In this episode, you'll gain insights into what makes a monster redesign successful and why some efforts fail to resonate. We'll break down the importance of maintaining recognizability and staying true to the source material while injecting fresh elements to keep the horror alive.
In this episode, you'll gain insights into what makes a monster redesign successful and why some efforts fail to resonate. We'll break down the importance of maintaining recognizability and staying true to the source material while injecting fresh elements to keep the horror alive.
Speaker 1:
Howdy, my little blood drops. How would you rethink your favorite movie monster? But before we talk about rethinking our favorite movie monsters we love, have you heard of Letterboxd, a social networking website for movie lovers? Follow the link in the description, which will take you to my Letterboxd page where you can see the movie lists I've put together for each podcast episode. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? A demon will invade your dreams. I will give you three examples of classic movie monsters. One was well done, one wasn't, and the last one was overly reworked.
Speaker 1:
In the 1980s, friday the 13th movies had Jason Voorhees, a tank of a supernatural slasher. You knocked Jason down and he sat right back up. The fear was in the unstoppability of Jason. In the original movies, they used clever editing to make Jason seem like he could supernaturally move through an environment, stalking his prey. In 2009 remake of Friday the 13th, we get a different Jason. The 2009 remake was a mediocre movie, but I liked what they did with Jason. In the 1980s, jason was a tank. In 2009, jason was a predator like a mountain lion. In the 2009 remake was how predatory Jason was in stalking his victims. A great comparison would be the 1980s Jason is to the Terminator as the 2009 Jason is to Rambo.
Speaker 1:
In 1984, we saw Nightmare on Elm Street with Freddy haunting the dreams of teens. To feed on fear, freddy, the scion of fear would take your dreams and turn them into nightmares. The writers of Nightmare on Elm Street understood dreams and nightmares in correlation to the audience. You could see yourself having those nightmares and dreams, or a version of them. We all have those wet dreams of the girl or guy in class. But there was also an embarrassment that came along with those dreams. Nightmare creatively tapped into that duality of interpretation of dreams In the 2010 remake for Nightmare on Elm Street, which had a lot of technical issues, bad writing and repackaging of story, and the monster wasn't really innovated.
Speaker 1:
There was no rethinking of Freddy in the remake movie. Freddy is one of the hardest to reconceptualize. Where do you take the concept of Freddy, the personification of fear? The remake didn't try to rework Freddy or the story. Another thing the remake didn't understand was the correlation between dreams and nightmares and the audience watching the Nightmare on Elm Street remake was a failure in my eyes, but they didn't bring anything new to the table or attempt to rethink the monster.
Speaker 1:
Lastly, the 90s leprechaun movies are the personification of greed. The leprechaun is a quick-witted greedy, gold-seeking terror. I love the lore built in the movies for Leprechaun but, more importantly, the fear of overabundance and what it turns you into. What do you become when you get a large amount of wealth or anything? You become twisted, like the Leprechaun was with his gold, completely consumed with it, something that affects everything around you. In the 2014 remake I guess it's not a remake we got Leprechaun Origins. I liked Leprechaun Origins. It was a creature feature, but it wasn't Leprechaun. You could remove the gold fixation from the leprechaun't Leprechaun. You could remove the gold fixation from the Leprechaun in Leprechaun Origins and change the name and you would have had a good B-Flick monster creature feature. Leprechaun Origins is a perfect example of completely rethinking the monster to something unrecognizable from the source material. We could call it cave troll.
Speaker 1:
What would I like to see in a remake or rethinking of the movie monsters? We love Recognizability. I want to look at the new incarnation of the monster and say that is Jason. I don't want a repackaged story of, like the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street. Most of the time, this feels like the studios are trying to do a cash grab on the franchise. Also, sometimes it seems like lazy writing. And finally, I don't want the monster so overly worked that I don't recognize the monster like we get with Leprechaun Origins. Recognizability honors the source material but allows for a new iteration of the story and monster. A perfect example of this would be Rob Zombie's Halloween. Rob Zombie tried to give us a different perspective on Michael Myers. That was really only hinted in the original movies. We got to see a lot behind the Michael Myers mask. If you could rethink a movie monster, what would you rethink? For me it would be Chrome Skull from the Lay to Rest movies. What monster would you rethink?
