‘Halloween’ Director John Carpenter Reveals Why Michael Myers Is Unkillable: “He’s An All-Purpose Monster”
JB Augustine
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Halloween Ends won’t be the end for the Halloween series or its timeless antagonist Michael Myers as it turns out. As long as they make money, Miramax will bleed The Shape dry, and there is no doubt that they will go as far as they can with that newly announced TV series which should feature Michael in some way.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween Ends, co-written, produced and directed by David Gordon Green
Sure, he died via industrial grinder in the last film and, not leaving any trace afterward, his fate looked pretty final. Still, we’ve been there before at the conclusion of several installments, especially the original Halloween 2 and H20 in 1998. No matter what anyone does, you can’t keep a good slasher down, so long as fans and producers demand his resurrection.
And that’s what matters most here, not what makes Michael tick on the page, but the circumstances in the culture that justify bringing him back for another round. No one understands this better than his creator John Carpenter who wrote and directed the first film; the 1978 hallmark of horror that started everything for the man (Carpenter and Myers), the myth, and an entire subgenre.
(from left) Michael Myers (aka The Shape) and Cameron Elam (Dylan Arnold) in Halloween Kills, directed by David Gordon Green
The filmmaker answered the question of what keeps The Shape stalking at New York Comic-Con, via Screen Rant, and compared him to another true Titan of cinema Carpenter is fond of. “I’ll tell you what, he’s an all-purpose character. If you want the first movie, you’ve got that. If you want him to be able to kill all the time, you’ve got that,” he said.
“The only other all-purpose monster is Godzilla,” Carpenter added. Arguably, Godzilla is more all-purpose than Myers. He has been around longer and at different times been portrayed as scary, tragic, bestial, and sometimes fatherly and silly. Through it all and regular dips in his box office, the King of the Monsters managed to come back again and again stronger than ever.
Michael Myers (aka The Shape) in Halloween Ends, co-written, produced and directed by David Gordon Green.
Whether Halloween’s new TV deal leads to some sort of shared universe or a dusted-off anthology proposal or not is a roll of the dice right now. The same is true of if it will stand the test of time the way the MonsterVerse has, for example.
NEXT: New Michael Myers ‘Halloween’ TV And Film Universe In The Works From Miramax Television
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