Rorschach is Freddy Krueger. Okay, Fair Enough.
So New Line wants to reboot A Nightmare on Elm Street. I don’t honestly understand why. There is nothing about that movie that says “missed potential” to me. It pretty much fulfills exactly what it set out to do. But for whatever reason, New Line felt they could make more money off of it, and so the reboot charges on. With - get this - Jackie Earle Haley in the lead role.
Why not Robert Englund? I don’t know. They wanted to take the character in a more serious direction, and maybe Robert wouldn’t be along for the ride if he couldn’t crack a lot of puns. Haley has a huge amount of geek cred after his lauded performance as Rorschach in “Watchmen,” and he definitely has the Freddy look, but I’m still not sure I’m 100% on board for this.
Much like other horror reboots, this one is purportedly going to rely heavily on a minor background story that no one really cares about (the fact that Freddy was an accused child molester and whether or not he was guilty). There’s no better way to ruin a good, scary villain than to play up his backstory. Or completely change it, as Rob Zombie did with “Halloween.” Ugh. If they make this whole movie about “did he didn’t he” it’s going to be awful; this is movie about a man who kills children in their dreams. Let’s not get distracted.
I don’t particularly expect anything great out of the movie, but I do like Jackie Earle Haley and I’m pleased with the casting. I’m now willing to give the movie a chance.
What about you? Does this improve your opinion of the movie? Will you see it?
Popularity: 4% [?]
Easy, Liz–Robert Englund wouldn’t do it. Seriously; he’s on record that, basically, he’s too old for that sort of thing. They’d need a stunt double for any action material. He did, however, express an interest in a cameo, like a psychologist or something. This is sad, of course, but frankly if anyone can handle it, I figure Rorschach can.
Oh, and while I’m here–Robert Englund ALSO said there was a perfectly good reason to revamp the NOES series: specifically, to take advantage of the changes in technology.
But he wasn’t too old to do Freddy vs. Jason? I don’t know, it just seems kind of arbitrary. I understand them wanting to start over fresh, though.
Personally I think one of the charms of the series is how everything is obviously done with prosthetics and stop-motion. Just because CGI exists doesn’t mean we need to re-make every movie using it.
Freddy Vs. Jason was six years ago, remember. Also, the action footage there was done via stuntman also. You don’t think that was Robert Englund doing all that jump kick stuff, do you?