I remember in English we learned about types of conflicts/plots like
- man vs man
- man vs self
- man vs god
- man vs society
Etc. what type of conflict was Freddie v. Jason?
From Reedsy:
Character vs. Nature
How do you fancy your chances in a fight against Mother Earth? In this type of conflict, that is exactly what our protagonists are facing. Whether it’s wildlife (Jaws), natural disasters (The Day After Tomorrow), the weather (The Perfect Storm), or a post-apocalyptic landscape (The Road), the antagonists in this type of conflict cannot be reasoned with.
Stories that feature a “character vs. nature” conflict will usually center on a character’s survival.
Freddy and Jason are sources of nature. They have left their human elements behind when they died, and are now physical manifestations of revenge. They’re no longer even killing people that had anything to do with their deaths, they just hunt people that end up at the wrong place. Once you have entered their domains, there is rarely any escape.
They can’t be the reasoned with, they can’t be killed, and they will never stop seeking revenge. They are now eternal elements of Crystal Lake and Elm Street.
In Freddy vs Jason, it’s like when 2 weather patterns come together to make a deadly storm. The primary story was still about the kids trying to escape them.
To us as humans, there appears to be a secondary conflict between Freddy and Jason, but I feel you could argue that isn’t an actual conflict, as neither Freddy or Jason have any agency. They can’t not kill each other. They just don’t function that way. As with the storm, they are just 2 elements that mix violently. It’s no more a conflict than any story that has rain: the rain is not a conflict between the air and the water vapor held within it, it’s just what the laws of the world dictate happens when the air is supersaturated.
(Ok, done editing now. I got more into this than I anticipated…)
That would also classify Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash as a man against nature clash. Groovy.
Just checked the plot summary on this one, as I haven’t read it…
If Pamela was in possession of the Necronomicon, could Jason actually be a Deadite, possessed by the spirit of his mother?
Jason doesn’t show up until after Pamela is killed, and Jason has many of the same abilities as a Deadite.
Not as familiar with Evil Dead as I am Friday the 13th, but in a crossover, it sounds like it could be valid.
I haven’t read it in a long time but I remember the lore being pretty faithful to all three franchises & cleverly executed. If Jason is a Deadite & possessed by Pamela, that would still be man (Ash) vs nature (Pamela’s vengeful spirit), though it very much leans into Jason being used as a tool, which implies that the puppet master has agency beyond a mindless force of nature.
(Just having fun here and am happy for my hypothetical to be shot down.)
I’m having much fun on this train of thought as well. As a fan of all these movies, there’s many aspects of the lore to dive into, especially once we get into crossovers.
Do we technically even have a Jason origin story? Boy Jason dies in 1957, but the bulk of the first movie takes place in 1980. If Jason was his own revenging spirit, what the heck took so long?! His mom started bumping people off almost immediately, and Jason himself doesn’t come along until 23 years later, only after his mom is killed. Pam could have used that time to find the Necronomicon, at least in the crossover.
That Jason can still hear his mother speaking to him lends credence to possession. She is kinda crazy, murdering innocent kids and commiting arson and such for 2 decades and all that. That she’d possess her dead son’s body to keep going isn’t much of a stretch. And Jason has many supernatural powers of a Deadite while Pamela didn’t have any of Jason’s abilities. Something reanimated him and gave him powers at the time his mother was killed. Him being a Deadite explains it more than the movies ever really do that I remember.
I would be interested in the Necronomicon’s chain of custody, since the first Evil Dead movie takes place in 1981!
The FXIII franchise always played fast & loose with how Jason keeps going, but I agree the Deadite angle really works in that regard. My argument for “what took Jason so long” is exactly the murder of his mother by a camp counsellor. He was R-ing I P at the bottom of Crystal Lake but came back for vengeance when she was killed. He even had her head enshrined in (I think?) the second film. Mama’s Boy.
That messes with the Pamela possession theory a little though. Interesting if he was agreeable to her setting up shop. Or maybe by the time one possessing soul is “killed” the other is powerful enough to come back. Like a tag team rampage.
The timeline thing did trip me up trying to be as canonically accurate as possible.
The comic seems to take place in 2008, and the Necronomicon is in Jason’s shack. Browsing an Evil Dead fan wiki site, there seem to be numerous origins of the Necronomicon in multiple universes, and Lovecraft, the original Necronomicon author, had implied there are numerous copies and translations of the Necronomicon, so there could very well be more than one.
The Jason/Freddy/Ash comic sounds like the Necronomicon was in their family home, so Pamela had one, prior to 1980 when she was killed, and it stayed there until 2008, so there has to be more than one in that universe of Ash had previously dealt with it in 81.
Jason could have allowed a Necronomicon owning Pamela to use him as a host as she was in need of a body in one piece, hers now being headless and all. Keeping the head around may have been important to the spiritual connection.
Reading more in the Evil Dead wiki, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to permanently kill a Deadite, dismembering them just seems to slow them down the most, which is pretty typical for how people deal with Jason.
I don’t know if I’m ready to view this as canon or anything, but I feel it works solid enough for the loose rules of a slasher franchise. It’s at least a. More solid story than Jason X.
This belongs in [email protected].
I remember in school when we covered these, we were trying to find examples of all the combinations but we couldn’t get some of them.
Saving this!
I had a lot of fun too. I’m really the only one of my friends that likes these movies, so it was fun to explore some thoughts with someone else.
The Perfect Storm of horror movies?
Yup, it’s not like storm fronts go away forever. They just reach equilibrium for a time before their inevitable return, just like how Jason and Freddy got their reboots after this movie.
I would say when two opposing personified forces clash it becomes a man vs man fight.
IMO Man to Man covers peer against peer as well as literal fights between two normal human beings.
Fights between particular vampires in the Castlevania series would also be considered man to man even if they are very specifically not human, they are still people with thought process and human level decision making ability, so man vs man conflict still applies.
I agree with this assessment. Any 2 supernatural beings against each other is essentially man vs man. Them fighting involves agency, otherwise it’d be too boring to make a story about.
If we had 2 reanimated skeltons swordfighting, it would be cool for a couple minutes, but they can’t talk, they can’t plot and scheme, and they’d just keep on fighting with no purpose or end. Not a great story.
I don’t know the origins of the Castlevania vampires, a quick look shows many origins, but the Vampire Chronicles vampires still seem very much man vs man. IIRC, they basically are just regular people essentially possessed by part of an original Egyptian demon. When the demon part of them is killed, that’s why they just die. So for plot purposes, they’re just guys with a chronic illness. They still retain all the characteristics and associated drama of the people they were when they were alive.
I was talking more about the Netflix series, both the original and Nocturne feature very supernatural beings who nevertheless have the agency that is key in calling either party to the fight a person for the sake of man vs X
I do need to check those out at some point. I’ve heard a lot of good comments about them.
With full control of their will, I agree it’s definitely considered man vs man in a literary sense like this.
If only I could have written about this topic for my AP English essay…
The kind that starts off in a movie producers office, and the conversation starts off “So…you have a movie for me?”
Man vs. Society
Cultural shifts forced Freddie to temporarily ally with Jason in order to maintain his power base.
I disagreed with you initially, but if we look at Freddy as the main character, this works.
The story is Freddy-centric, Freddy basically contracts Jason, as society has found a workaround preventing Freddy from doing his things.
The plan with Jason backfires, much like your classic golem or Frankenstein type situation of raising the dead and losing control. But it’s Freddy’s issue with society meeting him down that initiated that secondary conflict.
Though part of the story is from the kid’s POV, much is still Freddy, much more so than Jason, and they could have told the whole story from Freddy’s POV and it’d be the exact same thing.
I like this take. Nice job!
Removed by mod
Nature vs nature
Civilization vs. the natural / supernatural
