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Is It Possible To Do a Good Elm Street Without Robert Englund?

posted 3 years ago by cyberbob (3488)
3 replies | jump to latest

Jackie Earle Haley had hype back then. He had gotten an Oscar nom for Little Children and played Rorschach

In hindsight, he was not a great choice for Freddy. Robert Englund isn't necessarily a great actor, but even since the first Elm Street you could buy that Englund was a sadistic demon reveling in his superpowers. Haley never seemed to exude that "drunk on his own power" thing

Can any other actor pull it off given proper writing and direction? Or is the role simply now synonymous with Englund?

[–] MickyMac (3175) 3 years ago

Kevin Bacon or Bill Hader.

[–] shydwaynehobbs (284) 3 years ago

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

It's too synonymous with Robert Englund.

Try to play it like he did and the best you'll get is a poor mans Robert Englund. Do something new and it's not the real Freddy Krueger anymore.

Technically a great actor could give a good performance but it'll always be measured against Robert as he set the standard. You can't best that. He IS Freddy Krueger.

For the record if everything else falls into place (good screenplay, acting from the rest of the cast, direction, effects) then yeah...the film as a whole could be good...great even. But Freddy himself will be lesser than Robert's performances.