Pushing these up makes the movies more current and ties into the ‘80s nostalgia heyday we’ve been in since Stranger Things kicked off. The timeline is moved, so that the Losers encounter Pennywise first as children in 1988, and then their modern-day encounters are in 2016. The Losers are played as children and adults, respectively, by Jaeden Martell and James McAvoy (Bill), Sophia Lillis and Jessica Chastain (Bev), Chosen Jacobs and Isaiah Mustafa (Mike), Jeremy Ray Taylor and Jay Ryan (Ben), Finn Wolfhard and Bill Hader (Richie), Jack Dylan Grazer and James Ransone (Eddie), and Wyatt Oleff and Andy Bean (Stan). Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgård, is styled in a more outright scary way, edgier and way less colorful. The first film was written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman, and the second was written exclusively by Dauberman. If you’d like to know more about the production of the miniseries, check out Pennywise: The Story of It, which Stacey Osbeck reviewed here on MovieJawn.įor comparison, It Chapter One was released in 2017, followed by Chapter Two in 2019. The effects are dated, but the scares still work in that they make bright, mundane things spooky. But I don’t necessarily think that’s bad. There’s blood and gore, but it’s not nearly as gross as the modern films. This death for It is simplified from the book, but I think the changes work as a pretty satisfying conclusion.īecause it was intended for television, the miniseries rides a fine line between going for the goriness and scariness and keeping it clean enough for television censors. Beverly is able to hit It with silver, also like she did when they were younger, and the remaining Losers follow the injured spider form and rip out Its heart to kill It. Eddie plans to stun it using his inhaler, like he did when he was a kid, but he’s wounded and ends up dying in the sewers. In the miniseries, with Stan dead and Mike hospitalized, the rest of the Losers go into the sewer to defeat It a second time. Younger Mike is introduced to the Losers much earlier in It (2017), and we find out that his parents died in a house fire, so he’s living and working on his grandfather’s farm. Mike is perhaps the only character to get more meaningful development in the newer films, but it’s changed from the source material. Bill, Stan, and Ben are pretty well-established in both the 1990 and newer versions, but there’s more to them in the miniseries, as with Bev, Richie, and Eddie. I also think the miniseries does a better job at establishing character without bogging down the storytelling. It’s an effective set-up for the mix of flashbacks and modern sequences, whereas the modern films are split into sections. So within the first ten minutes, we’ve seen Pennywise in his clown form, he’s taken a child, and we understand that Mike’s encountered It before. He sees a MISSING poster for Bill’s younger brother, which prompts him to call everyone back to Derry. It begins in the modern day, with Pennywise appearing to a young girl, and afterward, Mike visits the crime scene. However, I think the miniseries has really great story framing. But, as I’ll cover later, It Chapter Two does the same thing. The individual Pennywise encounters stop the plot dead for a solid twenty minutes. Once they’ve all come into town and had their moment, they meet for dinner. For instance, the 1990 version portrays each of the Losers (minus Stan) getting into Derry, remembering seeing Pennywise as a child, and then a scary interaction with It in the present. On the whole, I think it’s a pretty effective adaptation, though there are some plot issues that also appear in the modern movies. The Losers were played as children and adults, respectively, by Jonathan Brandis and Richard Thomas (Bill), Emily Perkins and Annette O'Toole (Bev), Marlon Taylor and Tim Reid (Mike), Brandon Crane and John Ritter (Ben), Seth Green and Harry Anderson (Richie), Adam Faraizl and Dennis Christopher (Eddie), and Ben Heller and Richard Masur (Stan). The childhood scenes take place in 1960, and the adult storyline is in 1990. The series was praised for Tim Curry’s portrayal of Pennywise and the child actors’ performances, while the second half was not as well-received. Now available on HBOMax as a 3-hour movie, it’s not presented in its original split format. Cohen and Tommy Lee Wallace, It (1990) aired as a two-part miniseries in November of that year.
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