Daniel Craig has got a lot to answer for. Just because he managed to change James Bond from a slick, bulletproof quip machine into a deadly serious nightclub bouncer, with no neck and questionable taste in swimwear, all of a sudden everyone's at it. And by everyone I mean Freddy Krueger.
In accordance with the rule stating that every horror movie of the last 25 years must be turned into a watered-down, less scary remake, a new Nightmare On Elm Street film will be released next year. But where that once would have meant seeing Robert Englund rolling his eyes and chewing the scenery to an alarming degree, it now means we'll get Jackie Earle Haley (who played Rorschach in Watchmen). And Jackie Earle Haley won't be nearly as fun.
"Our approach was to make him a little more serious," Haley told Sci-Fi Wire. "He's a little less jokey." On one level, that seems like a perfectly rational thing to say. After all, if you were an evil, razor-handed, rape-produced child murderer from beyond the grave with extensive burns to your face and torso, it's unlikely that you'd have the sunny disposition to keep on making waggly-eyebrowed wisecracks about everything.
But ask yourself this: now that you know the new Nightmare On Elm Street will be light on hi-jinks, are you still excited about going to see it? Of course you're not. Freddy Krueger's mutant Timmy Mallett act was his USP. Take away his gleeful misbehaviour and you're left with a painfully generic movie villain who could have come from any number of low-rent slasher films.
It means that, in the new Nightmare On Elm Street, you probably won't see Freddy Krueger dress up as a French waiter and feed somebody to death. It means that Freddy won't murder anyone inside a comically dated videogame. It means that – and I can hardly bring myself to say this – Freddy won't perform any more novelty raps with the Fat Boys. Performing novelty raps with the Fat Boys was Freddy Krueger's raison d'etre. It was the thing he loved most of all.
It's a dangerous path that Haley is on here. Sure, it might seem a noble pursuit to make Freddy appear more realistic and grounded in reality – but that's how it starts. Next thing you know, you're making a sequel featuring flashbacks where Freddy gets bullied as a child and doesn't get hugged by his parents very often. And there can't be too many people who would want to see that happen to Nightmare On Elm Street.
So, Jackie Earle Haley, if you're reading, try to remember that Freddy Krueger isn't a psychologically damaged real-life murderer – he's Father Jack with a face that looks like a giant cold sore. Let's keep him that way.
