#McNeill is not the best writer I have to say lol

[quortknee]

Ok so I finished false gods. I am still not ok!

dan abnett is the king of writing the hardest lines in the world

[horrordirtbag]

freddy vs jason appreciation hours

This gon be a long ass post, summary at the bottom

Okay so basically this movie gets shidded the fuck on and y’know what I think too harshly. I think it did an amazing job bringing all of our slasher wet-dreams to life. And that’s one thing I really wanna stress throughout my incoherent internet rambling: bringing to life our fantasy. Cuz, y’see, I used to think this movie was garbo like many others, until like 4 years ago when I was watching it during a Halloween marathon, and I looked up from my computer and just saw Freddy and Jason, two of my favorite characters of all time, on the same screen together, beating the living shit out of each other. All my issues with it just kinda melted away and I really appreciated what I was looking at, and since then it climbed from the bottom of my list to easily in my top 5 for both franchises.

The fact that this movie even got made is a miracle. I’m just grateful that we even got to see this match brought to life at all. Just overcoming the rights issue between two major companies was a major hurdle to cross. Once that was settled, they could have just slapped together any shitty old movie they wanted and made a gazillion bucks no matter what. The title alone, Freddy vs Jason, would sell tickets, even if the actual movie was just two hand puppets smacking eachother for an hour and a half. But, no. New Line acquired the rights to Jason around 1992, and they immediately began work on the crossover. The only reason they made Jason Goes to Hell was because they had to wait for Wes Craven to finish New Nightmare first. That’s 11 years of development hell. They went through 10 scripts before they found one they liked, not to mention an innumerable amount of pitches. That’s an incredible amount of effort for a cheap slasher film. They spent thousands on the project before it even went into pre-production. Michael De Luca, the president of production at New Line, was an extreme fan of both franchises and really wanted to get it right.  New Line Cinema get’s a lot of flack for it’s treatment of the Friday franchise, and yeah, when you send Jason up his sisters coochie and into outerspace I can see why, but after reading more into the companies history with Jason, I don’t get the impression it was all cynicism. Even if you think the final product is dookie, you gotta give them some credit for the amount of dedication they put in for this project. And, you gotta remember, even though they produced far better films, Paramount was pretty much ashamed of their creation and ditched it as soon as it began making them less money.

Now I’m gonna talk about some of the actual problems with the movie itself. The main two are also both directed at our maggot-infested son. If you’re as much of a raging fan as I am to the point where you write essays for like 10 people to read on a website that hates tiddies you already know what I’m talking about. Let’s start with the fear-of-water debacle. This part pisses off the Friday camp, and for good reason. Any quick look at the past 10 movies shows you it’s just not true. Jason practically exists in water. He’s like the human version of Godzilla. But, in reality, Jason was never afraid of water in the movie. The screenplay writers have confirmed that it wasn’t a fear of water itself, but of drowning. And, well, we know that Jason shouldn’t be afraid of that either, being chained to the bottom of a lake for years on end’n all. But, even then, it’s not quite that simple. What Freddy is doing is exploiting Jason’s subconscious mind and the memory of the last time Jason ever felt fear: when he was a child, drowning. This is why Jason reverts back to a child, and then Freddy returns to the memory of his drowning in 1957. Ronny Yu went a much more metaphoric route in portraying this, but you can still kind of make it out. If you notice, even Jason seems surprised at his sudden refusal to chop through the stream of water. It’s not like he didn’t see it before he pulled his arm back. And, then, immediately after, we see Jason wading through Crystal Lake dragging a body, and at the end of the movie raises out of the water in New Blood fashion. So, it’s clear that even in the same movie, Jason was never intended to be afraid of water. Now, let’s talk about our gift-from-god Kane Hodder. As much as I love the final film, I hate how New Line treated our star man. This is the one thing I can’t really defend about the movie. No one still really knows why Kane was dropped, everyone involved just pointing fingers at each other, probably because whoever really did make the decision is afraid of Kane’s tree trunk arms. Even Sean Cunningham and other people deeply involved with the project were shocked they didn’t use Kane. For my two cents, I don’t think it’s one person or one specific reason to point to, but rather a whole bunch. In large part, I think Ronny Yu not being a fan of the franchise prior has a lot to do with it. He just didn’t realize that Kane was so beloved by the fanbase. Ken Kirzinger said that he initially auditioned to be stunt coordinator, and Ronny immediately asked him to play Jason, saying something around the lines of “you’re exactly what I’m looking for.” I can see why New Line would want someone with no connection to the franchises, as to bring in a fresh take, but for something like this, which is pretty much just a fanboy movie, it would have been better to grab someone who was also a fan. As to why New Line didn’t tell Kane Hodder they were going with someone else, I dunno. We probably will never know who was responsible for that lol. As disappointing as it is, I think Ken did a fine job (although I think he was a little too stiff), and I don’t think we should dismiss the entire film for it alone. This post is getting way longer than I anticipated. If you’re still here, hi, I hope your day is going well. Those art the only complaints, though, of course. Something I hear often is that the final fight is fantastic, but the rest of the movie sucks. I can’t really argue with that since it’s really vague, but I can say that, to me, the rest of the movie is great fun. Even if Freddy only has one kill, he has plenty of screen-time, all pretty good (and the one kill he does get in is great). And Jason’s stuff is all great too. The cornfield rave, the hospital chase, all good shid imo. But really that just comes down to personal taste.   Another thing I can’t really argue about are the characters being bland. Yeah, not much to say there. But honestly, I don’t think they’re terrible by any means (Kia dropping the f-bomb is tho). I have a feeling this complaint comes more from the Nightmare camp, since that series is home to much more compelling characters. Being more of a Friday fan, it just doesn’t bother me. 11 movies in, I’m used to bland characters lmao. Although, I do think Mark was a pretty interesting character. His relationship with his brother is pretty great.  One strange phenomenon I also see is that Freddy fans tend to complain that it feels too much like a Friday the 13th movie, while Jason fans say it feels too much like A Nightmare on Elm Street movie. And it’s not just me, either; this is also discussed briefly in Dustin McNeill’s fantastic book Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs Jason. If anything, this just feels like a testament to how well the movie blended the tones of both franchises.  The movie does also get too silly at times, but I think they did a decent job of reigning Freddy’s goofiness back to, I’d say, Nightmare 4 levels. Which is alright by me. nOW ONTO THE GOOD SHIT, We’re almost there. I swear. As I just mentioned, the movie masterfully blends both franchises. The movie has the plot of a Nightmare film, with Freddy pulling the strings, but has the bodycount (and characters lol) of a Jason film. Just because the plot is very Freddy oriented doesn’t mean Jason is left in his shadow, and just because Jason gets most of the kills doesn’t mean Freddy doesn’t get his time to shine either (the movie has plenty of Nightmare sequences, even if he only kills one). Complaints about Freddy only getting one kill are odd to me, since that’s the entire point of the movie. Jason is stealing Freddy’s kills. The ending, really, symbolizes what I mean. It’s the best possible way to end it. Jason rises from the water, holding Freddy’s head, making you think he’s the victor, but- nope! Freddy winks at the camera, and then the Nightmare jingle plays, mixed in with Jason’s iconic ki ki ki ma ma ma, perfectly balancing both franchises.  I’ve seen people complain about the ending, but I honestly think it’s genius. If you had Jason win, Friday fans would be mad; if you had Freddy win, Nightmare fans would be mad. Instead, not only is it really cool, but with the ending we got, the viewers themselves are allowed to decide who won, no answer being particularly wrong. To this day, people still debate who came out victorious.  Beyond that, the plot itself is such a great way to bring both characters together. Previous scripts had such convoluted ways of doing so, some involving the Apocalypse, some going meta like New Nightmare, and some just making no fucking sense at all. The Shannon/Swift draft does such a great job of keeping it simple. I love the idea of Springwood covering up Freddy’s existence, rendering him powerless. Not only is it the closest anyone’s ever gotten to actually defeating Freddy, but it also presents to the viewer a complex moral dilemma. Locking the kids away in Westin Hills is horribly cruel, unable to even see their family, but at the same time, if they didn’t, more kids would die at Freddy’s hand. To me, it’s really interesting.  The final thing I have to say, is that it’s just a boat load of fun. You can’t not have a fan orgasm watching the final battle (although they really shouldn’t have had Laurie interrupt the fight). It’s literally everything I ever wanted lmao, and I’m just eternally grateful that we got to see this match play out on our screens rather than just our minds before Robert Englund got too old. Again, seeing two of my favorite characters ever on the same screen is just awesome. In my opinion, I think it’s the best crossover-versus movie out there.  Some people just don’t like the movie and that’s fine, you can’t please everyone. I’m just dishing out why I love it so much, since it’s so vastly regarded as one of the worst of the series. You don’t see too much love out there for it, so I thought I’d spice it up.  TL:DR, I think this movie was such a wonderful love letter to the fans, and while it’s far from perfect, I think people really need to give it a second chance and look at it from a different perspective. It wasn’t made cynically, it wasn’t disrespectful to Jason, and it did a great job of bringing our fanboy and fangirl fantasies to life.