Possible Spoilers!
IT Chapter Two hit theaters on September 6. After watching the first chapter to refresh my memory, the beginning of the new movie and the ending of the first one may seem like they don’t correlate. However, the beginning of Chapter Two is in fact the beginning of the Stephen King’s novel. In regards to the movie following the book, it did almost to a T. Anyone who has read the book first couldn’t have imagined it differently.
(SPOILERS)
Stephen King himself made a cameo in this closing chapter. In a short scene he plays a clerk at a thrift store selling “adult Bill” (James McAvoy) his childhood bike back. The watcher can hear King make a smart comment, saying the bike will cost $300.00 and that McAvoy’s character can afford it because he’s a big name writer. Anyone who’s been told something similar, when their career is taken at face value and not for what their reality is, could relate.
Similarities between the movies include the CGI styles and acting styles. The combination of comedic relief and vulgar language in the first movie carries from childhood to adulthood in the sequel. For the people who were not a fan of the ‘cartoon-like’ monsters in the first movie, it’s likely that they won’t like Chapter Two for the same reason.
If you haven’t seen the first chapter, since many of the scenes in the sequel are flashbacks of the first film, some ideas or characters may not make sense.
Scare Level: If you don’t like clowns, it will definitely be scary. But if you didn’t think the first one was scary, then the second one won’t be. Jump scares get everyone, so don’t act like Pennywise slamming the coffin shut on the fake doll of Richie in the first film didn’t grab everyone from their seats.
IMDB gave the movie 7.0/10. Rotten Tomatoes on the Tomatometer gave it a 62% and the audience scoring was 79%.
Compared to the 1990 version, which was a 3 part series special, the remake was only split into 2 parts. However, after watching the DVD release version, I can see how the directors and producers decided to split the film into two parts even though it doesn’t follow the original. Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard play the leading role Pennywise in their respective films. I guess you could say Bill had some big clown shoes to fill.
Overall, both film’s cast and crew are equally successful in bringing Stephen King’s novel It to the big screen.
