There are times when performances don’t need to be compared to each other, and there are times when even the actors don’t want to see it happen. Bill Skarsgard has made it clear following his time as Pennywise that he doesn’t want people stating who was better than who, meaning whether he or Tim Curry did a better job, and it’s easy to agree with him. The reason for this is that people try too hard to compare different actors when it comes to the idea that they’ll end up playing the same role. There are a lot of actors out there that have taken on the same role after their predecessors have grown too old, retired, or even passed away. But trying to determine who’s better in a role is something that people tend to do out of habit, and in some cases, it’s a little too easy, and a lot of us have fallen into this habit. Who plays the better version of a superhero, who plays the better version of a villain, etc., we end up comparing one person’s acting with another while adding in a heavy helping of personal bias that too many people think of as fact.
Here’s the truth though: when it comes to Curry and Skarsgard, it doesn’t matter who people think played the murderous clown the best since they both took the role in vastly different eras. There aren’t a lot of people out there that can remember the 1990 miniseries that Tim Curry starred in without thinking that he did a great job of injecting dark humor and terror into the character, all the while appearing to be a seriously deranged and terrifying individual that no one in their right mind would want to face in real life. Another truth is that Skarsgard did the same thing in the modern era, and it was just as terrifying.
One has to remember that horror has changed along with everything else since back in the day, movies such as Psycho and The Birds were utterly terrifying to people since they represented something that was vaguely unknown and unheard of in their experience, even if Psycho was a little closer to reality than many cared to admit. But the point is that horror has changed so much in the last several decades that what was able to horrify people in 1990 wasn’t bound to work as well in 2019 when Part II had peoples’ hopes up concerning Pennywise. What can be agreed upon is that the endings both failed to live up to the overall expectations of the fans since even the book didn’t provide a great ending as it went on for far too long and prolonged the story in a way that didn’t allow it to taper off, but made it gutter out instead. The movies at least showed a fairly quick ending that was to the point, even if at some point it became a little hokey as well. The point is that the build-up of each movie was great enough to be deemed worth the effort of watching, and the villain was great enough to follow until the lackluster end.
The better ending does still belong to the miniseries for the simple fact that the fight between what was left of the Losers Club and the creature behind the clown was taken care of in a manner that felt far more realistic, in a manner of speaking, than the reverse bullying session that took place in the 2019 movie. But in terms of who was better, Curry or Skarsgard, the point is moot since they both did a great job and they came up with a way to play a character that was meant to be utterly terrifying and fed on the fears of the kids they were after. It’s easy to say that yes, the effects and even in some cases the acting was better in the most recent movie, but when it comes down to Curry and Skarsgard, trying to compare them is ridiculous since they each turned in a performance that was great for the era in which they found themselves. The fact that Skarsgard doesn’t people comparing his performance to Curry’s should say it all since it indicates the respect that he has for Curry and the work he did with Pennywise.
People are still going to announce who their favorites are for the role and that’s all well and good. But the constant debate that started back when the new version of It came along is all kinds of ridiculous since trying to compare one act to another when they’re separated by decades is a futile effort in a lot of ways. Still, it can be said that Curry did opt for a great deal of dark, comedic moments and did steal the show quite often, while Skarsgard also went for a dark sense of comedy, but brought a little more terror into the mix, while the general feeling was that his character didn’t overshadow the Losers Club that often.
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