As UPROXX’s Vince Mancini noted in his review, David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot/sequel to John Carpenter’s 1987 original is “is full of this kind of homage, the good kind, where they aren’t just name-checking people and places from the original.” However, Green almost went a little too far with the kinds of homages he wanted his film to make, but Carpenter, who serves as the new film’s executive producer, ultimately talked him out of it.
According to what the director told Entertainment Weekly, the original plan was to use a lookalike of the late actor Donald Pleasence, who played Dr. Loomis in the original film, to reshoot the latter’s ending for the new movie’s beginning. Why? To catch up modern audiences on what happened 40 years prior:
“There was a more involved Loomis notion in a couple of drafts that we did,” says Green. “At one point in the script, we had an opening setup that included the end of the original Halloween in a kind of aerial restaged version. Our art director, coincidentally, on this movie, looks exactly like Donald Pleasence. So, we were like, We’ll just get him to do it, and we’ll do this thing, and we’ll recreate it. Like, Who’s so lucky on their own movie set to have a look-alike of the guy from 40 years ago? [Laughs] It was actually Carpenter’s idea, saying, ‘You don’t need to get people up to speed like that. Just drop them in on your movie.'”
As fans of the original film will remember, Dr. Samuel Loomis was Michael Myers’ psychiatrist and the man who shot “The Shape” and saved Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). This was the scene that Green and company wanted to reshoot, and while they didn’t, the new Halloween does include a clear homage to it towards the end.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
