It could have been so much more.

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2020)

It is my favorite book of all times - I've gone trough it around 4 times, plus most of Kings other work, at least once. I've all ways hoped for a proper adaption, since the TV miniseries adaption, just a had too little budget, too little time to tell the books all most 1200 pages, and had to be toned to much down for TV.
The way I all ways hoped for the adaption to happen, was like a modern TV series, like an HBO show or something. Perhaps just one season with around 10 to 12 episodes. Since even with both this movie and Chapter One combined, there's still much that they had to change or leave out, so much character development, so many great scenes, esential world building and exposition, they couldn't include in just two movies.
Hopefully it will happen one day.
And hopefully sooner than later.
Even though they clearly did their best on these two movies, and you could tell a lof of the involved people, actually cared abouth the book and how the film turned out, it is still far from the ultimate adaptation of It, that a lot King fans have been dreaming of for years.
Hopefully a new adapted series could then be set in the 50's and 80's like in the book, and be a scene for scene adaptation, that is more faithful and accurate to the book, instead of them mostly coming up with their own subplots, scenes, scares and incarnations of It, that more or less all were just downgrades and too different from how IT manifested itself in the book.
Though Andy Muschietti supposedly IS working on a supercut of the movie, where he will combine both the first and the second movie along with deleted scenes and allegedly even a few new ones, shot for this version.
If this really happen, then I really hope it will be intercut between the scenes with kids and the grownups, right from the beginning, like in the book.
Though a 6 to 7 hour combined cut of these two movies spliced together, still far from will be enough, to cover all of the book - a handful of extended and unseen/new scenes added to what we all ready have, still just isn't adequate, no matter how good this added material will end up being.
But until a 10 to 12 hour adaptation finally is made one day, this is probably our best hope until then.
Even though these two movies, have a lot of good things about them, like great editing, a great cast, especially for the kids, nice coloring, nice looking cinematography, okay music and good settings (Derry in particular is greatly captured), there's still a lot of issues the rumored super-cut may still have a chance to fix - though I guess a lot of it is hard to change by now, unless they decide, to do a rather extensive post production on this said supercut.
But hopefully, they can tone the humor down a lot, the humor, wasn't as cringe-worthy in the first chapter, it was mostly just smart remarks and banter between the kids, that seemed rather natural.
But in the second chapter, they turned the humor up way too much, and made it too forced and self aware. Which doesn't fit such a dark and epic tale, or an R-rated horror movie in general.
If they're going to shoot new scenes with Bill Skarnsgaard, I hope they're going to show a bit more of It's appearances as Penywise, when he's more aggressive, demonic, menacing and and mean-spirited in this jolly clownish comedian sort of way, like in the book. Even though Bill often did a great job with one hell of a screen presence, he was more than often too childlike, more like a weird creepy stalker in a clownsuit kind of way, that never really was described in the book - where it comes off more of this eternal interdimensional being, that thinks it's portraying a comedic human clown, and basically is overdoing it, with out it knowing it itself.
Hopefully this cut, will also cut away, with all these "shaking-camera-distorted-screaming-monster-clown-jumping-at-the-camera"-takes. Or just use it once, at best. They felt so forced, and, just took you out of the creepy atmosphere they were trying to build, plus the clown never gets any of the kids in these shots anyway, they could just cut to the kids running, they should be scared enough anyway, with out this type of forced modern trope, just played for cheap jump scares - the true horror lies in the tone and atmosphere anyway.
Maybe they could even re-shoot some of the CGI shots - which is one of my biggest issues with the film. I mean, the scene with George in the beginning, is just so effective and well done, until Penywise gets turned into this fake looking videogame monster-clown, that looks more fun than scary and you out of the mood. A bit of ekstra creepy clown-makeup, some nasty prosthetic yellow sharp teeth, and a couple of yellow evil eye-lenses, on some guy that goes into beast-mode and bites into a child arm in a yellow raincoat, would make this so much more disturbing, effective and evil. They don't even have to use Skarnsgaard again for something like, since It is all ready changing it's appearance and looking different, and they could just cut back to when George is crawling away from the sewer again.
A lot of the fake CGI stuff, could get fixed up this way, especially scenes when they distort Penywises face to this CGI videogame face, were it looks more comical than scary - just replace the face on Penywise in these scenes (that's a cheap thing to do), with some creepy guy, with evil makeup and prosthetic instead, and even it it out with good editing of the existing material.
Though this won't cover up all the CGI in the movie, it will help make the overall experience of such a supercut way more effective and feel more real.
Never the less, I really hope to see this supercut soon. AT least to hold us over, until the greatest book ever written, gets the adaptation it deserves one day, in a 10 to 12 hour and more faithful to novel kind of way.
I mean, if they could do it with a book with a book like The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, then IT definitely deserves this too - even if they've just made this flawed, semi unfaithful, but still somewhat okay and well meant attempt, that still could have been way worse.