This evening I was scrolling Facebook, as I do more often than I should, and was advertised an article about the upcoming movie Halloween Kills.  It features one of our favorite psychopathic slashers, Michael Myers, and from what I can tell by the trailer it may be the last time we see him.  The article described a petition started by one Jesse Streeter to have a certain scene removed from the movie.  The scene in question is one where Michael starts a house fire and murders the firefighters responding to it.  Definitely some heavy stuff, but I don’t feel that killing indiscriminately is necessarily out of character for Mikey, in fact most slasher fans would come to expect something like that.

There is a method to the madness, Jesse does claim there’s a reason for expecting the editors to take out an entire, probably expensive and tedious to create, scene from a highly anticipated movie.  I can’t exactly blame Jesse either, I’m sure it comes from a good place.  In their change.org petition description, they provide some background for us, something akin to “My family has a history as being employed as firefighters, I’ll be joining the ranks soon, and this actually happens in real life” referring to the fact that Michael may have specifically called the firefighters (didn’t think he was a talker) so that he could kill them.  In spite of this, I have my doubts that anyone in the actual fandom will find it so jarring.  Lots of stuff that happens in these types of movies happens in real life, that’s what makes it scary.

I can understand the sentiment behind it all but the fact of the matter is that to agree that the scene is “gruesome” is to completely disregard Michael Myers’ entire career as a SERIAL KILLER.  If you’re a true fan of horror, you should probably be used to this sort of stuff, and to take away from a director’s vision and fan’s anticipation for a self-serving purpose isn’t particularly noble in my eyes.  Maybe this seems petty and oppositional for the sake of opposition but if you find any value in a complete piece of cinema, you’ll sign on and try to keep the movie what it is.

also I’m pretty sure elderly folks are murdered in this movie too, so why aren’t we upset about that?