I thought the whole plot twist about the parents killing an innocent man was a brilliant idea. Sadly it was one which got thrown out the window about four minutes later, and it just became a formulaic remake all over again.
That little plot device would have been better,because it would have at least given a motive as to why he was so bent on killing all the kids he was after.
Oh well!
Making Freddy a villain beforehand was sort of a cop out for this new, interesting idea. It's best when remakes try something different, but other than making the child molestation background more obvious they really didn't add anything new to the table.
I don't much care for Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN, but it at least explored new territory like a backstory. Granted I don't think anyone asked for that, but still.
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I agree. It would have been far more interesting if the story was about the revenge of an innocent man who was blamed for harming kids, only to come back and actually take their kids.
shareThe problem there is it doesn't actually contribute to the core actors. Doing that would actually make the main four characters even more arbitrary, merely McGuffins in a struggle between absent parents and Freddy.
The reality is Elm Street has always, at its core, been about the struggle of confused teenagers against their perceptions of the world. The sins of the parents are metaphorical, not literal. That was Wes's main intention, and it resonates even in the worst of the films.
Here, its utterly absent. Shifting it to a literal sense cheapens the purpose.
I see what you're saying but it doesn't really change it for the worse. Either way they are paying for the sins of their parents. Both the old and the new ultimately involve kids who are struggling to deal with the results of the violent actions of their parents.
The sins of the parents in the original were no less literal.
The problem there is it doesn't actually contribute to the core actors. Doing that would actually make the main four characters even more arbitrary, merely McGuffins in a struggle between absent parents and Freddy.
The reality is Elm Street has always, at its core, been about the struggle of confused teenagers against their perceptions of the world. The sins of the parents are metaphorical, not literal.
No, it really does have deeper meaning. Craven has said so numerous times. Its about the sins of the fathers coming back to the children. Its about the false sense of security in suburbia, how those families saw a 50% increase in divorces. It is about rights of passage for teenagers. Its about women fighting back. Its about vigilante justice. Those are just off the top of my head that I can remember Craven saying. It DEF had a great deal of subtext and commentary.
Still, New Nightmare knocked it out of the park with its deconstruction or horror, and its fans and how horror movies are a cathartic release for primal thoughts. New Nightmare was 2 years before Scream and done a better job as well. Craven is DEEPLY into philosophy and uses that in all his films.
Haters gonna hate
I think the original does contain all these qualities, but unintentionally. None of the interviews with Wes Craven back in the day talked about any of this stuff. These are things he has thought of since making the orignal. Just like we can rewatch an old movie and find new ways to relate to it, Wes Craven's thoughts have expanded as well.
Heather Langenkamp has over the years talked about the role of Nancy and delved into the psyche of the character and of herself as an actor playing her, but she admits that at the time she was just glad to get a job.
People's view of their own work changes with the passage of time.
The man who frightened a young Wes Craven was the inspiration for Freddy's fedora. The idea of dying because of what happens in dreams he took from news articles of the time. Other ideas came not only from Wes Craven's fears and dreams but others involved on the film as well.
craven was inspired by
a phenomenon in Southeast Asia that claimed the lives of a number of young adults.
These relatively healthy men, all without a history of mental disorders, began reporting horrific nightmares driving them to forgo sleep in order to avoid these terrors in the REM cycle.
The consumption of coffee and other stimulants helped the men remain awake, initially, but eventually each man went to sleep. Hours later, the men would be found screaming and violently thrashing in their beds before dying from unknown causes.
This phenomenon was covered in the New York Times in an article titled "Nightmares suspected in bed deaths of 18 Laotians":
more over he specifically states that his main inspiration was from an Article about a family who escaped the killing fields in cambodia and managed to get to the u.s things were going fine but there young son began having very disturbing nightmares, he told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him. so he stayed awake for days at a time. When he finaly fell asleep his parents thought his crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night, By the time they got to him. he was dead. Craven said about this "He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”
No, that would have taken everything about the Freddy character and discarding it. The innocent thing would NOT work. Freddy is meant to be a sick, child molesting/murder. He is meant to be sadistic and disgusting. I dont want feel bad for Freddy. Making him innocent would strip everything great about the series off. The character of Freddy can never be an innocent man getting revenge.
The great part is actually that he wants to target the kids for telling instead of the actual parents who burned him. In his mind molesting children is OK and he should not have been killed for it.
Haters gonna hate
Get what you're saying, but I disagree.
And so does Scorsese. Cape Fear shows exactly how a GUILTY/EVIL man can be wronged, and thus provide him with added reason for targeting his foe. Didn't make him any less of a villain (he was worse than in the original), but it sure gave him a really good reason (at heart he felt dissed by Bowden, his whole "you think you're better than me" spells it out) to go to such extremes for revenge.
The same thing could have been done with Freddy here. But it would require a better screenplay and a director with balls (funny though, Strick wrote also the Cape Fear remake, so what happened here?).
Yes a character can be wronged and seek revenge for the wrong. That concept is in hundreds of horror movies and is cliche as one can get. The problem with what you are talking about though is the fact that Freddy Krueger was already an established character with 8 movies, Cape Fear was not. So doing something so radically different as making him innocent destroys everything about the character down to its very core. The sickness of Freddy being a child killer and murderer is crucial to the story. Wes Craven created the character to give him no sympathy and to be disgusted by him.
The whole point of the innocent angle in the remake is for the teens in the movie, not the audience. Its obvious he was a child molester well before the reveal that he was guilty. I mean he licked Nancys face and was feeling her up talking pervy to her for Gods sake. He just wanted them to get to the school, see the pictures which unlocked all of the supressed memories for Freddy. He plainly tells Nancy, "Your memories are what fuels me".
Haters gonna hate
"Making him innocent would strip everything great about the series off. The character of Freddy can never be an innocent man getting revenge."
Why not? It would've been an interesting twist on the character, instead of the same old nonsense that we got.
I'm happiest...in the saddle.
he is only a child molester in this one originally craven wanted him to be a child molester but decided to have him just be a child murderer. so yes he is meant to be a sick child killer but not molester. only in the remake did they actually have him be a child molester
shareIt is implied throughout the series he IS indeed a child molester, states it flat out in Freddy's Nightmares on the episodes dealing with his back story, and he is also referred to as a child molester in NoeS 5.
shareHe was a molester, it was just not explicitly said in the original because of the scandal. Its all over the original in the form of subtext. Craven evev says to this day that Freddy was indeed a pedophile.
Haters gonna hate
No, that would have taken everything about the Freddy character and discarding it. The innocent thing would NOT work. Freddy is meant to be a sick, child molesting/murder. He is meant to be sadistic and disgusting. I dont want feel bad for Freddy. Making him innocent would strip everything great about the series off. The character of Freddy can never be an innocent man getting revenge.
Agreed. Despite what the fan trolls says, that would've been a great twist. An innocent man being accused of being a child molester is bad enough, but to kill the innocent man is just as horrific.
That potential twist was the only redeeming factor in this otherwise awful movie, and they screwed that up.
I like the updated twist idea.
share
Sorry cool guy, it would have been a terrible twist and about cliche as one can get considering the "wronged innocent person seeks revenge" has been done in hundreds of movies. It also is fundamental to the Freddy character to be guilty. I dont want to have sympathy for Freddy, which would happen to a lot of people. He is meant to be disgusting and revolting.
You know whats horrific? A man actually molesting children and thinking there is nothing wrong with that. Horrific is being burned alive. Horrific is a dead child molester having the power to do whatever he wants to you in your dream and can kill you. Horrific is tricking the teens into thinking that he was innocent, only in an attempt to lead them back to the school to find the pictures of themselves being molested. And in doing so, Freddy has unlocked your supressed memories making him as powerful as possible now because those memories fuel him. Thats horrific and much better than the innocent cliche.
Haters gonna hate
While I agree it would be an interesting addition to the story, I think it makes more sense if he was a villain before he died as it makes more sense for a wicked person to do the things that Freddy does.
RAWR!
Wait...wasn't Freddy a child molester anyway (I mean in original concept; I believe it was decided that with the original script in the 1980's to focus on him being a child murderer aspect to soften audience outrage)? I don't know: I think the film is okay, but it seemed all over the place in many ways (I mean having many scenes of previous "A Nightmare On Elm Street" films included, but in an awkward way).
shareI don't see any real issue with Freddy being innocent in the remake. If anything, it was the only real twist that they added. Several scenes in this film were almost identical to the original film, just with new actors. The bath scene for example, or Freddy's shape appearing above Nancy's head when she is in bed. At least the "Was Freddy really innocent?" was the only attempt to go in a new direction in the all film. The ANOES series was full of parents who were unreliable, or just plain bad parents. This added a new direction to this. What if Freddy was innocent all along, and the parents were the ones who had created the monster?
*SPOILERS* My problem was, they threw it in soemwhat halfheartedly. It was proven at the end that he wasn't innocent all along. That way, it just felt like there was no point to doing the story line at all.
You said it better than I did, hurricanehorton; the storyline was mishandled. Man, if the concept is going to be remade, have focus, and don't treat it like the weekday salad.
shareNo. A lot of the scenes are inferior versions of the original. There's a difference.
share
It was blatantly obvious he was guilty before its even brought up in the film. He is scene licking Nancys face calling her his number 1. Either way, making him innocent would destroy a very vital part of Freddy.
Haters gonna hate
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I think the best thing they could have done, besides making it into a different take on the story/background. The next best thing would be to make it into a cheesy 80s slasher movie. A fanedit called Dream Maniac re-cut the movie into VHS looking tribute to horror instead of a straight up horror.
shareI hear people on here, well one in particular calling the wronged person seeking revenge is cliché, but so is a guilty person seeking revenge. Revenge is clichéd. As a matter of fact after 8 films and a tv series, the Freddy idea is now clichéd.
If you're going to reboot the series you either need great artistic vision (not a lot of that going around in 21st century Hollywood) in the presentation, or significant differences in the storyline to justify its existence. In the case of Freddy, they made him a pedophile who we're not entirely sure ever murdered anyone while he was alive. That's a weak change. They did not have him being found not guilty on a technicality and the parents acting out of a desire for justice, they simply had him burned to death by an angry mob, that's a weak change and actually does make him a wronged party.
They needed to change something. I think they could have made an innocent Freddy work. They needed to do something major to indicate they were going in a different direction to the original film series. Because why would you want to go to the same place you've already been. They failed in that, and so this is a weak stand alone remake, rather than the first reboot in a series.
Someone mentioned Rob Zombie's Halloween. It was a film that tried to add something different to the max, as that person rightly pointed out, it wasn't called for, but at least it tried, and guess what? There was a sequel to that one unlike this one.
This film was artistically bankrupt garbage that added nothing to the Freddy universe, did nothing to take the product in a different direction, and left the story with nowhere to go for a sequel.
"What every columnist needs to do is shut the f-ck up!"
Its WAY mor cliché for a wronged innocent person seeking revenge. Having Freddy be innocent would put people on his side and that just can't happen. The point of Freddy is that he is a sick evil bastard we are supposed to hate and fear.
I agree that remakes should change it up but that's fundamentally destroying the character. Yeah Halloween tried to change it up and show his early life and why he was the way he was and it was almost universally hated for doing so by hardcore Halloween fans. Just because it got a sequel does not mean anything. Nightmare grossed 115 million worldwide compared to 80 for Halloween. Its sequel made only 40 million and was hated by damn near everyone for being way to different. So both those movies combined barely outgained the one Nightmare film.
Haters gonna hate
I don't get the idea of saying this cliché is more clichéd than that cliché. That seems way too arbitrary and abstract for this kind of film. Cliché is cliché, period.
I would've liked the idea of keeping it ambiguous much longer through the film. Let Freddy play the wronged victim and be self-righteously indignant. Let him even begin to believe his own version of the events, which would just fuel his inner monster that much more. Show him becoming this monster, instead of just having him be it from the get-go. A vigilante/jihadi/serial murderer with a would-be cause is extremely scary--not to mention, not that far from reality. (Oh, but reality is so clichéd too! :/)
When the big reveal that he was guilty all along finally got made in the end, the truth wouldn't matter to Freddy anymore. By that point, he would've fully become the monster that we all know and love, he wouldn't really know or care anymore why he was the way he was, and he would simply love torturing and killing for their own sakes. So all that would matter from then on would be fighting him.
You could've had a deeper origin tale for your first part, but then also set up conventional slasher flicks for the sequels, while still having a rationale behind it all: the monster is confused about reality but still thinks he's the victim in all of this, but he's also having a hell of a time with it. He's powerful, he's insane, and he's convinced himself that he's right for doing what he does.