An exhaustive breakdown of how the new 'It' trailer compares to the original
2017 is fast on its way to being a very, very good year for Stephen King fans.
We've already got the long-awaited adaptation of The Dark Tower coming this summer, and now we also have our first teaser trailer for Andrés Muschietti's It remake to get excited about.
And what's the point in having a teaser if you can't obsessively break it down, frame-by-frame?
In a cathartic effort to forget about the 5+ months we have to wait before the film's actually released, we've been through the new trailer and compared it with scenes from the original 1990 miniseries.
The opening
The first 45 seconds of the trailer consists of an almost shot-for-shot remake of what is probably the most iconic sequence from the original: Georgie Denbrough dressed in his little yellow raincoat, sailing a paper boat down the gutter to his inevitable, clown-shaped doom.
You can see the similarities in the shots below:
They've even included the same wooden roadworks barrier, with the only difference being that 1990 Georgie ducks casually underneath it...
...While 2017 Georgie runs face-first into the thing.
The opening sequence ends with the iconic storm drain scene. The shots are mirrored, but apart from that it's near enough identical.
To be fair, Muschietti has clearly done this on purpose. The sequence with Georgie's paper boat is so damn memorable -- both in the book and the miniseries -- that tampering with it too much would just feel wrong.
The Losers' Club
The Losers' Club of 2017 looks fairly similar to how it looked in 1990. Beverly Marsh (played by Sophia Lillis) has a shorter hairdo and Richie Tozier looks a bit different too (he's now played by Finn Wolfard of Stranger Things fame), but aside from that they're all pretty much the same.
The photo album sequence
After a brief introduction to Derry and a few shots of balloons and creepy looking houses, we're shown another sequence that'll be instantly familiar to anyone who's seen the original: the kids all gathered together in a group to look through old photos of Derry.
Unlike the opening with Georgie and his boat, though, this sequence has a few more notable differences to the original.
Muschietti seems to be trying to make the 2017 version of It a little darker than the original. The lighting is moodier, the atmosphere feels more oppressive, and the introduction of Pennywise at the scene's conclusion is a lot more eerily subtle.
Bill's vision of Georgie
In the final sequence of the trailer, Bill comes face to face with his dead brother in what looks like the basement of his house.
We don't see much of the sewers in the 2017 teaser, but the sequence above foreshadows the Losers' Club's final confrontation with Pennywise in the pipes beneath Derry.
Finally, here are both versions of Pennywise.
The 1990 Pennywise (played by Tim Curry) had a disarmingly comic edge that contrasted with his abrupt shifts to horror (his teeth would turn into fangs and he'd let out this nasty growling sound).
Bill Skarsgård's 2017 Pennywise, meanwhile, appears to be all horror.
We'll have to wait and see which one proves to be the scariest.
Topics Film Stephen King
