Jason Was Never Supposed To Be Friday The 13th’s Villain (Why It Happened)
Jason Voorhees is the iconic slasher villain of the Friday the 13th franchise, but that wasn’t the original plan for the character.
You Are Reading :Jason Was Never Supposed To Be Friday The 13ths Villain (Why It Happened)
Jason Voorhees has become one of the most popular villains in the horror genre thanks to his role in the Friday the 13th franchise, but he wasn’t supposed to be the villain in it. The horror genre has been home to some of the most extensive and popular franchises in the entertainment world, and among those is Friday the 13th, and it all began in 1980 with the movie of the same name directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller.
Friday the 13th tells the story of Jason Voorhees, taking viewers back to Camp Crystal Lake in 1957. That year, a young boy drowned as a result of the irresponsibility of the counselors, and the following year, a series of murders took place at the camp, leading to it being closed for years. Going back to 1980, Camp Crystal was ready to reopen, so a new group of counselors arrived to get the place ready, but they were brutally killed one by one, and they believed the one behind the murders was Jason Voorhees, as they were aware of the past murders and the legend of the boy who drowned. However, Friday the 13th came with a major twist in its third act, as the real killer turned out to be Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), with a second twist towards the end when a decomposed Jason jumped out of the lake.
The commercial success of Friday the 13th led to a sequel and later a franchise with a total of 12 movies (including a crossover with Freddy Krueger and a remake), novels, comic books, and video games, and from Friday the 13th Part 2 onward, Jason Voorhees has been the villain to defeat. Jason Voorhees has become a horror icon, but he wasn’t originally planned to be the villain of the film series. On his official website, Victor Miller answered some of the most frequently asked questions he got, and among those were his thoughts on the Friday the 13th sequels. Miller explained that he hadn’t seen any of them as he has “a major problem with all of them” because they made Jason the villain, and the best part of his screenplay was “the fact that a mother figure was the serial killer”.
Pamela Voorhees was “working from a horribly twisted desire to avenge the senseless death of her son”, and as he was dead from the beginning – and died very young and as the result of the actions of others – Jason was actually a victim, not a villain. Miller added that he took motherhood and “turned it on its head”, bringing a mother who would have literally killed for her kids. As for why Jason was brought back and turned into a villain, it was all thanks to producer Phil Scuderi, who suggested the idea for the sequel. Steve Miner, director of Friday the 13th Part 2 and later Friday the 13th Part III, felt the audience wanted to learn more about Jason, so he chose to ignore the ending where Alice was attacked by Jason and have him survive his drowning and grow up. As has happened with many other slasher villains, Jason Voorhees has died a couple of times throughout the Friday the 13th franchise but is always brought back, giving him a supernatural, almost indestructible nature.
It’s hard to tell what would have happened with the Friday the 13th franchise had Miller’s plans of Jason Voorhees being a victim and not a villain had been honored, as Pamela Voorhees was killed in the first movie and it would have been hard to believe that she could come back to continue avenging her son’s death. Truth is that Miller’s original vision for Jason Voorhees completely changes the sequels, and in the end, viewers are the ones who will decide if the sequels with a villainous Jason Voorhees work or if the original movie stands as the superior one.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/friday-13th-movies-jason-voorhees-villain-mother-reason/