Five Nights At Freddy's Adaptation

Interesting tidbit. William's name plate says 'Steve Raglan'. Meaning he is using an alias to disguise himself. Like his stint as 'Dave Miller' in the novels. In the novel, the reason he did this was because while he was acquitted for the murders, people knew damn well he did it. So he went into hiding and resurfaced under a new name years later.

The cinematography and set design are pretty good, they really made the abandoned pizzaria feel atmospheric.

I've seen a few people criticizing the jokes, but I disagree. The FNAF franchise has always had its moments of silliness, such as when the player character is unexpectedly fired for ridiculous reasons at the end of the first two games. By incorporating a degree of self-awareness and not taking itself too seriously, the film avoids alienating viewers who are unfamiliar with the games and might find the premise too bizarre. Furthermore, the horror aspect of the games was the atmosphere rather than explicit content, as the reason why they became so popular among children despite their content was because they lack strong language and rely mostly on implied violence.

Edited by good-morning on Jun 27th 2023 at 7:00:41 AM

So to go after the plot implications

The animatronics are hunting down Abby to 'make her like them'. Except Golden Freddy, who is her ally.

William as said above is going under an alias 'Steve Raglan'. And he is the guy bringing in security guards, luring them to Freddy's so the animatronics can kill them.

Also William dons the Spring Bonnie costume at another point in the film. So it is likely we are going to see him getting springlocked.

Honestly, I'm really disappointed the film is going for the game's ghost of murdered children trapped in the animatronics route. I wish the film went in a different direction to distinguish itself from the games.

Umh isn't that the premise of the franchise thought ?

It is and there is no reason why there should be Adaptation Deviation.

Why would you think it would do a different plot? At that point just make a different movie, like that Nicolas Cage one.

Akin to Willys Wonder Land.

Personally I hate it when films try to distinguish themselves. I'm not watching FNAF the movie because I want an experience that's largely removed from the games.

That said. The Sonic movies do this well. The Destroy All Humans remake proved to me that you can make an adaption be too close to the original.

I want something in the vein of Uncharted or Sonic. What I've seen in the FNAF movie trailers though strikes a good balance of being similar yet different.

If they distinguished it anymore it wouldn't resemble the games and I probably wouldn't put money towards seeing it.

When you adapt something and it comes out looking like the Resident Evil films you've missed every thing I liked about the franchise and are just using my love for the franchise to sell me your poorly adapted vision.

Filmmakers need to stop putting their vision on a pre written moneymaker.

Anyway, they already threw red eyes on the animatronics. This is FNAF so its hard to really ruin.

They seem to already be distinguishing themselves. As Mike is not William's son here. Or atleast he does not seem to be.

Also! New synopsis.

>>> The film follows Mike (Josh Hutcherson; Ultraman, The Hunger Games franchise) a troubled young man caring for his 10-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio; Holly & Ivy, Unstable), and haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his younger brother more than a decade before.

Recently fired and desperate for work so that he can keep custody of Abby, Mike agrees to take a position as a night security guard at an abandoned theme restaurant: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. But Mike soon discovers that nothing at Freddy’s is what it seems. With the aid of Vanessa, a local police officer (Elizabeth Lail; You, Mack & Rita), Mike’s nights at Freddy’s will lead him into unexplainable encounters with the supernatural and drag him into the black heart of an unspeakable nightmare.

The film also stars Mary Stuart Masterson (Blindspot, Fried Green Tomatoes), as Mike’s icy Aunt Jane; Kat Conner Sterling (We Have a Ghost, 9-1-1) as Abby’s caring babysitter, Max; and Matthew Lillard (Good Girls, Scream) as Steve Raglan, Mike’s smug career counselor.

So, Mike's brother disapeared in this version rather than Mike accidentally killing him. Maybe he was another William victim here? And the 'unamed female Villain' is Mike's aunt named Jane.

So it looks like they are going to try making 'Steve Raglan' being William into a twist. This is gonna be one of those things where they kind of give away some major stuff early on huh?

Edited by Snoketrope on Jul 20th 2023 at 12:53:29 PM

It's also possible that they'll swing some plot twist of Mike doesn't remember the event and realizes or comes to terms with killing his brother during the film.

i.e. Something that shouldn't be in the synopsis of the film.

I should correct myself.

This is FNAF where the identity of one man has been debated for 4 to 5 games straight, a toy box has something inside of it with bo definitive answer as to what it is, the main villain has been killed 3 different times, and there are two currently valid continuities.

So it would take a BIG shift for it to affect me. Everything else is just making the plot make sense for a casual audience and not into an internet mystery gacha game.

Could you imagine the teaser poster in theaters having a secret code written on it that corresponds to some part of the script page count that leads to another freaking theory hunt about whether or not the villain of the film is dead or what the sequel will be about.

Yeah, let's also not pretend this franchise is some masterpiece of writing. The writing, for the most part, facilitates gameplay and a fun horror video game experience. Logic and coherency need not apply.

To be fair, Mike being William's son is very mired backstory stuff that was never particularly impactful on the games' story, so not doing that doesn't really change things much.

As was probably expected.

Imagine if it got a U rating..

I mean this is a Franchise with a huge fan base in kids. And it Isnt even graphic. I dunno why you'd want to lock them out.

You think Mike will be canonised here as william's son Michael. I know the games kind of imply it

As I said before, I doubt it.

Mike being William's son is a retcon wrapped up in a bid to make the games canon as much as an interconnected, complex conspiracy as possible, because there are years worth of games and books to work with. On the flipside, it's also not particularly important to the games' story - it's entirely a backstory retcon there for mystique factor, and Mike himself hasn't even shown up in years.

So unless this film intends to be a huge interconnected movie franchise, there's three questions that probably would put the kibosh on that being a thing here: "this is the first movie of this property, should we keep it simple?", "is this Everyman character more interesting to the audience as an Everyman", and "is the reveal going to do anything for the story but take up time?"

If they're going to reveal Mike as anything, my bet is they'll do something different to the games and have him be - like - a kid who was once nearly one of Afton's victims years ago or something.

Uh dunno. It could still be used for a big shocking reveal in the third act.

For what end, though?

Is the movie going to be a story about Mike coming back to take revenge on his father Afton, or is it going to be a movie about discovering the existence of the ghosts, learning the nature of their vendetta against him, surviving their revenge and so on? Those two things aren't really going to go hand in hand very well, mostly because if it's the latter, the story doesn't need Mike to be Afton's son to do that - to the contrary, Mike being Afton's son suddenly requires the plot to become more about their relationship in order for that twist to really be worth including in the story, which may well be a heavy distraction from the rest of the story.

By all accounts, this appears an adaptation of the FNAF 2+3 backstory with an Everyman family as the focuses who stumble across it, and I think the movie would be at its strongest if it stayed that way. It's the very first film of an unproven franchise - they're not going to overcomplicate it.

Tbh, I think that problem might be the reason Mike hasn't been in anything for a while. The FNAF lore lives on its Afton family drama, but the actual games' story never actually wants to be about that Afton family drama, leading to this weird repeated situation where they usually release a game about a new everyman protag, then after the game is over and done with for a while they reveal that the protagonist was actually one of Afton's hidden relatives, followed by the franchise introducing a new everyman protag and the previous one fading into the background so they don't have to deal with the implications.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 18th 2023 at 1:27:04 AM

@Mir Mike being William's son in the games was already canonized by the logbook. There, Mike directly references the events of Sister Location.

"Tbh, I think that problem might be the reason Mike hasn't been in anything for a while. "

I think the main reason is that Mike is dead in the main continuity, as he burned with his family as well as the other animatronics in the 6th games fire.

Edited by Snoketrope on Aug 18th 2023 at 11:53:19 AM

I mean, writers chose to do that. It's not like the character died in a fire on his own and the franchise was forced to keep him that way against its will.

He's not gone from the franchise because he died. He's gone from the franchise because the writers saw no more reason to keep him around, and thus wrote him out of the story.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 19th 2023 at 1:12:10 AM

That is not really do to anything specific with Mike, Scott said in the interview with Dawko that he made Pizza Sim out of necessity. That he wanted to give resolution to several events from the series.

More or less, it's because Scott wanted to end the story and give resolution to the old plot points. Mike, obviously, was part of that. And it seems like the old story really did end there, sense the big returning character turned out to not actually be returning (The thing we thought was William was actually the Mimic the whole time).

@ Knight Unknown: I mean, I never saw Mike Schmidt=Michael Afton being a thing. He's definitely the protag in Sister Location and Pizzaria Simulator but Fnaf 1 and 2? I mean it says "odor" but that could just be a mixture of sweating a storm in a life or death job and the animatronics' odor spreading when he tampers with the animatronics. I do think that Michael Afton is in contact with Mike and Jeremy so he can figure out how to clear up dad's mess