Line #8 FranchiseOriginalSin/Halloween


1	While many claim that the ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' series underwent a truly gruesome and Michael Myers-worthy death in later installments, it would be wise to remember that the better-received earlier installments were what [[FranchiseOriginalSin drew first blood]].
2
3	* The original series is seen as having lost its edge by stripping away the killer Michael Myers' mystique, with later films attaching him to an ancient Celtic curse in order to explain his ImplacableMan nature and why he kept targeting the Strode family. It eventually got bad enough that the producers had to [[CanonDiscontinuity declare everything after the second film to be non-canon]] when they made ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater''.\
4	If they really wanted to eliminate this series-derailing problem, then they should've retconned out [[Film/HalloweenII1981 the second film]] as well, because that was where it started.[[note]]In fact, this is precisely what the [[Film/Halloween2018 2018 film]] did, serving as a direct sequel to only the first movie and even having the characters [[DiscontinuityNod make fun of the Original Sin]] in the trailer.[[/note]] In [[Film/Halloween1978 the 1978 original]], Michael had no explanation beyond him being an escaped mental patient returning to his hometown to kill again, with Laurie Strode and her friends having no connection to him beyond [[InnocentBystander circumstance]]. It's also [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane left up in the air]] whether Michael is supernaturally evil or just [[BadassNormal extremely tough]]; while Dr. Loomis's final line[[note]]'''Laurie:''' "Was that the boogeyman?" '''Dr. Loomis:''' "As a matter of fact, it was."[[/note]] leans towards the former, that's presented as merely the opinion of one man. The second film, on the other hand, not only revealed that Michael and Laurie were [[LongLostRelative brother and sister]], it also implied that Michael's [[ImplacableMan seeming indestructibility]] was related to the occult. Later films continued piling on new pieces of backstory, enough that the script for the [[FranchiseKiller reboot-necessitating]] [[Film/HalloweenTheCurseOfMichaelMyers sixth film]] drew heavily from writer Daniel Farrands' EpilepticTrees about the prior films. In other words, that film merely took trends that had been going on unchecked for over a decade to their logical conclusion. Creator/JohnCarpenter, looking back on the franchise he created, [[http://deadline.com/2014/10/john-carpenter-qa-halloween-sequels-michael-myers-861942/ stated]] that its downfall came the moment it started giving Michael motivation and CharacterDevelopment, with this being a big part of [[CreatorBacklash the poor opinion he has]] towards his work on the second film's script.
5	-->"... Michael Myers was an ''absence'' of character. And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That’s silliness -- it just misses the whole point of the first movie, to me. He’s part person, part supernatural force. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake."
6	* As for the [[Film/{{Halloween 2007}} remake continuity]], one of the most polarizing things about it was in how it gave Michael a definitive origin story explaining why he became a killer, revealing it to stem from having AbusiveParents and growing up in a broken home. Many who disliked the film saw it as a return to the Original Sin and a misunderstanding of what made the first film great, though there were also those who enjoyed the new spin that Music/RobZombie put on the series and how it drew from real-life SerialKiller mythos.
7	* The [[EvilIsBigger much greater physicality]] of Michael Myers in Zombie's films also drew criticism. The stuntmen who played The Shape in the first two films, the 5' 10" Nick Castle and the 5' 8½" Dick Warlock, were fairly normal-sized men who didn't have much of a height advantage over the 5' 7" Creator/JamieLeeCurtis; their subtle-but-imposing presence came down in large part to both men being strongly built and great at playing an ImplacableMan, which made them ''seem'' bigger than the majority of Michael's victims (especially in the first film). Zombie, on the other hand, cast the mammoth 6' 8" Tyler Mane in order to make Michael more directly imposing and threatening, especially when paired with the 5' 3" Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie and the five-foot Creator/DanielleHarris as Annie, which a number of fans felt took away from his [[TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse seemingly normal]] image and turned him into a clone of [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]]. This trend towards making Michael bigger actually began with the fourth film, ''Film/Halloween4TheReturnOfMichaelMyers'', which cast the 6' 2½" George P. Wilbur as Michael; every future Michael would be at least 6' 1". It was even more jarring in this case, as it created canonical issues with how Michael grew so much taller between the second and fourth films[[labelnote:*]]For those wondering, the third film, ''Film/HalloweenIIISeasonOfTheWitch'', was a non-canon story that had nothing to do with the prior two, so Michael didn't appear in it.[[/labelnote]] -- and when [[Film/HalloweenTheCurseOfMichaelMyers the sixth film]] tried to answer that question, it became a major VoodooShark moment and a big part of the reason why the producers hit the reset button with ''[=H20=]''. The fact that Zombie's films had Michael be outright gigantic and [[HugeGuyTinyGirl paired him with much shorter actresses]] playing his victims simply put a much greater spotlight on the issue. Again, the [[Film/Halloween2018 2018 film]] defied the trend, putting Nick Castle back into the role, though the stunts were done by the 6'3" James Jude Courtney.
8	* Another point of criticism many had with Rob Zombie duology is how Dr. Sam Loomis had been flanderized into a self-absorbed {{Jerkass}} by the second film. The thing is, it can all be traced back to [[Film/Halloween5TheRevengeOfMichaelMyers the fifth film]] where Loomis had become desperate (and delusional) enough to stalk Jamie Lloyd and even use her as a bait to trap Michael. Some even take it further to [[Film/HalloweenII1981 the second film]] where Loomis caused an innocent person's death by confusing him for Michael. But the Ben Tramer incident was a clear case of PoorCommunicationKills because Loomis had a solid reason to mistake him for Michael (wearing a similar mask, no audible response, trying to flee instead of explaining the situation), as well as Tramer's death being entirely accidental by being hit with a patrol car driven by another person entirely. The fifth film, despite his flaws, still tries to paint Loomis as a WellIntentionedExtremist who [[CharacterRerailment gets better]] in [[Film/HalloweenTheCurseOfMichaelMyers the following film]]. As for the second Zombie film, it feels out of character for Loomis and when he does have a JerkassRealization, it's a bit too little, too late. Just like many cases above, the [[Film/Halloween2018 second reboot trilogy]] reduced Loomis's appearances to flashbacks while still trying to paint him as less sociopathic and more pragmatic person while still maintaining his likeability.
9	* On a more minor level, ''Film/HalloweenResurrection'' got a lot of flak for, among other things, its StuntCasting of Music/BustaRhymes as a cool, street-wise ActionHero who manages to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu put down Michael Myers]] -- ''twice'' (once [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech verbally]] without even realizing who he really was, and once [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown physically]]) -- and live to tell the tale. ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater'' also featured a rapper in a prominent part, but Music/LLCoolJ's role was substantially smaller and less over-the-top than Busta's, and not nearly as controversial as a result.
10	* More broadly, there was a time when ''Halloween'' was seen as this for the horror genre in general. The SlasherMovie genre was very unpopular with contemporary critics, who saw them as little more than "dead teenager movies" (Creator/RogerEbert's famous description of them) that swapped suspense, characters, and plot for graphic violence, nudity, and strangely reactionary attitudes towards such. As such, when slashers took over horror in The80s, those critics directed their ire back at ''Halloween'', blaming it for unleashing all of the worst trends of the decade's horror. ''Halloween'' itself was a [[BloodlessCarnage comparatively bloodless film]], however, and Carpenter relied heavily on the old-school tricks to get viewers on the edge of their seats, tricks that fell by the wayside in the '80s as later slashers, including many of its own sequels, instead emphasized the carnage. As for its politics, Carpenter himself acknowledged how the film came to be seen as having injected into horror a moralistic conservatism in which teenagers were killed for [[TheScourgeOfGod smoking pot and having premarital sex]], saying in [[https://old.post-gazette.com/tv/20001013romero2.asp a 2000 interview]] for IFC's documentary ''American Nightmare'' that "if I ended the sexual revolution, I apologize." As Carpenter's quote suggests, it was unintentional, and Laurie's lack of participation in her friends' drunken sexcapades is used to paint her less as a "good girl" (she gives in and smokes a joint in one scene, only to immediately start coughing) than as [[CuteBookworm a bookish, socially awkward nerd]]. Opinions started to [[PopularityPolynomial turn around]] in The90s, however, with the broader critical reappraisal of the slasher genre, such that these criticisms of ''Halloween'' have largely fallen out of fashion.
11	* A common opinion on ''Film/HalloweenIIISeasonOfTheWitch'', the oddball of the series with no connection to any of the other films, is that it would have received a better reception if it had been ''Halloween '''II''': Season of the Witch'' instead. Creator/JohnCarpenter's plan to make ''Halloween'' a GenreAnthology series, its stories tied together only [[ThematicSeries by their connection to the Halloween holiday]], ran into the problem of the fact that the second movie followed on directly from the first, turning ''Halloween'' into a more traditional film series with its own running plot and characters to follow. There was no going back from that, and ''Season of the Witch'' trying to do just that met a natural backlash.
12

Context FranchiseOriginalSin / Halloween