Before you immediately cry out, “Well duh! ‘Jason X’ took place in the future, so what’s the point of this?“, do me a favor and hear me out and watch the below video. There’s something really cool happening here that I don’t think anyone, except for this guy, realized.
While watching the Friday the 13th films, it’s easy to forget that these movies, although released sometimes years apart, operate on a timeline that is not connected to their theatrical release date. Rather, the films operate within their own universe, creating backstories and a mythos that spans a longer period than one might realize.
For example, at the end of Friday the 13th and beginning of Friday the 13th: Part II, Alice needs to go to a psychiatric hospital where she stays for two months to recover from Mrs. Voorhees’ horrific attacks. However, once she’s released and goes home, she is killed by a mysterious figure. It’s only five years after that event that Crystal Lake camp is once again being reopened by Paul Holt. That means that while only one year has passed since theatergoers got to see a Friday the 13th film, over five years elapsed in that universe. But remember in Friday the 13th: Part 3 when Chris Higgins is talking about her run-in with Jason? That took place in 1982, two years prior to the events of the second through fourth entries in the franchise!
Look, I know this is getting confusing, so I’m going to stop trying to explain it and let YouTuber Intermittent Thoughts, who analyzed the franchise, lay out the timeline in a simple, easy to understand manner.
What makes analysis this really fascinating for me is that because of these jumps in time (such as Tommy Jarvis growing from a young boy to a man), it ends up that several of the Friday the 13th films actually took place in the future upon their release! Now, as we all know, that doesn’t really mean anything in how the films are presented. There are no laser guns, flying cars, or anything like that. Well, not until Jason X, but you know what I mean. Instead, the fact that it’s the future has absolutely no bearing on how the events occur. It simply proves that Jason is indeed an unstoppable, timeless killer.
Check it out below and tell us your favorite Friday the 13th moment in the comments!