This Is Why I'm Like This: A Movie Review, IT 2 SPOILERS

  As a life long Stephen King fan, it was my duty to see the new IT movies.
  As a life long Tim Curry fan, it is my duty to snark about it.
  My first Stephen King novel was The Shining. My mom read it and loved it, and promptly gave it to me. I was in high school, however, and the language was upsetting to her, so she took a black sharpie and marked through the cuss words. That lasted about 50 pages, then she gave up. I guess she realized that I could infer the word based on the context, anyway, so what was the point? It was also a life lesson for me, as story is king and context is God, and the language is only as relevant as the reader chooses to make it.
   I read IT when I was hospitalized with a kidney infection. I read it in hardcover, and I finished it the week I was in. I know, right? How long ago was that? They would put you in the hospital for a kidney infection, they kept you for a week until you were better, and your insurance paid for it. Crazy times, man. I had insurance through B. Dalton, I remember the store manager bringing me flowers in the hospital and awkwardly hovering at the foot of my bed until I dismissed him.
  I was so disappointed in the ending that I never re read the book. Every once in a while, that happens. He knows how to tell a story, no argument. But sometimes he just gets all spun up with his own yarn and forgets that he needed a way back out, an exit strategy. A bread trail, something. I think that's what happened with IT. As terrified as I am of spiders, after all the great ghoulies that preceded the arachnid, it was just ...well, lame. The spider web of his story got away from him, tangled him up and immobilized him and he disappointed me. With a spider.
   Clearly, I had to watch the miniseries that emerged with Tim Curry, because it was Tim Curry. He was a delightful Pennywise, and the cast did their best to hold on against some heavy handed directing and poor screenwriting so I enjoyed myself. Yet there was still that ridiculous spider at the end, and even with a miniseries, there was no way all the story lines and characters were going to make it into the movie. Too much of King's writing relies on the internal narrative and thoughts of his characters. That doesn't translate to a screenplay.
   So when I heard they were making two movies and splitting the time periods, I thought there might be hope to explore the storytelling instead of the horror. Not that the horror wasn't awesome, but without the character development it was flat. That's what went wrong with the miniseries. What makes IT terrifying is that IT knows what scares you.
    IT 2017 came out and was just the kids. I worried about this, as in film it's a rough gig to try and bring back those kiddos in the next movie because, you know, they age. I assumed that meant the kids' side was on lock and part two would be all the adults. This vexed me, as the novel has the memories and the present so twisted up that something is going to have to give for the story to be told clearly in two movies. The first installment was a delight, no adults at all, only the kids' side of the story and missing that stupid awkward gang bang that never made any sense, anyway. And the death of Georgie was beautiful and horrifying in all the right ways.
   So it was with some trepidation that I embarked on viewing IT 2. The girls and Jim were all about it, so we planned to splurge and see it at the Alamo, where they were featuring "IT themed drinks" which amounted to floofie daiquiris with whipped cream cherry juice, and we could have lunch as well. I figured if it sucked at least I'd have beer and food.
   We arrived, full of hesitant anticipation. While waiting in the empty lobby---never a good sign--we looked over the Coming Soon ads flashing on the walls and chose our next adventures. It's like planning a vacation, you know you're gonna drop almost $200 at a movie, so pre planning is key. We entered the theatre to a lovely history of Pennywise and IT, and enjoyed our bloody alcoholic beverages as Genoa staved off a massive stomach ache and I downed two ambers. The movie began.
    Three hours later we were all buzzed, full and disappointed, but unable to pinpoint exactly why.
    The movie was "fine", it's a good movie,but..."it was long" was our collective comment.
    First, they mixed the kid memories in with the adults. I think this was for anyone who didn't see the first one, and it just added more time. They also added "flashbacks" not from the first movie or the novel to fill in a new agenda that makes Richie gay. I don't care if he's gay, if he was originally gay in the novel it was never explored and I dunno why it needed to be done now. I care that he's funny and he keeps the humor rolling, that's what I care about. It matters none to me that he carved he and Eddie's initials into the bridge railing as kids, or that Henry bullied him about being a "faggot" in a flashback. All you did was add more time to an already bloated film in what appears to be a contrived agenda. Stephen King has no agendas other than to scare the pants off of you, stick to his plan. He is King for a reason. He made any homophobic agendas clear in the opening with the death of Adrianin the novel, and it was present in the movie. Anything more is...overkill.
   Second, the story itself was changed. All King fans know the pain of Halloran taking an axe to the chest at the end of the movie version of The Shining. This time, instead of Henry putting Mike in the hospital, he just hurts Mike's hand. So now Mike is able to attend the final showdown...because, thirdly, he had to explain some native ritual that, again, was not in the original novel, and he needed to be present in the cave at the end for that to work. Awesome. Please add some more stuff to try and explain the inexplicable and fix a bad ending. If you're wondering, it did not work.
   I will take a moment to appreciate that the screenwriter, with the obvious support of King, took a jab at the horror master for his inability to end the book. I guess I wasn't the only one disappointed with the spider.
  I also do not take umbrage with the removal of Bev's husband and Ben's wife,whose presence, honestly, bloated the novel and just created more story lines that needed tying up.
  Fifth, Henry is so prevalent in the novel as an agent of IT, who is then quickly discarded once he serves his purpose, that he may have just as easily been eliminated from the movie altogether, since they chose to downplay his role even further. No need for him, cut him out--he just adds time, again, and it's already three hours long.
   I think the issue is what all Stephen King films suffer from: a deep identity crisis. His work is more than horror, and it relies heavily on in depth character analysis, much of which cannot be translated to a screenplay. The IT in 2017 worked because it stuck with the present, the kids dealing with the horror of "right now", unencumbered by their past. The film was clear, concise, contained jump scares and humor and that charm that King is so good at eliciting from us regarding our childhood friendships. IT 2 falls short because they were bound to film the kid flashbacks before they got too old, and then piece them together with the adults. Which is fine, I suppose, if it added to the story. But for the most part, it did not. There are six surviving adults (SPOILER ALERT STAN THE MAN DOESN'T MAKE IT)  each  of whom need their own "flashback" to remind themselves of the past. I don't think you need an entire scene  a piece to do that. As long as the moment happened in IT 1, which it did not, you need only reference it briefly. But those moments weren't in the first one, and so they bog down the second one with more kid memories. Poor planning, guys.
   I would watch James McAvoy read the phone book. He's a stellar actor, and it's a delight to see him play a regular Joe instead of a psycho. The rest of the cast are admirable, though I have no idea who they are, I always appreciate a director who does not rely on star power to sell a film. The acting is not the issue here. I think the writing was fine except for the weird additions that only added time, not character or story. The directing was done with an eye to the rose colored glasses of youth in a small town that King so loves. What they needed was an editor willing to cut scenes. Those additional flashbacks were not helpful, they only dragged and prevented the forward motion of the story. And as I posited in the first paragraph, story is king. (***addendum, I just looked up an interview with the director. The original cut was four hours long, and he still wants to film more. 'Nuff said.)
   Then there was the spider. I honestly didn't think anything could possibly be less satisfying than a giant black spider.
   I was wrong.
   That was not horror, that was silly. Making the clown the spider was an exercise in poor choices. Or laziness or just an acknowledgement that you just cannot satisfactorily end this beauty on film.The screenwriter clearly thought he could fix King's poor ending, and all he ended up proving was that if you're going to tell the story the way it's intended, the ending is going to be stupid on film. The end didn't justify the means, and the means didn't justify the end. The means were everything and it ended because it had to. In all cases: the novel, the Tim Curry miniseries and the newest additions,this is a fabulous horror story with a crappy ending. It is what it is. At least when you read about the spider and dead lights, it's left to your imagination and you can feel the fear of the characters.
   So he's got that going for him.