The pitting of two cinematic idols against one another is nothing new, with Godzilla vs. Kong only the latest example of dozens of such battles. And now, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have used a moment from its trailer to poke fun at a common complaint of their own attempt at such a pairing, Freddy vs. Jason.
The 2003 slasher saw the first canonical time that the icons of teenage slaughtering appeared on screen together (unless you count Freddy’s glove showing up at the end of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday to drag Jason’s mask to the underworld), and saw a scheme by Freddy to use Jason to regain his power backfire when the fear he intended to siphon is attributed to Jason instead. A common criticism of the movie is the script giving Jason a fear of water that had never before been brought up, which Shannon and Swift tacitly referenced in a tweet.
If you watched the previous movies you’d know that Kong was never afraid of water before this is bullshit pic.twitter.com/owo2vXiJu4
— Shannon & Swift (@shannonandswift) January 24, 2021
Like that trailer shot isn’t suggesting Kong is afraid of the water but rather wary of the situation, the point they’re making is that they didn’t make Jason afraid of water specifically, but rather acknowledge that even a twice-undead madman can suffer PTSD from having almost drowned as a small boy. Also, as the moment in question occurs in the dream world, Freddy’s domain, deep-seated trauma can be awoken in a way that Jason would have never before faced in reality.
There are plenty of things for which you can criticize Freddy vs. Jason for, such as bad CGI, too much focus on its generic assortment of teenagers, an out-of-place piece of overt racism and wallowing in subgenre clichés which by that point had been deconstructed for years, but spending the best part of two decades ridiculing a minor plot hole that arguably doesn’t even count as one is definitely a bit silly.