The Halloween Franchise

[thecolorsblend]

Aside from the convenience of the studio owning the rights to both franchises, I've never understood the logic behind pitting Michael Myers against Pinhead. Not only are the characters themselves totally different – and not in a way that would make them contrast effectively against one another – but the tone and style of their respective movies are also drastically different. Incompatibly so, in my opinion.

Honestly, I tend to agree with that. I don't relate to pairing unrelated characters up in the first place. But if you're going to do it, yeah, they should be compatible.

Castigate me as a heretic if you want. But if you ask me, pairing characters up like that is what you do when your individual franchises have begun running out of steam.

As an example, there's a very strong argument that Universal's monster rallies of the Forties accelerated the (already terminal) creative decline of the classic monster franchises. The monster rallies probably kept the lights on at Universal. But it came at the price of the credibility the films had earned up to that point.

That's not to say there aren't enjoyable monster rallies. But it is to say that the individual characters were best served with solo films.

If Myers were to get pitted against another established character, I would regard that as a very poor sign for the Halloween franchise's health and legitimacy. Considering the hard won gains the Halloween series has achieved since 2018, I cringe at the thought of Myers in anything but a solo film.

But...

How about the Sawyer family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise?

... this could be interesting. Myers is the perennial lone wolf. So, odds are he'd target the Sawyers. Of course, the Sawyers aren't exactly innocent, shrinking violent teenagers. Absent any possibility of a team up (neither camp seem like joiners to me), conflict is the only possible outcome here. And I do sort of like the idea of captives of the Sawyers being caught between a rock and a hard place in trying to escape two separate camps of murderous psychopaths. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Or Carrie White? The Friday the 13th movies already made an unofficial Jason vs. Carrie in Part VII: The New Blood (1988).

Always considered this entry to be an underrated entry into the F13 series. It's a welcome little change of pace... which I'm happy to let Jason have. I have less personal investment in Jason, frankly. So, bizarre oddities like that suit me just fine.

But with Halloween they could make it a licensed crossover. Maybe even bring back Sissy Spacek as an older version of Carrie, whose teenage granddaughter is now manifesting the same powers she once did. It's a lame idea, I know, but it's one way to go.

Like the man says, I think there would be an issue of availability. Carrie White died pretty definitively at the end of the De Palma film.

But if it meant seeing Spacek reprise her most famous role... yeah, I think I might be willing to eat crow and at least give Carrie v Michael: Rise Of The Chef's Knife a day in court. Out of respect.

Or you could take a more humorous post-modern approach and make Halloween Scream (or HalloScream), in which a group of Ghostface killers try to manipulate Myers into recreating his own past murders so they can document it in their movie. Michael would have an obvious advantage over Ghostface on account of his supernatural strengths, but the Scream team could compensate for that by having maybe five or six Ghostfaces on their side; all highly skilled, with teamwork strategy and modern technology at their disposal. Or perhaps the Ghostfaces are all serial killer competing to see who can take down Myers for a cash prize. Surely something like that would work better than Halloween vs. Hellraiser.

This would have to be done with tongue pretty firmly in cheek since Halloween is a fictional series of movies in the Screamverse. And come to think of it, Scream was a fictional series of movies in the H20 timeline.

Still, the mutual admiration society that has existed between Halloween and Scream would make for a fun crossover film.

For my own suggestion, Rob Zombie exited the Halloween franchise with a pretty sour taste in his mouth. But I've wondered how a Zombie Myers face off against the Firefly family might play out. As with the Sawyers, the only way I can think of to justify such a crossover in-universe(s) would be with the Fireflys and Myers actually hunting each other.

Where the wheels come off the wagon there is Sheri Moon Zombie having already played Michael's mom along with Zombie's apparent preference for the core Firefly family members always surviving each film. I just can't picture too many survivors if they go to head to head with Zombie's Myers. But hey, maybe there's a way to make it work.

[Silver Nemesis]

Castigate me as a heretic if you want. But if you ask me, pairing characters up like that is what you do when your individual franchises have begun running out of steam.

I think that's true in most cases. For me, it depends on the IP. I never wanted to see Alien and Predator cross over. I was fine with the AvP videogames and comics, but I was opposed to the movie being made. Why? Well, I consider the first Alien to be a legitimately great film. Throwing the Xenomorph into a monster mash cheapened the concept in my eyes.

With something like King Kong and Godzilla, it's a different story. Those characters already have long histories of battling other giant monsters. They're the two most famous kaiju in movie history, and it makes sense for them to fight each other. If they existed in the same world, they would inevitably clash. It doesn't require a major plot contrivance to facilitate that conflict.

But in the majority of cases, I agree that versus films are generally cheap cash-ins that studios resort to when ideas are running dry. I expect a DC vs. Marvel movie will eventually be made, once the box office returns for both brands sink sufficiently low.

Halloween is one of the film franchises that I don't want to see cross over with something else. I wouldn't mind a crossover between Michael Myers and the Silver Shamrock storyline, but I don't particularly want to see Myers duke it out with a villain from another franchise.

For my own suggestion, Rob Zombie exited the Halloween franchise with a pretty sour taste in his mouth. But I've wondered how a Zombie Myers face off against the Firefly family might play out. As with the Sawyers, the only way I can think of to justify such a crossover in-universe(s) would be with the Fireflys and Myers actually hunting each other.

Where the wheels come off the wagon there is Sheri Moon Zombie having already played Michael's mom along with Zombie's apparent preference for the core Firefly family members always surviving each film. I just can't picture too many survivors if they go to head to head with Zombie's Myers. But hey, maybe there's a way to make it work.

There's potential in this idea. Zombie's more lurid and graphic reinterpretation of Halloween might be better suited to such a crossover than Carpenter's comparatively subtle and restrained version. And since the 2007 Halloween and its sequel are stylistically and tonally consistent with Zombie's Firefly movies, it would make sense to use Captain Spaulding and his crew as opponents for Tyler Mane's version of Myers.

Returning to the subject of Halloween Ends, here's a new browser game to promote the movie's release. Ever wanted to be chased down and killed by Michael Myers? No? Well now's your chance.

https://escape.halloweenmovie.com/?id=63359a2eac3f7

I had a few goes and could only survive for about three minutes. I'm sure others can do better.

[thecolorsblend]

Thx for posting that. It's a pretty simplistic game. But it says that somebody is willing to invest the bucks for promoting this movie.

I'd like to think it says something that somebody behind the scenes believes in this franchise enough that they'll spend money on promoting their third movie in the Blumhouse series. Doing this for your first movie is one thing. But doing it for your third, that's pretty telling.

[The Joker]

Figured this was worth posting. As trying to explain all the "Halloween with Michael Myers" timelines can come across as incredibly convoluted for the uninitiated.

[thecolorsblend]

Listening to the HE score while I work. I never thought HK's score was bad. But so far, I'm liking this one more. We'll see how things go.

I'll be watching the movie tonight on Peacock. Got my whole evening built around this thing.

[thecolorsblend]

Just over an hour into this thing. And... wow, what a change of pace it's shaping up to be. There's a lot to say. But there are also spoilers to avoid for now. But what I'll say is that this a pretty daring creative direction.

Instead of typing up 50 million posts, I'll probably just update this one.

Update 01- Wow. I'm... just not sure what to think about this.

Update 02- Okay, so there's almost no way of talking about what does and doesn't work with HE without going into some pretty big spoiler territory. So, unless someone authorizes spoilers early, I'll refrain from posting spoiler stuff until Monday. Fair enough?

For non-spoiler stuff, I'll just say that I enjoyed the movie. Yes, it's very different from any other Halloween movie ever made. But considering how similar to one another every other Halloween movie ever made can be, a change of pace (esp for a concluding chapter) is probably a good idea. I think so anyway. If you disagree... well, in that case, I'll go out on a limb and suggest you didn't like this movie very much.

Generally, I think the Blumhouse films were well worth making, they honored many previous Halloween films and they restored a lot of dignity to the franchise that had been sapped away by Halloween Resurrection (which I still kind of enjoy even while I acknowledge it's no good at all) and the Zombie films. The way is clear now for a reboot of some kind, which I can't wait for.

Update 03- So, this is a little odd. Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season Of The Witch and Halloween II (2009) are also streaming on Peacock. I don't think I understand the logic behind only those movies streaming there. But they are streaming there. Ymmv in Europe.

Update 04- My self-imposed spoiler moratorium is nearly over. But until then, SN mentioned the Halloween/Hellraiser crossover we neatly avoided back in the Nineties. Having seen the og Hellraiser now... I think I could see a crossover, actually. Now, to be clear, we're talking about a very specific version of The Shape. The Thorn trilogy era Michael Myers, who is clearly under some kind of curse and is basically a paranormal entity, isn't a total mismatch with the Cenobites as presented in the first Hellraiser. The director of such a crossover would need to pay VERY close attention to the tone and style of a Thorn-era Halloween crossover with Hellraiser. Good luck finding such an astute director, mind you. But I don't think it's a completely insane idea.

But if we were talking about Myers as seen in Halloween 1978, yeah, that character has no business whatsoever crossing over into anything too overtly paranormal.

Point being that the Halloween franchise was such a trainwreck by the mid-Nineties that I just can't imagine crossing over with Pinhead and co. would've made the situation radically worse.

Of course, then we wouldn't have Halloween H20 (which I continue to adore). So, on balance, I have to say things worked out for the best.

[thecolorsblend]

Spoilers

It's about forty minutes before we even see Michael in the movie. And when we finally do see him, he's broken, hiding from the world in a sewer. Subsequent scenes show that he's not the apex predator that he was in the previous two movies anymore. I can totally understand how this doesn't work for dedicated fans of the series. But I can accept it. It even makes sense to me in a lot of ways. Just like a lot of predator animals will just go into the woods and mark time for however long they have left when their glory days are behind them, Michael is doing the same thing here. In the previous two movies, he got shot, stabbed, run over, beaten, set on fire and probably other stuff I'm forgetting about. I can see where he'd be in bad shape after all that. And now, he's just waiting to die, a weak shadow of his former self.

The theme of society needing an Other to oppose and by which to define itself was embodied by Michael previously and now it's Corey being forced into that role. Honestly, this is where the themes of the film get a little muddled for me. Is Corey pushed into evil by Haddonfield because society needs an enemy to fight? Or was he corrupted by evil in some general sense (or by Michael directly in the sewer)?

Maybe the entire point is for me to be asking these questions. But I just find it a bit confusing.

There IS an argument that Michael's evil is a transferable commodity. Halloween 4, Halloween 6, H2018 and HK could all be argued as implying that. So, the idea that Michael's evil overpowered Corey (an otherwise basically good kid) is a defensible interpretation, if you ask me.

The opening credits of H2018 used the H1978 font. HK used the original Halloween II's font for its opening credits. HE uses the Halloween III italicized font. And those were all significant choices. They weren't done at random.

Halloween III is notorious for showing very little Myers (and only H1978 on a TV screen). And HE is already becoming notorious for showing relatively little Myers.

There were some weird creative decisions. I think I understand David Gordon Green was going for when Corey steals Michael's mask. But that's just emasculating for Michael. The previous movies showed Michael getting his mask taken too and it's just a tired idea by this point. Michael is the dying predator who isn't as strong as he used to be, hence he's unable to stop Corey from stealing his mask. Plus, it shows that Corey himself is becoming more powerful. He's now powerful enough to outmuscle Michael when nobody else in the movie is truly capable of doing that. I'm just saying that three consecutive movies where Michael gets his mask stolen is just ridiculous, no matter how effective it might be in each individual case.

Overall, I enjoyed this film and I enjoy the whole Blumhouse run of movies. In the end, I think this was well worth doing. And I'm now super excited to see where else the series could go. Might I suggest a reboot set in the Seventies?

[The Joker]

I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of HE, Colors. Truly. It's discernible that you, Silver, and I are pretty big fans of the Halloween franchise, just by going off this thread, and although I presently don't know what Silver's opinion is as-of-yet, at least one of the three enjoyed this installment.

For me, I was hyped for HE (tried to stay away from spoilers as best I could), but unfortunately walked out of the theater very underwhelmed. Which was in stark contrast to what I felt with the other Blumhouse efforts back in 2018, and just last year with HK. H2018 was a very pleasing movie to sit thru, and though I had issues with HK, I felt there was more positives than negatives. However, with HE, there's some very odd choices made, some of which I don't particularly find very satisfying (especially in terms of cohesion), and thus consider HE to be, by far, BY FAR, the weakest of the Blumhouse Halloween trilogy.

So yeah, I am absolutely sympathetic towards those who disliked what we were given here, and a little bit envious towards those who really enjoyed HE.

I don't know. I can't say it's the worst Halloween movie as some are claiming, cause that's just a tad bit hyperbolic, but I definitely wouldn't rank it high up there either. To me, the film comes across like a very calculated attempt in wanting to be controversial. Although thank god they apparently dropped the 'post-covid world' angle that they originally claimed was going to factor into HE's story, cause I really didn't see any of that present in the film itself. But yeah, if deliberately sparking contention among fans/general audiences was in play, Blumhouse succeeded. No doubt about that.

I may write up a more spoilerish post soon, I may not. Haven't really decided on that yet. Honestly, I get what David Gordon Green/Blumhouse was going for with the choices made, but some of them I just don't think particularly came off very well, was done better in previous movies, or just seemed, ultimately, kinda corny.

As far as the final confrontation between Michael and Laurie? I'll take how it was handled in the original "Halloween II", and even "H20" over this any day.

[thecolorsblend]

I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of HE, Colors. Truly. It's discernible that you, Silver, and I are pretty big fans of the Halloween franchise, just by going off this thread, and although I presently don't know what Silver's opinion is as-of-yet, at least one of the three enjoyed this installment.

I'm inferring a lot from his absence in this thread.

Honestly, fair enough. HE is taking a beating from the critics and from wide audiences. Clearly, the creative direction HE takes isn't for everyone. And I'll even say that I understand why. Characters go in some pretty unexpected directions, Myers is relatively underused, there's an emphasis on character development which is usually foreign to Halloween, so on and so forth. That stuff will bother some of the movie's core audience.

But this is one time when the subversion of expectations works for me.

Well. "Works". Maybe that's not the best way to put it. But I'm not mortally offended by HE. Tons of Halloween movies show The Shape as a larger than life evil presence who cannot be defeated. A movie that goes a different direction for the sake of "ending" the story is fine with me. No, I wouldn't want every sequel in this franchise to be like HE. But as a conclusion (of this timeline, if nothing else), I'm not bothered at all by HE.

H2018 had tons of nostalgia, HK had tons of carnage and HE is an oddball conclusion to the story. I can accept all of that just fine.

I reassert that the next Halloween movie needs to take the gloves off. But I think I'll look back favorably on the Blumhouse films. And I'll go out on a limb and suggest that history will ultimately be very kind of the Blumhouse films as well. But I might be wrong.

[The Joker]

I'm inferring a lot from his absence in this thread.

Either Silver is working on one hell of a write up, or it's just not worth his time.

Honestly, fair enough. HE is taking a beating from the critics and from wide audiences. Clearly, the creative direction HE takes isn't for everyone. And I'll even say that I understand why. Characters go in some pretty unexpected directions, Myers is relatively underused, there's an emphasis on character development which is usually foreign to Halloween, so on and so forth. That stuff will bother some of the movie's core audience.

But this is one time when the subversion of expectations works for me.

Well. "Works". Maybe that's not the best way to put it. But I'm not mortally offended by HE. Tons of Halloween movies show The Shape as a larger than life evil presence who cannot be defeated. A movie that goes a different direction for the sake of "ending" the story is fine with me. No, I wouldn't want every sequel in this franchise to be like HE. But as a conclusion (of this timeline, if nothing else), I'm not bothered at all by HE.

H2018 had tons of nostalgia, HK had tons of carnage and HE is an oddball conclusion to the story. I can accept all of that just fine.

I reassert that the next Halloween movie needs to take the gloves off. But I think I'll look back favorably on the Blumhouse films. And I'll go out on a limb and suggest that history will ultimately be very kind of the Blumhouse films as well. But I might be wrong.

I'll always appreciate the Blumhouse trilogy for some of things brought forth for the franchise, even if I feel the concluding chapter was incredibly underwhelming and fundamentally bizarre with the character/story choices made. It is what it is, but the 2018 film is comfortably in my top 5 Halloween films. I was very pleased with that movie. "Halloween Kills" is a fun ride, and yeah, I find the image of Michael emerging menacingly from Laurie's burning house to already be in the category of iconic imagery when it comes to Halloween films. The pre-title 1978 flash back sequence is top tier as well. Even the people who vocally oppose HK, seem to at least like the '78 sequence.

I'll agree that HE is the oddball of the Blumhouse trilogy, and thus feels very disconnected (for numerous reasons) to it's predecessors. The more I digest HE, the more I believe the intent of having the three films take place on the same night should have remained the objective. Or have H1978, H2018, and HK be the "trilogy" rather than having to actually produce three films.