After finishing the series it is so funny to look back on where we started and where it ended. At the beginning Friday the 13th was at its core a simple whodunit that became a revenge story that seemed to resonate with people. In the final movie of the series Uber Jason is about to begin his quest of eradicating all human life on Earth 2.

 

                                                          Mrs. Voorhees killing Kevin Bacon because her son drowned  seems so quaint in comparison.

Strange Origins Of A Series

 

The journey between these movies is especially interesting because of how different Friday part 1 is from virtually every other movie in the franchise, except 5, but we’ll get to that in a second. Immediately after the success of the first film the series shifted completely, immediately discarding the whodunit nature of the original in part 2. That makes sense I suppose, it would be hard to have a series of slasher whodunits, and people seemed interested in Jason’s appearance at the end of the first movie so the second one was kind of just a remake of the first film but with Jason as the main antagonist and not Mrs. Voorhees. This is where the series gets really confusing though because well, the continuity between these two films makes no sense at all.

 

Initial Continuity Confusion

That’s going to be a running theme with the Friday the 13th movies but it’s particularly noticeable so early in the series. It really doesn’t make any sense how Part 2 continues on from Part 1, particularly with Jason as the new antagonist. In Part 1 Jason was a zombie or something? It wasn’t really explained, just used as a last minute scare, but now he has between films become a full grown man and they never get into HOW this happened. Between the ‘death’ of Jason and the 21 years since then that Mrs. Voorhees went on her killing spree, how was Jason still a child? Why did Mrs. Voorhees think he was dead? Why is the explanation of ‘he was living in the woods’ supposed to explain this? Really that’s all just there to try and explain how two movies that could not possibly have any continuity have some continuity.

 

Greater Continuity Confusion

Things quiet down after 2 with 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all having a stable continuity that is self contained and mostly makes sense. Everything falls apart with 8 though, as the movie ends with Jason transformed back into his young boy body. How toxic waste transforms a zombie back into a living boy is unclear, but whatever, who cares, the important part is that this is a hard end to Jason as a zombie killer. This huge plot point goes completely ignored by Jason Goes to Hell which just picks up with zombie Jason as a murderer attempting to murder someone. How we got from young boy Jason back to here is never remarked upon. Things get even crazier with the end of Jason Goes To Hell where Jason is sent straight to Hell by having his heart pierced by the magic Voorhees dagger. Jason is now in Hell. But Jason X begins with Jason totally fine but just older and also alive. How did he get out of Hell? Uh…maybe he gave his heart to Jesus before he died and went to heaven, but then kept murdering people in heaven and was banished back to Earth? That may be dumb but it’s more explanation than the movie gives us.

 

The Greatest Success of The Franchise

In a way, I do like how they play fast and loose with continuity as the sequels go on. I appreciate how the writers wanted to take the series in a lot of different directions to see what worked. Especially after the success of the Tommy Jarvis trilogy, 4 through 6, which were very different than the previous movies with recurring characters and a main plotline that lasted through all three movies. Very different than the previous two films which were just: Jason shows up somewhere and starts murdering people. This gamble paid off big time and these movies were financially successful as well as receiving more critical success than usual, in the cases of 4 and 6 at least, part 5 was panned hard. Rather than just copying that, they tried to make each movie afterward feel unique. While I criticize 7-9 for many things, I do have to acknowledge that they all feel very distinct, for ill or good, while the early series becomes a bit jumbled in my head.

 

Time to Compare TEN Movies!

Quality-wise the series definitely peaked in the middle, with 4 through 6 being my personal favorites that establish everything great about the Friday the 13th series. The beginning was kind of rough, 1 and 2 weren’t amazing movies but they were serviceable enough slasher films that are quaint and fun while providing a good backbone to what will come later. Number 3 adds some iconic elements to the series in the form of Jason’s mask, the wacky side characters who start appearing, and the addition of a socially isolated protagonist, but it is just so bogged down by its 3D gimmick and the huge cast of awful characters, including a second protagonist. After 6 though, they lost all the momentum the series had built up, with 7 and 8 having premises that were at least good wasted by having annoying characters and not realizing their full potential. I don’t even consider 9, or the ending of 8 for that matter, to be in canon with the franchise. Jason X gets made fun of a lot for taking the franchise to space, but it’s a really fun watch that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I usually don’t try to rate movies against each other but for the purposes of a retrospective I’ll try to do that  now: 6, 4 ,5 , X, 1, 2, 7, 3, 8, 9.

 

Friday The 13th Got Kind Of Weird.

Looking at my own ranking like that is pretty interesting which rose to the top. I definitely enjoyed the ones that took themselves a bit less seriously, like 6 and X. It does get a bit harder to take the franchise seriously after all that has happened with it, like Jason dying and coming back as a zombie, Jason fighting a psychic, Jason going to space in the future. Jason appearing on Arsenio Hall.

This photo taken seconds before disaster.

 

Shifting Tones Can Be Confusing

It all seems so silly, but I also loved the franchise when it took itself seriously. 4 and 5 took themselves about as seriously as the franchise ever took itself and they told really great stories that stand head of shoulders above the rest of the series. And what is interesting about 5 in particular is that it is more in line with Friday the 13th part 1 than any of the others, because it is a whodunit at its core, where the killer winds up being someone that you didn’t think it would be. Maybe the throwback nature of it caught fans off guard when they were used to something a bit more straightforward at this point in the series? I definitely appreciated the change in pace, watching these movies in a row makes it much more interesting to see ones that really do stand out, for better or for worse, and part 5 stands out.

 

The Series May Be A Bit Deeper Than Some Give It Credit

One thing I do really like about the series is the consistent theming when it comes to the main characters. In almost all of the movies after Jason was established as the villain either the main character or one of the main characters suffers from social isolation. This is a pretty normal thing for teenagers, but it carries with it special meaning for this series due to the backstory given to Jason in Friday part 2. Jason’s hatred for teenagers is often just stated to be because of the whole witnessing his mom killed in self defense by one of the camp counselors she was trying to kill thing, but I really hate how you have to twist the continuity around for that to make any sense at all as to how he was able to witness that.

 

Protagonist Grouping

A more sensible connection between the people he kills and himself is this idea that was brought up in Part 2 which is that Jason experienced intense social isolation as a child that permanently stunted his social growth. This combined with the previously stated mom murder makes a more compelling argument for why he wants to hurt people who had everything he wanted and took away the only thing that he had, and might explain why the social pariahs almost always end up as being the last person alive. Except for 3 where the person who most embodied social isolation was killed halfway through, but I’ll just call that an anomaly. All the other films (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, X) have protagonists who share this same trait but at the end of it, I’m not completely sure if this was an intentional thing or more like a running gag. Hell, in Jason X, Jason is awoken on the ship in the future by hearing the sounds of teenagers having sex, through the ether I suppose because I don’t think he was near them, and then he goes on his killing spree.

 

An Uncomfortable Revelation

So much of the series is devoted to making sure that anyone who has sex dies that I have to ask a question I really don’t want to ask: is Jason the first popular example of an ‘incel’ as a villain? I’m not trying to be topical, but the more I think about it the more sense this makes. Jason is socially isolated, has mother issues, and takes out his anger on people who are more socially and romantically successful than he is. For those of you who don’t know what an incel is, firstly I envy you, and secondly it is a term used by people, overwhelmingly men, who for a variety of reasons are not sexually active. It’s a ‘movement’ that has been widely criticized for things ranging from embracing self-loathing, to encouraging racism/misogyny, to endorsing violence against people who are sexually active. I shouldn’t have to tell you how bad all those things are, and I’m having trouble not drawing parallels between this group that has members who have mass murders attributed to them and Jason, a mass murderer of people who are popular and have sex. Thank god Jason never talks or we might get some really uncomfortable monologues.

 

The Goofy Truth

I think what attracts people to Jason though is the sheer absurdity of the character. The ideas I was just talking about are so laughable that Jason kind of becomes a punchline in his own movies. The Jason X gag being the most obvious but you see all kinds of jokes about Jason, how he seems to teleport everywhere, why he wears a hockey mask, how he seems to target teenagers who are sexually active and/or do drugs. His silent absurdity is what draws people to the character, especially as the series goes on, where he gets placed in more and more bizarre situations and responds the same way to everything that happens. In Jason X, Rowan is rather taken aback to suddenly be in the future but Jason doesn’t seem to notice that anything is different when he wakes up. It’s weirdly reassuring that no matter what happens Jason will always be Jason, and that you always know what to expect when you see him in a movie. Maybe that’s why the franchise had such staying power. It’s dormant for now, but you never know when someone’s going to come along and reboot it. Like LeBron James.  https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3528412/lebron-james-friday-the-13th-reboot/ Wait…what?