Movie Defense Force: Friday the 13th (Reboot)

attackshark

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Nov 16, 2010
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i have just now caught on to the appeal of horror films. why do so many revolve around murdering teenagers? because it's a fantasy all adults have. because teenagers are awful.

bravo, horror film genre. bravo.
 

Draconalis

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Sep 11, 2008
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How can nudity be unsatisfying? Does not computer.

Edit:

Aardvaarkman said:
Can we please get a video series that keeps to the actual premise - defending underrated movies, rather than one that just says that shitty movies are good because Jim likes them?
Defending underrated movies isn't the premise of this series.
 

MrHide-Patten

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Jun 10, 2009
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After seeing the original and then this, this is by far the better film. There wasn't even the iconic machete or hockey mask in the original, just lots of boring people getting murder every hour or so, or at least it felt like hours because it bored me to tears. Me and my sisters even started to make fun of the stalker "music" (che-che hah-hah) to amuse ourselves.

The only part worth watching of the original is the last couple of minutes, perhaps one of the greatest climaxes to horror film I can remember, doesn't stop it from needing an editor to clean up the rest. The reboot isn't great by any strech of the imagination, but the original isn't what I'd call 'sacred'.
 
Sep 24, 2008
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Well, I never saw the Reboot, but I've seen all the Jason films. Ever. Sometimes all at once (who else misses those College days?)

But if he's human, this falls into the same category of slasher movies that I can't stand: The invincible due to plot Human Killer.

Take Scream. Why does everyone run? GRAB something. All he has is a freaking knife. Yes, it can kill you, but he has to reach you. If you let him out of sight, you give him the element of surprise. If you managed to get him on the floor and he isn't getting up, use that time to throw something heavy at him to injure him or shove something into his damn leg so he can't run after you.

Humans are frail. That's why these victims fall one by one. But if the Slasher is human as well, you're on what we like to call Equal Footing.
 

Grabehn

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Sep 22, 2012
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I've never been a fan of this kinds of movies, especially Freddy's since I was pretty easily nauseated from the gore parts. But after watching that last axe throw, I must see this movie.
 

kburns10

You Gots to Chill
Sep 10, 2012
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I definitely need to check this out. I've always avoided it due to bad mouthing from fans of the series, but it sounds like a strong film in its own right.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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People don't like their Escapist fantasy messed with. It can be hard for many to understand why Horror is escapist fantasy, it is, and it really has nothing to do with people wanting to be killers, or the dark side of human violence, or anything else, as there isn't generally that much direct association with the villain.

Let me be honest, the real world is boring. People strive to get away from it. Horror movies generally feature the premise of a bunch of generally ordinary people who get caught up in extraordinary events. Chased by unkillable murder machines, surviving against zombie hordes, exploring creepy abandoned locations, it's all very differant from what most of us do, and tends wind up being unexpectedly exciting. While most of us would never want to be in a horror movie as such things tend to go down (which would lead to our inevitable, horrible, screaming death) the idea of cool stuff happening and being in the middle of it is exciting and adventurous, and captures the imagination. Genere fans typically go to great lengths mentally contriving their zombie survival plan, or thinking about what they would try and do if they say confronted the mythology of Friday The 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or on a video game front what it would be like if they found themselves in Silent Hill. One of the reasons why you see such stereotypical characters as well is to make the situation somewhat believable (more so than many kinds of fantasy) since everyone probably knows people at least similar to the ones in the movie.

The problem with reboots like "Friday The 13th" is that what the studios are doing is playing around with mental constucts and mythologies that have been around for a couple generations of movie goers. These things are popular based on their expanding mythology and for being what they were. You decide to reboot it and change everything around and that slots off the fans who invested a lot of imagination in it to begin with. Those doing reboots, not just of this, but of other properties, totally seem to miss the point that if they are going to change things substantially, there is no point in using a well known franchise name, because anyone whom that franchise has meaning to is just going to get cheezed off when you make alterations to it.

On a lot of levels I can agree that for it's genere "Friday The 13th" was not horrible. The problem was that there was no reason to make it "Friday The 13th" had they taken the time to create their own killer, and try and build up their own mythology, rather than mess around with an existing one, they might have found something with these (relatively good) production values going over a bit better. Ironically it's the lack of creativity and willingness to take risks that is creating these kind of relative bombs. Had they taken the big name director and reasonably large budget for a horror movie and channeled it into a new franchise, it probably would have gone over better. In this case the big franchise name and what was supposed to go with it, actually hurt them IMO.

I've noticed a general tendency in "Movie Defense Force" to look at movies that were dragged down by their own self-imposed baggage more than anything. I suppose on a lot of levels things like this, Aliens 3, and the like are not terrible when you try and look past the ways they turned their respective liscences into their own downfall. Typically ignoring continuity that the fan base they were tapping really liked as a whole, and was arguably superior to their own product from a creative perspective. Something like "Aliens 3" got panned by "Aliens" fans because the then more relevent and known "Dark Horse" continuity was simply vastly better and effectively de-canonized and ruined by the movie, and with "Friday The 13th" there was never any real point to rebooting it for the people to whom that
franchise name was going to matter.

I'll also say that Jim's defense of some of the things that were "out of character" in this movie and which he defended by referancing other things Jason did in previous movies, is a bit out of place. See the idea of Jason using a Harpoon wasn't really fitting of the character, and didn't go over very well at the time. That's why you didn't see him running around harpooning people or using ranged weapons after you saw that kill, and you kind of had to dig to a relatively early installment to find a place where he did it, and they didn't mess with it again because it didn't work. By having Jason come out as "Mr. Psycho Survivalist" and shoot people with bows and such your going in a direction that any decent writer or director should know had been tried and failed.

What's more, despite his relatively humble beginnings, and the "twist" of the first movie, this was always a series intended to have supernatural undertones and seem like paranormal/unreal stuff was going on even when it wasn't (and it got really over the top to begin with). I think it was explained by some of the creators when he started to become popular that Jason himself isn't really either a man, or even an undead entity, at the end of the day he's more or
less the manifestation of a curse placed on the camp and surrounding area.

At any rate, perhaps the most important thing to consider is that by making Jason so relatively "normal" it also hurt the mystique. People who go to see Friday The 13th after this many installments want to see the usual trappings, but also expect things to be insane. If they just wanted to see what is more or less literally just some guy in a hockey mask as opposed to something supernatural, they could go see plenty of other perfectly normal slashers. The reboot turned Jason from a really campy form of nightmare fuel, into just another psycho rural dude. When you look at it from that perspective and remove everything that made him special down the road, was he even a paticularly good/entertaining psycho rural dude now that we've had however many "Wrong Turn" movies, not to mention Rob Zombie's fairly popular "House Of 1000 Corpses" and "Devil's Rejects"?.
 

UberNoodle

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Apr 6, 2010
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Actually, the real motivation for the remakes and reboots is often because of a 'use it or lose' it clause somewhere in the licensing or IP usage agreements, in which if the studio does not make films using it, they may lose the property to its original rights holder.
 

likalaruku

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Nov 29, 2008
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As long as they don't reboot A Nightmare on Elm Street as a series of movies. I love the franchise as a horror-comedy & unfunny pedo-Krueger sucked out all the laughs.

As a kid, I could never really differentiate Jason Voorhees from Michael Myers, & apparently neither could the director & script writer for "Jason Goes to Hell."
 

daxterx2005

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Dec 19, 2009
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People complain about reboots for the soul purpose of complaining.
I'd much prefer a reboot than another horrid sequel at that point in time where were we in the Voorhees time line.
Jason had already been attacked by a telekenetic girl, explored Manhattan....and went to fucking space.

People complaining about going back to the roots of the series is ridiculous in retrospect.
 

pretzil

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Jan 30, 2010
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All slashers run, a lot, the idea is that you don't see it, watch "The Rise of Leslie Vernon" to see how important cardio is while preparing a massacre.
 

Vault Citizen

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Worgen said:
I think the annoyance with it is that it seems to have thrown the original movie out the window. I mean Jason wasn't really in the original, it was his mother (its over 20 years old, spoilers don't count anymore.), I don't think the hockey mask even showed up till the third movie. Just watching your review kinda made me annoyed at the reboot and I'm not some old fan of the series, I've actually only seen the first movie and I only saw it for the first time last weekend.
I'd be more disappointed about that reveal being spoiled for me if I knew there was any likelihood that I was going to watch the original Friday the 13th but I think it is a mistake to assume that something's age makes reveals details about it any less of a spoiler.
 

kailus13

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Appearing out of nowhere is what makes slasher vilains so great. Even if there's no supernatural explanation for it, it's still scary. Non-supers would have to plan exactly where their victim would be and get to it before them.
 

TheThirdChild

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Feb 16, 2010
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I didn't mind the idea of him kidnapping someone, but having the the brother (I think) come looking for her just felt a bit boring and overused.
 

knight steel

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TheThirdChild said:
I didn't mind the idea of him kidnapping someone, but having the the brother (I think) come looking for her just felt a bit boring and overused.
Your avatar.......I love it soooooooooooo much ^_^
OP:Don't like horror movies so what you said won't get me to see this unfortunately-also a lot of these MDF's seem the focus around horror you know Alien-Blair witch-freddy vs jason,I know you done other such as water world,wild wild west so do you think you could do some more of those types?
 

Eve Charm

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Aug 10, 2011
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Ya can't say this is one I've seen either. I think the whole horror reboot died after they let rob zombie ruin Halloween.

Anyway it doesn't really seem like many of these won't make a good MDF unless it's something out right hated or known for ruining a series or what not. Something like silent hill or resident evil movies or a lot of the " this actor should stop making friggen movies already " like anything newer tom cruise, will smith, adam sandler.
 

Anchupom

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Apr 15, 2009
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canadamus_prime said:
I haven't seen this one, but it doesn't sound that bad to me. I think people are just biased against reboots. I think this is a classic case of They changed it now it sucks [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks]
Linking to TV Tropes without a standard warning?
You monster.
 

Ragnarok2kx

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Nov 18, 2009
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Worgen said:
I think the annoyance with it is that it seems to have thrown the original movie out the window. I mean Jason wasn't really in the original, it was his mother (its over 20 years old, spoilers don't count anymore.), I don't think the hockey mask even showed up till the third movie. Just watching your review kinda made me annoyed at the reboot and I'm not some old fan of the series, I've actually only seen the first movie and I only saw it for the first time last weekend.
I'm going to be an asshole here and state that while you're technically correct, the original Friday the 13th was released in 1980, which makes it over 30 years old.
 

Jennacide

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Dec 6, 2007
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I think most people were more annoyed at the point you didn't even mention Jim: Friday the 13th, the original, WASN'T about Jason. He wasn't even in the movie until the sequel. Well, okay, so he kinda shows up in the end with the boat, but that's not the point. The original movie was all about Mrs. Vorhees going apeshit over Jason's death due to irresponsible counselors, which is why she went on a rampage. When someone tries to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, she goes on a killing spree again.

The remake didn't do anything special, and wasn't particularly funny, which ended up being the reason for the movies past the second to exist. Nightmare on Elm Street was more about the insane deaths and being scary, Friday the 13th: Part 3 and beyond were about being campy and stupid.