Movies
‘Transformers’ and ‘Friday the 13th’ Share a Weird Universe Connection
Michael Bay directed one and produced the other. But it goes deeper than that.
With Transformers: The Last Knight now out in theaters, I was reminded of something over the weekend that I had been meaning to look into for a while now. The latest Michael Bay-directed film is the fifth in the franchise that kicked off back in 2007, just two years before Bay’s Platinum Dunes remade Friday the 13th. But what do the two universes have in common, aside from Bay being creatively connected to both of them?
Oddly enough, actor Travis Van Winkle links the two in an unexpected way!
Van Winkle appeared in Transformers as Trent DeMarco, the character perfectly described on Wikipedia as “the stereotypical jock: he’s on the football team, has big arms and washboard abs, a sweet ride, a smokin’ hot girlfriend, and he hates nerds.” At the start of the film, DeMarco is the boyfriend of Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes, though he’s dumped by her when she finally catches on that he’s, well, the biggest douche in school.
Trent exits the film after Mikaela leaves him.
Cut to two years later.
In the Friday the 13th remake, directed by Marcus Nispel, Travis Van Winkle plays one of the douchiest characters in the franchise’s history. He’s a self-obsessed asshole who ends up cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend. His character’s name? Trent, described as “a snobbish rich kid who loves to show off his wealth.”
And get this. As if it wasn’t already clear (he even drives virtually the same vehicle), IMDb notes that the character’s full name in Friday the 13th is, you guessed it, Trent DeMarco!
Yes, Travis Van Winkle played the same exact character in Friday the 13th as he did in Transformers; the horror remake reveals that Trent was killed by Jason Voorhees just a couple years after Mikaela dumped his sorry ass!
Now I’m not going to pretend that this means Jason Voorhees exists in the same universe as the Autobots and Decepticons, as it’s really just a fun connection between two Michael Bay films, but there is something undeniably amazing and amusing about a character we hated in Transformers being killed within the Friday the 13th universe.
That’s Jason for ya. Righting the world’s wrongs, one asshole at a time.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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