friday the 13th remake/reboot

We're finally of an age where everything from what we grew up is being sold back to us

"back to us"? it's not like we were selling it in the first place.

"back to us" in terms of "doing it again"

for example: "JEM: the Movie" is coming. Bet on it.

Snorks: The Motion Picture

don't give them any ideas

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http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37762

FRIDAY THE 13TH Producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form Discuss the Reinvention of Jason Voorhees with Mr. Beaks!
Though it's impossible to ascertain anything about the actual quality of Platinum Dunes' FRIDAY THE 13TH remake from the special-to-Comic Con teaser (pieced together from fairly rough footage), I'll say this much: it looks like a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie. Then again, so did JASON TAKES MANHATTAN.

Producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form are well aware of your... reticence. They've read the talk backs. They know you're tough to please. All that said, they seem very confident with their FRIDAY THE 13TH reboot. You want a FRIDAY THE 13TH with a series of inventive kills, a batch of good lookin' babes, and a Jason who's unstoppable and ubiquitous as can be without resorting to teleportation? Well, that's what you're gonna fucking get!

A word on that footage: it begins with a pair of inadvisably curious teenagers happening upon a spooky house in the forest. Since they're neither Jared Padalecki nor Amanda Righetti (the respective final guy and girl of this FRIDAY THE 13TH), they barge right in and stick around even though the place is plainly a haven for some backwoods breed of maniac. By the time the dude inexplicably reaches into a hole in the wall of the bathroom to retrieve a severed head, you've already written them off for the sequel.

From there, I can happily report that all of the crucial elements for a "good" FRIDAY THE 13TH are in place: the hockey mask, Jason's "Ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma" and, um, killin'. We didn't get to see too much gore, but I imagine there will be a healthy (or unhealthy) flow of blood in this movie. If you've any other questions, here's Fuller and Form to hopefully answer 'em. (We also touch on their planned remake of THE BIRDS, and another 80s horror franchise they'd like to bring back.)

Beaks: With a film like this, you've got to first build the buzz through the fans and get them excited. So while you didn't want to go in a supernatural direction with the character? Also, did you still feel like there were certain elements that absolutely had to be in place?
Brad Fuller: What made the movie interesting for us to make is that Jason Voorhees is one of the most iconic killers to ever be put on film. And what made him interesting is that he's methodical and unstoppable. Having said that, anything that goes away from that and makes it feel unrealistic... we wanted to move as far away from that as possible. For us, this is a guy who lives in the forest and eats what he kills. He's in shape because he lives in the forest; he's not lumbering around because he has to trap. That, to us, made him a more effective killer. So in our movie, as you saw from the piece we showed today... Jason is fast. He runs fast. He's athletic. He can move.
Beaks: That money shot of Jason bearing down on the girl... Jason's moving so fast, moving so fast, and the camera is backing away so fast, I thought she was on a rig.
Andrew Form: She wasn't. She was just on her hands and butt going "Get the hell away from me!"

Fuller: She's scared at that moment, too. Her fear is palpable. Look at him! (Pointing back to Derek Mears) He's big right here. If he comes running at you swinging that thing... it's crazy! The other shot in the trailer is the girl in the tent. He comes up behind her in the tent, and you see him pull up with the machete. In that shot, we had to use a real machete because we couldn't score the back of that tent. We wanted it to feel real. And she's terrified because that's a real machete coming through the back of the tent, and then he attacks her.

Form: The sound is all real. And her reaction is unbelievable. She didn't really know when he was coming through. So... it's fun.
Beaks: Can you talk about hiring Marcus Nispel to direct the film? It's interesting because--
Fuller: You know what's crazy? You're the first person to ask us that question today, and I think you're our last interview.

Form: You're the only person who's mentioned him.
Beaks: I'm surprised he isn't here. He was out front doing press for TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE back in 2003. Maybe people just simply forgot about him.
Fuller: Here's the thing: Marcus is a really great shooter. He can make his days. Sometimes what he does on the set is make it feel very frenetic and crazy. I think that worked on this movie. Now, that's not always the best working environment, but not knowing exactly what's going to happen next... that makes the performances seem real. There's an edginess to it that works for these kinds of films. That's why he was great for CHAINSAW, and that's why I think people will be happy with what he did on this film.
Beaks: The original FRIDAY THE 13TH movies were, visually, very perfunctory. Bringing in a stylist like Marcus, was there a concern that fans might say, "Hey, this guy's too fancy! He's too good!"
Form: Well, the movie's not shot that way. It's really not. It's not over-stylized. I don't think we'll turn anyone off like that. As Brad said, he's an amazing shooter, but it's not an over-stylized version.
Beaks: Derek mentioned that he's playing Jason, in part, as a survivalist in the John Rambo mold. Hearing what you guys are doing with the character, that makes a lot of sense. When you were developing the script, where there any other monsters - real or fictional - you might've been referencing?
Fuller: For us, it was just about making him as scary and imposing as possible. It was about making sure that we had the mask right and the machete right. Also, that there was a variety in the amount of kills: how we do them, how much blood there is, and making sure that they're not repetitive.
Beaks: With regards to THE BIRDS remake, are you working from the Daphne du Maurier short story or more directly from the Hitchcock film?
Fuller: It's starting from the short story. That's what got us all excited about the film, and Martin Campbell has his own take that he's kind of spun from that. But we don't have a script yet, so we can't really say. We'll know in a couple of months.
Beaks: And other horror films you're looking to remake?
Form: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is the movie we want. We hope that'll be our next film. Hopefully, the studio will allow us to remake it.
Beaks: Well, that's a better film than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies. The first one, at least.
Form: The original ELM STREET is a great film. We'd be lucky to have an opportunity to take that on.
Beaks: And go in a completely different direction? The original is so indelible.
Fuller: The studio already hired a writer, Wesley Strick, to start writing, so we're not really privy to that. They know our interest. Part of it is figuring out what they want to do. I think they want to see what we did with FRIDAY THE 13TH, and, when they see it, I hope they're happy.
So there you go. There will be a lot of murder in this FRIDAY THE 13TH. Happy?

half of me is happy to see more Jason, half of me knows that they're lying when they say it isn't over-stylized

Oh boy!

Or not.

I have to say, the scene in the trailer where the girl fearfully peeps around the shower curtain, sees nothing there, relaxes, and pulls back the curtain to reveal Jason standing directly behind her is pretty awesome.

i have never seen a single friday the 13th film ever.

is that bad

It's okay, I haven't either.

(In fact, I didn't know the twist in the first one until almost a decade after it came out.)

I'm going to a dark horror nerd place with this, but jason is in friday the 13th for about 10 seconds. how is this a remake?

From what I understand this is basically the first three movies condensed into one flick.

how did they ever condense the plot?! all the nuance, gone!

I haven't seen the original Friday the 13th movie, but I've seen several of the sequels when I was a kid, and they always had the same plot:

1) A bunch teens go camping to the woods/to a summer cottage/other distant location.

2) Jason wakes up from the dead nearby.

3) A couple of the teens are about to have sex, but suddenly Jason appears and grueseomely kills them.

4) The other teens try to run away or drive away in a car, but even though Jason is always just walking slowly like a zombie, somehow he manages to catch them all up.

5) Jason kills the teens with various inventive and gory methods. He never uses the same method twice.

6) Only one or two of the teens survive, and they finally manage to kill Jason...

7) ...but in the final scene it's shown that Jason is not fully dead, just waiting for the next sequel.

x-post

it's more like a 'remix' than a remake (from the trailer, parts of this new F13 seem to have come from the 2nd/3rd/4th movies too) - the same team were responsible for that TEXAS CHAINSAW MOVIE rework from a few years ago, which sort worked the same way, mixing new and old plot elements - and slightly strangely ,this FRIDAY THE 13TH has been shot by Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer on the original TEXAS - tho no Savini fx, sadly

xpost to Tuomas, actually, after Part IV, that pretty much describes none of them.

You can find some great reviews and discussion of each of the first 10 (!) movies here. Liz Kingsley is a really funny writer from Australia.

Oh wait, actually I saw part of the one where Jason manifested himself as an evil slug and started possessing people.

I have seen all of them, some of them multiple times, and love them unreservedly, though some partially on meta grounds - like, some of them feel like a few guys kinda thought it might be profitable to bid on this dormant franchise so they half-heartedly threw a movie together but ran out of enthusiasm around day three of the shoot so they just kept working but without any real interest or belief that there'd ever actually be people watching...stuff like that makes for compelling viewing to me. OTOH, I just love gore movies anyway, so I'd find some rationale to say these movies rule no matter what.

Anyway I expect to see this tonight but I'll be surprised if it's as good as the My Bloody Valentine remake.

yeah, that MBV 3-D flick was a really pleasant old-skool surprise - tom atkins, gratuitous nudity, gore, great ending

Can't wait for SAW: The Re-SAWING in 2028.

the first movie terrified me, but i was only about 9yo at the time.

the rest blow.

It's weird - there's this one, and there's also the Last House on the Left remake, both of which appear to use the exact same bluish-black green high-contrast moody palette that David Fincher beat us all senseless with in the 90s. I feel like this is all of a piece with new Tomb Raiders, Star Wars remakes - even Mad Men. They're all attempts to make hi-res a genre or film or period of time which has become frustratingly naff.

i just watched the original again, still pretty good especially the ending.

Didn't realise Savini was involved too.

I really, really, really didn't like this. Zero scares, really unbearable characters, not a single set piece that hasn't been done better by a dozen other grade z horror flicks. I'll take Jason in outer space with Cronenberg cameos over this any day.

(and I had fun with the MBV remake - the only box from Ward's checklist up there that this ticks is gratuitous nudity. It really needed a dose of Tom Atkins. Or anything that suggested this was made by people who like horror movies, and not some kind of robotic Michael Bay focus group-ed plug 'n' play slasher generator).