ELM STREET teaser time!

[Keith]

Hopefully you're right, but if you put aside the knowledge you have from the original, and look at this trailer objectively, it does seem like he's an innocent man being wrongfully killed. To me, anyway.

Which would make that glove totally pointless. The glove is what he used on the kids. I don't think that is where they are going, but the trailer leaves it very open.

[Cuppy]

Freddy wasn't a pedophile he was just a child murderer.

[Keith]

Freddy wasn't a pedophile he was just a child murderer.

You sure? The sexual undertones were pretty much overtones in the movies.

[BrianLynch]

Yeah, I was always under the assumption he was a child molester. 

[Cuppy]

Wes Craven says his inspiration for the basis of Krueger's power stemmed from several stories in the Los Angeles Times about a series of mysterious deaths: All the victims had reported recurring nightmares beforehand, and died in their sleep.[22] Additionally, Craven's original script detailed Krueger as a child molester, which Craven said was the "worst thing" he could think of. The decision was made to instead make Krueger a child murderer in order to avoid being accused of exploiting the spate of highly publicized child molestation cases in California around the time.

[Luke Erik]

Huh. I always thought he was a molester. Wonder why I always thought that.

[Tom K.]

Huh. I always thought he was a molester. Wonder why I always thought that.

You thought it because the implication is clearly in there regardless of the official story.  If Craven really, seriously intended to remove that element, he didn't do a very good job.  So, while it doesn't openly seem to exploit sex crimes, it certainly implies them in the initial depiction of Freddy.  Either way, he's a fairly loathsome character which makes the selling of him as a kind of anti-hero starring in rap music videos and MTV specials somewhat odious.  

Say what you will about ELM STREET 2, but the sexuality of that film seems a natural extension of the original film.  As the series went on, the films grew remarkably asexual.  On the commentary for FREDDY VS. JASON, Robert Englund says that Freddy and Jason have always had the same kind of victims, implying that both franchises killed off teenagers who got wasted and had premarital sex.  This only goes to show that Englund never paid attention to his own films.  The only time the Elm Street kids were ever "bad" was when they were suffering from the trauma of their dreams.  Otherwise, they were almost all essentially talented, reasonably intelligent good kids with several of them seeming to be punished not for their "sins," but for being overachievers.  One girl works out too much, another girl studies too much, the antagonistic doubter is pushing herself to be a olympic-class swimmer.  The only one in the later sequels who engages in premarital sex is Alice (who is also guilty of, gasp, excessive daydreaming) and that results in an entire movie with her (unconvincingly) knocked up and fighting to keep her baby.

Meanwhile, there's Freddy, becoming less and less like the pervert he is (and he really is regardless of how you frame it) and more like The Joker in the rogue's gallery of '80s slasher villains.  That's the real reason he became so appealing.  Well, that and the fact that each sequel grew more and more ambitous with the fun special effects set pieces.  In a weird way, the Elm Street movies set the template for future New Line effects movies (usually released in August) like MORTAL KOMBAT, SPAWN and BLADE.  They weren't always the most convincing or expensive effects, but they were cool and used with an abandon that more polished Hollywood "event movies" didn't.

[Hawkboy]

Hopefully you're right, but if you put aside the knowledge you have from the original, and look at this trailer objectively, it does seem like he's an innocent man being wrongfully killed. To me, anyway.

But don't you see, that makes his backstory TRAGIC!

Platinum Dunes, you've done it again!

[BrianLynch]

I know the movie deals with the whole "did he, didn't he".  The leads are trying to figure it out.  OF COURSE he did, they ain't gonna change Krueger that much.

[Dan]

I know the movie deals with the whole "did he, didn't he".  The leads are trying to figure it out.  OF COURSE he did, they ain't gonna change Krueger that much.

You mean like they wouldn't make Leatherface a sad slow kid whose family pressures/harasses him into killing? Or they wouldn't make Jason Voorhees a wily redneck rigging up booby traps to protect his weed farm? Or (different studio, but the point stands) they wouldn't make Michael Meyers a troubled kid who killed because his mommy didn't love him enough?

Point is, pretty much every major horror remake has significantly tweaked the villain in some way, so I don't see why they wouldn't do it here too.

[Tom K.]

I propose a meta-reboot in which Freddy is a misunderstood, creepy Boo Radley type who buys or makes the glove to scare the neighborhood kids one Halloween and ends up getting his ass lynched like a census taker gone too far down south (hell, you could make it topical and have Freddy be a census taker).

From there, he haunts the dreams of the lynch party's children to, ya know, plead his case and establish his innocence.  At the end of the movie, Freddy now realizes that his soul as free, but he's going to use his powers to put walk the earth (in a dreamlike way), put the wrong things right and bring justice to those who need it.

He is...The Dream Master. 

We'll even have a remake version of Rick from ELM STREET 4 as a kind of Morpheus teaching Freddy how to take on criminals and Hell Mouth dream monsters with kung fu so that we can have some martial arts action.

[Dan]

I propose a meta-reboot in which Freddy is a misunderstood, creepy Boo Radley type who buys or makes the glove to scare the neighborhood kids one Halloween and ends up getting his ass lynched like a census taker gone too far down south (hell, you could make it topical and have Freddy be a census taker).

They could carve 'Fred' on his chest instead of 'Fed'.

[Amusing Pseudonym]

I think I would have enjoyed a full-length prequel about just Freddy's back story, ending with his death  then maybe a tease of his nightmare incarnation after the credits. 

[Untamed Aggression]

I think I would have enjoyed a full-length prequel about just Freddy's back story, ending with his death  then maybe a tease of his nightmare incarnation after the credits. 

I recall that was on the cards for a long time before Freddy vs Jason came along and fucked up everything for everyone.

I'm not just talking about horror fans here, I mean existence in general.

[sean]

Which would make that glove totally pointless. The glove is what he used on the kids.

I thought the glove was a child's nightmare interpretation of a sexual molestor, not something that Krueger used while he was alive.  But it's been a while since I saw it.