How King Kong And Godzilla Provided A Road Map For Freddy Vs Jason
You didn't have to be a horror aficionado to appreciate the enormity of "Freddy vs. Jason" in 2003. This was two of the titans of the slasher genre finally going head-to-head in a bloody free-for-all. Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees had slashed, stabbed, and otherwise punctured our collective pop cultural consciousness for years by then. As a young kid who had yet to see any of the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Friday the 13th" films, even I knew exactly what was being referenced the first time I saw the scene in "Christmas Vacation" where Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) dons a hockey mask while taking a chainsaw to his gigantic Christmas tree.
Crossover films of this ilk have largely gone the way of the dodo since "Freddy vs. Jason" came out. We're now 80 years removed from Frankenstein's monster meeting the Wolf Man for the first time in Universal's OG Dark Universe, and there's been nary a peep about Xenomorphs clashing with Predators on the big screen since "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" left the "Alien vs. Predator" series dead in the water in 2007. Even when King Kong and Godzilla clash these days, it's only as part of a larger shared universe. As opposed to the idea that, well, sometimes you just want to watch humongous monsters smack the stuffing out of each other, concerns about canon and continuity be damned.
Such was the case when director Ishirō Honda brought "The Eighth Wonder of the World" and "The King of the Monsters" together in "King Kong vs. Godzilla" in 1962. In fact, it was Honda's Shōwa-era "Godzilla" film that provided a road map for director Ronny Yu when it was his turn to pit two deadly icons of the silver screen against each other in "Freddy vs. Jason."
'I think the audience understands they're not going to die'
Supernatural slasher villains like Freddy and Jason, as with Kong and Godzilla, can never really be killed or destroyed. Even when their fate seems sealed in one film, they're just a retcon away from being revived in the next one (assuming the franchise even bothers to acknowledge what happened to them). So how do you give "Freddy vs. Jason" actual stakes when it's even further removed from the main continuities of either "Friday the 13th" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street"? In a 2004 interview with IGN, Yu said he looked to "King Kong. vs Godzilla" for inspiration on that front:
"When I was little I watched a lot of monster movies like 'Godzilla' and 'King Kong' and other Japanese monster movies, and this is how I got the inspiration. If you look at Godzilla, he never died and the Japanese made so many episodes with him. 'Freddy vs. Jason' is like 'King Kong vs. Godzilla'. I think the audience understands they're not going to die, but as long as I give them enough excitement and keep them entertained, then that's where I get my direction."
Yu's comment cuts to the heart of the matter. Crossovers like "Freddy vs. Jason" and "King Kong vs. Godzilla" are about showcasing the strengths of their respective franchises, not trying to maintain narrative tension. These aren't "Avengers"-styled cinematic events that serve as the culmination of years (if not decades) of shared universe storytelling, they're spectacles that allow filmmakers to indulge their inner nerd by answering the question "What if...?" There's a reason why "Freddy vs. Jason" ends with Freddy (Robert Englund) winking at the camera as Jason (Ken Kirzinger) carts his decapitated head away. The film is in on the joke just as much as its audience is.