Thank you, trailer editor, for this brief respite during which we can take a breath and smile at the adult Losers Club cast. Here we see Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), Richie (Bill Hader), Bill (James McAvoy), Bev, and Ben (Jay Ryan) standing together on a Derry street. They’re probably looking at something fun, right?
Oh, nevermind. It’s a mirror image of the Loser’s Club as kids in the summer of 1989, and there were two more of them then. Goodbye, smile.
From here, the trailer quickly turns into a farewell tour of Derry. Here’s the Barrens, where the gang found Betty Ripsom’s shoe, young Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) evaded bullies, and Patrick Hockstetter bit the dust.
Here’s the beautiful field across which the Losers merrily trod back when Pennywise seemed like less of a threat than the local bullies. Cinematographer Checco Varese is taking over for Chung-hoon Chung for the series’ second half, and he seems to purposely include visual reminders of the first film throughout the trailer.
There are a lot of quick shots of the adult Loser’s Club seemingly just walking around, but each one holds significance. This shot is taken from a familiar-looking alleyway, perhaps the one where Mike was once run down by Henry Bowers and friends. At least three missing person posters are visible in the shot, all of them in the same style as the 1989 posters on which younger Richie (Finn Wolfhard) once saw himself. The fire hydrant is the only pop of color in the shot, and its bright blue, red, and yellow seem almost clownish — likely not a coincidence since Derry water lines seem to lead directly back to Pennywise. Most noteworthy, though, is the fact that the town seems utterly empty.
The Losers reunite! This sequence of shots, which sees our heroes meet up at a Chinese restaurant decades after their last adventure, seems to match up with descriptions of the film’s first footage which played at Comic Con’s “ScareDiego” event last year. “This meeting of the Loser’s Club has officially begun!” Richie announces from across the table, speaking one of the trailer’s only lines that isn’t a part of the Mrs. Kersh scene. A later shot shows him hugging Ben on what seems to be that same night. This is also the first time we see adult Eddie (James Ransone) up close.
At first glance, this shot looks like a part of the Losers’ reunion dinner; it’s intentionally edited that way, framed on either side by the shot above and Richie and Ben’s hug goodnight. Yet upon further inspection, it seems to be something entirely different. There are five hands here when the Chinese restaurant scene features six people, and the corners of the faces look nothing like the Loser’s Club actors. My guess is that this is actually from a horrifying opening scene of the book version of IT, which features a character named Adrian Mellon (Xavier Dolan) and has yet to be adapted on screen.
