Henry Bowers was different in this adaptation (and how bullying has changed since the late 80s)

I mean he was still a sadistic bully, but his 1990 miniseries counterpart was more akin to a bully you would see in a Nickeldeon cartoon. This version was more forgiving (since Georgie went missing) and his dialoge kinda had a witty dark sense of humor, in comparison to his counterpart from the miniseries, who just acted like every other generic bully from every other kids TV show or movie from the 80s and 90s. The 1990 miniseries version of Bowers was like a mix of Roger Klotz from Doug and The Greaser Dogs from CatDog (the latter of which came out years later) and maybe some of the bullies from Hey Arnold or Recess.

The portrayal of this incarnation of Henry Bowers is similar to more modern bullies, where they're far less 1-dimensional and more like villains seen in superhero films, despite this version of IT taking place in 1989, when bullies were a lot more cruel and sadistic than today's bullies. If anything, the Bowers gang of 1989 should've been more like the bullies from The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. I get that the novel/miniseries was set in the 50s/60s and therefore bullies were also different back then, but the bullying portrayed in this version, is more akin to the bullying of the 2010s and 2020s, instead of the 80s and 90s. It was a lot worse back then, especially compared to today. Even the bullies in Hot Tub Time Machine were more akin to standard 1980s bullying than this movie. I mean, where's the over the top "Karate Kid" style bullying, for a film set in 1989? Those films were very popular back then, even KK3 came out in '89, so why would they go the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" route and make Henry Bowers more akin to Rodrick, instead of Johnny Lawrence or Make Barnes?

I don't really know what bullying was like in the 50s and 60s, since I wasn't alive back then, but I do remember bullying being way more sadistic and extreme, in the 90s and 2000s, compared to now. A lot of today's media rarely portrays bullying as this huge problem, anymore. There's no more of these intense after school fistfights, as the bullies and/or their parents would be locked away behind bars, if this were to happen nowadays. Today's bullies come off as petty and pathetic, compared to the bullies from previous decades.