Is the Friday the 13th Remake/Reboot Doomed?
For some, the Friday the 13th franchise is a fun, memorable series that has gone through ups and downs throughout three decades and counting of entertainment. For others, it is a stain on the shirt of cinema, one that should be washed off and forgotten. For me personally, it’s a prime example of a franchise that has lived on the “same only different” tone that some series take on. For the casual fans who don’t follow the franchise, if you pop in, say Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) then show Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), that viewer might ask if that’s all the franchise has to offer, nubile teenagers going into the woods or by the lake for sex and drugs only to be killed by an unstoppable force of nature. Whether or not this is a positive or a negative aspect of the franchise is totally up to said viewer. And for me, I guess I’m in the crowd that says that every film in the series that goes back to those basics and doesn’t color too far outside the lines (i.e. Jason takes Manhattan or A New Beginning) is one worth watching. Yet when something like the Mandarin comes up in Iron Man 3 (2013) I praise it for being a different approach for Marvel villains. I sense an outcry of hypocrisy from some of you. You may be right. That’s a topic for another blog post.
Anyways, now that I’ve kind of set up some ground work for how I feel overall on the Friday the 13th franchise, we’ve been hearing in recent weeks about the forthcoming re-reboot, if you will, which has previously been slated for dates from 2014-2016, yet principal photography has yet, to my knowledge, to even begin. Rumors have been abound for this new entry in the series, from it being a found-footage style film to it being a remake set in the year 1980 to it being a re-imagining of the original story. I don’t know what to believe as far as what the focus will be, but for me personally, a remake set in the 80’s intrigues me most with the found-footage idea being an insult to my eyes. My fingers ache from having to type out “Friday the 13th found-footage style”. And as far as the re-imagining of the original story, wasn’t that what the 2009 remake was for? If they do that again, I don’t really see the point.
So some recent statements have said that the father of Jason Voorhees, the killer main character, Elias Voorhees, will make an appearance alongside Jason’s mom, Pamela, and it will revolve around what makes Jason the killer he is, how he is raised as a child and stuff like that. Now how can I say this and make it sound like I’m not pissed off? Wait, there is no way, this just sucks. Who cares about Jason as a child? Really, who? In the original story Jason is a deformed child but what the other kids did to him was irrelevant to why he became the killer that fueled eleven more films. It had to do with him getting even with teenagers, since a teenager killed his mother. That’s what caused Jason to go from a background motivation for Pamela in the first film to becoming the center-stage killer of 1980’s horror cinema, plot-wise. Unless they want to seriously mess with what Jason is when he gets to killer status, what happens to him as a child is useless. Whether he’s getting rocks thrown at him, being ignored, or being included by the other kids, it shouldn’t impact him one iota about how or why he gets the hockey mask. Then as far as Elias goes, he’s always been an enigma of the series, someone who has always been mentioned but never seen. He was supposed to make a cameo in the finale of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), but it was scrapped. While I’m not against him appearing, it has to be something done very well. To draw a comparison, let’s say the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie reveals who Star-Lord’s father is. If they want to have any integrity, they don’t make it a joke on the level of the Howard the Duck cameo at the end of the first film. No, they get someone with craft and pizzazz and take the moment seriously. If this new Friday the 13th remake/reboot makes him a throwaway character who just becomes Jason’s first victim when he’s still a child or something ludicrous like that, it’s gonna make me want to burn the theater down. I think as long as they remember that after they do this they can’t un-ring the bell and that if it isn’t respectable it will reflect poorly on them and the franchise, they’ll be okay.
As far as the rest of the movie, I suspect the rest will be the standard meat and potatoes of the series: boobs, booze, and blood. This aspect, however, is something I’m actually looking forward to. When I think back to the 2009 remake, the first forty minutes or so is basically your standard Friday the 13th movie plot, and for me was the most enjoyable part of the film. The rest, for me, went downhill, but if a new film just has the goods in that way after whatever crap they throw at us in the first act with Jason’s origin story, the movie won’t be a total fail.
I guess that the film will be coming soon. After all, they’ve supposedly been working on the script for this new film for a while. And I think that there is an opportunity coming for an interest to rise up again in this franchise. Jason as the main villain premiered 35 years ago this year with 1981’s Friday the 13th Part 2. Jason wearing the hockey mask celebrates it’s 35th anniversary next year, and due out this year is a new Friday the 13th video game. If you’re a fan of the franchise and haven’t heard about this new game, I recommend looking up some videos on YouTube of the developers discussing what the gameplay will be like and also there was some early gameplay footage released around a year ago. Again, for me the bottom line with this reboot is that making the origin story stupid with him having killing instincts as a deformed toddler or something like that will cripple the film, for sure, and maybe make it hard to watch, but as long as they return to the basics of why this franchise hit it big in the early 80’s and show fun and memorable kill scenes, there will still be a spring in the movie’s step.
