We’re well over a year from the release of It: Chapter 2, Andy Muschietti’s soggy sequel to his seismic take of the first half of Stephen King’s 1986 epic, but, with spooky season upon us, horror fans are again reflecting on the total drag that it turned out to be.
Take Community creator Dan Harmon, for instance, who took to Instagram on Tuesday to offer up some alternate loglines for the story, which finds a group of old friends returning to their Maine hometown of Derry after the ancient evil they thought they’d vanquished as children resurfaces. Or, in Harmon’s words, “swim through dirt and blood that isn’t there and confront a million year old spider that identifies as an industrial era clown yet weakens when the word ‘clown’ is shouted at it.”
Other highlights from Harmon’s post:
- “Divided by a monster that failed to kill them when they were much smaller, a half dozen fully grown humans with similar names and overlapping roles unite to split up, overpower the monster individually, then join forces to unsurprisingly defeat it at its weakest.”
- His description of Pennywise as a “a thing that can eat your actual body with real teeth IF you get tricked into trusting it, otherwise known as not fearing it, but can’t hurt you unless you fear it but also can’t hurt you if you spend an entire summer fearing it, in which case it can eat your delicious fear. Also it can straight up kill you if you’re so unafraid of it that you just kicked its ass and turned your back on it to tend to your lover.”
- His other description of Pennywise, “whose only weaknesses are being confronted, yelled at, physically threatened, insulted, mocked, challenged, approached, ignored and having objects thrown at it but only if you really believe that the thing you’re throwing will hurt it.”
To be fair to King’s tome, of which we are very big fans, it’s not to be blamed for the film’s leaps in logic and thin character sketches. And, to be fair to Muschietti, the ending of the book is more or less impossible to render on film, metaphysical and mind-fucky as it is.
Regardless, we’re still annoyed by that “Angel of the Morning” drop.
Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]