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Special Features
- Audio Commentary with Ronny Yu, Robert Englund, and Ken Kirzinger
- Deleted and Alternate scenes with commentary (including original opening & closing)
- Behind the Scenes Coverage including screenwriting, set design, make up, stunts and photography
- Visual Effects Exploration
- Storyboards and Galleries
- Ill Nino "How Can I Live" Music Video
- DVD-ROM:
- Script-to-Screen & Trivia viewing modes
- Cutting Room Floor - make your own fight scene
- Killer sound bites
- Weblinks
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Product Description
DVD Features:
3D Animated Menus
Alternate endings:Alternate opening and Ending
Audio Commentary:Commentary with Director Ronny Yu, Actors Robert Englund (FREDDY) & Ken Kirzinger (JASON)
Comparison Scenes
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes:18 Deleted Scenes with optional commentary from Director Ronnie Yu and Executive Producer Douglas Curtis
Documentaries:--Behind the scenes coverage of the films development - including screenwriting, set design, make up, stunts and principle photography --Visual effects exploration
Featurette
Full Screen Version:Both fullscreen and Widescreen on one disc
Interviews
Music Video:Ill Nino "How Can I Live"
Storyboards
TV Spot:Lots of TV spots
Theatrical Trailer
Customer Reviews
"Freddy vs. Jason" reintroduces us to good old Springwood, the home of the late but definitely unlamented Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Things have changed in the old neighborhood since Freddy went on his dreamscape rampages back in the 1980s and early 1990s. The adults in the area figured out an excellent way to get rid of the man with the frayed sweater and razorblade gloves forever, or so they hope. They simply removed every reference they could find in newspapers and magazines about Freddy Krueger. Go to the library to do some research on the man, as one of the characters does in the film, and you won't find a darn thing. Why go to all the trouble of a news blackout? Easy. The kids can't dream about Freddy if they don't know he exists. And if they can't dream about him, they can't perish horribly. There are a few kids that know the ghastly secret, like Will Rollins (Jason Ritter), but the authorities have him and the others tucked away in a high security mental hospital under the influence of the powerful anti-dream drug Hypnocil. Before Rollins unceremoniously went to the hospital, he spent a lot of time with his gorgeous girlfriend Lori Campbell (Monica Keena) and her friend Kia Waterson (Kelly Rowland). Lori doesn't learn what happened to him until Freddy decides to come out of retirement.
Krueger, you see, despises the fact that the Elm Street kiddies don't know about him. In order to once again torment the descendants of his oppressors, he resurrects the dreaded Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) to stir things up in his old neighborhood. Jason does an excellent job of instilling the appropriate amount of doom and gloom in the kids, partly through his beastly appearance and partly through his penchant for imaginative killings. In one case, he folds a kid up in a bed. Hardly disturbing, right? Well, it is when the poor chap's heels are touching the back of his head! Voorhees's antics soon know no bounds. He shows up at a rave in a cornfield just in time to massacre scores of kids in particularly heinous ways. Jason kills so many people, and keeps on killing more, that it puts a serious crimp in Freddy's plans when he shows arrives on the scene. He wants all the children to himself, which means Jason has to go back to hell posthaste. Problem is, the masked maniac isn't going to do it without a little help. The result is the fight, a slam bang, take no prisoners tete a tete that is breathtaking to behold. Neo and Agent Smith can't compare to these two. Freddy and Jason squaring off translates into a lot of blood and a lot of broken bones. Any humans who happen to get in the way are hamburger.
"Freddy vs. Jason" is a massively entertaining film. It's not a traditional slasher film although there are slasher elements in it. It's not a character driven film, either, except for the two killing machines. The entire film exists solely as background for the final showdown. Sure, some of the effects up to this point, including the shadow Freddy and Kelly Rowland's nose flying off, garner a chuckle or two. But the fight scene stands center stage. The best part has to be when Freddy dumps dozens of long pieces of rebar down on an unsuspecting Jason, several pieces of which turn the hockey masked maniac into a giant shish kebob. Or maybe the best scenes include the battle at the lake where Freddy and Jason exchange blows resulting in huge gouts of black gore. Whichever part you like the most, the conclusion to the film won't disappoint. Given the emphasis on the fight, it's sort of disappointing we don't get to spend more time with the always beautiful Monica Keena. She's the sort of young lady I never tire of seeing in a film. I would tune in to watch her sit around in sweat pants and a grungy T-shirt eating breakfast. In "Freddy vs. Jason," though, she's one step above cannon fodder. Pity.
The amount of supplements included with the film stagger the imagination. A commentary track with director Ronny Yu, Robert Englund, and Ken Kirzinger heads the list. You've also got a "jump to a death" option, trailers, an intriguing documentary on the special effects, interviews about the difficulty in bringing the film to fruition, and a lengthy text article from Fangoria magazine about the myriad scripts penned by many writers over the years. I highly recommend this film for those viewers looking for a great way to whittle away a few hours. I'll be watching it again soon.
I love this movie. It has everything I would have asked for: gratuitous nudity (well, I might have added a little more of it); an acceptable number of kills and the blood and gore to go with them; insights into the "births" of both Jason and Freddy; a return to basics for Freddy himself, veering him away from his stand-up comedy career of later Elm Street films yet retaining his wickedly sarcastic wit; an interesting cast of characters I enjoyed seeing die one by one; and of course both a home and away match for our two star attractions. It also has plenty of an oftentimes wet Monica Keena, and the fact that she remained clothed throughout the film only made her that much sexier. You've got plenty of action at Crystal Lake as well as Freddy's boiler room turf, and the premise of the film works very well. How to bring Jason and Freddy together? That was always the crux of the matter, and the assorted scriptwriters who worked on the story over the years came up with some ridiculous ideas that would never have worked. Damion Shannon and Mark Swift deserve kudos for discarding all the old ideas that continued to cling to the project and giving us a darn good script. We all know that Freddy draws his power from the fear of his victims, but he has suddenly been forgotten. The adults of Springwood have erased Freddy and his activities from the collective history of the town, and those kids who know Freddy and fear him have all been shipped to an asylum and deprived of the ability to dream via drug therapy. Freddy has been made too weak to come back, and so he selects Jason Voorhees to go to Elm Street and spread fear anew. His plan works, as the authorities let Freddy's name slip out, and with each of Jason's kills, Freddy grows stronger. This leads us to the second critical aspect of the plot: why would Jason and Freddy fight one another? Once Freddy's back, he doesn't take kindly to Jason claiming all of his own would-be victims - obviously, the guy in the hockey mask needs to learn who the boss really is. And so the rumble begins, a fight brought over into the real world thanks to the kids of Elm Street who work things out and intentionally place Jason in Freddy's path.
I thought all of the young actors did a great job, even though a couple of characters were not fleshed out as much as they might have been. Freddy is his old self again, witty but downright vicious, and Jason is his single-minded murdering self. I had a hard time deciding who to pull for, though. I love Freddy because he takes the time to enjoy tormenting his victims before killing them, but you have to admire the one-man killing machine that is Jason Voorhees. I think there was plenty of fighting between the two at the end, and I approved of the ending. You can argue about the victor of the fight, but clearly (whether or not a rematch ever occurs) the fight ain't exactly over just yet.
The DVD is fantastic, filled with all sorts of goodies. I actually started wondering when the featurettes on the making of the film would ever end - there is an amazing amount of material here. Another wonderful addition was the two-part Fangoria article detailing the wild history of this long-awaited film; I could not believe some of the ridiculous ideas espoused by earlier script writers; had New Line made this film earlier than they did, they would very likely have doomed both the Jason and Freddy franchises. The Ill Nino video for "How Can I Live" is fun to watch, although I was disappointed it did not feature any movie clips (and thus no Monica Keena). Best of all, though, you get a number of deleted/alternate scenes as well as an audio commentary of the film by director Ronny Yu, Robert Englund (Freddy), and Ken Kirzinger (Jason) - England sort of dominates the conversation, but his excitement about the film is palpable. Yu was an interesting choice as director, but I think he did a fine job; I was especially fascinated to learn how much of an impact early screenings of the film with test audiences affected the final cut - Yu knew that the fans were more knowledgeable than he was on the subject at hand and rightly deferred to their opinions when they made plain the fact that certain elements of the first cut just would not fly.
Freddy vs. Jason was an idea borne years before this film began pre-production. The premise of the film (Freddy calling on Jason to strike fear back into the children of Elm Street) is decent, but it seemed to me that something was missing...
I enjoyed the movie, especially the dream sequences, but I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with the film. It just didn't feel like Friday the 13th to me. It felt more like a Nightmare on Elm Street film, but even those movies were scarier. This movie bordered on absurd at times and much of what we had come to know about Freddy and Jason was betrayed in this film by way of contradiction (i.e. Jason suddenly having a phobia of water after he had, on many occassions in the past, pursued people into the water to kill them).
I am glad that this movie was made and I will always remain a fan, but I feel that with all of the time and writing that went into this idea, it could have been a hell of a lot better. The story was not bad, but the movie was simply not scary or suspenseful at all. It's a must see for any fan of either series, if for no other reason than to see what your favorite classic slasher is up to - but don't expect to get that good old feeling you used to get when watching a Friday the 13th or a Nightmare on Elm Street film back in the 80s and 90s.
The bonus material is extensive and quite exhaustive. They cover every aspect of the film, including pre-production, direction, stunts, visual effects, make-up, audio commentary, deleted scenes, storyboards and galleries, etc.... The bonus disc amounts to a few hours of extra viewing, which is actually pretty informative and insightful. With cool, animated menus, this is a great DVD edition for something of a letdown film.
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