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Jason X

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Jason X
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJim Isaac
Written byTodd Farmer
Based onCharacters
by Victor Miller
Produced byNoel Cunningham
StarringKane Hodder
CinematographyDerick V. Underschultz
Edited byDavid Handman
Music byHarry Manfredini
Production
companies
Distributed byNew Line Cinema
Release dates
  • November 2001 (2001-11) (Spain)
  • April 26, 2002 (2002-04-26) (United States)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$11–$14 million[2][3]
Box office$16.9 million[2]

Jason X[a] is a 2001 American science fiction slasher film directed by Jim Isaac, written by Todd Farmer and starring Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell and Kane Hodder in his fourth and final appearance as Jason Voorhees. It is the tenth installment in the Friday the 13th film series. It introduces his futuristic counterpart, Uber Jason.

Conceived by Todd Farmer as the only pitch he gave to the studio, suggesting sending Jason into space as a means to advance the film series.[4]

Jason X was theatrically released in the U.S. on April 26, 2002, grossing $17 million on a budget of $11–14 million and received negative reviews from critics. It is followed by Freddy vs. Jason, a crossover with the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series.

Plot

In the year 2010, Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is captured by the United States government and held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. Government scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) decides to place Jason in frozen stasis after several failed attempts to kill him. While Private Samuel Johnson (Jeff Geddis) places a blanket on Jason, Dr. Wimmer (David Cronenberg), Sergeant Marcus (Markus Parilo), and a few soldiers hope to further research Jason's rapid cellular regeneration and try to take Jason. They pull off the blanket covering his body, but find Johnson dead, instead. Having broken free of his restraints, Jason kills the soldiers and Wimmer. Rowan lures Jason into a cryogenic pod and activates it. Jason then ruptures the pod with his machete and stabs Rowan in the abdomen, spilling cryogenic fluid into the sealed room and freezing them both.

445 years later (2455), Earth has become too polluted to support life and humans have moved to a new planet, Earth Two. Three students, Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell), Janessa (Melyssa Ade), and Azrael (Dov Tiefenbach), are on a field trip led by Professor Braithwaite Lowe (Jonathan Potts), who is accompanied by an android, KM-14 (Lisa Ryder). They enter the Crystal Lake facility and find the still-frozen Jason and Rowan, whom they bring to their spaceship, the Grendel. Also on the ship are Lowe's remaining students, Kinsa (Melody Johnson), Waylander (Derwin Jordan), and Stoney (Yani Gellman). They reanimate Rowan while Jason is pronounced dead and left in the morgue. Lowe's intern, Adrienne Thomas (Kristi Angus), is ordered to dissect Jason's body. Lowe, who is in serious debt, calls his financial backer Dieter Perez (Robert A. Silverman), of the Solaris, who recognizes Jason's name and notes that Jason's body could be worth a substantial amount to a collector.

While Stoney and Kinsa are having sex, Jason thaws out and attacks Adrienne, then freezes her face with liquid nitrogen before smashing her head to pieces on a counter. Jason takes a machete-shaped surgical tool and makes his way through the ship. He stabs Stoney in the chest and drags him to his death, to Kinsa's horror. Sergeant Brodski (Peter Mensah) leads a group of soldiers to attack Jason. Meanwhile, Jason enters a projected holographic game and attacks and kills Dallas by bashing his skull against the wall after breaking Azrael's back. He then tries to attack Crutch, but Brodski and his soldiers save him. Jason disappears; after Brodski splits up his team, Jason kills them one by one.

Lowe orders Pilot Lou (Boyd Banks) to dock in on Solaris, a nearby space station. As he is talking with the Solaris engineer, he is hacked apart by Jason. With no pilot, the ship crashes through Solaris, destroying it, and killing Dieter Perez and everyone else on the Solaris. The crash damages one of the Grendel's pontoon sections. Jason breaks into the lab, reclaims his machete and decapitates Lowe.

With the ship badly damaged, the remaining survivors head for Grendel's shuttle, while Tsunaron heads elsewhere with KM-14. After finding Lou's remains, Crutch (Philip Williams) and Waylander prepare the shuttle. Rowan finds Brodski, but he is too heavy for her to carry, so she leaves to get help. Waylander leaves to help with him, while Crutch prepares the shuttle. Jason kills Crutch by electrocution. On board the shuttle, Kinsa hears of Crutch's death and has a panic attack. She attempts to escape alone and leave everyone else for dead by launching the shuttle but forgets to release the fuel line, causing it to crash into the ship's hull and explode, killing her. Tsunaron reappears with an upgraded KM-14, complete with an array of weapons and new combat skills. KM-14 cartwheels and fights Jason off and seemingly kills him, knocking him into a nanite-equipped medical station and blasting off his right arm, left leg, right rib cage, and, finally, part of his head. The survivors send a distress call and receive a reply from a patrol shuttle.

The survivors set explosive charges to separate the remaining pontoon from the main drive section. As they work, Jason is accidentally brought back to life by the damaged medical station, rebuilt as an even more powerful cyborg. Jason easily defeats KM-14 by punching her head off. As Tsunaron picks up her still-functioning head, Jason attacks them but is stopped by Waylander, who sacrifices himself by setting off the charges while the others escape. Jason survives and is blown back onto the shuttle. He punches a hole through the hull, blowing out Janessa. A power failure with the docking door forces Brodski to go EVA to fix it.

Meanwhile, a hard light holographic simulation of Crystal Lake is created to distract Jason, along with two virtual teenagers to distract him, which works at first but he sees through the deception just as the door is fixed. Brodski confronts Jason so that the rest can escape. As they leave, the pontoon explodes, propelling Jason at high speed towards the survivors; however, Brodski intercepts Jason in mid-flight and maneuvers them both into the atmosphere of Earth Two, incinerating them. Tsunaron, Rowan, and KM-14 celebrate having escaped successfully, and Tsunaron assures KM-14 that he will build a new body for her.

On Earth Two, a pair of teenagers beside a lake see what they believe is a falling star as Jason's charred mask sinks to the bottom of the lake. The teenagers go to investigate.

Cast

Production

Development of Jason X began in the late 1990s while Freddy vs. Jason was still in development hell. With Freddy vs. Jason not moving forward, Jim Isaac and Sean S. Cunningham decided that they wanted another Friday the 13th film made to retain audience interest in the character. The film was conceived by Todd Farmer, who plays "Dallas" in the film, and was the only pitch he gave to the studio for the movie, having suggested sending Jason into space as a means to advance the film series.[4]

The film was filmed during the summer of 1999 in Toronto.[5] The film score was composed and conducted by Harry Manfredini. It was released by Varèse Sarabande on May 14, 2002.[6]

Release

Jason X was released in November 2001 in Spain,[7] and on 26 April 2002 in Los Angeles and New York.[8] A theatrical trailer was released on 9 November 2001.[9][10]

Box office

The film made $13.1 million in the U.S. and $3.8 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $16.9 million, becoming one of the worst-performing films in the series, after Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell, which made $14.3 million and $15.9 million, respectively.[2]

Critical reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 20% based on 106 reviews and an average rating of 3.56/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Jason goes to the future, but the story is still stuck in the past".[11] On Metacritic the film has a score of 25 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[12] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[13]

Roger Ebert gave the movie 0.5 stars out of 4, quoting one of the film's lines: "This sucks on so many levels."[14]

However, the film was better received in the United Kingdom, gaining positive reviews from the country's two major film magazines, Total Film[15] and Empire.[16] Empire's review by Kim Newman in particular praised Jason X as "Wittily scripted, smartly directed and well-played by an unfamiliar cast, this is a real treat for all those who have suffered through the story so far."

Despite the initially negative reception from critics, the film has recently seen a retrospective growth in popularity, particularly among younger fans of the series.[17][18] Praise has been directed at the film's ability to poke fun at itself and the film series as a whole, as well as inventive death scenes; Adrienne's death in particular (head frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then shattered against a table) is often singled out as a highlight, and was even tested on an episode of MythBusters in 2009.[19]

Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD on October 8, 2002.[20] It was released on Blu-ray in 2013, with all of the films in the Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection set.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Pronounced as the letter X, not 10

See also

References

  1. ^ "Jason X (2000)". British Film Institute. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c "Jason X (2002)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
  3. ^ "Friday the 13th Franchise Box Office History - The Numbers". www.the-numbers.com.
  4. ^ a b Cairns, Bryan. "An Interview with Jason X Writer Todd Farmer". IGN. Retrieved April 7, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ Rowe, Michael (March 2002). "Jason X Kills in Space". Fangoria (210): 44–48 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ^ "Jason X (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)". AllMusic. June 11, 2018.
  7. ^ Grove, David (February 2005). Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood. United Kingdom: FAB Press. p. 212. ISBN 1903254310.
  8. ^ "Jason X (2002)". American Film Institute. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  9. ^ "JASON X Trailer Kicks Arse!!!". Ain't It Cool News. Retrieved June 15, 2018.
  10. ^ "Jason X Trailer". YouTube. Retrieved June 15, 2018.
  11. ^ "Jason X (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  12. ^ "Jason X Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
  13. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
  14. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Jason X Movie Review & Film Summary (2002)". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
  15. ^ "Jason X review | GamesRadar". Totalfilm.com. September 11, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
  16. ^ Kim Newman (October 11, 2015). "Jason X Review | Movie - Empire". Empireonline.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
  17. ^ "A Look Back at Jason X". bloodydisgusting.com. April 26, 2017. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  18. ^ "In Defense of Jason X". nerdist.com. October 15, 2016. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  19. ^ "Shattering Heads". discovery.com. November 4, 2009. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  20. ^ Kipnnis, Jill (August 24, 2002). "DVD ASAP". Billboard. Vol. 114, no. 34. p. 62.
  21. ^ Harrison, William (September 13, 2013). "Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection (Blu-ray)". DVD Talk. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
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