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Robert Englund, who plays Freddy Kreuger, talks about the plot for FREDDY VS. JASON.
The “King Kong vs. Godzilla”-style matchup was hinted at not-so-subtly way back at the end of 1993’s “Jason Goes to Hell,” when Freddy’s glove was seen clutching at Jason’s equally distinctive hockey mask.
“I’ve been signed, sealed and delivered on this for a couple of years,” Englund explained. “And it went through a lot of incarnations, both with scripts and with directors.” It wasn’t until “Bride of Chucky” director Ronny Yu came along that Englund felt “Freddy vs. Jason” could be made into a picture as fun as the title suggested, without robbing either character of their scariness via ” ‘Abbott and Costello Meets Freddy and Jason’ kind of crap.”
“I always thought the real trick of ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ [is that] you had to get into Jason’s nightmares. We’ve got to see what makes Jason tick,” Englund offered. “In this movie we get in there. And Freddy’s walking around in there, getting his feet dirty. And it’s pretty sick stuff.”
Buried in the plot of “Freddy vs. Jason” is (gasp!) a bit of social commentary. The Elm Street folks have managed to escape Freddy by stuffing their teens with pills to prevent them from dreaming. Freddy uses Jason to get around all that, and get back to the killing.
“[It’s] a metaphor about how easy it is to medicate society these days,” Englund said, chewing on his spectacles. “And it’s discovered that people need to dream. … Freddy’s at loose ends to get people afraid of him anymore, [because] if you don’t dream, Freddy can’t hurt you.”
“Freddy’s trying to regenerate himself and he’s using Jason to instill fear in the relatives of the offspring of the original Elm Street vigilantes,” he said. “Freddy needs to manipulate Jason, and when he’s in the dreams he can. What happens is that Freddy creates a Frankenstein. … Freddy kind of spoils him, gives him a little too much dog food and he kind of turns on his master. And that’s the gist of the plot.”