I am going to focus on the career of a single character mainly for this blog, but first a few notes about the It story by Stephen King in general. Spoilers ahead. Also, no troll comments about how Bill Skarsgard is a better Pennywise monster than Tim Curry. Both are magnificent and I love them equally.
For those of you unfamiliar, the It franchise is based on the book about seven people who reunited in their hometown to fight an ancient, shape-shifting, murderous monster they battle 27 years earlier as a group of children. The group is made up of Bill, Beverly, Ritchie (who is my favorite character), Eddie, Mike, Ben, and Stan. For the recent films, they split the story in half, so their kid moments make up one very excellent film and their adult moments (still with kid flashbacks) create a less excellent but still pretty good sequel. I’m going to be talking just about the sequel today.
As a kid, I grew up with the Tim Curry version and I watched it pretty much every time I caught it on TV. Just like most of my generation who watched that made-for-television masterpiece (which my boyfriend says is cheesy, but that can be correct), the scenes featuring them as kids are always so much better than the grownups. It made me sad as a child to think that the seven main characters barely spoke after high school. And that they forgot how close they had been. The parts of the story where they are young really do play out like an extreme adventure movie - seven friends who can send a supernatural killer clown into hibernation with the power of friendship. I couldn’t understand how a bond that strong could possibly be destroyed, even by time and poor memory. As an adult, it makes sense. It’s no-less sad, but it’s realistic. And that in it-self is a tragedy. Understanding why that is just the way life goes even when a killer clown is involved is pretty bleak.
Still, the the second movie’s character that I will be focusing on is Bill, the group’s leader, played by James MacAvoy. Bill grew up to be an author and screenwriter. His wife is an actress who is starring the adaptation of his latest book. One of the earliest scenes in the film involve Bill on set being asked by both his wife Audra and Peter Bogdanovich (as “director”) to rewrite the ending before they shoot it. This is of course given Bill block and becomes a running theme in the movie. One of the things I objected to in this film was that they minimized Audra’s part (and before anyone argues, yes, I have read the book not just watched the TV Curry mini-series) which I feel is important to Bill’s adult life as a writer. His abilities directly impact Audra’s career and so she is both supportive, but tough. Her having a larger part in the original story is a part of what gives Bill a chance at closure and continuing his career at the end of the story. But instead, she just sort of fades out in this version. By the time she shows up again, you’ve kinda forgotten who she is.
Bill argues that his endings are the way they are because real life doesn’t give nicely wrapped closure. However, as a reader sometimes a form of closure is needed to get a book out of your head when you’re done.
When the Losers Club as the group is called reunites, Beverly (Jessica Chastain) even mentions to Bill how scary the movies he writes are, but that the ending sucks. But the greatest scene to bring this up involves Bill in a thrift shop trying to buy his childhood bike. The shop owner is none other than Stephen King (remember in the 90s/early 00s when King had cameos in all of those crappy TV movies like Langoleiers and The Stand? This is better than those. No pizza delivery or pretending to be a professional in a suit. In fact, I kinda wonder if King’s costume was something his wife Tabitha found in the back of their closet.
Bill notices that King as the shopkeeper has a copy of his book. When asked if King would like a signature, he responds, “No thanks. Didn’t like the ending.” Ba dum dum.
In the end, Bill is more confident in his writing (although he wife doesn’t even get to make an appearance at the end) partially because he now has complete memories of his childhood. The ironic part is the changes the made to the end of It for this film weren’t that great either. So go figure.
