Freddy Vs Jason Proved It Was Impossible To Root For Freddy Krueger
It took 19 years for Freddy Krueger from "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and Jason Voorhees from "Friday the 13th" to finally clash on the big screen. And let's face it: the two horror titans, the definitive monsters of '80s cinema, were always destined to duke it out. The fans demanded it, and the studios involved knew it would make bank. The perfect storm. It was just a matter of when. But this guaranteed success suffered in development hell throughout the '90s as writers and directors came and went, a rotating door of noteworthy (and not-so-noteworthy) talent that tried to crack the indelible premise of these two iconic characters battling to the death and transform it into an actual, workable movie.
And after so many folks tried and failed, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift finally cracked the code, and director Ronny Yu translated it to the screen. And on August 15, 2003 (20 years ago to the day of this article publication), "Freddy vs Jason" hit theaters and was the box office hit everyone knew it would be. Now, 20 years later, the film remains a hoot (albeit, a sometimes problematic one). There's an absurd joy to watching these two slasher icons tear each other to pieces – it's a definitive experience for every horror-lover who argued about who would win in a fight, whether on the school playground or around the office watercooler. It delivers exactly what you'd expect based on the title.
The unusual thing, though, is that the film plays favorites a bit. It has to. "Freddy vs Jason" picks a side: Jason is the hero of the movie, Freddy is the villain, and whether you prefer one franchise or another, the story itself makes it clear that Jason has to win this duel and Freddy has to lose. Perhaps that's what beguiled so many other filmmakers in the past: it's literally impossible to make a movie where you even remotely want to root for Freddy Krueger. Jason, for all of his, uh, character flaws, is the good guy by default when you place him next to Freddy.
A movie versus a party
The funny thing about Freddy being the actual villain of a movie where two of the ultimate bad guys fight to the death is that his franchise dictates the tone of the actual film. "Freddy vs Jason" is structured like, and feels like, a "Nightmare on Elm Street" film from moment one ... albeit a "Nightmare on Elm Street” movie guest-starring an undead, hockey mask-wearing killer who racks up a gigantic body count. The sense of discovery, and perverse mystery, in the lead-up the actual brawl promised by the title is pure "Nightmare," as is the focus on an actual cast of characters who realize something is up and band together to stop the supernatural threat rising against their community.
"Nightmare on Elm Street” movies tell, for lack of a better term, actual stories with characters who go on journeys, even boilerplate ones. "Friday the 13th" movies, however, are just blood-soaked exercises in chaos. Pageants to showcase gore. Vignettes built around brutal and sometimes hilarious deaths. The average "Friday the 13th" film would be downright experimental if it wasn't playing for the lowest common denominator: people who want to whoop and cheer as various characters get obliterated by a zombie redneck. I say this with love. I am firmly part of that lowest common denominator. A Freddy Krueger movie is, well, a movie. A Jason Voorhees movie is a party.
So when you're dealing with the lowest of high concepts like "Freddy vs Jason," you need to cling to what you can get to make it coherent. You need to gravitate toward the character/franchise that will actually allow it to hang together. Freddy Krueger offers that. You have to build the movie around him. You have to make him the obstacle, the main threat, the big(ger) bad. Because when you put him and Jason in the same room, you realize that these two guys, despite being born of the same '80s slasher horror movement, couldn't be more different in the effect they have on audiences.
A dog versus a killer
Second only to certain pop stars who will remain nameless, Freddy Krueger is the most popular abuser of children in pop culture history. It's canonical: before he died, Fred Krueger abducted, abused, and murdered kids. The parents of the victims took their revenge, and he returned from beyond the grave to claim his own vengeance. This isn't subtext – it's literally in the text. And it makes the public's embracing of Freddy as a cinematic icon, and his drift toward wisecracking lead of his own films, icky in a way that's tough to talk about, even today. It's why I largely love the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films but won't call myself a Freddy Krueger fan. He is, conceptually and in execution, truly upsetting. He is a supernatural monster built around a real-world ugliness that is tough to shake. I can't cheer on Freddy. I root for him to lose.
But Jason? Big, dumb, lumbering, ugly, undead Jason Voorhees? Oh, man. He's my guy. Unlike Freddy, who operates from a place of pure cruelty and malicious desire, Jason is a labrador retriever. He's an extremely stupid dog that no one bothered to train who wanders through the woods and does what he does, acting on instinct because he doesn't know better. Sorry, horny teens: this is Jason's turf, and you're in the way. Whoops! You've got a machete in the head. Haha! Oh, man. That Jason! What a goofball! What's that silly boy gonna do next?
Operating in their own movies, Freddy and Jason are both mass murderers. But when you put them in the same room, in the same movie, an instant dynamic emerges. One of these guys is so much worse than the other, and if the movie refuses to acknowledge it, there's going to be a problem.
A hero versus a villain
Jason actually racks up a significantly higher body count than Freddy in "Freddy vs Jason," but he's still just a big ol' weirdo, wandering around and machete-ing folks because it's his nature. You can't tell an untrained dog to stay off the couch, and you can't tell Jason to stop chopping teenagers in half. The film even makes this part of the text, with Freddy dealing with mounting frustration over being unable to control Jason. Meanwhile, Freddy plots from the shadows and makes actual machinations. While Jason wanders, Freddy plans. While Jason just kills because he comes across someone with a heartbeat, Freddy thinks deeply about the people he wants to harm.
It's no wonder that, in the film's back half, the surviving teens end up teaming up with Jason, trucking his unconscious body to the site of the final fight so he can stop Freddy. Yeah, the big galoot murdered their friends by the dozens, but Freddy, the committed child murderer, is so much worse. The movie knows it. The characters know it. And somehow, the script transforms the 6'5" zombie serial killer into the underdog: he loses the first round against Freddy (badly!) and then his childhood trauma, his near-drowning experience, is weaponized by Mr. Krueger. Jason Voorhees becomes Rocky Balboa.
Because he has to be. To treat Freddy as anything less than the worse of two evils would require a movie with a bankrupt moral compass, and while that certainly would've been an interesting experiment, mainstream slasher films trend toward the bad guys getting their just desserts. And there's such a clear bad guy here.
Freddy vs Jason
Much like how "Alien vs Predator," released one year later in 2004, ultimately realized that the Predator was the "hero" monster and the xenomorph the villain that needed defeating, "Freddy vs Jason" makes a choice. Well, it makes several choices. It decides to be slightly more sophisticated in its structure and storytelling by embracing the "Nightmare" model over the "Friday model. And then it realizes that there is no universe where people should be allowed to actually root for Freddy Krueger to actually win this fight and plays it out accordingly.
Yes, you're still allowed to like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" movies. Yes, you can appreciate Freddy in "Freddy vs Jason" as a proper wrestling heel, the kind of guy you love to jeer and boo. But Jason is the John Cena of the horror world: too weirdly pure to be a full-on villain, especially when placed in the same room with the more unsettling and direct evil of his biggest pop culture rival. You can pick your favorites. You can have an opinion about how it plays out on screen. But Freddy was always going to lose to Jason in the version of "Freddy vs Jason" that actually got made. That's just how the scales balance. That's how movies work. And 20 years later, it feels more inevitable than ever.