If you’ve seen the newest image of Platinum Dunes’ Jason, it’s not a far cry from my exaggeration. He wears a brown under shirt, what looks like a black hood, and slacks. Almost like a well dressed fan on Halloween. That’s not my Jason. And I doubt it will be the fans’ Jason Voorhees, regardless of how accepting of change they are. Here’s why:
If you remember Bay's Leatherface, he was a deformed crybaby who stole skin because his face is ugly, and he was made fun of my boys in school, and his psychopathic tendencies weren't his fault. Leatherface became a wuss just like Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, and pretty much everyone else I grew up fearing.
Michael Bay is the man who when he isn't creating mediocre movies about giant robots, is also remaking classic horror films without relent, and it's a guarantee this Jason Voorhees is going to be much different from the Jason Voorhees I grew up with. I grew up with the hockey masked killer, one of the first horror characters I was ever exposed to. And I basked in everything he's ever been in from the awful trek in space to the groovy battles with Corey Feldman, and it pains me to think what Bay and his other hack buddies are doing to him that will be considered canon.
Hopefully they don't write themselves in to a corner again by cutting off his arm.
Though some high brows will be quick to denounce the Friday the 13th series as being pure brainless dreck, we "Friday the 13th" fans love it because it's brainless dreck. It's one of the best and most entertaining horror franchises of all time, and the Jason fans love it for every splattered body, broken bone, and insane plot hole the writers keep throwing at us in an attempt to find some sort of coherence in Jason's world. And we may never see an actual sequel.
Unless it's on Bay's dime, and that's a shame.
Sure, he's a rip off of Michael Meyers, but one that's actually managed to be so much more interesting in personality, gimmick, and story arc. Who else beside Jason has been more imitated in animation, video games, and other slasher films? We hardly ever see Michael spoofed as much. The storyline is severely uneven, but that’s the charm of the series. Jason was a mongoloid who drowned, rose to avenge his mother, then suddenly was a masked maniac avenging himself, then was a masked maniac striking down all camp counselors and then just became a pissed off monster killing anyone he could find. But who cares? Jason has always been that cooler slasher of the bunch whose mask is instantly recognizable and whose palette for weaponry has always been creative.
And he was a killing machine whose own unstoppable force of evil was an unstoppable force for anyone who happened to cross in to Camp Crystal Lake. Though Kane Hodder was never my favorite of the Jason's, he did succeed in being the only man who could properly become the man behind the mask simply because with Hodder he was like a charging bull. He was a merciless monster who huffed and puffed, and made sure to blow your head off with a single punch regardless of where you were. This is a man whose own stature more than made up for his height.
Growing up with a horror fanatic for a mother, I was basically conditioned to love horror and took great pleasure in sampling everything I could. The first Friday the 13th film I ever saw was "The Final Chapter" the movie that should have ended the entire series because it did it properly. But it was my luck that I happened to watch the best of the series with a Jason we never saw again, an imposing, utterly horrific beast of a man who took pride in slaughtering vapid teenagers. And then there's that great story between Tommy and his sister, probably the only really engaging sub-plot in the "Friday the 13th" series that we never saw again.
This was a Jason who wanted to murder Tommy, and wouldn't stop until he had the chance, and writer Barney Cohen brought us a Jason who destroyed a young boy's innocence and general outlook on society once taken away from his sister. This is the Jason I came to know and he's the man I spent many years writing fan fictions about and coming to love, and it's a shame we probably won't see this anymore.
I'll admit it, Jason was turned in to a joke over the years but a joke that I still rather enjoyed. He suddenly had the ability to possess people in the wretched "Jason Goes to Hell," somehow made it out of hell to terrorize in "Jason X" where he went in to (ugh) space and became a (ugh times two) robot/cyborg who was impervious to bullets, all after finding out he has the ability to heal. Honest! And then there was Freddy vs. Jason, where he was turned into a sympathetic anti-hero (why?) and walked around like Frankenstein the entire time.
All I’m saying is if we have to suffer through a reboot or a remake, at least do it right, I’m begging you. Re-capture the feeling of the series yet again with a Jason who is menacing while the protagonists are sympathetic. I want another Tommy Doyle, I want another Megan, I want to remember why I love this character, I don’t want Jason in the way of torture porn like the new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movies, or a trailer trash slasher like Rob Zombie’s “Halloween.” Undo the mistakes of the past franchise, and keep Jason ambiguous in origin, even if we have to endure the new “gritty” Jason in the process.
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