I appreciate your respect and have always enjoyed our discussions because you aren’t dismissive of ideas that aren’t your own.
Here’s a question I have for you and anyone else who wants to answer: we’ve all seen the sequels and perhaps the remake. I appreciate and admit that it’s tough to come up with something new. Looking back on what we’ve seen with Laurie, was H40 really the best that a major studio and professionals could come up with? They decide to skip other films and start over again, they manage to get JLC back, they get the best mask we’ve seen since the original, and even Carpenter wants to be involved. This was the best that they could manage? Laurie Strode never grew up and became an alarmist/survivalist victim who spent 40 years turning her house into a trap to one day capture and kill Michael? She put all other things aside, including responsibilities to her family, for this? I get that the take they wanted was “haunted” and “damaged,” but that just doesn’t ring true when looking at Laurie in the original film. Here’s a girl who never gave up keeping the two kids in her care safe from a madman who had killed her friends and was hellbent on killing her. She was tough as nails and didn’t give up after seeing her friends murdered and horribly displayed, after being slashed and falling from a landing, after stabbing Michael three times and struggling with him as he tried to choke her to death. The best they could come up with is: “Yeah, she never moved past that night and spent 40 years haunted by the experience, waiting for a rematch.” Let’s look at Sarah Connor: she’s a bit of a damsel in distress in the first film but we know from Reese that she’s going to grow into a badass leader herself, a glimpse of which we see in the first film and then fully revealed in T2. I don’t think anyone would have wanted to see Sarah isolate herself in a compound and build traps in case another Terminator showed up. She was active and just as important, outward.
I suspect most of us are not screenwriters (I’m a writer myself and am just beginning to dabble with scriptwriting) but I have no doubt we could all come up with something better. We saw Laurie change her name and move away in H20, which makes more sense given that H2 is in that continuity. I’d have preferred she was more active, though I liked that she had a career that gave her purpose and helped other people. It was a brilliant idea to make Laurie a teacher/headmistress, as she’s great with kids and seems to be a natural educator. That’s all there in that first movie. So if we can’t do that again, let’s at least agree we need to make sure Laurie is active. She’s also, like H20 and H40 Laurie, concerned that Myers might return and hurt others. The most logical choice for her would be not to have children who would then be in danger should that happen. She also owes her life to Sam Loomis. It makes perfect sense that she went to him for therapy after her ordeal. It’s not a huge leap that she would become inspired to help victims of violent crime like Loomis helped her. Already, we’ve got a Laurie who has no children and who is active, driven to help other people who suffer like she did. That’s a far more interesting character than the haggard recluse who spent four decades on the defense.
As for Michael, let’s again look at the first film, especially since we’re skipping all other sequels. As far as we known in that movie, Michael is a normal six-year old kid. Something happens (we don’t need to explore that, which was Zombie’s mistake) to turn him into a killer. Loomis says he sits “staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off.” Carpenter always said Michael was pure evil, supernatural yet human, a force of nature, the Boogeyman. There’s never an answer as to why he becomes what he does, nor do we need one. The only reason he went after Laurie (AND Tommy, which H40 ignored) is because they crossed his path. That’s it. He fixated on them and then stalked and murdered her friends and had every intention of killing them. He’s stabbed in the neck, chest, and eye, shot six times and then falls from a second story balcony. After all that, the best thing Green came up with is that he allowed himself to be taken back into custody? If Michael is just there in the hospital under guard, the H40 Laurie makes even less sense. Hell, they even give us a scene of her at the asylum with a gun. If, however, Michael was never found after falling from the balcony, if he instead disappeared and “could be anywhere” as Carpenter has repeatedly said he intended with that ending, survivalist Laurie makes a lot more sense.
So, let’s combine these two ideas. Myers disappears and is never found. Laurie became Loomis’ protege and eventually a mental health professional like him, helping victims of violent crime. She’s dedicated her life to this work and has chosen not to have children because she has no time and because Myers was never seen again, refuses to risk her child or children’s life should he return. Meanwhile, she’s worked to help Tommy and Lindsay cope, as they were also victims of The Night He Came Home, and they’ve become like children to her. There’s the heart of your story, Laurie, Tommy, and Lindsay, the only survivors of that night. They’ve tried as best they can to move on, but in their worst nightmares they know The Shape is still out there and could return any Halloween night. He returns of course, and no one knows where he’s been. Was he out there all those years, maybe killing in other towns? That’s a horrifying mystery that’s far better than “yeah, he was locked up and did nothing for forty years until his lunatic doctor engineered his escape.” That’s not The Shape. He is self-directed, answering only that “secret, silent alarm.”
So he returns to Haddonfield, maybe to a renovated Myers house or the house on the property where it once stood. He kills the inhabitants and then waits, watching the streets. He fixates on someone like he did with Laurie, and begins stalking and killing. Laurie, Tommy, and Lindsay hear about it know it has to be The Shape. The police are disbelieving, thinking it’s a copycat. Our heroes know better and they set out to stop Myers in any way they can.
We haven’t seen any of that before and it all fits perfectly with the first film. Now, if your’e not going to do a movie that skips all the other sequels, then you don’t have to use it as your basis as much. That was always the stated vision of H40, though, yet they not only got Laurie wrong, they ignored Tommy and Lindsay and gave us characters we didn’t care for or even really like. Sure, they’re going to bring in these and other characters now, but if I can build a story that includes them faithfully and logically, why couldn’t they for the first movie? Green said in an interview that there were ninety drafts for the movie. The interviewer joked about it and he said he wasn’t exaggerating. How do you go through 90 drafts and still get it so wrong? That’s what I can’t abide. I expected that they would do a better job, that they would be far more faithful to the original and its characters after saying that’s what they were going to do.
I honestly don’t think Halloween needed any sequels, outside of Carpenter using Someone’s Watching You as the basis for a sequel with Laurie living alone in an apartment years later. Other than that, no sequel has justified its existence to me. H40 could have been the one that did justify it’s existence, but it was mostly unimaginative and failed to live up to the characters and spirit of the original film outside of names and situations. I know other people have different takes and that’s great, but I have a hard time accepting this as the best that could have been done with so many things falling into place for what could have been a modern classic.
