colinr0380 wrote:He isn't the new killer in part 5, he is just worried he may be, and other people assume he is.
He becomes the killer just before the end credits, seemingly possessed by what is either the spirit of Jason Vorhees or his own dementia. They blatantly disregarded this sequence as the whole affair was a terribly absurd and pointless attempt to get away from the Vorhees origin and keep the series going. It was a huge disappointment and was the reason they so heavily marketed Jason's return in the next entry.
(and I haven't seen Bay of Blood yet, but it is a film I'm interested in seeing in the future
As a fan of the Friday movies, I think you will be rather amused by it.
in a Scooby-Doo-like twist, the person we glimpsed for six seconds early in the film now wearing the hockey mask to commit the murders? Sadly the latter
That's precisely what I'm saying, and why the continuity simply isn't there. The producers clearly abandoned the direction of the series between 5 & 6.
DrewReiber wrote:No, I'm not, although strangely the Nightmare films went down the same route - some attempt at continuity with the earlier films before giving up at the end.
They gave up by that up by the second film when they threw out most of the pre-existing characters and even some of the backstory itself, confusing the character's own origin. I heard that their lack of focus on the direction of the sequel was so heightened that they attempted to start the film without Robert Englund to quite negative results behind-the-scenes. The film's release was such a creative disaster that they immediately went back to Wes Craven, despite having dumped him earlier, for a screenplay they could use to get back on track.
Unfortunately, they rewrote it entirely and just used the basic elements and his name to sell Part 3. I've read the adaptation of his original screenplay and it was head-over-heels better than the film they ultimately made. However, the ideas still gave them enough fuel to move ahead successfully. They managed some creative consistency from Dream Warriors to the Dream Child, but yet again they became confident in just exploiting both the character and their audience towards the last two sequels, thanks in large part to lowering the bar and over-exposing the character on television.
They had become so lazy as to rely mostly on the creative elements of the TV show (makeup, writers, etc.) and their behind-the-scenes producers (Rachel Talahay) to slap the film together on the cheap. Talahay later admitted they didn't even think they tried that hard... ugh. Anyway, enough of this tangent. My point stands that they made the same mistake on 6 that they did with 2, except the next time they also started giving the directorial reigns away to anybody. The series had ups and downs, but most of the momentum that propelled it through those initial 7 years as a cultural phenomenon can be tracked back to the groundwork Craven laid out in his various collaborations with New Line.
For example, the mostly crappy part 2 (only notable for the homo-erotic element, the sado-masochistic death of the gym teacher and the exploding budgie!), is meant to be set in the same house Nancy lived in in the first part.
I don't think that's a good enough argument to provide continuity. As I said, it just confuses the entire series after only two films. You never see any of these characters again and most of the new elements were completely ignored until Wes Craven incorporated some of them into New Nightmare. What, the house is haunted because of the first movie? C'mon... that's complete nonsense. It completely contradicts everything in the original where Freddy just goes from place to place as he feels. It's a copout link that the producers threw in because they had no idea what they were doing and couldn't think of anything better without risking having to pay more people to come back.
(it doesn't ignore part 2, but the second part has no characters in common with the rest of the series, so could be considered as occuring separately)
It was completely ignored. Freddy's points of origin were changed yet again in the later sequels, and just about everything he did in the film as a monster was also dropped. In Dream Warriors, they did everything in their power to imply that the last film was irrelevant. They just wanted to pretend it didn't happen.
This turns out, for me, to be the best of the sequels.
I made the mistake of reading Wes Craven's original story before seeing the film and I was crushed by how lackluster it was. I never warmed up to it either, unfortunately. I would say, if we're not counting New Nightmare as a straight sequel, that The Dream Master is the most entertaining in terms of dumb, over-the-top fun.
Now, there is a very strong continuity between the third, fourth and fifth Nightmare films, which does suggest that there was some attempt to have a continuing story. Whether people recognised the continuity or not is a different matter, made more difficult by the same characters being played by different actors over the films.
That doesn't matter, especially considering how many film franchises had done that by then anyway. Those characters also continued in books, comics and other merchandise, which made it all the more curious when they threw it all away for Freddy's Dead. Like I said, I don't think anyone at New Line really cared at that point as long as they threw a lot of easily marketed gimmicks into "the Final Nightmare".
Freddy Vs Jason is marginally better but is also seriously uninterested in it's own history.
I guess that's where we'll just have to completely disagree. I was taken aback by how unnecessarily respectful that script was of both series. I think maybe you expect too much from a decade late, crossover followup following a whole slew of nearly unwatchable sequels, IMO. I mean, what did you want to see, a bunch of seriously aged and poor actors come back from the earlier sequels?
There is no link that could be made between Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X, and no link possible between Jason X and Freddy Vs Jason.
Again, I'm not sure what your problems with Freddy vs. Jason are. It's very obvious to anyone that "vs" was supposed to follow Jason Goes to Hell, and has absolutely nothing to do with a cyber-Jason running around in the future. I can follow that line of logic in an infinitely easier manner than understand most of the intentionally vague and weak links between the various Friday the 13th films.
Perhaps I'm making the suggestion that they think the audience for the films are so dumb they're just going to see 'the latest Freddy film' or the 'latest Jason' and not need to remember the events of previous instalments?
That would be my guess.
