Did any of you guys see IT Chapter Two? Thoughts on making Richie gay and the first scene of the movie?
So...my wife and I have seen IT Chapter One over 20 times. That's not hyperbole, we actually lost count at 21 watches for her and 18 for me. She cosplays Richie. I cosplay Eddie. We were both afraid going into this movie that it wasn't going to live up to our love of the first. It's not perfect, but damn if we haven't seen it three times already. And damn if I haven't sobbed every single time. Thoughts on the second scene: I've been informed that it's taken from the book. I wish they'd changed it. I wish the violence wasn't gratuitous. But I don't let that scene diminish my love of the rest of the movie. Thoughts on Richie: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. My wife and I have headcanoned Richie as bi and in love with Eddie since the beginning. But we never expected to actually get a queer Richie. There are a few things I wish we could've gotten (Richie telling Eddie that he loves him, Richie coming out to the Losers Club, a shot at the end (maybe where Bill and Mike are talking on the phone) with Richie talking to someone, some kind of hope that he'll meet someone new) but all in all I genuinely believe that Richie was one of the best-written characters in both movies.
I saw it awhile back. In general, liked it although I thought there were a few certain plot holes/stuff didn't make 100% sense. In terms of THAT first scene Spoiler: Spoilers I thought it was bit grim. Purely from a representation point of view, I LOVED it and thought it was refreshing. More often than not, gay characters are very stereotypical and for comedy purposes. I loved how it showed a darker side to what some LGBT people have to deal with, to bring to light a serious issue . I also loved how they revealed it - (if I remember correctly)- it wasn't the entire point of his character or area of plot. Subtly referenced and a bit less so near the end. My friend's bf actually thought we were stretching the queer eddie thing until a few days after the fact LOL
You're referring to the Adrian Mellon character? That scene is directly lifted from the some of the first few pages of the novel (in the book it's not linear, it bounces back and forth between the 1950s and the 1980s, which in the movies were set in the 1980s and 2010s), I think what Stephen King was trying to say with that part of the book is that people are even scarier than Pennywise can ever be, just look at what they do to this gay guy.
Except they were being driven by Pennywise, like Bowers when they were kids. I've had a lot of time to think about it and skipped that scene while watching the movie the last four times. There is no reason, writing or plot, that that scene needs to be as gratuitous as it is. There's really no reason it needs to exist at all, except to be true to that part of the book. It's not about the lengths of violence people go to when they're afraid because homophobia isn't fear. It's not about how people are the real monsters because they're not acting under their own free will.
I really don't think they were... I read the book and even though it's been awhile since I've read it, I really don't think that's the way that shook out.
I haven't read it at all so I can't speak to it directly but my wife read it a few months ago, and she asked me multiple times if it was clear in the movie that they were being driven by Pennywise because that's how it is in the book. I suppose it could be more ambiguous than she remembers.
See, that's what I found scary about it in the book, the homophobes who attack Adrian Mellon aren't under Pennywise's mind control. They're just rotten screwups all on their own and act like animals because the 1980s was a very homophobic time because they were being lead by Ronald Reagan, the worst president in United States history (with the exception of Woodrow Wilson)-- he makes Trump look like a choir boy because unlike Trump, Reagan actually believed in what he said and would continue to believe in it until the day the neurosyphilis ate away at his brain in the form of Alzheimer's. Stephen King points this out in a lot of his stories, but no, I don't think that the attackers of Adrian Mellon in the book were under Pennywise's mind control. They were just no good from the start.
