‘IT CHAPTER TWO’ TRAILER DROPS

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X31v5Ht2rPo&w=560&h=315]

New Line Cinema and Director Andy Muschietti dropped the official trailer for the long-awaited sequel to IT Chapter One (2017) on July 18. It’s been 27 years. Pennywise, eater of worlds and of children, survived his first encounter with The Losers Club and has returned to Derry, Maine. The members of The Losers Club, now nearing their forties, had in the ensuing decades gone their separate ways. Now they are lured back to tangle with the evil, ravenous entity one more time.

The new trailer (embedded above) gives us our first look at some of Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s terrifying new antics, including a funhouse clip that demonstrates that the clown’s appetite for kids has not waned over the years. In addition, we see a beautiful set of fade-in comparisons between the 1989 younger members of The Losers Club and their now-adult counterparts. Conspicuously missing from this side-by-side is young Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff) and adult Stanley Uris (Andy Bean), although there’s probably a very good plot-related reason for that if Muschietti and company stick to the plot of the novel.

Similar to how IT Chapter One was received, the comparisons between IT Chapter Two and the 1990 ABC miniseries are inevitable when the film finally hits theaters on Sept. 6, 2019. Going by the trailer alone, this film already has more going for the adult half of the tale than the miniseries did. For example, the comparison between the young and adult versions of each character demonstrates that the film’s crew thought carefully about how each child would evolve into adulthood. Unlike the miniseries, which simply used adult stars already in ABC contracts, viewers can believe that young Beverly (Sophia Lillis) might actually grow up to be adult Beverly (Jessica Chastain) and that young Bill (Jaeden Martell) could grow up to become adult Bill (James McAvoy). The same goes for the rest of The Losers Club.

The reactions and fear demonstrated by the adult Losers Club members in the trailer also seems more intense and believable in the few seconds that we see them. The 1990 miniseries seemed to have some trouble getting the adult actors to react in a way that felt like they had actually experienced the events that had transpired nearly three decades earlier.

Along with our glimpses of The Losers Club in the new trailer, we get a creepy little narration by Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) himself: “For twenty-seven years, I’ve dreamt of you. I’ve craved you. I’ve missed you!”

IT Chapter Two will hit theaters Sept. 6, 2019. IT Chapter One is currently available on both digital and physical media.