Jason X (2001)—Desperation and Madness Rolled into One
Happy Friday the 13th, folks. To celebrate the infamous day of bad luck, I’ve decided to take a look back at the most iconic franchise aptly named after this day. Remember Jason Voorhees? The invincible undead killer of teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake? What if we set a Friday the 13th movie…in space? Oh wait, they killed him off for good in Jason Goes to Hell. But that’s never stopped anyone from bringing him back. Now sit back, relax and experience what a hockey mask-wearing, machete wielding super zombie does…in space!
The year is 2008 and Jason Voorhees (played by Kane Hodder) is captured by the U.S. Government. Despite numerous attempts at killing him, the government is unable to. So they decide to put him in cryogenic stasis. Because that’s smart. But before they can do so, Jason breaks free and kills his way out. Dr. Rowan LaFontaine (played by Lexa Doig) lures him to the cryogenics chamber but a leak in the chamber ends up freezing both of them. We then cut to the year 2455 where a group of students on a scientific exploration field trip discover both Rowan and Jason. Bringing the two on the ship, the Grendel, they use nanobots to heal Rowan whilst Jason is used for dissection. However, Jason awakens and begins a killing spree aboard the ship.
To this movie’s credit, it does set the future in 2455. A date that’s so intangible that you could realistically believe the technology. Too many movies set in the future are only set in years like 2019, 2024 or 2049 whilst presenting technology way beyond our grasp (I never got my cyborg body, Ghost in the Shell!). However, that is also the film’s detriment. The characters use nanobots to do practically everything. Regrow physical limbs? Nanobots! Bring someone back from the dead? Nanobots! Give someone physical enhancements that would make Bane from Batman blush? Nanobots! They can do it all! Forget stem cell research. We should be focusing on funding nanobot research.
Considering the fact this franchise had a Carrie-esque psychic in one film, Jason becoming a body-snatching demon heart in another, and even going to New York (although NOT to pursue any dream of making it on Broadway), when I say that THIS is the most unhinged movie in the series by far, I don’t mean it lightly. Jason ends up killing AN ENTIRE SPACE STATION!!! It makes sense how he could easily take out drunk and high teenagers on his home turf. But he spends the entirety of the film in an unfamiliar setting. Yet he’s easily taking out highly trained military personnel armed with futuristic weapons. Is he Rambo now? If he used his newfound tactical prowess against Freddy Krueger, Freddy vs. Jason would’ve lasted a mere five minutes. And yet, this is not where the madness ends.
It actually culminates at the film’s midway point where Jason is confronted by a female android named Kay-Em 14. Armed with multiple firearms and a dominatrix getup, Kay-Em 14 blasts Jason to hell and back. However, those damn nanobots bring him back to life with a few biological upgrades giving us…UBER JASON. I’ll admit, UBER JASON has a really cool design. Yet, it also leaves you scratching your head at its absurdness. His existence is still entirely stupid. How did they even come up with this? And the worst part is that Kay-Em looks like a discount Alice from the Resident Evil movies (specifically one of the later ones), even though the first one wouldn’t come out for at least another year. I guess no matter what, we can never escape that franchise even in a slasher film set in space.
The dialogue further contributes to the film’s insanity simply by being self-aware. It knows what genre it is, and makes fun of itself all the way. And while we do get some good laughs and amusing moments, it doesn’t always land and sometimes tries so hard it loops around from clever to just being stupid. A good example of this is when Sergeant Brodski gets stabbed by Jason. He quips that it’ll “take a lot more than a poke in the ribs to put this old dog down”, to which Jason responds by…stabbing him again. Haha, I guess? Or when one of Brodski’s commando’s reports back to him that one of his men is “screwed” upon seeing the corpse sliding down a large drill. Yeah, these jokes suck.
Funnily enough, Jason X features two major cast members (Lexa Doig and Lisa Ryder) from another space opera show from the early 2000s called Andromeda. And after watching an episode of Andromeda, I feel like Jason X is some bizarre else-worlds tangent from said show. The only difference is that Jason X’s sci-fi setting somehow looks even more generic than Andromeda’s and Lexa Doig replaces Kevin Sorbo as the de facto leader. Oh, and no one present is a “Nietzschean”. And considering Frederick Nietzsche is the philosopher people read to be edgy, I think that’s a good thing. Did the director just really like Andromeda and just decide to make a Friday the 13th film around that premise? It also doesn’t help that Jason X began filming during Andromeda’s debut.
Unlike some of the more notorious entries in this franchise, I have a really tough time deciding whether Jason X is truly an awful film or if it’s so bad it’s good. While it’s awesome seeing UBER JASON wreak havoc, the entire movie feels like a conjoined gaggle of desperation and madness. It’s obvious New Line Cinema wanted to release Freddy vs Jason first, but since the movie was stuck in production hell, they decided to just release something to keep fans interested. And at the end of it, it all just feels like a desperate attempt at prolonging a dying franchise. But whatever lies in store for this franchise’s future, nothing will ever top Brodski tackling UBER JASON into orbit like a reverse Joseph Joestar.
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