Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)
It had been 12 years since the last real Nightmare on Elm Street film (it's debatable on whether New Nightmare should be considered one or not. If considered, it'd been 9 years), but only one year since the last Friday the 13th film (Jason X). However, this film had been in development hell since about 1993. 10 long years. Actually, both New Line who owned the rights to Freddy, and Paramount who owned Jason, had considered a movie involving the two fighting way back in 1987, but could never come up with a story that satisfied both studios. After New Line bought the rights to Jason back in the early 1990s, the plan was more feasable. If you remember, 1993's Jason Goes to Hell ended with Freddy's glove reaching up out of the ground and pulling Jason's mask down to hell. And yes, it was meant by Sean Cunningham, producer of the film and creator of the Friday the 13th series to point towards the big horror match. But when Wes Craven decided to make New Nightmare in 1994, all plans for this were put on hold. And yet a script still had to be written. By 2003, New Line had spent 6 million dollars figuring out how to do the film, paying people to write screenplays, etc. One of the first story ideas involved both working as Hell's assassins for Satan, harvesting souls for him. Satan starts a little contest sending the two to earth to see who could get the most souls (kill the most). The one that wins gets to stay on earth to kill people, the other one goes back to hell and does nothing. Even Brannon Braga and Ronald D Moore, who were responsible for the three Star Trek shows in the 1990s wrote a script! There was one where it was revealed that Freddy once worked at Camp Crystal Lake and he molested Jason and then drowned him so he wouldn't tell. (Um... no. Ew.)
Finally, a script was chosen that seemed to work well. Two writers named Mark Swift and Damian Shannon wrote the one that was ultimately chosen. (About 14 screenplays were written over the 10 years.) These two writers would go on to write the screenplay for the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th. Finding the right director took a little while, but definitely not the 10 years it took to find the script. They met with about 40 directors and finally they asked Ronny Yu, who had directed 1998's Bride of Chucky to direct the film. Initially he had no inclination to make the film. He wasn't a fan of either franchise. But when told that he didn't have to take it seriously, he was on board. They got Robert Englund to come back very easily. (It was the last time he played Freddy on screen.) However, fans of the series were not happy when the producers opted not to bring back Kane Hodder as Jason. He'd portrayed the character in every Friday the 13th since 1988 (4 films). They went for some other stunt guy who had more "emotive eyes" and who was 3 inches taller. I dunno. I don't see the big deal.
The movie has Freddy manipulating Jason (by appearing as his mother) into killing teens on Elm Street because no one remembers him. The police department has hidden every trace of what happened on Elm Street in the past, including sending those who have witnessed Freddy's killings to a psychiatric hospital. So, after the first few killings that Jason does (and make Freddy progressively stronger) but Jason is an unstoppable killing machine and won't let Freddy actually kill anyone (Freddy likes to play with his victims first, and Jason just hacks away.). After a while the teenagers figure out what's going on (including the main character's ex-boyfriend who was locked away in the psych hospital after watching her dad who was really Freddy kill her mom) and plan to knock out Jason with sedatives and drive him 600 miles from Springwood, Ohio to Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey. (In the movie, it seems to take less than an hour due to cuts from the script.) And of course there are two physical brawls between Freddy and Jason. One in the dream world and one in Camp Crystal Lake.
The cast here is... a mixed bag for sure. The main actress, Monica Keena, is usually an okay actress. Here she's probably the worst actress since Nancy's mom in the first Nightmare film. Her lines are overdone, and she seems kind of drugged out most of the time and I doubt it's just great acting due to sleep deprivation. On the other hand you have the great Brendan Fletcher (Tideland) and Jason Ritter. The other actors are serviceable I guess. (Well, maybe not the deputy who I figured was supposed to be like Deputy Dewey from Scream.) Jason Ritter was a last minute addition to the film. His part originally was going to go to Brad Renfro (Tom and Huck, The Client) but his drug problems forced him to be recast. (He died about 3 years later from a heroin overdose.)
However, people are so not here for the acting. They're here to see Freddy and Jason kill said actors and kick each others asses. But if you're hoping for gore galore, you'll be sadly disappointed. A lot of the blood is CGI or unrealistic. The whole film is so very over the top, especially the two fight sequences. Ronny Yu wanted sort of a WWE vibe to the fight scenes, very theatrical with a lot of name-calling (at least from Freddy, as Jason is thankfully still mute). In fact, before the film was made, a mock press conference was held with Jason and Freddy in the WWF etc style. It set the fans up perfectly for what the movie would be like.
All in all, I don't have much to say about this one. Pretty much everyone has seen it. You know it's just stupid fun. And it is fun. Freddy is about like he was in Nightmare 4 making lots of puns. Jason looks like he did in like part 4 of his franchise before he was turned into a eewy gooey zombie with a mask in part 6. The characters are annoying and for the most part really stupid. They're there to run around, pretend there is some interesting plot (there isn't really) and get killed. And they do that admirably I suppose. (Christopher Marquette has a charming womanly scream.) I must admit, when I went to go see this by myself in Richmond back in 2003 on opening day, I was really looking forward to it. I mean what slasher fan wouldn't be? And even though it wasn't the dark gory film that I wanted, I still had fun watching it. However, I hate, hate, hate the ending. What a cop-out! No winner? WTF? Well, I guess you could say the main girl and main guy in the film win. They live, at least. At least with the way it ended, both Freddy and Jason fans are either unsatisfied or satisfied. Most of my friends see Jason as the winner because they like those movies and don't care for the Nightmare on Elm Street films. I always consider Freddy the winner, because I've always liked the Freddy character more than lumbering, my walk is my act Jason. Hey, at least I got to see that chick who's not Beyonce from Destiny's Child do mouth to mouth with Jason Vorhees!
The movie certainly did well at the box office. I mean, when you get fans of two different franchises together and others who just are interested to see the fight, that's a lot of people! In its opening weekend of August 15, 2003 (this was the last movie I saw before I moved to the mountains for a year for college) the movie earned 36 million dollars. That was 6 million more than it cost to even make the film! By the end of its theatrical run, it had made globally about 115 million bucks, making it the most profitable film of either of the franchises. (A record it still holds even after the two remakes.) Efforts were immediately made to do a sequel with either Pinhead, Michael Myers, or Ash from Evil Dead, and in fact, Sam Raimi was keen to have Ash fight the other two, but alas the deal was never worked out. However, the screenplay was turned into a comic book which is apparently pretty good. I'll have to give it a look one of these days.
Well folks, with that, there's only one more Nightmare on Elm Street film to blog about, which is the 2010 remake. I hope to do that one sometime within the next week, but you know not to take my word on such things by now. I'm sorry there wasn't much to this blog entry, but as the film isn't one of my favorites nor particularly bad, I just didn't have much to say about it. The dream sequences were cool, though. I will say that. The movie is very comic booky, if you know what I mean. You've got a Hong Kong director directing this one, so you should expect lots of wire work. Seriously. I am also sorry there's not much multimedia in this blog post. The clips were available, but I didn't do any scene breakdowns here so I didn't need them. Plus, from what I'm told, most don't watch the clips I put up anyway, as they read this on their Android phones or devices, and alas most of those clips require Flash, which those devices can't use.
Until next time, don't let the bed bugs bite!
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