CHUD has a great little interview with the producers of the upcoming Friday The 13th "remake," or "reimagining," or "some kind of sequel" or whatever you want to call it. Check it out here.
I'm so freakin excited about this. Now, sure, I've learned my lesson about producers talking about how much they love and respect a franchise they've inherited only to do everything to dictate otherwise, but let's be optimistic and take these tidbits at their awesome facey valuest. For one, they seem to want to play it straight -- NO SPOOFING, which is one of my cardinal rules on how to keep things from sucking. And, while some fans don't like the idea of restarting the story rather than continuing it, I have to ask: "Continue what?" If you like the oldest movies in the series and want to see more of that kind of stuff, restarting the bitch is the only way to get it.
Here's the kicker, though. They said that they'll be drawing most of their inspiration from the first three installments of the series. Okay, Part 1, whatever, but Part 2 and Part 3? Holy God yes. Yeah, they'll be creating their own origin tale, which is kind of risky because I don't think we really need or should even have that much information about how it all began or what it means, but we certainly seem poised for the best Jason Voorhees effort in, heck, twenty years.
There are ways to make this movie work. Unfortunately, there are also ways to make this movie not work, but still make a lot of money. I'm hoping the guys behind this can fight for what they really want to get out of this picture, and stray from the obvious, stray from the beaten path of what other resurgent horror franchises became, to just find the right way of making longtime fans happy without alienating everyday moviegoers, and vice versa. Hip hip for long sentences. Shit like this will make its money back in the opening weekend with or without merit, so what the fuck? Give us some merit.
I have a laundry list of things I want out of this movie, but let's narrow it down to a three item wishlist:
- Please please please have the ensemble of random horny teens not know anything about Jason, let alone that they're in any danger, until the final trimester of the film. I LOVED that about the first bunch of F13 flicks. The dichotomy of this cheesy teen romance/comedy movie occurring within a Jason Killing People movie always added to the replay value.
- Please please please don't make Jason supernatural in an explained way. If you have ideas on what he is, hint at them. Be vague. Give fans a reason to think, and to debate, and to write lousy fan fiction. Ambiguity goes a long way with this kind of stuff. One of the major reasons Leatherface became such a horror icon is because he was totally open to interpretation. If you're restarting Jason, leave out the Guide To Jason.
- Please please please give us a batshit weirdo ending. Don't just make it an "extra scare." Don't just make us think things are a-okay before TURNIN' DEM TABLES. Do something bizarre. I hope they work really hard on that, because fuck me if I can think of anything fans couldn't predict if given long enough.
In celebration, here're some Jason-related articles I've written throughout the site's storied thirty year history:
Posted by Matt on 01/10/2007. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
Howzabout “Jason on Broadway”?
And I remember the islander phone ad.