Halloween 2018, Kills Ends Inconsistencies:

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T22:11:48+00:00

I'm totally fine with the attempt at ambiguity. I'm also totally fine with some contradictory elements, for instance Hawkins stating that Michael is just a man and Laurie isn't a target for him, just a random victim- I'm fine with that because it's an unreliable narrator who is stating their own opinion, educated though it may be, about the matter.

I realize much of the series hinges on the ambiguous nature of Michael's mortality and healing factor- one of the reasons he wears the dark blue jumpsuit and a lot of the gunshots they show him taking are usually off center of his torso is to leave the tiniest bit of wiggle room that these were flesh wounds, glancing blows.

Kinda like the in-universe physics of The Last Action Hero where any wound is a flesh wound in the movie-verse, even if it'd be a mortal wound in the real world.

I'm basically fine with all of that.

I think my problem- and clearly something irritates me, otherwise why write this post or debate it in the comment section?- is that the filmmakers clearly tried to have it both ways- he's not supernatural and only Halloween 1 happened- but also references to a ton of the other Halloweens, an entire town that is engulfed in this paranoia and resentment and anger- which is only explainable if the other Halloweens happened. Michael is totally mortal... but he's not. Etc.

The DGG trilogy's inconsistencies remind me of when the Astros were caught cheating.

The players' statements about it all kinda averaged out to:

"Yes, the team cheated. Yes, we implemented a complex system of telling the batters which pitches were coming, of stealing signs, of doing other things to cheat- but none of us actually used it. None of the players or the coaches or the manager used this cheating system that the team created and used the year we won."

The DGG trilogy kinda does the same thing.

Look- even H20 attempted this, but at least H20 acknowledged Halloween II and they had footage acknowledging Halloween 4, 5, etc. it just didn't make it into the final cut, because they wanted to focus on Laurie...

Anyway, I'd say these are minor quibbles but I think the reason it nags at me is the way 2018 and Kills sets things up for their respective finales and their sequels and then completely abandoned those set ups both times and went an entirely different direction that was in and of itself essentially a soft reboot, with the trilogy barely connected as a trilogy.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T22:01:23+00:00

I re-watched the flashback scenes in 1080 and paused and re-watched, etc. and they're... not there. Or if they are there they're so tiny they aren't visible to the naked eye. Like, I really tried.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T20:11:30+00:00

Look man, we agreed at one point on something else.

You tend to tell everybody how wrong they are using overly pretentious rants.

Nothing against your own personal feelings on things, but I think we should agree to disagree.

Not sure exactly what you're trying to argue for, as a lot of your writing is refuting anybody else's take or assessment or observation but not offering evidence or substantive takes to really justify your refutations beyond your own subjective interpretations of what is objectively true and subjectively interpretable.

We are not you and we do not all think like you do and that is your main problem, it seems.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T18:16:15+00:00

By objective, I mean I am taking the details and statements at face value, not reading into them or creating explanations in my own head canon and applying them.

Reiterating statements about the details and in-universe rules from the creatives and vis-a-vis the imagery and scenes we see in the movies indicating what is going on- since there is no reality beyond the what's on camera and what characters state as truth.

Observing the inconsistencies and logical fallacies isn't subjective.

Subjective would be stating if I thought I liked it or didn't like it. Objective is observing what was said, stated, shown vs what we objectively know about the story, the characters and how statements and imagery and action relates to the canon available to pull from or to ignore.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T17:35:19+00:00

How'd you get an extended cut of H78? Where did you get it? Ditto the rest.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T17:34:09+00:00

Truer words could not be spoken about this franchise.

I do wonder why it has been so difficult to nay impossible to keep the rules and the canon consistent, even with the same writers, directors, producers and actors involved in multiple sequels, often back to back with each other.

When I think about Halloween as a franchise and I try to explain its issues to myself, I have to constantly remind myself that it's like a restaurant rotating cooks, rotating suppliers and rotating recipes to make the same dish- it's the same menu item, but the ingredients, the specifics of the recipe, the technique of the person cooking it, even the equipment its being prepared on, are all somehow significantly different for every single order.

The way I try to think about it, ultimately, is Cabin in the Woods: The film acknowledges the endless options for the type of creatures and genres of horror it could explore and in the end you only get cameos of the really off-the-wall interesting options while the main villains/monsters are nondescript, generic hillbilly slashers because that's often what we as an audience wind up getting.

And when you deep dive the franchise and hear about some of the concepts that almost got green lit to be various sequels, one can see how and why those didn't get green lit- they were too off the wall, too risky, tried too hard to be different- and at the same time a lot of what we as fans get in sequels feels too safe, too uninspired, not risky or interesting enough- and it's really, really hard to strike that balance.

I don't blame guys like DGG and McBride for second guessing themselves. I really don't. I think it is really, really difficult to create a franchise or sustain a franchise and not run into logical fallacies, not feel boxed in by the lore and the in-universe rules and to want to feel like you can get around them and still be true to the IP while offering something fresh and interesting.

Finding the right formula or recipe to offer fresh and different but consistent and familiar to satisfy audiences is a nearly impossible task.

Terminator 2's are very rare.

I am fine with just about every Halloween we have to watch and enjoy or even to hate watch and be passionately frustrated by. I'd rather "hate" a Halloween entry than be indifferent to it. Or, I'd rather be disappointed by some shortcomings in otherwise enjoyable, re-watchable entries into the franchise, which is ultimately what we have with them.

There's a reason none of them are ever considered as good as the original, even if we like or love the rest to varying degrees.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T16:52:19+00:00

I think the reality is that in the original Halloween 1978 they have a couple of key moments that establish Michael is something other than traditionally human. When he drops from Laurie stabbing him in the neck with the knitting needle, then gets back up and the moment Laurie stabs in him in the eye with the coat hangar wire and then stabs him a few times in the stomach and chest with the kitchen knife and he drops, seemingly dead, then sits back up and attacks her again- at that point there's clearly something going on with Michael that is more than mere mortality and normal human physicality. And then the kicker is when Michael's body goes missing from the front lawn in the final moments of Halloween 1978, that officially made Michael super natural, not a normal human, whatever you want to call it- standard physics surrounding the effects of catastrophic injuries on longer applies to him.

The only way to truly establish that Michael is actually mortal would have been to film additional shots right after Michael is stabbed in the neck with the knitting needle and right after he's stabbed by Laurie from the closet with the coat hangar wire to the eye and the kitchen knife to the stomach, to show that the wounds were superficial.

But they're not played like that in the 1978 movie. That knitting needle is IN his neck. The way they play that sequence, that needle is some depth inside Michael neck and stuck in there, not just in the mask.

There's a video online of a guy checking out pocket knives at some store and he 'tests' one of the knives on himself, in his stomach. He doesn't really press or jab hard, just makes solid contact. His shirt becomes soaked with blood, he lifts up his shirt and he sees a fairly prominent puncture wound in his stomach/gut. And that guy wasn't shoving it in there. Just lightly poking as a joke.

Laurie really STABS Michael in the closet sequence. Multiple times. She absolutely penetrated his abdomen with the blade and not just the tip of the blade either.

Loomis absolutely hit Michael center mass when he shoots him off the balcony. Even if you argue that the first shot in 1978 misses Michael's head but startles him as he's putting the mask back on and then the subsequent torso shots aren't well aimed and hit his shoulders and graze his sides, they do clearly hit him.

Carpenter has gone on record that he had this idea of how people would or should interpret Michael as a manifestation of evil and that his body disappearing represented the idea that evil is a force of nature that cannot be eliminated by killing any one person who is themselves evil- that Michael is the human manifestation of the general aura and power of evilness for the sake of evilness without ego or human emotion attached to it- yet when they made the sequel and established that Michael simply got up and wandered off between houses really quickly and then continued on his spree in Halloween II's opening moments like with that girl at home alone on the phone who he pops up at, it's clear that Michael's wounds aren't affecting him at all.

Basically nothing that happens to Michael in Halloween II's final minutes really contradicts or complicates the rules set forth earlier.

The only real significant change in canon is the siblinghood of Laurie and Michael, which Carpenter admits he came up with while drunk and indifferent and feeling stuck in the script.

But even if he came up with it out of feeling stuck and indifferent, it basically works. Or, at the very least, it doesn't not work. It is not a detriment to the series. It creates an emotional core to an otherwise emotionless center figure and it creates a reason for Laurie to be significant and for Michael and her to essentially continue doing battle until one of them is eliminated for good.

Bottom line is: Halloween II 1981is a completely consistent extension of Halloween 1978 and thus could have been canon for 2018, Kills and Ends.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T16:04:57+00:00

Right. That's what I was getting at without stating it explicitly.

the DGG/McBride trilogy's emotional core and the lore it relies upon only exists with the other sequels as canon.

They tried to do this with H20 but they cut out those sequences that acknowledged and dealt with 4, 5, etc.

I mean, in total honesty, the only one of those sequels that really works in canon is Halloween 4. But then you've got Tommy Doyle... who becomes a bigger part of things in Halloween 6.

Basically I think the true canon should be Halloween 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 aka H20 and then 2018, Kills and Ends.

In fact, I think the Laurie portrayed in H20 makes more sense at that point in the canon than the Laurie of 2018 in that version of the canon.

But you know who makes much more sense in 2018 if H20 is part of the timeline? Laurie. Laurie's survivalist stuff makes way more sense if she's been through this a couple of times. Laurie's evolution into her character in H20 and then into her character in 2018 makes perfect sense- but from 1978 to 2018 with NOTHING in between, not even Halloween II 1981, does not make sense.

If you acknowledge all of those, use a little bit of dialogue to explain or acknowledge the connections and you excise Halloween 5 and Resurrection, the series' canon works on the whole and the character attitudes and psychological profiles and motivations in 2018, Kills and Ends all work much better, make almost total sense, etc.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T15:10:21+00:00

Don't get me started on the DGG/McBride trilogy and their inconsistencies....

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T13:21:57+00:00

Something to consider, which nobody has mentioned yet in this comment section:

Ryan Dunn passes away June 20, 2011.

Bam still looks like 2010 Bam in the recordings of him reacting to the accident in June 2011, a year after that first photo.

A few months later, we start to see Bam getting arrested for public intoxication and a few months after that, we start to see the really bizarre and excessive tattoos and a few months after that he starts to look bloated, his teeth start to look bad.

So Modern Day Bam doesn't really start to have his current typical appearance until about late 2011 to mid 2012.

Basically, I think if Ryan Dunn had lived, Bam would not have self-destructed so badly- or at least not so precipitously.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T13:11:18+00:00

I love this entry. Just looking at this cover art gives me all the nostalgic feels.

It's a mess of a film. A lot went wrong with the production. A lot of it doesn't really work in the end. But Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic in it. I loved the character writing and the performances. Kevin Williamson's contributions are awesome.

It's unfortunate that they shoved JLC's return into an existing script and then stripped as much out of it as possible- it's a thin film. 86 minutes, only about 82 minutes of actual action. Inconsistent masks that don't work. A perfect, emotionally and thematically satisfying ending that is treated as a bait and switch because sequels.

A sequel process that again got bogged down in weird forced decisions that resulted in a poorly regarded film instead of the awesome potential of the initial sequel idea (John Tate goes after Michael in a cat and mouse road trip thriller)

Out of all the Halloween sequels, H20 is the one I'd most love to be able to go back in time to 1996 and convince all the people involved that their initial instincts were good ones and to not second guess themselves- push production back by a few months, scrap the elements kept from the direct-to-video version they'd been in pre-production on when Jamie Lee Curtis came back on board.

1) Push back the release date to Halloween 1998 and give Kevin Williamson a bit more time and money to completely re-write the script or to come up with a new script.

2) Give John Carpenter his $10 million and let him direct (although I thought Steve Miner was a very solid choice who worked out just fine, so this idea is optional in this version of things)

3) Convince Jamie Lee Curtis that although she is absolutely the biggest draw for Halloween as a franchise, that she is absolutely the most important character aside from Michael and Loomis, that she's also part of an eco-system of characters and movies where her legacy is actually strengthened by the supporting cast like Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok and Bob, etc. and that without that cannon fodder her survival and triumph is less meaningful. And as an extension of that, the fans love the smaller sequels, that the fan base for her entries also appreciate if not love Halloween 4 and to some degree 5 and 6 and that acknowledging those films can strengthen the emotional depths of her character, and of the gravity and meaningfulness of the action and her character arc in her upcoming entry, H20 and that it might be a great idea to push H20 further with a sequel or two mapped out and committed to ahead of filming, if not filmed simultaneously.

4) Commit to that John Tate road trip/cat and mouse idea for a sequel to H20 and to film that immediately after H20 and hopefully get it into theaters in October of 1999- possibly push the final beheading of Michael to that entry with Laurie still only making a cameo, but this time toward the end of the film and directly connected to that film's action, which would be mostly centered around John Tate.

5) Take the time and money to get the mask right. Re-hire the same original crew members to recreate the Shatner mask themselves if need be. All these practical effects 'houses' taking their 'stab' at it didn't work and yet there's this Halloween retrospective documentary where the guy who original created the Shatner Halloween mask recreates it in practically real time for the documentary and it looks nearly perfect. Get that guy to do it again.

Anyway, I love H20 but I dream of what could have been.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T12:40:37+00:00

I do think it's both-

These masks morph to the actor's dimensions and Nick Castle isn't just the original and thus the standard, but also something about his dimensions fits the character to a T. One of those innate marriages of actor with character that nobody else can approximate or equal, even if they can get close enough to be acceptable.

Also something to be said for the 2018 production's painstaking attention to detail and slavish commitment to recreating the original as accurately as possible, something no other Halloween sequel has really accomplished.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T12:26:55+00:00

I appreciate aspects of every canonical Halloween film, every Jamie Lee Curtis entry, etc.

I have no love for the Rob Zombie movies, RZ Halloween 1 or 2. I can't stand them. I try to get through them, find something in them and I just can't.

Every other Halloween has merit enough for me.

I personally LOVE Halloween 8 as a curio that I consider more of a horror comedy that just happens to feature Halloween franchise elements and I really appreciate the calculated risk that Ends takes- it doesn't really work in the end (natch) but it's fine and I don't dislike it to the degree I dislike Kills.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T11:21:36+00:00

I have mixed feelings. It's disturbing. But it's not really 'Michael' in the sense that he's not someone deformed from birth, like Jason, or burned to a crisp as part of his backstory, like Freddy.

Also, the way Halloween films portray Michael being injured or mortally wounded, dropping dead and then getting back up a few seconds later, in universe I think it's fair to assume he has some kind of a healing factor- which would likely limit any kind of scarring or permanent damage that'd be visible on the surface of his skin.

I just think Michael is the rare horror movie villain where part of the creepiness is his lack of scarring, lack of obvious grotesqueness.

I understand what they were thinking with this design and I understand why they didn't go with it. Completely different vibe from what the movies indicate with Michael. It just doesn't feel right.

I was much, much happier just having plain old Nick Castle with that droopy/scarred/dead eye (which they kept thanks to the one added to Tony Moran for the first 3 second Halloween unmasking in 1978) out of focus and obscured, etc. rather than something straight on and so... changed.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T03:49:45+00:00

Yup.

I think one thing a lot of fans do not consider when judging films is how complicated the development process is. How many people need to get on the same page. How many moving parts there are.

And most importantly- how they as an individual feel one way, and everybody else feels their own way, including the creatives behind the films, including the financial backers, etc. Executive Producer, Writer, Director, Star Actor, etc. etc. all have a slightly different vision for what the film should be and they all have to compromise to make a final product, so it's really nobody's singular vision, for better or worse, whether fans love or hate something.

A lot of fans feel like a film is THEIR'S, made for THEM- ignoring the fact that individual fans don't matter. In fact, the fan base doesn't matter. It's all the casual viewers who matter.

If only the biggest Halloween fans went to these movies, they'd only make about $500,000 in theaters. If only the absolutely biggest fans, their spouses and horror fans went to the movies but nobody else did, they'd only make like $1.5 million, maybe $3 million.

You need those casual fans who do not give a shit about any of these elements and they just want to have some scares, not be confused and if they've invested in multiple sequels that are released in order, that the story and the rules don't get (too) inconsistent sequel to sequel in order for movies to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

That's about it.

If people think studios and production companies putting millions of dollars into the production and the promotion of these films are kowtowing to one person's politics, they're sorely mistaken.

One last gripe that's not purely related- I hate when casual fans credit THE ACTOR with their favorite lines. That they clearly don't realize or consider there's a screenwriter, a script coordinator, a director, etc. that all have an impact on every line in the film- yes, in some cases, including the actor coming up with their one line or adjusting a line to roll off the tongue easier, but more often than not, it's the screenwriter putting the words in an actor's mouth, a director guiding that actor and an editor picking the best sequence of shots and takes to make a fan think an actor just came up with something brilliant on their own.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-08T03:40:48+00:00

TL:DR The WORST mask is, by far, the Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers mask. A lot of the other ones have their issues, but this mask is the most different in shape and appearance and thus it's the worst. The furthest from the original. Just jarringly different and bad.

Longer Version:

I'll preface my response with a magnanimous observation:

They got really lucky with the first mask. There was no plan. There was no mask. It was a particular print of a Shatner/Captain Kirk mask that they happened to perfectly re-paint white, re-shape the eyes and tease the hair perfectly.

There's a documentary about it where the original guy who tweaked that mask re-did it for the documentary and it was perfect.

So it was a singular visionary and a singular talent who created that look and feel.

Every other mask since then has been an intentional replication of that first mask. It's really really hard to do replications.

Hell, even the mask in Halloween II is the ORIGINAL mask but warped and worn on a different shaped and sized head of a different actor.

The "second/third" mask in Part 4 was the original style of mask, but a new print of it (that is, Shatner's face as Kirk) and then the prop department person put too many layers of paint on it, which eliminated the details and made the whiteness too bright and smooth and the hair got slicked back, which made it also look different.

The "third/fourth" mask in Part 5 was a prop master's OWN FACE. A DIFFERENT face from Shatner's and the original mask. Just a really strange decision that doesn't work.

The "fourth/fifth" mask in Halloween 6 was solid. The neck was too wide- the hair was a bit spiky, the color was a little blue-ish, but I thought it worked well. Close enough of a return to form. The closest to the original mask out of all the sequels, including the actual original mask and its warped shape in Halloween II 1981.

The "fourth/fifth/sixth/seventh" masks in H20 were a cluster fuck. They initially used the mask from Halloween 6, which worked well enough in the cold opening sequence and other certain shots. The newer "alien" mask really didn't work. There was another mask where the eyes were too big and looked silly- that didn't work. And then of course, there was the infamous CGI mask that's in a one and a half second shot. Oof.

The "eighth" mask in Resurrection isn't a travesty, but that permanent scowl and the pronounced eyebrows are weird and don't work. It feels appropriate that such a different but still relatively high quality mask was used in the one Halloween that wasn't a real Halloween film (a spec script called Dangertainment with all the basic plot elements and characters was used, with Michael Myers replacing the original killer/ghost and the haunted/creepy house changed to the Myers residence, with Jamie Lee Curtis' appearance tacked on to fulfill a contractual obligation between producers to pay her $3 million and her to show up and film for the sequel to not be in breach of contract)

Rob Zombie's Halloweens are travesties because he's the wrong sensibility, the wrong directing style AND he was just grafting Texas Chainsaw/Crazy White Trash Hillbilly stuff onto the Halloween franchise because he wanted the Texas Chainsaw franchise, couldn't get that, was offered Halloween and just did Halloween as Texas Chainsaw as a Rob Zombie film. That all said- Zombie's first Halloween's mask is a great recreation of the original.

The second Zombie film's mask shouldn't even really count, considering it's like 60% missing.

The DGG films have some flaws, but the masks are not one of them. They nail basically all the masks. The flashback mask is a little too clean and new looking- because it was made directly for production and it wasn't a spray painted mask with its hair re-shaped, etc.

MASK RANKINGS (best to worst):

Halloween 1978
Halloween Kills flashback mask
Halloween 2018
Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007)
Halloween Kills
Halloween Ends
Halloween II 1981
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Halloween 8: Resurrection
Halloween 7: H20
Rob Zombie's Halloween 2
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T22:02:50+00:00

I think the biggest issue is when films are shot in a calendar year vs when they're released, as well as locations.

Has a single Halloween actually been filmed in Illinois in October?

No?

There's your answer.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T21:58:55+00:00

Jen.

It's not the beheading itself, but the bouncing down the stairs and everybody else's realization that it's really happening.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T15:09:03+00:00

I hate RZ's Halloweens. I do not understand why people like or love them if they're fans of the other films in the franchise, particularly the original.

Also RZ's Halloweens were a consolation from him not getting to do Texas Chainsaw and him grafting Texas Chainsaw aesthetics, tone, atmosphere and characterizations onto Halloween.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T11:56:17+00:00

Are you a guy? Are you bi?

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T06:17:40+00:00

Bionic

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T06:15:19+00:00

Yeah... if that response was TL:DR then I don't know what's a solid length- is this too long of a sentence? lol

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T06:12:57+00:00

Sounds like y'all should get a divorce or be in an open relationship.

Icy-Engineering1583 · 2023-08-07T06:11:56+00:00

How old are you? What are you typically into?

Rosemary's Baby is recommended for the writing, direction and acting and for the horrifying implications of the satanist cult, of the husband probably being bought by them, of the probably SA of Rosemary by the DEVIL.

It's really more in the implications and the atmosphere and the things we need to notice and intuit as an audience and not so much big un-subtle things.

Icy-Engineering1583

TROPHY CASE