With news of (another) A Nightmare on Elm Street remake hitting, fans of the franchise have been speculating and arguing with one another about just what approach the new movie should take after 2010's remake flopped.
The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise has some of the more passionate fans I've encountered over the years I've been part of the horror fandom. Face it, the Nightmare movies provide a lot more to be passionate about than most of the slasher movies at the time -- from character to plot to imaginative dream sequences to mythology building and motivation for the monster. For whatever reason, if you were a horror fan during Freddymania in the '80s, it's a franchise that made its mark on you. Freddy was inescapable.
Freddy has been depicted in several forms -- toasted tormentor in the shadows, sadistic clown, cackling goofball -- and there's a devoted fan for each one. Some fans love Elm Street in all of its incarnations. Fans of the Jason movies are a jokey, rowdy, fun-lovin' bunch that matches the tone of that franchise. Michael Myers fans are a somber bunch who are picking up the pieces of their heart that's been shattered so many times by that franchise's absurd turns. Freddy fans, we're serious about this stuff. We love it.
But there's a new wave of fans who accuse a lot of us longtimers of being stuck in the past. (Maybe if you're introduction to Freddy is Freddy VS Jason, you shouldn't be dictating where the franchise should go.) For a lot of us longtime fans, it was difficult to see the original being remade in 2010. Unlike the Hammer films of the '60s, which logically remade those old Universal Monster movies that had been limited by a lack of color and censorship, there was just no real reason to remake the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. And it was right for the fans to be apprehensive about the remake being in the hands of Michael Bay's company Platinum Dunes, which specializes in taking the horror movies of yesterday we loved and turn them into Xtreme Mountain Dew ad music videos. Those of us who didn't want the remake, who didn't like it, have been accused of turning away new fans of the franchise, but I think the lifeless, pointless remake was guilty enough of not bringing in new fans.
I'm anti-remake, period, but Hollywood's going to do what it's going to do. I actually had hopes for Jackie Earle Haley in the role of Freddy. He's not only a good actor, but after spending so many years out of the spotlight, he's a performer who's hungry to take whatever on. I thought it was pretty brave of him to take the role of Freddy so soon after having critical acclaim for Little Children. (I probably would have talked him out of it if I was his manager.) But the remake did him no favors. In an attempt to prove that the new Freddy was "serious," they stripped him of ANY personality. No, I don't want that buffoonish Freddy who dresses like the Wicked Witch and makes jokes so bad that Austin Powers would cringe, but even before Freddy became that clown, he was known for his personality. That's one of the several things that made him stand out from the silent baboons like Jason or Michael. Freddy has spark, he's a live wire. The entire 2010 remake was a flat, dull, pointless exercise, a sinking ship that took Haley down with it. If he had been allowed to cut loose, he could have made a major impact on that movie, been its sole spark of life.
There ARE fans who refuse to accept anybody other than Robert Englund playing the role. As far as I'm concerned, there's no real reason why Englund couldn't play the part again. I think he has a couple of more Freddy performances in him. He's already shown so many sides of the character and reinvented the role for New Nightmare. But I've gotten the impression that Englund's kind of glad to have Freddy in his rearview mirror. And, realistically, you know Hollywood's not going to bother with him. But, Englund's made his mark. He's played the part to the best of his ability and proven he's the definitive Freddy Krueger -- he's the Sean Connery to which every other actor who takes the role will be measured to. Englund played Freddy in eight movies, a TV series and countless promotional specials -- in a world that can barely get the same actor to ever play Batman more than a couple of times, that's a hell of a run.
The new remake, if that's what they're going for, could be a complete shot-for-shot Xerox of the original, but in Hollywood's mind, they'd still be under the impression it's a "new" movie. They'll probably want a new Freddy. Other than his personality, one of the things that stuck out about Freddy WAS the way that Englund returned to the role so many times. (Has any horror actor ever returned to the same part as much as he has? I don't even think Christopher Lee played Dracula as many times.) There was even a revolving door of actors for the Universal Monsters. So, as much as I might be one of those oh, so annoying fans stuck in the past who wants Englund back, I acknowledge that it would make no sense to try and restart the franchise with someone who might only be able to do a couple of movies, opposed to someone new who could do several. (One option Hollywood could take is to get Englund and have it be a motion-capture performance; Freddy could be depicted in a way that's much more surreal and monstrous than make-up could allow. But I'm opposed to motion-capture, to be honest. It robs performers of their talents, life and performance by painting a cartoon over them.) So, there's no doubt they'll be after a new Freddy Krueger.
I've put a ridiculous amount of thought into who I think would be a good, new Freddy. I think Freddy needs to be dark, menacing, and have a sense of humor. Not the moronic cartoon humor of Freddy's Dead, but the cruel, sadistic humor. The taunting. He needs to be merciless, he needs to exploit his victims' fears as much as he can, and he needs to savor it. He can't be turning victims into a balloon, pop them with his glove, and be like "He was full of hot air, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" No! We need Freddy to be dark and scary again. The burnt bastard needs to go back into the shadows. He needs to be intimidating, genuinely scary, sinister, vicious. He needs to be more quiet, deliberate in what he says. He shouldn't be Schwarzenegger, firing off more bad one-liners than bullets. He should be a creep and you should want to hate his guts and want for the protagonist to prevail.
I kept visualizing the way I thought Freddy should be depicted until my brain formed someone who I had seen play nasty bastards and who I think would fit the bill. I wasn't aware of the actor's name, but now that I looked him up, his name's a bit too unintentionally cutesy to cast him as Freddy (though I imagine marketing departments would have fun with it), but I think he'd do a great job: Burn Gorman.
Gorman is a heavily active actor with a Shakespearean background, but not too well known; I'm not familiar with Torchwood, but with that and Game of Thrones, he at least seems to be comfortable with geeky stuff and knows how to handle an association with it. I think he's unfamiliar enough in America that, if the movie failed, it wouldn't really hurt his career, especially back in England. If the movie would be a success, if he would be successful in the part, it would get him a bit of a boost in America, but I don't think it would so negatively color his resume and reduce the amount of dramatic work he could do in his home country.
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