First we have to clarify that Pennywise doesn't kill, he is basically an illusion, It kills. It kills children because they are safer to kill then adults.
However, he doesn't seem to target adults like he does kids, which is odd, seeing as how, as many will agree, adults have just as many fears, worries, phobias, anxieties, and insecurities as any child, maybe more since they've lived longer and thus had more time to develop more things to be afraid of.
This creature feeds off fear and its preferred victims are children as their fears are simpler, but there might be another very different reason for that, and it's rooted on the real meaning of IT.
They reach the conclusion that Pennywise has all of the adults under some sort of spell that prohibits them from seeing him. The adults of Derry are shown to be villainous in their own right as well. The adults of Derry are shown to be true villains of the story in the same way as Pennywise.
1908: It awakens after the Kitchener Ironworks Explosion, where 102 people are killed (88 kids and 14 adults). 1935: It awakens after the Bradley Gang shootout.
IT arrived on Earth through an event similar to an asteroid impact, landing in what would later become Derry, Maine. Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep.
In both the book and the films, It is an ancient alien creature, older than civilization, and in King's novel, older than our universe. It feasts on the flesh of humans simply because our fears are easy to manifest and they make us taste better.
Stephen King's IT introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
Why Art The Clown Is The Scarier Than Pennywise. First and foremost, Art the Clown is a human serial killer, unlike Pennywise. Though he does possess supernatural abilities, his kills are marked through very brutal — and very human — means.
I recommend this film to everyone who loves slightly disturbing films and TV shows like me but for anyone under the age of 13 you really should not watch it. It's very gory and contains adult language.
Throughout Stephen King's It, Pennywise is referred to as a male, but author Stephen King pulled a fast one on readers in the It book ending by revealing the creature's true form was a pregnant spider, implying that it is, in fact, biologically female.
A common interpretation of this phrase is that it refers to where the souls of IT's victims go after they die, as they wouldn't go to heaven nor hell, staying instead in the “deadlights”, which would be a sort of limbo, thus “floating” in that middle point for eternity.
Pennywise had targeted Georgie when the boy was too young to know any better or fight back. In the clown's most contemptible murders, Pennywise did not rely on visions or fears to lure Georgie in; instead, Pennywise exploited Georgie's trust and turned it into a fatal weakness.
And if his victim believes him to be powerless, he will become powerless. And so the group figures out that their best bet is, essentially, to bully the bully: They mock Pennywise, telling him he isn't scary. Humiliated, Pennywise begins to shrink, transforming into an almost Benjamin Button–like, melted clown-baby.
"The Losers Club" becomes aware of Pennywise's presence after it kills Bill's little brother, Georgie. King stated in a 2013 interview that he came up with the idea for Pennywise after asking himself what children feared "more than anything else in the world", and feeling that the answer was clowns.
Pennywise was always evil - or, more accurately, he never really existed. He was just a creation of IT to lure in children so they could be terrified and then eaten. Or so that IT could create chaos, incite riots and spread fear.
Art the Clown is not immortal in the sense that he can't die. While he is hard to kill, Art has been effectively killed in both Terrifier movies. However, it seems the creepily silent Art the Clown has an ability similar to The Umbrella Academy's Klaus, where he is able to resurrect himself by unknown means.
In my opinion, the new Pennywise is a lot scarier. There are major music differences between the two films as well. The old version specifically use music so it is easy to predict when something will jump out on the screen. It is meant to make the moment suspenseful, but it comes off as cheesy.
Pennywise can possess people, cause hallucinations, control minds, warp reality to his ends, can invade the dreams of his victims, make himself invisible at will, and read minds. Thus, Pennywise is pretty definitively stronger and more powerful than Art the Clown.
In the novel, It's origins are nebulous. He took the form of a clown most frequently, Mr. Bob Gray or Pennywise, but his true form is an ancient eldritch entity from another universe who landed in the town that would become Derry by way of an asteroid and first awoke in 1715.
Pennywise is a shapeshifter that takes the form of whatever its victim fears the most. Pennywise the Clown, offering children balloons as it did to little Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) at the start of the first IT movie, is just the preferred physical form though.
But, the film makes clear, It (sometimes written as “IT”) isn't just a clown. Oh no. As detailed in King's novel, he's an ancient, cosmic being, described in the novel as an “Eater of Worlds”, who is able to adopt a variety of nasty guises.
While playing Pennywise in IT and IT Chapter Two, Bill Skarsgard wears a set of prosthetic teeth, for times when the dancing clown really needs to show off his razor-sharp chompers. The problem is, these teeth caused Skarsgard to drool, and not just a little. The teeth caused full-on torrents of slobber from the actor.
If you read the book and seen IT Chapter 2, you would know that Pennywise is only the physical avatar that belongs to a much larger cosmic entity. What Pennywise actually eats or feeds off of,is Fear.
Yup! He's a demon and the general idea is if you are not scare, it will only be harder for Pennywise to kill you as he needs to bait you. He can kill you if he wants to anytime and doesn't care. Although, if you are not scared, he will either leave you be for a little while or just kill you in the instant .
