutes. Like that is like the point of television. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, they made an issue of them all wanting to go home and then they kind of ended up. They sort of were like dealing with their issues or coming up with more memories and whether they were scared into staying and dealing with it or, or they felt the need to stay and deal with their fear or something. They kind of all turned around. But yeah, them kind of going back and forth just felt like added footage that we didn't need in this so much. And I don't know how that sort of I don't want to be here attitude really related to the source material or paid homage to the Tim Curry version or anything. I don't see how that added to anything other than just dragging out the story and giving more opportunities to look into the adults viewpoint or history. [00:04:20] Speaker C: I think there's also something to be said about the fact that they were all adults now. I think the adults all did a good job acting. I had no problem with any of the actors and some of them I thought were brilliant casting for the characters to grow up into that character. It's just, I. It's somehow less engaging to watch a full grown adult get scared by a clown than it is to watch like a 11 year old get scared by a clown. Like, I'm not going to say that Pennywise isn't terrifying. And obviously they know that he can kill them at any time and he's a gigantic space monster spider. But like, there's just something in my brain where like when Bill Hader is in broad daylight being terrified of a clown a mile away, you're just like, okay. Like it just didn't have the same pop or panache for me that the first. [00:05:02] Speaker A: There was a lot more daylight scenes in this one and they were just kind of cgi, you know, the, the Paul Bunyan chasing him around and stuff, which didn't scare me at all. I just kept wondering how come no one else is seeing this? Like he's. [00:05:18] Speaker C: Well, because it's. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's in his head or whatever. But it's just. Yeah. That a lot of the sequences just didn't really land for me this time. [00:05:26] Speaker C: Ironically, that's one of the only jump scares I think that actually did get me is when he's park bench looking around and all of a sudden it just, just when it's like right beside him. Like it wasn't like he was creepier. It kept going. But just that initial like bra, because it was just so loud and just in your face, it was like, oh, geez. But I think that might be the only one. Like most of these were just more just weird. Like I said with the first movie, it's more unsettling than it is scary. So yeah, when they're at the Chinese restaurant and all the, the fortune cookies are cracking open, they're like bugs with human faces. [00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Blood acid stuff coming out of the table and gross stuff. [00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Like this isn't scary. This is just weird and I don't like it. Also, yeah, CGI on that was just off. [00:06:07] Speaker B: I felt the CGI on this one was more off than the first, actually. [00:06:11] Speaker C: Agree. [00:06:12] Speaker B: Just in general, like this one had a bigger budget. Should have been able to do more with the cgi. But the problem is they just added more CGI instead of, you know, touching up scenes to make them look better. They went full CGI and it ruined a lot of the movie for me. The other problem, like RUN said there was a lot of like daytime type scene scare scenes. And there wasn't as much as in the first one. They had a lot of like really weird creepy adult scenes. Like the adults were off in dairy right. And it made for scary situations. These kids real life was scary. The Bully that was after them was super scary. And this movie didn't have that, and it didn't have good Pennywise scenes, so it didn't really have anything scary. [00:06:59] Speaker A: It. [00:07:01] Speaker B: There's. There's so many problems I. I don't even want to talk about because I just feel like I'm going to be ragging on this movie forever and. And longer than the movie itself, if that's even possible. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah, they're a long movie, this one. So the first movie was 35 million, and it grossed 704 million worldwide. And the second movie came in almost twice as much. $79 million budget made almost half as much worldwide. 470 million worldwide. [00:07:32] Speaker C: I wonder how much that budget went to. The fact that now they've got all the kid actors, but also all the adult actors, and you got some fairly big names like Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy. Like, they're probably bringing in a pretty significant chunk of that additional budget. [00:07:45] Speaker A: Unfortunately, you know, you. You mentioned Bill Hader completely overshadowed the James McAvoy's character, Bill. And when it was kind of. Bill's supposed to be the lead character in here, but honestly, Richie was the one I was watching and intrigued with for most of it. He was a little more interesting, and they were like. They were touching on Richie's, like, secret, but they never really got there, never went anywhere with it. And instead he was just running around from Paul Bunyan out in this. Yeah. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah. But he got more. That's. That's the thing, though, is Rich got a story arc, whereas the majority of the characters did not. Yeah, mainly, like, as you said, Bill, his character had, like, very little arc. Like, he's still upset about his brother that he lost, like, 20, 30 years ago. Like, there's. Well, it's just. It's the same ploy. At least. At least Pennywise went over. Went after some other kids and made him feel bad about it. So. So that was something. And then there's Ben, who is no longer out of shape and has everything going for him except for the one love he lost 30 years ago. He's still not over it. Like, it. What does the clown have to go for? For him, Nothing. That's why he's barely in this movie. It. His character makes no sense to be there. It's. It's terrible. And yet he gets his own little segment, and you're like, oh, man, why am I watching this? Why am I watching this? [00:09:16] Speaker C: So I'll push back that the slightest little bit. Yes, it's Weird with Ben's character because he's, he's in the, the real world, we'll call it, and still looking at that photo in his wallet. So like he's clearly not over her. Even though everybody's forgotten everything, he's still holding on to the feeling of her. With, with Bill's character though, you gotta remember he left Dairy a long time ago. He's coming back, he's seeing his old house, he's seen the place where his brother was killed. Like he's being confronted with a lot of those things. It's not necessarily getting the feeling that in his day to day life he's like moaning about his brother on a constant basis so much as like you're returning to the scene of the crime where all the trauma is. That would bring up a lot of feelings. [00:09:55] Speaker B: It could trigger something. Yeah, I guess so. I, it just. Although in this plot line, does he even remember he had a brother? Because they all forgot Dairy and that they were there at all. Why did they even come back? How did Mike convince them? How did Mike even convince them being like, hey, remember we made a pact. Actually, I don't remember Gary at all. Who are you? [00:10:16] Speaker A: They didn't really showcase those conversations enough to, to isolate that because I was kind of the same thing. Like, like they blast through the conversations on the phone and get, and he gets everybody to come back and they all remember each other all of a sudden, but they have a hard time remembering anything else. Even when they're in Derry, they struggle for it. Now the, for the amnesia thing did explain one thing that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Beverly is married to an abusive husband. And I was like, that just doesn't really check for me. I know there's a thing about people, you know, you marry your father, you marry your father or you know, the guys marry their mother or whatever. I, I, I get that. But this seemed like her character in the first one overcame her fear of her father. You wouldn't expect her to get into another relationship like that with some other dude. But if she completely forgot all that, then it would make sense that like subconsciously she would fall back into it. So that did make a little bit of sense, but they didn't really explain it. I had to make that connection myself and it was a, a bad way to go about it. But the rest of them forgetting everything and having trouble remembering and when they did remember, they just wanted to leave and about it the whole time really just kind of, kind of ruined it and like you said Ben being this really attractive guy, all of a sudden, it didn't jive with me. That whole story was pointless at that point. I didn't like it, I think for [00:11:35] Speaker C: the talking on the amnesia thing. I don't know that they necessarily forget their families or that they grew up in Dairy so much as they just have all moved on with their lives. They forget. Yeah, they do forget dairy. I guess to some extent they do forget a lot of what happened. They forget their friendships and why they've got the scars on their hands. But like, I don't think she forgot that she has a father because her dad still lives in Dairy and she didn't. She purposefully moved on from him also. [00:11:56] Speaker B: How did that guy survive that hit to the face from her? I thought he was dead from the first movie. She like slams him with the. [00:12:05] Speaker C: Her. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Her dad, like, she just slams that toilet cover. [00:12:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:12:10] Speaker B: Oh, man, that would kill somebody so easy. I think. Yeah. [00:12:14] Speaker A: It's just a 20 pound brick of porcelain. [00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. [00:12:18] Speaker C: Having her husband be abusive, though, in the book at least, is a huge plot point. Like he actually follows her to Derry and is like kind of a main antagonist. So in this one she just takes the ring off and like, that's the end of his storyline, which I was okay with because this movie's already three hours long and bloated with the characters we actually care about. [00:12:39] Speaker B: Care about. Thank you. [00:12:40] Speaker C: Sure. Sure. But it's just one of those things that, like, I'm kind of glad they left that in the book. [00:12:45] Speaker B: The. [00:12:45] Speaker A: The amnesia thing is intentional. They put that in there. It is supposed to try and represent the. The forgetting of the childhood, the forgetting of those things. It was kind of explained to me. I was doing some research on this. [00:13:02] Speaker C: But what a lot of people do with trauma is they take it and they put it in a box and put it on a shelf and they leave it there. And until something forces you to open that box, that's where it kind of stays. [00:13:13] Speaker A: But they also forgot their bonds and their friendships and overcoming that trauma and is. Is what they lost. And so having to come back to regain the remember and remember that, hey, we overcame this clown and that's what they were trying to do is that everybody's like, f this, I don't want to deal with this clown. But as they continue to. To remember things and continue to remember each other and work together, they remember that they overcame the clown once before and that they can do it again. That's what they Were trying for. It just didn't play out well enough for me and I didn't like it. [00:13:49] Speaker C: So we talked last week a little bit about like generational trauma and stuff like that. That to some extent and like, I'm not a psychiatrist by any means, that is how trauma works though is that you do just kind of put it away and forget about it. And like your brain like the rest of your body heals and it doesn't always heal properly. It doesn't always heal the trauma. Sometimes it just heals a scar over the trauma. So like if this is something that you can't deal with, your brain will just be like, let's just not deal with it. Let's just put a little bow on that, put it over there and we'll just put that aside. So I, I don't know that that's exactly it would work this drastically, but I definitely think that's something Stephen King was trying to touch on with this is like, yeah, like they were so traumatized by what happened. It had to be put aside, it had to be forgotten. It had to be put in a box and just like left us. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Right, but, but was this a chosen like these seven people chose to forget this or was this an it Pennywise tactic to get them never to come back because they know he's secret. Right. It doesn't explain it. [00:14:59] Speaker C: I think in the course of the story it's it. I think from the writer's perspective, it's trauma. Does that make sense? Like that's kind of what I'm trying to get at. [00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't, I mean I, I [00:15:09] Speaker B: understand that it can be multi leveled and that's how it's supposed to be. And in the book it can be very much that. [00:15:15] Speaker C: Sure. [00:15:15] Speaker B: In a movie that's two hours, three hours long, way too long. It's hard to get both of those across. And I don't think they did it in a very good way. [00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah, they clearly didn't. All of us are in disagreement of the nuances of, of that whole thing. And so clearly they didn't do a good job of it. And something else that they didn't do a good job of was weaving together a cohesive plot that makes sense. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I mean the plot is so simple. How is it three hours long? [00:15:46] Speaker A: Well, okay, first off, why did they have to bring the bully back? Henry, right? He fell down a well and could have died. And instead in the beginning of this, he gets flushed out the drain and goes off to, you know, go to the mental institute. And everything. [00:16:01] Speaker C: Okay, so that's where I think her husband could have been. An interesting point is having her husband be that antagonist instead of bringing Henry back. It doesn't mean the trauma to everybody, because obviously none of them will know who that character is. But you still get him, like, stabbing them and attacking them and being like, why are you with my wife? What are you doing to her? Or something. [00:16:18] Speaker A: But Henry wasn't even traumatic for me. Like, it was. It was a bad play bringing him back in here because he wasn't scary. He didn't seem to scare the group. They were just like, oh, crap, this guy. Why? Why are we dealing with this right now? They're more afraid of Pennywise. He's just a sideshow for them. It's not even a big deal. People are getting stabbed by him and they're like, pull it out. We'll deal with this later. Let's go. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Stab him back. Just stab him back. [00:16:41] Speaker A: But did you notice that? Is it Henry is the character's name. [00:16:45] Speaker B: I forget. [00:16:45] Speaker C: Henry is the bully. [00:16:46] Speaker A: Yes, Henry the bully. [00:16:47] Speaker C: Okay. [00:16:48] Speaker A: He had a Firebird car in this. He escaped from a mental institution that he has supposedly been in since he was a child, since juvenile hall. How did he get the car to drive there? How did Pennywise give him that knife? Where that come from in reality? Right. It's just one of those things that Stephen King's just kind of like, going to be ambiguous about. Okay. But there were so many little things in this movie that just made absolutely no sense whatsoever. And I'm like, why did they put that in here? That's dumb. [00:17:21] Speaker B: I mean, I. To me, that was the least of my concerns. Pennywise is like a freaking cosm. Could do whatever they want given this guy a knife and a Firebird that his little zombie buddy can drive him around in. That's the least of my concerns in this movie. There's so many other plot holes and just, like, bad writing and bad character work that takes me fully out of this, that those are so minor to me. But, I mean, it's. You're not wrong. [00:17:56] Speaker C: You're not wrong. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:58] Speaker A: Did you notice the little kid that keeps bumping into everybody and they keep scaring the. Out of this poor little kid? It's the same kid every time. And everybody's having, like, a mental breakdown in front of this kid and they keep using the same one. I was like, why is it this kid and it never amounts to anything. Why'd they keep reusing the same kid to take. [00:18:19] Speaker C: Murdered pretty drastically directly. [00:18:22] Speaker B: That was For Bill's sake. [00:18:23] Speaker A: It. [00:18:23] Speaker B: It was like somehow building a rapport with Bill, being like, oh, I. I remember you from the restaurant and it was weird. Then you were here and you're telling me you're going to the fair and now I know Pennywise is after you. I have to save this kid. Like, I couldn't save my brother or didn't want to save my brother or did. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Okay, I guess that makes sense then. All right. [00:18:44] Speaker C: I'm trying to be at the redemption arc that he didn't get orders. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:18:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm with Brian on this one. There was a lot of inconsistency, as we've mentioned before. I really like rules in movies and stuff like that. I can go with almost anything you want to put down as long as you follow your own rules. And it felt like Pennywise was all over the place, especially in like the last 45 minute cut scene or fight scene in the. In the basement or whatever. Like, I don't know. Sometimes he seemed like they could punch him. Other times he seemed ethereal. Sometimes he would attack them. Sometimes he was just content with scaring them. Sometimes he was having a comedic bit with them. [00:19:21] Speaker B: So this, like, what is going on? [00:19:23] Speaker C: Like, why can he attack if he could just stab them and kill them? Why didn't he just do that? Why? Like, he attacked Eddie and killed Eddie. [00:19:31] Speaker A: This has to do with the way that they perceive Pennywise. Because remember, Pennywise isn't actually a clown. He is a multi dimensional being of pure evil from another, from the in between universes or something crazy like that. Right. Stephen King spent like 700 pages trying to explain it to us, and nobody even got it, then snorted it all away. Right. So this battle at the end is supposed to be them overcoming the fear, working together, believing that they can, using positivity and creativity or something. And like, at the end, they start belittling him, turning him into a puddle, and then they rip out his heart to finally to. To kill him. But they have to belittle him and believe that he is nothing. And that's what it has. So it's this matter of belief and fear and stuff. And it's. It's like representative of it and it's very, you know, ambiguous. Ambiguous. It's. Yeah, it was kind of rough. But speaking of the final scene, there's a lot of people did not like Stephen King's ending in the book because it was very hard to understand because of all that ambiguity. However, the movie with. With Tim Curry, everybody hated the ending because it was the spider monster. Right. And they couldn't make a monster to represent it in its true form. It was supposed to be just what people could comprehend. And so they made a big spider monster. And no one liked the ending. And so throughout this story, even Stephen King himself makes those jokes about the ending sucked. Right. Bill's book, the ending sucked and I didn't like the ending and all that. So this time they made sure to put Skarsgard's feature face on the monster. It was still kind of a spider monster, still a CGI wonder cluster. Yeah. But you still had the creepy eyes or some of that emotion coming through from Scars Guard, which I like that they tried that. They tried to change that ending and make it a little different from everything else and still incorporate things like they have the, the. The ritual of Chud or something is in the book. And instead they use that stupid wicker basket that they're trying to trap him in that replaced the, the thing. And they didn't have the turtle from the book, but we did have lots of little instances where you see a Lego turtle in the background or they're out playing in the, in the quarry and they're like, oh, you're stepping on a turtle or something. And they mention it because they wanted the audience to know, hey, we know the source material, but we're going a different way. [00:22:01] Speaker B: Well, they just can't really put it all in. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Let's be honest. They just can't. [00:22:05] Speaker A: Right? [00:22:05] Speaker C: It's all right. [00:22:07] Speaker B: The problem is they should have cut more or made different decisions to trim it. Because here's the biggest problem. For me, the first IT movie, All the Children, was a nice encapsulated story. It hit every beat. You had a through line for all the characters. It was finished aside from, oh, 27 years. We have to come back later. You couldn't. You don't even have to. It's just like, okay, well, you can pretend they come back and they defeat it. Right? Because they know what they're doing. Then you cut to this movie and it's the exact same movie, only instead of young adults or kids, it's grown ass bitches who don't freaking have any clue. The kids did so much better than these idiot adults that you don't believe they're afraid of a clown anyway because they're adults that have bigger problems in their life, like abusive husbands. It just doesn't work. You're telling the same story, you're telling it worse. And then you're putting in the kid actors because they're the ones that blew up the first movie. In the beginning, it's just over. Convoluted. They tried to bite off way more than they could chew it reference and it just fell so flat. It felt it fell so flat for so many reasons, but they should have just stopped at the first one and called it a day. [00:23:32] Speaker A: I think you're right. And honestly, I didn't like the adult actors who played the older version of those children. They didn't match up, you know, back in. [00:23:41] Speaker C: I thought they matched up very well. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's like the one redeeming factor of this movie. [00:23:47] Speaker A: I didn't, I didn't like. Well, especially Ben. Right. Ben didn't fit for me at all. And, and I guess Bill, I liked Bill. James McAvoy did a good job as Bill. And, and I, I didn't like the guy who played the older version of Ben. I didn't like how they went with a good looking version of him. It's screw. We talked about that. But the rest of them, I kept having to go, wait, who's other than Eddie? Or is it Eddie is Richie. Richie was the one. But he was, you know, the glasses, you knew who was right. The giveaway there. But the rest of them, I kept going, wait, who's this? Wait, is that Stanley? No, he committed suicide. Wait, no, is it. Who's this? Like I, I kept having to stop and try and remember. And then of course, the other thing too is that I watched the original one with Tim Curry. So now I'm getting those kids mixed up with these kids and those adults mixed up with these adults. [00:24:39] Speaker B: I mean, what about you, Dan? What do you think about the, the adult casting compared to the children? [00:24:45] Speaker C: I mean, it helps that I also know half of the adult cast, whereas I only one of the child actors. So you always have like that little bit of an in. I thought a lot of the actors did a really good job. And especially specifically I would say Bill Hader and Jessica Chastain, when they have those like flashback cutscenes back and forth, you can really see just how close they actually are. Like how, how much it does kind of work that like. Yeah, I could, I could absolutely see you growing up into this person. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Oh, see, I didn't like Jessica Chastain as, as Beverly. It didn't fit. Yeah, it didn't seem like the same person. She seemed like a totally different person to me. [00:25:17] Speaker C: Okay, that's, that's fair. That's your opinion. I will staunchly disagree with you. I think she was probably the best cast of them. [00:25:23] Speaker B: But okay, as far as physical appearance, I think Eddie was the best cast. They look so close. Like he looks like an adult Eddie. [00:25:35] Speaker A: For sure. Yeah, I'll give you that one for sure. [00:25:38] Speaker B: And overall, I feel like the casting director, whoever matched these faces to the kid actors, I thought overall they did a good job. I think where it fell. And maybe Brian, where it fell for you. The hardest is in the writing of the characters. The characters just didn't have enough to pull their child characteristics that we already had a full movie of him to let them feel like, oh, yeah, this is this person 30 years from now. Because they just didn't even when they went off on their little one find their little artifact trinket voyage by themselves, which is a complete waste of time because the whole ceremony was bubkiss. And the whole plot, it was irrelevant. Could have been removed when we saved an hour out of the stage. Stupid movie that even those parts was more about the flashbacks to the kids than the adults reacting to it. And it was so stupid because we didn't get to attach ourselves to the adult characters. We just yearned for the children characters that we only got a flashback of. And they ruined the flashback because the kids are two years older and they freaking CGI'd them to look younger and they ADR their voices and they sounded weird, like chipmunks sometimes. And I couldn't. I couldn't stand it. It just. Everything in this movie just disappointed me. I was so bored, but I was more angry. So I just hate watch this thing [00:27:05] Speaker A: anyway. [00:27:06] Speaker B: But I think the casting director didn't [00:27:08] Speaker C: get any of that personally. But. [00:27:10] Speaker B: Oh, dude. If you. If you do some shots of. What's his name? Wolf. Finn. [00:27:17] Speaker C: Finn Wolfhard. [00:27:18] Speaker B: He's full CGI man. And Eddie's voice is the worst. There's times where he literally sounds like a robot. Like a chipmunk robot. It's so bad. It's. And that's. Here's the problem. If I fall out of the movie, these are the things that I pick up on instantly because I have nothing else to do. I've got nothing else to do but find all these crazy flaws that if you are invested in the movie, you could let it go. You just let it go. Let it go. [00:27:48] Speaker A: CGI will overlook stuff like that, right? [00:27:52] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:27:52] Speaker A: I had a lot of fun watching Predator Prey, and so I could overlook the hatchet on a string. In fact, I had fun with that. Right? As stupid as that was, this movie, you're not having fun. In fact, my Fun score is really low on this film. And it makes everything else start coming down because you start noticing and picking it apart. And this time, the second time around, like I said, I picked this thing apart. And there was just so much that I did not enjoy going through it. So I don't want to watch it again. The only thing that I did enjoy was Skarsgard's. Skarsgard's portrayal of Pennywise. Even though. Hold on a second. Let me get those off. My chat's going nuts. Skarsgard's portrayal of Pennywise was still really good. I. I just like the way he did it. I like his take. Doesn't mean I don't like Tim Curry's. I think Tim Curry is amazing. I just like the way that they chose to go with this, making him less human and having a harder time trying to mimic a human clown. And, you know, the. The beep, Richie and the. The little childish ways he talks that are just not right. I enjoyed that. That was about it for this film, though. You know, the. Probably my favorite sequence was when the little girl with the scar on her face goes underneath the bleachers and is talking to him. And that little dialogue back and forth between him and her. And the whole time you're just like, oh, no. Run away, little girl. That was pretty good. The rest of this film, though, it's just you. It was such a disappointment. After coming off the first one with the kids just rocking it for the most part, I didn't like him as much as you guys did, but the story with the kids was great. And then I think. I think Will's got it down. I think the writing for these adults just didn't allow us to. To get in with these characters as much as I wanted to. [00:29:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:29:48] Speaker A: And even the. [00:29:49] Speaker B: The little girl scene, I agree. It was like one of the better scenes. Yeah. But it's the. It's the intro to the first movie all over again. [00:29:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:29:57] Speaker B: So it's like they didn't even do anything new. It's just the exact same thing. Oh, it's a scar instead of. Or like a birthmark instead of a balloon or. Not a balloon. A boat. Right. She wants that removed. He wants his boat back. It's the exact same setup, exact same result. Except for this one's halfway through the movie. So you don't start with a jarring incident. And even the jarring incident, they cut the legs off of Pennywise in this movie. The inciting incident in this movie is a couple at the fair who get bashed for who they are by local kids. And it's a horrible scene. No disagreeing there. It definitely was like, damn, this is horrifying in real life. But then Pennywise is just there, like, biting this guy for no reason. Like, Pennywise looks like an afterthought. He looks completely useless compared to the town of Derry. And that doesn't make any sense if your main goal is to present it. You lost me right off. Right off the. Right off the bat. You lost me right off the bat. Yeah. [00:31:02] Speaker A: That was another plot point for me that I didn't understand. It was like, why are you having this. This issue about these. These two gay guys that are being beyond harassed, beat to death by these horrible people from the town. What does that have to do with this story? Don't get me wrong. It was a shocking. And scene and everything. It was. It was actually a pretty decent piece of cinema right there. Had nothing to do with his story. They were the. The guys beating them up. That was a way scarier scene. Dealing with that kind of crap was a way scarier thing than this weird clown all of a sudden at the end, just like, not on a body. It's like, what? [00:31:46] Speaker C: Okay, I gotta step in for a second. I think the whole point of the show. Welcome to Darien. That's gonna get more into it, probably. I haven't seen it. You have. Is the. The closeness. I'm missing the words. That's what I always do whenever. Try and go live. The proximity. The proximity to the spaceship or whatever it is that Pennywise crashed into is like emanating evil. You can see that, like, objects around it don't perform properly in gravity. Some of them are floating up, some of them are floating down. All the kids are just hanging around. Like the. The craft itself is just changing the world around it. And it has lived there for so long, it is emanating evil. So the whole point of it is that Derry itself is almost like a haunted town. So the people in it, including the bullies, are acting so far above and beyond what normal bullying would be. They're treating people horrendously. They're attacking these bullies and they actually scare and just beat this person up to the point where body flows down to exactly where Pennywise is so that Pennywise can eat. He doesn't have to do anything. The people of dairy are doing it for him. I feel like that's a point that is brought over over and over again in this movie. Everybody in these movies are treating people horrendously, like way beyond what we normally see. Like, you can see movies with bullying like Dazed and Confused. It's a little bit of like harassment. And then you get into this one and like everybody is awful. Like Henry Bowers is like carving his name into these kids. The harassers at the the fair are literally trying to kill this couple. Like when he jumps his. Or throws the body over the bridge. There's no doubt in my mind. He. They have to assume that they just killed him. Like, there's no way. They don't. I think that's kind of the point. That is like the unspoken truth of Dairy is that even when Pennywise isn't actively doing something, his presence is felt in everything that is happening around him. You guys don't get that at all. That didn't. [00:33:41] Speaker B: I agree. I agree. 100 but I was waiting for you to go off of Full Screen fair. Yes. In the first movie, that is 100 accurate. In this movie, that is 100 not accurate. In this movie. It's only those guys at the start at the fair. [00:33:58] Speaker A: That's true. There's not a lot. There's the bullies. There's the bullies in the, in the arcade with Richie. [00:34:04] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's a flashback, isn't it? [00:34:05] Speaker A: It's a flash flashback. [00:34:07] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, sure. But again, it's all the kids. None of the modern day stuff, aside from the fair shows that aura of dairy under this cursed spell. And, and it's. [00:34:19] Speaker C: There's. [00:34:20] Speaker B: There's times you can do it. Like there's the waitress at the restaurant. She doesn't do anything. There's people here and there that don't. Nothing except that incident in the Modern times shows that. Otherwise it's. Yeah, but he's like possessed by Pennywise. Like that's. [00:34:38] Speaker C: Sure, but that's kind of my point. Like the whole town to some extent. [00:34:40] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:40] Speaker C: Like, they don't interact with very many people outside of their little circle. [00:34:44] Speaker B: Henry is also an outlier because Henry knows who Pennywise is. Henry's accepted, like it feels like it says accepted him as. Like he, oh, he came back. He wants me to do his bidding. Like he was into it. [00:34:56] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:56] Speaker B: In this movie. Again, in the first movie, I think you can say it's the curse of [00:35:02] Speaker A: the presence of emanating an evil. And that would make sense. [00:35:05] Speaker B: He does not come across at all in the same way as the first. [00:35:08] Speaker C: Theoretically, you've seen the first movie if you're watching the second one. If they spent time building that up again, it would be completely unnecessary. They show you [00:35:18] Speaker B: add another hour, like [00:35:20] Speaker C: you're the one complaining about the time, but then you also want them to put more scenes. [00:35:23] Speaker A: And in the show, welcome to Derry, there is some brutal scenes of racism. And your, Your idea makes a lot of sense in that TV show and how it's carried on. So I think that is something that's trying to happen. They didn't do a great job of portraying it in this film. They just had that intro and they, they, they could have. They did a lot of redundant, wasteful imagery and storytelling that just didn't need to be here. I would have preferred showcasing a little bit more of the. The emanating evil from the presence of it. [00:35:53] Speaker C: Yeah, my issue, if we're going to do this, I'm going to go back to something Brian was talking about a little bit earlier. I just want to put a bit of a finer point on it. My issue with this movie is the ending, because we've had two full movies of these kids getting beaten up and tortured by the people in their lives and called losers to the point where they just had to own it. We see them grow up as adults, and all of them are very successful adults. Like, none of them, maybe, Stanley, we don't really get a whole lot what's going on with them. But the rest of them all seem like they have very successful lives. Whether they're actually legitimately rich or running companies or, you know, television producers or whatnot, or writers. All of them are doing very well in their lives. They come back to dairy, they're reminded that they're losers. And then the culmination of this film, the way they defeat this evil being who's been harassing them and other people for centuries, if not millennia, is they become bullies. And they have to use the language that they've been told the whole time. And they have to, like, talk down to this thing. And, like, it just. It struck me as so wrong. And I get that if, like, they did a Care Bear stare, it'd be even worse, but at least that would be like they're defeating it with happiness or joy or love or something. But the fact that this evil being is defeated by kids turning to bullying and saying evil things to him, like, just rubbed me so incredibly the wrong way that that's the thing that bothered me the most. There was a lot of things that took me out, a lot of rules that Pennywise didn't follow that I really didn't like. That whole, like, fight in the sewers I could was just awful. But, like, when it Culminated in that I was just. I was just straight out, like, that was the worst decision it could have been for me. [00:37:31] Speaker B: But he's such a sad little clown. [00:37:35] Speaker C: I thought he. I thought he'd be, like, joking with him. Like, he's messing with them so much, and he's like, oh, you're small. [00:37:41] Speaker B: You're small. [00:37:42] Speaker C: You're nothing. You're small. And he's, like, shrinking away. I really thought he'd come back and be like, just impale all of them. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:37:48] Speaker C: Like, do something. [00:37:50] Speaker A: It. [00:37:50] Speaker B: It doesn't make a lot of sense again to me. I think it's a bad layout for this movie. Like, it. Pennywise. Why he's toying with these adults so long makes zero sense. Right? Like, if you think about it, these seven. How many times has Pennywise been in a situation where seven people have thrown him back into the darkness for 27 years, stopped his reign, and then came back to finish the job? How many times has this happened to Pennywise that he can just be like, all right, let's just have a little fun. I'm sure I can scare these adults a little bit. No, I just kill them. You have so much power. Just kill them. It just. It just makes me so sad. [00:38:38] Speaker C: And that's like. Even if they'd had to build him up and, like, they got there right at the very beginning of it, and he had to gain his strength back, and that's how he killed Eddie, is because he finally ate enough fear that he was able to manifest himself in physical form. But they say in the movie he's almost at the end of his cycle. Like, he's ready to go back into hibernation. He should be as strong as he could possibly be right now. [00:39:00] Speaker B: Just. [00:39:01] Speaker C: And they're like. They're just mean to him. And he dies. Like, just piss right off. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, That's. I would have preferred the freaking CHUD ceremony to work. They were all buying into it. They buy into bullying him. Why wouldn't they buy into this and just have it work? Because it's the same. It's the same thing in my mind. As long as they're. As long as they're believing it's gonna work, it should work. [00:39:29] Speaker C: They believe that the spear is going to work, and the spear takes it out for a couple of seconds. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Exactly. So why it doesn't work doesn't make any sense. Aside from it's a horrible plot line that shouldn't have been in the movie in the beginning, because obviously the indigenous people didn't get rid of it. Otherwise it been gone. What? What? What the hell? [00:39:50] Speaker C: Because they didn't believe it would work or whatever. He scratched off of the thing. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it did fail and that's why he scratched it off. He wanted them to believe it. And. And they didn't believe in the beginning. It's all. [00:40:01] Speaker B: But how. How would I buy into this story being like, wait, if. If the native people already took care of this, why is it back? How did it come back if it worked? It doesn't make any sense. [00:40:12] Speaker C: Yeah, the adults were thinking all that hard on those. [00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, whatever it is what it is. Richie definitely had the best arc. The most intense scene to me and then ruined completely was the old lady in the old apartment that Bev used to live in. That old lady was amazing. Her creepy smile, her in distant stare. Just weird twitchy. It was all really like, why is this happening? This is so weird. It makes no sense for her Bev character to go through this, but it's at least interesting. And then it turned into a CGI disaster, which again made no sense. Just killer. It made no sense. But that five minutes of like her getting tea was like at least interesting to me. [00:41:04] Speaker A: That was probably one of the better scenes as well. I think that that old lady was probably one of the best actresses in the film. And. And it. It creeped you out. It gave me goosebumps watching it the way she would just. Just ask a question, just freeze frame, pause. Like it just. You're just like, why won't she move? You know? And then finally she. She says something and changes her. Her expression. Yeah, it was fantastic. And then the monster comes out of the dark and it was trying to get you that kind of one jump scare and then she's like chasing around the room and it went downhill. But it was. I like that. That was cool. It. It reminded me of the scene from the. The first movie where they are watching the slideshow in. In the garage. And it was reminiscent of that how Pennywise came out and scared them. And it was. It was pretty scary. But it. It didn't land as well as. As that one did, so. But it was a good scene. [00:41:57] Speaker C: It was one of those scenes that I remembered liking a lot the first time. Like I probably would have put it up there like you just said with the. With the scene from the first movie with the slideshow and this thing. It just didn't. Didn't do it for me very much all maybe because I knew exactly what was coming or had an idea like Maybe I built it up, like, oh, this is the good scene. And like, yeah, the freeze framing was kind of cool, but everything, like, once she's in the kitchen and like, she's doing that weird walk she does, I was like, okay. [00:42:23] Speaker A: You know, you could tell she was naked walking around in the back. You're like, what the hell's going on? [00:42:27] Speaker C: I. I think that's about the first time. [00:42:29] Speaker B: But this time, like, like most scary movies, you know, once you've. The cat's out of the bag, it [00:42:36] Speaker A: doesn't hit the same. [00:42:37] Speaker B: So I agree with that on this specific scene. For sure, it doesn't hit as hard, but it was still at least more interesting than a lot of the movie. [00:42:46] Speaker C: I will hit back on that just the tiniest bit though, because, like, obviously we just watched the whole Conjuring franchise, but because I'm editing it, I'm essentially watching it a second time, right? Some of the scenes are still creepy the second time around. Like when there's something on screen that is just not necessarily horrifying, but just off, just really off. Even though I'm editing the film and, like, I'm usually listening to something else while I'm going through it. Like, the hair on the back of my neck is still going up because [00:43:14] Speaker A: I'm just like, well, I had that when we watched Chapter one. When we watched chapter one the second time around, I was like, yeah, this still can scare me. And I know what's coming. Not with chapter two. [00:43:25] Speaker C: It was interesting Woman scene. Just did not do it. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it was interesting at best. And that was. And that was it, fellas. I'm ready to be done with it. [00:43:34] Speaker C: Oh, God, I was ready 10 minutes ago. If you like what we do and you want to help support us, head on over to our Patreon. There's a link down below. Shout out to our producers for helping with the show as well as our executive producers, Real Bubba, Hotep and Dino, and our writer, Elder JM990. Thank you all so much for helping me. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Here's the breakdown of the film. After talking about it with these guys, maybe these actors were decently cast and I just didn't have the opportunity to really feel their character because they had crappy through lines for this film for their adult selves and just did not hold up to the tremendously good job that the children did in the. In Chapter one. So maybe I can give them a pass there. But there were so many just really weird plot holes. Everything from the Wicker basket and how they, you know, end up defeating Pennywise to just some of the weird stuff, like, you know, how's Henry Bowers get a car? Like, why? Where'd that come from? Little things that kind of took me out of the film. But the biggest thing was that I just didn't have fun watching this. I just didn't really enjoy it. And when it's. When you're not enjoying it and it's as long as this is, and there's very little for you to enjoy other than just picking the thing apart really makes it a bad film for me. I gave this a 7 60. You know what? Forget that. Give it a 58. I'm giving this a 58. I can't even give it a solid 60. It's just. It was. It's just no bueno. Didn't. Didn't really have a good time with this. The only reason I would ever suggest anybody watch this is if you really enjoyed the first one, you wanted to finish it. But honestly, stop at the first one and just know that they end up beating it later. That's all you need to know. [00:45:28] Speaker C: As I mentioned, I watched this one in two parts. And the first part, we ended about an hour into it. And I was enjoying it at that point. And admittedly, I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. And I was looking forward to getting back to this one. I remember watching this, I don't know, 2019, whenever it came out, and not loving it, but enjoying it. So I was looking forward to getting back to this one. Enjoyed the first hour or so of this one, maybe more than the other two did. I'm not 100 sure. But the second time we sat down to watch this one and we went through the last, like, hour and 45 minutes. I just, for the first time in a while on our rating, it really felt like I was just doing homework. Like I was just watching it to get to the end just to be be done with it. My wife was yawning beside me, and it was just. Just kind of an awful experience. And even when it ended, I asked her, like, did that do anything for you? Said it didn't. I was like, okay, maybe it was just our headspace. Maybe something's going on. So it's really interesting talking to Brian and Will. They were the exact same spot. Like, this just did not work for any of the four people that I talked to about this movie. I will say that I think the acting in it was actually pretty decent. I liked the character. I like the actors in those roles. Ironically, Bill Skarsgard might have been my least favorite actor in this one. Just because I don't know when he's scaring kids it makes more sense. And the scene under the bleachers when he's scaring the kid made a lot of sense. But having him put on that like crazy weird, funny voice and talking to an adult in broad daylight just didn't really resonate for me. Didn't like make the hair stand up on my neck. It didn't scare me. Like it, it's a very unsettling movie, but it's not really scary. It just didn't hit any of the notes that I was hoping it would hit. The sound at one point even like really made you aware, like hey, bad things are about to happen. And it's like I like scores when they kind of tell you what's going to go on a little bit or when they're subtle and in the background you kind of listen to it on a second or a third watch. They're like, oh, that's really well done. But not when it's punching you in the face with it quite as badly. This scene was, I just like the guy said the, the enjoyment level was awful. It was breaking its own rules. There's just not a lot to love here. And yet I'm giving this a 62. I, I don't think it was unwatchable. I just don't think it was nearly as good as the first one. I think it's totally fine if you watch the first one. Enjoy it to finish off the series, the two part series, but maybe you just don't bother with the first one. [00:47:47] Speaker B: Okay, here's the problem. And I, and I think, you know, Brian had a little bit of trouble. He changed his score. Even Brian, I felt like he's hesitant on rating this movie. Here's the problem. It. The first movie was a pretty good movie and they knew what they were doing. They executed well. They had all the same capabilities, even more so funding wise to make a great movie. And it is technically for the most part made really well. There's a really good potential to this movie. But the writing was horrible. The underutilization of the actors was horrible. Relying on the children actors just forced in there so that people will come out to see it because, oh, I remember those kid actors were fun in the first one. Horrible. There were so many bad choices made in this movie that it just crippled it. It crippled it. Adding the humor where it didn't belong crippled this movie. Cutting off Pennywise at the legs crippled this movie. There's so many elements that it could have gone the right way but they just flooded it with all of these bad choices and bad decisions. Even Brian was saying like they, they, they did little call outs to the turtle from the book. Even though it wasn't in there. There's all of this lore and deep cuts in here that if you look for, you can find but you don't want to look for because it's so boring. Af they don't know how to edit. They don't know what they just. They bit off way more than they could chew. And it fell so flat. This balloon deflated so fast. Pennywise fell so far from Paul Bundy. It just was a disaster. This movie is a disaster, but it is a well made movie. 59 don't go to this. Don't watch it. It's trash. Just watch the first one and be happy with your life. Don't be angry like me. You don't have to be. I'm angry, so you don't have to be. This movie sucks. [00:49:58] Speaker C: All right. And with that, we have it as a series coming in tied with Jurassic park, but I had to put it underneath. I just had to. [00:50:08] Speaker B: I knew it was above Jurassic park, but Dan wouldn't let me have it. [00:50:12] Speaker C: No, it is tied with Jurassic Park. That is not the same thing. [00:50:15] Speaker B: But it could literally be above it. [00:50:18] Speaker C: But it's not and it never will [00:50:20] Speaker B: be because Dan wouldn't let me have it. My word stands. My word stands. Nope. [00:50:27] Speaker C: Anyways, this puts it actually shockingly close to the Conjuring franchise, which, I don't know, I think as an overall, yes, there's a lot more Conjuring than there is it. But overall I enjoy. [00:50:39] Speaker A: If you count how many minutes I think it's a tie. [00:50:41] Speaker C: Yeah, you might be close. [00:50:45] Speaker B: Conjuring movies were a little long in the tooth as well, but that's fair. It's a fair rating, I guess. [00:50:50] Speaker C: I. I remember liking this a lot more than I actually did. Yeah, that's really unfortunate. [00:50:57] Speaker A: I remember liking it a lot more when I first saw it too. [00:51:00] Speaker B: As soon as I saw Chapter two, I was like, no, I'm done with this and this. [00:51:05] Speaker C: You mean as soon as you saw Chapter two? Like as soon as you finished watching it? [00:51:08] Speaker B: Yeah, like back in 2019. Yeah. [00:51:10] Speaker C: Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Just compared to the first one, I was just like, what happened? What happened? [00:51:15] Speaker C: All right, that's our rating of Chapter two. But what's yours? Let us know in the comments down below. I'd love to hear from you. We record this live over at Twitch TV, the Montul Mongoolie show, every Thursday night at 9pm Eastern Standard Time. So head over there and hit the follow. But if you want to hang with us live, or if you made it this far in the video you probably enjoyed it, hit the like and subscribe button on this one. So we see you in the next one. [00:51:39] Speaker B: Sam.