Jason X (2002)
When we last left Jason, he was... well... He wasn't there anymore. His mask had been taken down to the depths of hell by Freddy Kreuger. Obviously, this was to set up for Freddy Vs. Jason, which was possible now that New Line Cinema owned the rights to both characters. Sadly, it was not meant to be. The film was stuck in development hell until it was eventually released in the summer of 2003. That's ten years after Jason Goes To Hell was released. By the time the late 1990s rolled around, Sean Cunningham, creator of the Friday the 13th franchise and producer of Jason Goes To Hell decided that a film would need to be released to keep audiences interested in Jason. New Line was game, so they came up with the idea to set the film in the future so that the continuity would not be messed up. They still planned to do Freddy vs. Jason. Their ultimate idea was basically to rip off Aliens, Leprechaun 4: In Space (I shit you not.), and Alien: Resurrection. I can get behind ripping off Aliens. It's a great film. However, the other two suck. I mean, I haven't even seen Leprechaun 4 and can tell you it sucks. (Though the premise does have my interest piqued. I mean, it's a leprechaun... In space!!)
So should I give you what small amount of plot is in this great experiment? Okay. So it starts out in 2010, which was the future when the film came out, but is now the past. Got it? Good. Jason is captured in 2008 and scientists attempt to kill him for two years before giving up and deciding to cryogenically freeze him. However, the head doctor of the project and the military have decided that Jason is too valuable in the research of cellular regeneration, and decide to take Jason to another facility for more testing. (The doctor is played by Canadian director David Cronenberg, oddly enough. The filmmakers used his crew to make the film.) Of course, Jason kills everyone (Cronenberg included) and attempts to take down the female doctor that wanted to put him on ice forever. She tricks him into the cryo chamber and closes the door. As he's being frozen though, he jams his machete through the door of the chamber into the doctor and the whole room gets frozen. I'm sure this is scientifically impossible, but if people can believe the earth is flat, we can believe this in a movie. 400 years later, salvagers come along (sound like another movie to you?) and revive the doctor with their new nanotechnology healing her damaged tissue. The arrogant, money obsessed professor on the expedition recognizes Jason and of course thaws him out too. He thinks scientific research on Jason to produce medicines and weapons is important... Plus the money he'll get for it. (This really sounds familiar.) Of course, Jason senses gross stupidity and must wipe it out person. Actually, the way he wakes up is kind of funny. The people on the space ship, (Oh, I forgot to tell you. We're on one of those.), they got bored waiting for the new doctor lady to wake up and looking at Jason's nasty rotting corpse and all go have sex with each other. (I'm not exaggerating here. They all go have sex.) And as the orgasms happen in the other rooms, Jason comes alive. It's quite hilarious watching it. And the researcher who is studying Jason has one of the best deaths in the series.
And Jason goes on killing the occupants of the spacecraft one by one, a la Alien without the suspense. However, and this is one thing a lot of Friday fans hate about this movie, it is pretty darn funny. It doesn't take itself seriously at all. You've got Jason in virtual reality holodecks, there's a sexy woman cyborg, Jason gets killed only to have the nanites bring him back as Cyberjason... It's beautiful. There's even some explosions in space and Jason flying through space for a bit. It's utterly ridiculous. I feel, however, that this should be embraced, not shunned as most people feel the film should have done to it. If you can't have fun with a Jason film, you probably shouldn't be watching them. As I've said before, do we really need 13 films of Jason killing off campers? I mean, out of 13 installments, that happens in... 9 of them. Only 8, 9, 11, and this one don't do that. They change the formula for basically the 1990s and early 2000s, and though the hardcore fans hated it, I thought it was a good idea. Surprisingly no one noticed that there were no campers in Freddy Vs. Jason either. Everyone loved that one, and yet it didn't stick to formula either. And besides, how can you not love the super cheesy, cringeworthyness of the following scene?
Best of all, I'm not hoping for every single person to die in this film. Sure, most of them I wanted to die, but not all of them as in The New Blood or Jason Takes Manhattan. Maybe it's because their all Canadians in this one. (No, I'm sure that's not it, but it's the only segueway I could think of.) This was filmed in Canada, guys. And most of the actors, if not all of them, are Canadian. I mean, it even feels Canadian when you watch it. It feels like a Syfy Original Movie, and Syfy films all their stuff in Canada. In fact, two of the main actresses here were in Andromeda at the time. (And that show sucks pretty bad, by the way.)
Now let me address the silliness of the film a bit more. The script was written after Scream and Scream 2 had come out. The studio would not agree to the film unless the script was given a rewrite to make it more self-referential like those films were. It needed to be postmodern and hip. So the script had self-referential humor and stupidity added to it. Before that, it was a pretty straightforward Friday film. However, the film does have the highest body count in the series at 28 on-screen deaths. (There's a space station that inadvertantly is blown up that probably killed thousands of people, too. And the characters in the film don't seem to really give a shit.) My one beef with the film is that digital effects are used for gore and death scenes too much, and they look really really fake. The movie was filmed in 1999/2000 and good digital effects could not be had for the budget of this film... and it shows. Also it rips off Alien way too much. There's even characters named Dallas and a woman has blood splurt right in her face like during the chestburster scene in Alien. (And just like then, the actress wasn't expecting it, and unlike during the filming of Alien, she was screaming because the stuff got in her eyes and was burning really badly.)
You may have noticed that I said the film was shot in 1999/2000 but that I said it was released in 2002. That's because there was a shake-up at New Line right after the film was shot. The new head of production hated the film. Therefore the movie was shelved for almost two years before quietly being released in theaters. (So quietly that I don't remember hearing about it, and I was 17 at the time and loved horror. I thought it was direct-to-video for years.) The movie was a flop and critics and many fans hated it. Even as a placeholder, they hated it. Filmed for 14 million bucks, the film made 16 million worldwide. But really.... you need to see this one if you haven't. It's great fun. It knows it's stupid. It knows that it won't be taken seriously. However, like Mars Attacks!, some people just really don't get the joke.
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