Freddy vs. Jason
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Freddy vs. Jason is a slasher film. Directed by Ronny Yu, the film, released in 2003, pits Jason Voorhees (of the Friday the 13th horror series) and Freddy Krueger (of the Nightmare on Elm Street horror series) against each other.
Tagline(s):
- The Ultimate Battle Of Evil Vs. Evil.
- Winner Kills All.
- Even A Killer Has Something To Fear.
Contents |
Plot summary
The film begins with Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) in his human days, throwing a doll into a furnace, then murdering a young girl he's holding captive. As he licks her picture on to his book, the parents of Springwood burn him to death. His eyes are then seen and it becomes apparent that he is stuck in Hell. Because no one remembers him and his crimes, he remains unable to escape. Therefore, he conjures up Jason Voorhees (played by Ken Kirzinger), a renowned mass murderer from Crystal Lake who is also possessed, or is at least controlled by supernatural forces.
A female camp conselor, Heather appears, and believes the male counselor she is to go skinny dipping with has already arrived and is the source of the ominous sounds she hears. After leaving the water, she sees (and flees), Jason Voorhees. She seeks shelter in a tree, but is discovered by Jason, who shoves his machete into her so hard, it goes through the tree. Jason hears something that sounds like his mother, and Heather instantly reanimates, taking the forms of Jason's past victims, each saying they deserved to be punished.
Freddy, in the guise of Jason's mother (Pamela Voorhees, the one person to whom Jason will listen), convinces Jason to kill teenagers living on Elm Street to make the residents of Springwood think that Freddy is back. It is learned this was apparently a dream and Jason wakes up. Freddy changes back to normal, thrilled with his plan.
After the opening, Jason arrives at Elm Street, at the former Thompson's home, where the first female Freddy was beaten by, Nancy, once lived. Lori Campbell (played by Monica Keena), and her two friends, Gibb and Kia, are playing a game about who they would marry, have sex with and kill. Gibb is smoking and drinking, Kia wants a nose job, and Lori is the only innocent virgin in the group. Gibb throws a cigarette outside and it hits Jason's face. The doorbell rings and in comes Gibb's boyfriend, Trey, who treats her cruelly, and his best friend, Blake, who is in love with Lori, but she wants to stay away from him. She is still in love with her first and only boyfriend, Will (played by Jason Ritter), who disappeared years ago, and everyone wants her to get over him.
Trey and Gibb go upstairs to have sex, where Trey tells her to take a shower. Blake discovers the back door is open. While Gibb is showering, Trey gets a beer and then sees Jason, who rapidly stabs him in the back, then crushes him with the bed. Upon seeing this everyone runs out screaming, proceeding to inform the police. Lori hears them mention a name, and after being sent to the police station, she remembers that it was Freddy. She finds that she is alone, and sees a trail of disappearing blood. She finds the girl Freddy killed, and she has no eyes. She warns Lori of Freddy, and Lori finds herself outside her newly blood-covered home. She sees girls singing a song, approaches them, then turns around and sees Freddy's face, right in front of her. She wakes up, sweaty and breathing hard.
At Blake's home, his father is mad, because he should have been watching his sister, but Blake swears back because his best friend was murdered. He remembers the name Freddy, and wants revenge. He sees a sheep walk by, walks up to it, and sees Freddy, who brings his shadow to life, but injured himself trying. He decides to let Jason finish the job. When waking up, his father loses his head, literally, and Blake encounters Jason, and is murdered by him.
At this time, at Westin Hills, Will hears of what happened, and escapes to save Lori, with his friend Mark, who is the only one at the time, who believes in Freddy. In the morning, Lori's father(played by Tom Butler), puts hypnocil in juice and tries to get her to sleep, she almost does and encounters Freddy again. She leaves for school, where she learns of Blake's death. She encounters Linderman, who also is in love with her, and some of Trey's old friends. In the halls, she mentions her dream of Freddy, which causes everyone to listen to her. Her friends say she should calm down. That's when Mark comes in and tells everyone about Freddy. Will tells him to shut up, and Lori faints after seeing her first love again, and is sent to the infirmary, where Freddy is observing her. He appears to Kia in her dream as well. Will and Mark do info on the deaths in Springwood, and Mark keeps claiming its Freddy.
At a rave they were invited to, the girls try to party, Gibb gets drunk and passes out, and a raver tries to rape her. Lori encounters Will, who she tells about the death and Freddy. Gibb has a dream where Trey is alive, and follows him to where Freddy is, but before he could kill or rape her, she and the raver are killed by Jason.
Jason kills more kids, and Lori, Freeburg, Will, Kia, and Linderman escape. After dropping everyone else home, Will tells Lori he was sent to Westin Hills because he witnessed her dad kill her mom. For years she thought it was a car accident. Lori's dad shows up and threatens to hurt Will for being around Lori, which causes her to run away from home with Will. They realize they need help from someone who knows Freddy, Mark. Unfortunately, Freddy kills him in a dream about his brother, who was also a victim of Freddy Krueger.
After that, the sheriff has an argument with Deputy Stubbs on the murdered teens. He finds Lori and her friends. Lori is falling asleep on the couch. They hear the truth of Jason and Freddy. They start talking about giving Freddy a virgin sacrifice. Everyone, even Will get up wanting to give Lori to Freddy. She backs away, and sees a man resembling her dad, calling her an angel saying she still has him. He asks her for a kiss. He then attempts to french kiss and starts licking her mouth from the inside, she screams and shoves him off. It's Freddy and he holds her down staring at her, enjoying their kiss. She tries to push him off as he attempts to french kiss her again, while pulling his ear. She wakes up screaming, and holding Freddy's ear in her hand, she drops it and it turns into maggots. Will reveals the unknown drugs he and Mark took, and Linderman reveals that it is called hypnocil, and it surpresses dreams. They decide to get some for themselves at Westin Hills.
Will grants the group (Will, Lori, Kia, Linderman, Freeburg, and Stubbs) access to Westin Hills via the card that he and Mark had used to escape with. While the group searches for the drug "Hypnocil", Jason catches up with them and breaks into Westin hills. Freeburg decides to take a "J-break" and gets himself "high". While stoned, Freddy makes an appearance to Freeburg as a bong-smoking caterpillar. He lures Freeburg into the room containing the Hypnocil and possesses Freeburg and washes all the drugs down the drain. He then gets Freeburg to fill up two syringes full of highly concentrated narcotics and awaits Jason. When the group finally finds Freeburg, Jason has already caught up with them and managed to kill Stubbs. The group runs by Freeburg, but to their surprise, he is waiting for Jason. He lets Jason get to him and then plunges both needles into either side of Jason's neck, but is chopped in half right before Jason falls unconscious.
The group puts Jason into their van and begins their plan to take care of Freddy and Jason at the same time. The group plans on using Lori's find (bringing things out of the dream world) to bring Freddy to the real world and get him and Jason to kill each other. While on the way to Crystal Lake, Jason has a nightmare of his own. In the nightmare, Jason is confronted by none other than Freddy himself and takes a brutal beating. Freddy hands Jason massive amounts of punishment but still can't figure out why Jason won't die. Finally, when Jason is about to strike at Freddy, he backs down after almost running into some water pouring down from the ceiling. Freddy finds out that Jason is afraid of the water (although this contradicts other Jason movies) and finally has a way to kill Jason. Freddy decides to drown Jason in his dream.
Around this time, Lori puts herself to sleep in preperation to get Freddy out of the dream world. After Lori falls unconscious, she is immediately thrown into Jason's nightmare, where she see's a young Jason Voorhees being bullied by other camp kids until he tries to run away and falls into the lake. Lori runs to the camp counselors for help, but only finds Freddy in control of the dream as he rapes a counselor. She runs to the lake to save Jason herself, but Freddy drags him underwater and attempts to kill Jason. Before Freddy can kill Jason, Jason wakes up due to Will wrecking the van they were traveling in. . . Lori however, remains unconscious.
Lucky for the group, they wrecked right at the entrance to Camp Crystal Lake. The group takes Lori, still asleep, to a nearby cabin which is also near the lake. The group tries to revive Lori, but she's having problems of her own.
Freddy, angered by Jason disappearing right before he got the chance to kill him, attacks Lori. Freddy turns the dream into Lori's house, and Lori finds out that her mother was actually killed by Freddy. Freddy knocks her down, then scratches her chest near her breasts, showing her blood. Then he talks about how the first time(sex) gets a little messy. He chuckles, then runs his blade up her leg to lift her skirt. It isn't entirely apparent if she actually gets raped or not, but there's a good chance she was.
Jason finds the group and begins to attack them in the cabin. Linderman is mortally wounded when he is impaled through the back by a wall hanging. A fire starts after a lantern is dropped, and Lori's clothes catch on fire. Lori wakes up right when she has her hands on Freddy. Freddy immediately realizes his error in taking his time with Lori as he comes face-to-face with Jason . . . only this time, it's Jason's turn to hand over the beatings. With Lori awake, the group uses Freddy as a distraction for Jason so they can escape. Linderman dies from blood loss, and the group is forced to leave him. They run to the lake docks where they hope Jason and Freddy will kill each other. Jason momentarilly gets rid of Freddy by whacking him hundreds of feet through the air into some other cabin. Freddy catches up with the group before Jason though, and is about to attack the group when Jason does it for him, killing Kia. Here the two titans of terror duke it out and beat each other up pretty bad.
After a few minutes the titans are sent flying through the air and land on the dock after Freddy's plan to crush Jason with a giant rock-filled cart backfires. Lori and Will pump gasoline on the dock while the two are fighting and attempt to light it on fire. By the time Freddy realizes he is surrounded by flames, Jason begins to stab Freddy very deep with his hand, and Freddy uses Jason's machete to do the same. They both fall over into the lake, and Lori and Will think that it is over. They both collapse on the docks exhausted, but then someone emerges from the water. He walks over to the group, and the audience can see black pants, black shoes, and a machete. But when the camera rises, you can see that it's Freddy holding Jason's machete. Right before Freddy slashes at the two helpless teens, Jason reaches out from the water and impales Freddy through his back and out his stomach with Freddy's own clawed arm. (It had been chopped off by Jason before they both fell into the water.) Freddy drops the machete and falls to his knees. Freddy looks up and sees Lori holding Jason's machete, and she yells "Welcome to my world bitch!" right before cutting his head off. Jason sinks to the bottom but not before witnessing Freddy's demise. Freddy, along with his head, falls into the water as well. Lori, after doing this, drops Jason's machete in the water, right where Jason was.
Lori and Will leave, and night turns to day. But before the fog lifts off of the lake, a figure emerges from the water . . . Jason! Jason walks out of the lake holding Freddy's head and you think that Jason has won, but before Jason disappears into the forest, the camera gets a close-up on Freddy's face, and then Freddy looks into the camera and winks! Freddy's trademark laugh is heard before the credits roll.
Sequel?
Several propositions for a sequel to the film, involving additional characters from other horror franchises, have been proposed. The first idea involved the use of Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams character from the Evil Dead franchise. This idea was apparantly halted when Evil Dead director, Sam Raimi, decided against it. A second idea involved using the Michael Myers character from John Carpenter's Halloween franchise. According to an interview with Englund, from March of 2006, New Line Cinema has particpated in talks with Carpenter concerning the film.
Reaction
While a box office success and fairly well received critically among fans and genre critics, many felt that the film failed to live up to the hype that had been building up for so long for such a highly anticipated film. This is mostly faulted to the plot, which is often cited as adding little to the genre, and the characters being standard slasher stereotypes. While these criticisms are argued to be expected in the genre, others express the desire for something different in a film that they believe should be grander than both sets of predecessors and other slasher films. Some Friday the 13th fans have also expressed a distaste for the way in which Jason is portrayed in the film, although these complaints may have root in the controversial decision not to cast fan favourite Kane Hodder again in the role he played consecutively in the previous four Friday the 13th films. On the other hand, Nightmare fans were upset that Freddy's body count was considerably lower than that of Jason's (Freddy only directly kills one character versus Jason's body count that reaches more than a dozen) [1]. However, one of the most talked about aspects is the final scene, which has caused endless debates among fans of both franchises as to its meaning and who of the two actually comes off as the victor. Fans of Jason contend that he won the conflict, due to him striking the last blow of the fight, weakening Freddy enough so that Lori was able to decapitate him. Fans of Freddy argue that since Jason himself did not strike the fatal blow, that it was a draw. Neither argument has been confirmed or denied by New Line. However, co-writer Mark Swift has stated that he considered Jason to be the victor. Some even believe that the idea of pitting the two monsters against each other to be futile itself, as there would be an effort not to offend fans of either, and that the film "copped out" in making a clear winner in order to please both fanbases.
Betting
Due to the popularity of Jason and Freddy among adults (who remember them from their teen years), a large number of bets were placed on the outcome of the movie. Some professional betting establishments even started taking bets and given odds on different outcomes. Some of the most common/popular outcomes were:
- Freddy wins hands down, Jason survives
- Jason wins hands down, Freddy vows revenge
- Jason beats Freddy, but ends up in hell at the end
- Freddy beats Jason, but is defeated by locals
Notes
- At one point, Pinhead was to make an appearance in the film (at the end, as Jason and Freddy are duking it out in hell, Pinhead appears and breaks up the fight) but the licensing issues prevented it.
- Many fans were upset that longtime Jason actor Kane Hodder was not asked to reprise his role. The producers wanted an actor with more sympathetic eyes, and who was much taller than Robert Englund in size, so professional stuntman Ken Kirzinger was hired. Kirzinger previously appeared (albeit briefly) in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. He also served as that film's stunt coordinator.
- An alternate ending was also considered where Freddy and Jason fight for eternity as gladiators in Hell for Satan's endless amusement, but it was never filmed. However, animatics for this sequence do exist and were included as a hidden "easter egg" in the DVD special edition of the film.
- Yet another alternate ending that was to be put into the movie was that Camp Crystal Lake was drained and a giant hand made of water was to drag Freddy and Jason down to Hell, but Freddy survived only to kill Lori's dad, and ultimately to fight a reanimated Jason. This is an easter egg in the dvd version of the movie.
- According to this film, Jason is terrified of water. This is seemingly contradicted by other films in series where he is at times swimming and kills in and around water. The writers have said the final draft of the script (which underwent an uncredited rewrite by David Goyer) muddled the issue, and that originally Jason was supposed to be afraid of drowning, not merely water by itself.
See also
External links
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