Thoughts About: The Death of Our Beloved Franchises

 With all of these remakes coming out, the question remains: Will we ever see our beloved slashers in true form again? This question has bothered me for some time now and I have come to the conclusion that will never see these characters again in the fashion that we know and love.

I am an 80's child. I was born in 1980, so I grew up when all of the big horror franchises were being introduced. I grew up on Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. When I was a kid, these characters were bad ass. Everybody in school talked about them and even Freddy was an American icon. Freddy was on all different types of products. Freddy was kind of like the Rambo of the horror scene. (Anyone who was alive in the 80's knows what I am talking about)

As I became a tween, my beloved horror icons started to disappear. Freddy went from American icon to being a joke, Jason started venturing out from Crystal Lake and then made a cameo in one of his own movies, and Michael Myers vanished for some time. It was at this time that I realized that my beloved horror icons were disappearing, and the horror movies of the 80's were slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Michael Myers was the only icon still alive in the 90's, with the releases of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: H20, but Freddy and Jason were dead. They had both gone to hell. Their 90's movies were a pale comparison to their 80's movies and both characters were shelved in the first half of the 90's. This was a sad time to be a horror fan.

In 1996, with the release of Scream, there was a glimmer of hope. Slasher movies were on the rise again, so it was only a matter of time before the greats came back to the big screen. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The rebirth of the slasher movie would end as quickly as it started and only Jason and Michael Myers would make appearances in movies that are most remembered for their flaws rather than their strengths.

For years there had been talk of a Freddy Vs Jason movie, and every year that went by, it would become apparent that it was just talk. But in the summer of 2003 we got our wish. Freddy and Jason would square off in what would be their final appearances as the icons that we remember.

Now that the three big icons of the 80's have had their movies remade, there is no hope for a resurgence of the characters that we love so much. The studios that control these characters have no interest in going back to the golden days, instead they are focusing on the future. Jason is no longer just a slasher in a hockey mask killing your teenagers for setting foot on his turf. Now he is a skilled woodsman who sets traps and kidnaps girls who look like his mother. Michael Myers is no longer "pure evil", but a guy who had a troubled childhood. The jury is still out on Freddy, so there is still hope.

My dream is that each character get a proper send off. They should each get a final movie that settles once and for all the sows that they have reaped. With the movies already being remade, however, this will not happen. For a kid that grew up on these movies, this saddens me. But we still have the original movies to remind us of better days.