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Oh man. What a lesson for me in first movies made. I get why this was used as the standout example in the GIF, but oof. I wish the script I'd written, with the two NL execs as shepherds, would have been the movie.
As @bradmiska might remember, the draft that we thought was going to be shot was different in many ways, some big and some subtle. This happens a lot, but I still have memories of arriving to set and recognizing nothing from the script on the shooting schedule.
On my first day on set, a crew member told me, "In this intro scene for the two leads, we decided there wasn't enough dialogue for them at this party so we took some dialogue from page 87 and put it here."
In case you were wondering, this is NOT how it works. And that was one of so many things I saw undone. One of the New Line guys and I worked hard to sidestep tropes in the script. An example: Freddy appearing while two characters are driving in car.
"The trope we've seen a thousand times is: Freddy is standing in the middle of the road, and they have to swerve. Let's be smarter." And we were. He can appear anywhere, and we have the advantage that you don't know which of the two is dreaming -- driver, or passenger.
So we had Freddy rise up in the back seat, taunt Quentin (driving) as he gores Nancy through the chair, blood spraying the windshield, Nancy screaming at Quentin WAKE UP and he snaps to realize he'd drifted off while driving and the two crash the car into a tree.
Now they both have concussions, to complicate matters when they realize the way to kill him is to fall asleep and then wake up once they have hold of Freddy.
What do I see on set that night? Freddy standing in the middle of the road.
What do I see on set that night? Freddy standing in the middle of the road.
There are a thousand reasons why things like this happen, but with the right team in place, you have collaborators who plus up the project versus make it a different thing than what it was originally designed to be.
And with so many scenes that pay homage to Wes Craven, and a story that stayed closed to the original, you'd think it would be considered a remake by everyone involved. But nope. For credit purposes, another writer got it classified as a sequel. Which infuriates me even now.
Why? Because it meant Wes Craven was not given story credit. For characters and a world he invented. For a plot twist akin to PSYCHO that was his idea -- you don't realize Nancy is the heroine for the first act. I petitioned to have him included and lost.
All of this a really long-winded way of saying: Yes, this should be remade. I'm not advocating my script from back then, but just have it made by people who have a love and expertise of not just NOES but horror. There are some amazing voices today for it.
