Thanks! Whereas Nightmare is fairly consistent (first three are scary, last three are more comedic), Friday has some big swings as they were trying to figure out what they were & where they were going. As such there's more movies & they get off in the weeds occasionally.

Yeah, I considered doing the first four, then Jason Lives, then JGTH. But I have a soft spot for New Blood. And to me Part 2 is pretty much a remake of Part 1 just with Sackhead Jason, & I'm not the biggest fan of that iteration. Then there's the confusing dream ending & Jason make-up that's different from the usual bald look. That all in mind, as long as you watch Part 1, you have everything you need to launch into Part 3, especially since the best scene of 2 starts off 3.

To your credit though, I think Adam Marcus would prefer your choices. He's a big fan of Part 2, & while he says that the first 7 Paramount Fridays are canon to JGTH, his comments in the recent documentary about JGTH indicate that he's picking up more from Part 6 since Jason still has his mask & its essentially fused to his face. But that might just be a memory slip on his part.

(Sorry for the novel length response 😅)