It was kind of a sad day when Robert Englund recently announced that he’s too old to take on the role of famed dream stalker Freddy Krueger any longer. It was enough to douse the hopes and dreams, pun totally intended, of a great many horror fans that grew up being scared to death by Krueger and wanting more as they continued to take in every movie and appearance of the demented dream demon. While hope isn’t entirely lost on that front, as Englund might be able to come back as the voice of said killer in an animated version, more on that later, there is an idea that he approves of that could keep the movies alive for the time being if only because it’s something that’s never been done before, amazingly enough. One would think that we’d seen just about everything Krueger could do since he’s terrorized more than a couple of generations and has even gone outside of Elm Street when he took on Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason. But there is one place we haven’t really seen examined as more than a brief origin story in the movies, and that’s how Freddy got his start at being a cold-blooded killer, or a pedophile if an origin story was to go by the canon of the most recent movie. Englund had this to say about a prequel to the movies, as provided by Andrew Marshall of We Got This Covered:
“I think that the franchise probably deserves a really good prequel. There’s never been an entire movie devoted to Freddy before he was burned and the crimes and getting caught by the police and going on trial and getting away with killing children. We know that he was set free, so to me, the great part in the prequel is gonna be the lawyers, the lawyers that get him off. These ambulance-chasing lawyers (or whatever they are) that get Freddy off and then, of course, the ending would be the vigilante parents burning him. That would be the end of the movie, but I think there’s a great story there somewhere … I think it could sustain 90 minutes.”
To hear the man that made the monster say this is nothing but uplifting since it means that there’s a chance that someone might actually be thinking about it now given that it’s not a bad idea really. Seeing how Freddy came to be who he was in the movies, a murderous maniac that somehow managed to escape the law due to a technicality, would be kind of interesting. But it would also indicate that the movie could get dark in a hurry no matter if he was simply a murderer or a pedophile since when one thinks about his earliest murders it has to be remember that he had to be a lot more devious and demented in his ways than he was as a dream stalker, especially given his limitations and the idea that he could be caught. It’s kind of a hope that we might even get to see how Freddy’s mother was affected by her conception of him since the whole idea of ‘son of a 1,000 maniacs‘ that comes from the movies is enough to think that Freddy was never quite right from the start and that he was predestined to become someone that would wish to see rivers of blood flowing by thanks to his work. It sounds demented in a way but his prequel could be something that would better explain the why and how of his character and give people a better understanding of just how monumentally screwed up this character really was. Heck, it might even make some people sympathetic to him despite the fact that he really was a monster given human form.
It’s hard to say if this is going to happen since ideas come and go all the time and even those that sound great get dumped by the wayside by those that don’t think they’d come out right in the writer’s room. Sadly though some of those that never make it past the personal bias of the writers, directors, and producers tend to be ideas that could have made all the difference between success and failure. This time around it’s a big hope that someone will actually see the benefit of this idea and agree that it might actually shine a huge light on the character and expose him in a way that will make people understand Freddy just a little more while still reviling him as the monster he was created to be. He’s been a favored movie monster for so long that giving him another run doesn’t sound like a bad idea, and being able to show him in human form this time would be kind of intriguing.
Before I forget though, there is an idea floating around the rumor mill about Englund being up for taking on a voice role if there’s ever an animated version of Nightmare on Elm Street, but as Mike Jones of Screenrant states it’s not all that likely to happen. Never say never though, as horror movie fans are bound to pick up on the idea if it gains enough traction.
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