I'm teasing, of course. By the time Part 5 came around, Jason Voorhees had been the killer for three of the four previous movies, so it was understandable why the change would have been more than a little disconcerting for the fans. However, despite the fact that A New Beginning is a beautiful, beautiful dumpster fire I don't think it's entirely beyond saving. Far from it, in fact. To prove it, let me take the existing elements of the story and try to see if I can make this a workable sequel.
So...let's hit the rewind button and start (hopefully) trying to make this into something more workable.
A New Beginning 2: Electric Boogaloo can begin just like the original does: Tommy gets brought to the halfway home at Pinehurst and is having hallucinations of Jason Voorhees that stem from the trauma of encountering him years ago. However, it's clear from the beginning that Tommy is not and is not supposed to be our protagonist. While the opening will focus on him and have him settling in at Pinehurst, we're getting less from his perspective and instead from the rest of the teens at Pinehurst - in particular, Violet.
Why Violet? She bucks the usual type for the Final Girl being a New Wave type, is aloof and disconnected from most other people around her, and is ripe for that amazing thing we call character development. That thing that the first four movies (in varying degrees) seem to do that was dropped after Part 6.
And why focusing on the other teens rather than Tommy? Well, I mentioned in my review that John Shepherd gives the single worst performance for Tommy Jarvis in the franchise, and while I didn't want to completely throw him out, I wanted to minimize his part in it both because I really don't care for what they did with Tommy and to serve as a red herring for later, so at the very least his inclusion can have some use to the plot.
Focusing on Tommy off his rocker is a bit like focusing on the guy in the jail cell at the beginning of 30 Days of Night, i.e. it would be really, really not interesting.
You could argue that the film already does this, but Tommy is featured in too many scenes in the film where it's clear he can't be the killer due to timing. No, by the way, he isn't the killer this time either. The audience, however, isn't going to know that from the beginning so that he can probably be set up as a red herring and so it won't be obvious that he can't be the killer.
So we get the death of Joey thanks to chocolate bar-induced axe wounds and shit begins to go down.
However, as we continue on, a lot of the more gratuitous characters (and thus deaths) are either going to be restructured or cut out entirely. Roy is going to be centering his revenge around the Halfway Home and in particular Vic who committed the murder in the first place. It amazes me that the film has the guy be the impetus for the entire plot...and he gets arrested and is never seen again. I know that Roy Burns is supposed to be insane, but you'd imagine that he'd want to find some way to throw the actual killer into his revenge plan.
Say what you will about him not being able to get to him because of the police, Roy pulls off a lot of way more ridiculous nonsense in the actual movie.
So the first death will not actually be the two punks in the middle of nowhere but, lets say, a police van with Vic in lock up being transferred to a State facility in the dead of night. Roy uses a car or truck or some large vehicle to force the van off the road. Vic escapes from the wreckage, badly beaten and bleeding from the wreck, but still alive. Unfortunately for Vic, he finds that his legs don't work quite as well as they used to...forcing him to try and crawl away. Roy, unseen except for his boots, takes out the two police officers and then proceeds to impale Vic through the face with a machete just after he insists that "You're dead!". We get a shot of the wrinkled skin around an eye peering out at us through an old, battered hockey mask.
Simple, to the point, and we could almost swear that Jason Voorhees is back and better than ever...even though he's not, but we don't know that yet.
The news reaches Pinehurst about the three murders the next morning. The teens and staff have mixed reactions, though Tommy is completely sedate until it's mentioned that Vic and the two guards were killed by a bladed weapon. He gets shakes and leaves, angrily pushing aside one of the other teens much like he did Eddie in the actual film instead of just pulling a full on mentality snap beatdown on the idiot.
In between here, we get some scenes that the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth movies of this franchise did so well (again, in varying degrees) - scenes of the characters interacting so that we actually care about them when they die. I don't know why this stopped being a trend in horror movies other than writers just wanting to be lazy. I've said before, this doesn't need to be anything big. Just a few short scenes like in Aliens of the group having a meal together, or playing games by the fireside as in Friday the 13th Part 2, or just talking. Something apart from just having almost every single character be a complete asshole who we want to see murdered, apart from the Final Girl who usually just ends up being bland. Something that, ironically, the Friday franchise will be doing a lot of in later chapters.
Out of all of these, we see the focus get put onto Violet among the rest, kind of in the same way we did Alice in Part 1 or Ginny in Part 2. Unlike them, though, the audience isn't expected to actually like Violet from the very beginning. She's rude and standoffish, very lost in her music, and is really only friends with Robin. Maybe we could pull a Nightmare on Elm Street and make it seem like Robin is the main protagonist, but that might just be a little fanciful on my part. Either way, Violet ends up being our lead.
As in the original movie, the bodies start dropping following Vic axing Joey to death. However, this only happens in the area of Pinehurst. Like I said, we're cutting down on the gratuitous deaths of people who have no connection to the events in question. So one of the staff of the halfway house and his girlfriend at a diner getting axed doesn't happen, or at least has to happen on the grounds of Pinehurst, because Roy is sort of viewing it as his Crystal Lake. Anyone who pops in and sticks around is fair game to get the machete.
So, the staff onsite, the teens, and so on.
In a change from the material we've seen, when Pam and Reggie (yes, Reggie still exists. Eat me, he's just a kid) go to see Reggie's brother Demon, it isn't Tommy that comes along with them, but Violet. Why Violet? Because Tommy remains in his room making masks and doesn't respond when Pam asks him to come along. Violet, on the other hand, has nothing better to do and Reggie, wanting to act tough in front of Pam (his "girlfriend"), basically eggs her into it. So she agrees in that kind of dismissive way. When they leave, we get a shot of Tommy opening a drawer...and looking at a kitchen knife in it. When he looks up, he has another hallucination of Jason. While he's frightened at first, he soon gets a sort of ordered calm about his face as if he's suddenly set his mind to doing something. The Jason illusion vanishes as he does this, Tommy taking up the knife.
So...let's hit the rewind button and start (hopefully) trying to make this into something more workable.
A New Beginning 2: Electric Boogaloo can begin just like the original does: Tommy gets brought to the halfway home at Pinehurst and is having hallucinations of Jason Voorhees that stem from the trauma of encountering him years ago. However, it's clear from the beginning that Tommy is not and is not supposed to be our protagonist. While the opening will focus on him and have him settling in at Pinehurst, we're getting less from his perspective and instead from the rest of the teens at Pinehurst - in particular, Violet.
Why Violet? She bucks the usual type for the Final Girl being a New Wave type, is aloof and disconnected from most other people around her, and is ripe for that amazing thing we call character development. That thing that the first four movies (in varying degrees) seem to do that was dropped after Part 6.
Focusing on Tommy off his rocker is a bit like focusing on the guy in the jail cell at the beginning of 30 Days of Night, i.e. it would be really, really not interesting.
You could argue that the film already does this, but Tommy is featured in too many scenes in the film where it's clear he can't be the killer due to timing. No, by the way, he isn't the killer this time either. The audience, however, isn't going to know that from the beginning so that he can probably be set up as a red herring and so it won't be obvious that he can't be the killer.
So we get the death of Joey thanks to chocolate bar-induced axe wounds and shit begins to go down.
However, as we continue on, a lot of the more gratuitous characters (and thus deaths) are either going to be restructured or cut out entirely. Roy is going to be centering his revenge around the Halfway Home and in particular Vic who committed the murder in the first place. It amazes me that the film has the guy be the impetus for the entire plot...and he gets arrested and is never seen again. I know that Roy Burns is supposed to be insane, but you'd imagine that he'd want to find some way to throw the actual killer into his revenge plan.
Say what you will about him not being able to get to him because of the police, Roy pulls off a lot of way more ridiculous nonsense in the actual movie.
Simple, to the point, and we could almost swear that Jason Voorhees is back and better than ever...even though he's not, but we don't know that yet.
The news reaches Pinehurst about the three murders the next morning. The teens and staff have mixed reactions, though Tommy is completely sedate until it's mentioned that Vic and the two guards were killed by a bladed weapon. He gets shakes and leaves, angrily pushing aside one of the other teens much like he did Eddie in the actual film instead of just pulling a full on mentality snap beatdown on the idiot.
In between here, we get some scenes that the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth movies of this franchise did so well (again, in varying degrees) - scenes of the characters interacting so that we actually care about them when they die. I don't know why this stopped being a trend in horror movies other than writers just wanting to be lazy. I've said before, this doesn't need to be anything big. Just a few short scenes like in Aliens of the group having a meal together, or playing games by the fireside as in Friday the 13th Part 2, or just talking. Something apart from just having almost every single character be a complete asshole who we want to see murdered, apart from the Final Girl who usually just ends up being bland. Something that, ironically, the Friday franchise will be doing a lot of in later chapters.
Out of all of these, we see the focus get put onto Violet among the rest, kind of in the same way we did Alice in Part 1 or Ginny in Part 2. Unlike them, though, the audience isn't expected to actually like Violet from the very beginning. She's rude and standoffish, very lost in her music, and is really only friends with Robin. Maybe we could pull a Nightmare on Elm Street and make it seem like Robin is the main protagonist, but that might just be a little fanciful on my part. Either way, Violet ends up being our lead.
As in the original movie, the bodies start dropping following Vic axing Joey to death. However, this only happens in the area of Pinehurst. Like I said, we're cutting down on the gratuitous deaths of people who have no connection to the events in question. So one of the staff of the halfway house and his girlfriend at a diner getting axed doesn't happen, or at least has to happen on the grounds of Pinehurst, because Roy is sort of viewing it as his Crystal Lake. Anyone who pops in and sticks around is fair game to get the machete.
So, the staff onsite, the teens, and so on.
In a change from the material we've seen, when Pam and Reggie (yes, Reggie still exists. Eat me, he's just a kid) go to see Reggie's brother Demon, it isn't Tommy that comes along with them, but Violet. Why Violet? Because Tommy remains in his room making masks and doesn't respond when Pam asks him to come along. Violet, on the other hand, has nothing better to do and Reggie, wanting to act tough in front of Pam (his "girlfriend"), basically eggs her into it. So she agrees in that kind of dismissive way. When they leave, we get a shot of Tommy opening a drawer...and looking at a kitchen knife in it. When he looks up, he has another hallucination of Jason. While he's frightened at first, he soon gets a sort of ordered calm about his face as if he's suddenly set his mind to doing something. The Jason illusion vanishes as he does this, Tommy taking up the knife.
Red herring set.
Pam, Reggie, and Violet leave Demon's once Pam attempts to call back to Pinehurst and gets no answer. Demon is then left and he and his girlfriend are never seen or mentioned again.
Which is a far better fate than Ethel and her son Junior, who only existed for one scene in this version as well and had just as much impact.
That is to say, none. I really hate both of them and find them to be a waste of screentime.
So our trio return to Pinehurst and find that everyone is dead. Of course, we'd see these deaths as we did in the actual film, intercut between other things going on. Reggie finds the first of the bodies, Violet getting him out of the room quickly as Pam does in the film when that happens. Roy then confronts them and Pam is seemingly killed trying to hold him off while Reggie and Violet flee the scene. They find the rest of the bodies along the way, with Roy still in hot pursuit through it all. Eventually, they come to a barn as in the original film. Reggie takes him out with a tractor as before, and it leads to Violet taking Pam's role of fending off Roy with a chainsaw.
When it runs out of fuel, she manages to get up into the loft with Reggie and they fend off Roy by throwing various objects down at him until Tommy arrives. Rather than being stuck in a trance as in the original film, Tommy is very adamant and gives Roy no time to react to his sudden presence. Like will be later done in Jason Lives, we get the edited in bits of Corey Feldman screaming "DIE!" as he machetes Jason to death, mirrored by Tommy absolutely going to town on Roy with the knife we saw earlier, screaming at him much as he did Jason all those years ago. Once Roy manages to react, this would be an absolutely brutal fight that would go on for several minutes. Their struggle eventually leads them up into the loft and then falling off the edge of the barn.
Roy falls into tractor harrow, which impales and kills him as it does in the original film. Tommy falls just shy of it, avoiding the blades. As the two were falling, however, Roy's hockey mask was cut from his face. When Violet and Reggie find him, the mask has fallen onto Tommy's face in a way that is definitely not menacing. Unfortunately, thanks to the injuries that Tommy sustained in the fight and the fall, he dies from his wounds shortly after he whispers "I did it. He's dead. I did it...I did it, Trish..." The camera pans down to show Roy's machete has impaled him through the stomach.
Pam, Reggie, and Violet leave Demon's once Pam attempts to call back to Pinehurst and gets no answer. Demon is then left and he and his girlfriend are never seen or mentioned again.
Which is a far better fate than Ethel and her son Junior, who only existed for one scene in this version as well and had just as much impact.
That is to say, none. I really hate both of them and find them to be a waste of screentime.
So our trio return to Pinehurst and find that everyone is dead. Of course, we'd see these deaths as we did in the actual film, intercut between other things going on. Reggie finds the first of the bodies, Violet getting him out of the room quickly as Pam does in the film when that happens. Roy then confronts them and Pam is seemingly killed trying to hold him off while Reggie and Violet flee the scene. They find the rest of the bodies along the way, with Roy still in hot pursuit through it all. Eventually, they come to a barn as in the original film. Reggie takes him out with a tractor as before, and it leads to Violet taking Pam's role of fending off Roy with a chainsaw.
When it runs out of fuel, she manages to get up into the loft with Reggie and they fend off Roy by throwing various objects down at him until Tommy arrives. Rather than being stuck in a trance as in the original film, Tommy is very adamant and gives Roy no time to react to his sudden presence. Like will be later done in Jason Lives, we get the edited in bits of Corey Feldman screaming "DIE!" as he machetes Jason to death, mirrored by Tommy absolutely going to town on Roy with the knife we saw earlier, screaming at him much as he did Jason all those years ago. Once Roy manages to react, this would be an absolutely brutal fight that would go on for several minutes. Their struggle eventually leads them up into the loft and then falling off the edge of the barn.
Roy falls into tractor harrow, which impales and kills him as it does in the original film. Tommy falls just shy of it, avoiding the blades. As the two were falling, however, Roy's hockey mask was cut from his face. When Violet and Reggie find him, the mask has fallen onto Tommy's face in a way that is definitely not menacing. Unfortunately, thanks to the injuries that Tommy sustained in the fight and the fall, he dies from his wounds shortly after he whispers "I did it. He's dead. I did it...I did it, Trish..." The camera pans down to show Roy's machete has impaled him through the stomach.
Reggie hugs at Violet's side, the rain falling down on them. The nightmare is over.
We get essentially she same denouement that follows in the original. Everyone's at the hospital and surprise of surprise, Pam survived! Yes, it seems in his rush to get after Violet and Reggie, Roy did not in fact finish the job of killing her! Paramedics got to her in time and she is expected to pull through! With Roy dead, it seems that all's well that ends well...or does it?
In the morgue, two of the orderlies are having the body of Tommy Jarvis signed in. A lone medical tech remains behind, not noticing as the body on the slab starts to twitch, and is taken by surprise as a saw is drawn across his throat in a manner like in The Final Chapter for a bit of homage/reference. We do not see the face of Tommy as he does this, getting a Halloween-esque POV shot as he goes through the morgue and eventually finds a familiar hockey mask in a sealed evidence bag beside the body of the late Roy Burns...
Violet goes to a vending machine to get Reggie a snack as he asked for it - looking after him whereas she was more dismissive of him before, even to the point of letting him listen to her Walkman - attempting to keep his spirits up while he waits for Demon to come and get him. She puts in a few quarters, the machine eats the change and she sighs, turning to see. . .
We get essentially she same denouement that follows in the original. Everyone's at the hospital and surprise of surprise, Pam survived! Yes, it seems in his rush to get after Violet and Reggie, Roy did not in fact finish the job of killing her! Paramedics got to her in time and she is expected to pull through! With Roy dead, it seems that all's well that ends well...or does it?
In the morgue, two of the orderlies are having the body of Tommy Jarvis signed in. A lone medical tech remains behind, not noticing as the body on the slab starts to twitch, and is taken by surprise as a saw is drawn across his throat in a manner like in The Final Chapter for a bit of homage/reference. We do not see the face of Tommy as he does this, getting a Halloween-esque POV shot as he goes through the morgue and eventually finds a familiar hockey mask in a sealed evidence bag beside the body of the late Roy Burns...
Violet goes to a vending machine to get Reggie a snack as he asked for it - looking after him whereas she was more dismissive of him before, even to the point of letting him listen to her Walkman - attempting to keep his spirits up while he waits for Demon to come and get him. She puts in a few quarters, the machine eats the change and she sighs, turning to see. . .
. . .the open door of the morgue across the hallway, with a hand slammed in between the door and the doorframe at floor level.
And here comes the twist I know that you definitely won't see coming!
Pushing it open, Violet finds the hand is attached to the body of the medical tech slung onto the floor with his throat slit, and beyond that she sees the body of Roy Burns still upon a slab...and one cold chamber is opened marked "T. Jarvis" lies open (the tag has been smeared with blood) and the slab is empty. Violet covers her mouth in horror and shock, realizing what has happened.
In Pam's room, she awakens to see...Tommy standing over her. She asks him what he's doing, his only answer coming as he slips on Roy's hockey mask and brandishes a scalpel, still covered in blood from the medical tech he killed in the morgue. Pam screams as we cut to the credits.
Jason Voorhees is dead.
Roy Burns is dead.
Tommy Jarvis...is alive.
Aaaaaaaaaand roll the credits.
So that's how I would have improved Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Like I said in my review of the film, Jason Voorhees being in this film wouldn't have helped it actually be good - it needed something more. We needed a main character who we could see as someone we could root for, something which Tommy in the original version of his film definitely was not. Empathize with, certainly, he's someone who was thrown into a terribly traumatic situation as a child. It doesn't make him particularly interesting to watch, though, especially given John Shepherd's overall incredibly lackluster performance.
I know some people are going to be upset that I had Tommy succumb to the madness as in the original film, but it fit the overall tone. If you go from The Final Chapter to Jason Lives, it definitely seems less fitting. However, this exists entirely within its own separate universe. A vacuum away from the rest of the series. You'll also be happy to know that Jason Lives is actually my favorite of the Friday films, so I'm really glad that A New Beginning really wasn't better than how it came out, since it gave us that awesome movie.
This was just an attempt to try and make that film a little better. Hopefully, I managed it.
Friday the 13th: A New Begi-look, you guys know I don't own this. Move on.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
And here comes the twist I know that you definitely won't see coming!
Pushing it open, Violet finds the hand is attached to the body of the medical tech slung onto the floor with his throat slit, and beyond that she sees the body of Roy Burns still upon a slab...and one cold chamber is opened marked "T. Jarvis" lies open (the tag has been smeared with blood) and the slab is empty. Violet covers her mouth in horror and shock, realizing what has happened.
In Pam's room, she awakens to see...Tommy standing over her. She asks him what he's doing, his only answer coming as he slips on Roy's hockey mask and brandishes a scalpel, still covered in blood from the medical tech he killed in the morgue. Pam screams as we cut to the credits.
Jason Voorhees is dead.
Roy Burns is dead.
Tommy Jarvis...is alive.
Aaaaaaaaaand roll the credits.
So that's how I would have improved Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Like I said in my review of the film, Jason Voorhees being in this film wouldn't have helped it actually be good - it needed something more. We needed a main character who we could see as someone we could root for, something which Tommy in the original version of his film definitely was not. Empathize with, certainly, he's someone who was thrown into a terribly traumatic situation as a child. It doesn't make him particularly interesting to watch, though, especially given John Shepherd's overall incredibly lackluster performance.
I know some people are going to be upset that I had Tommy succumb to the madness as in the original film, but it fit the overall tone. If you go from The Final Chapter to Jason Lives, it definitely seems less fitting. However, this exists entirely within its own separate universe. A vacuum away from the rest of the series. You'll also be happy to know that Jason Lives is actually my favorite of the Friday films, so I'm really glad that A New Beginning really wasn't better than how it came out, since it gave us that awesome movie.
This was just an attempt to try and make that film a little better. Hopefully, I managed it.
Friday the 13th: A New Begi-look, you guys know I don't own this. Move on.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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