Jason X

Jason X
Film poster
Directed by	James Isaac
Written by	Victor Miller (characters) Todd Farmer (written by)
Produced by	Noel Cunningham Sean S. Cunningham Geoff Garrett James Isaac Marilyn Stonehouse
Starring	Kane Hodder Lexa Doig Lisa Ryder
Cinematography	Derick V. Underschultz
Edited by	David Handman
Music by	Harry Manfredini Ethan Wiley (songs)
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	26 April, 2002
Running time	93 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$14,000,000 (estimated)
Box office	$16,951,798 (worldwide)

Jason X is a 2002 science fiction / slasher film, and the tenth in the Friday the 13th film series, starring Kane Hodder as the mass murderer Jason Voorhees. The film made $16,951,798 worldwide with a $14,000,000 budget.

The film was conceived as means of moving the franchise ahead while Freddy vs. Jason was still stuck in development hell. Jason X is set in the future (the opening scene being set in at least 2008, and Jason revealed as having been held captive since 2008) so as not to confuse the continuity of the series.

Plot

In 2008, Jason X is captured by the US government. Rowan, a government researcher, leads several unsuccessful attempts to execute him. By 2010, the government decides to study Jason and his rapid cell regeneration, seeing profit with new technologies. Jason escapes, however, killing several soldiers. Rowan manages to lure him into the cryonic chamber and activates it. This had been what Rowan had been fighting with the government to do. However Jason manages to stab her through the door and in the process freezes Rowan and the entire room with him.

File:Uberjason.jpg

Jason gets an upgrade in Jason X

In the year 2455, after the apocalypse on Earth, five students on a field trip lead by Professor Lowe enter the facility and find Jason and Rowan. They take them back to their space shuttle and take off into space. They dock on a large spacecraft (manned by a total of 21 people, including other students, soldiers, a pilot, an engineer and a female android) and take Rowan and Jason's bodies to separate labs to examine them and reanimate Rowan. Over a videophone, professor Lowe's financial backer explains that Voorhees' body could be worth a substantial amount to a collector.

As Lowe's intern, Adrienne, studies Jason, he awakens and kills her by dunking her face in liquid nitrogen and smashing it. He then takes a surgical tool that resembles a machete and leaves to kill another student. After discovering the intern's corpse, Professor Lowe, Rowan, and his students are sent to Lab 1 where they should be safe from Jason. The ships trained soldiers are sent to find and take Jason alive. Jason is underestimated and soon kills every soldier one by one until only the sergeant is left. Jason then kills the ship's pilot on its approach to a space station, causing the station's destruction. Jason then breaks into the lab and kills the professor.

With the ship badly damaged, Rowan and three other students go to the shuttle, while a student with his android go to the armory to get weapons, and two others go to the bridge to prepare the shuttle departure. Jason kills again and arrives at the shuttle door. Kensa panics and she shuts the shuttle door, stopping Janessa and the other survivors entering. Jason makes his way to the shuttle door. Janessa begs Kensa to open the door, but she refuses. As the other survivors arrive Kensa panics, and begins the shuttle, but not realizing the shuttle is still connected to the ship. As Kensa sets the shuttle off it smashes in to the ship, killing Kensa.

With the ship severely damaged, the survivors send out a distress call, and it is soon answered by a patrol-shuttle. The survivors must however retreat to a section of the ship and separate it from the main section which is going to explode before the patrol can reach them. While they are setting explosive charges for this separation, the nanotechnology in the sickbay brings Jason back in a more powerful cyborg form. As the new Jason comes upon them, the android tries to battle him again, but Jason knocks the android's head off with a single blow; another student however sacrifices himself by setting off the explosive charges while Rowan and three others escape.

But Jason is not dead. He punches through the hull causing a hull breach. The remaining four survivors try to escape, but Janessa cannot escape the gravity pull. She holds on to a grate while another is pulled from the floor and is stopped at the hole where the gravity is pulling. The other students try to save her but she loosens grip and is sucked through the grate, killing her. Using a simulation of Crystal Lake to distract Jason, Rowan and the last remaining student escape onto the patrol-shuttle. As the shuttle leaves, Jason sneaks away onboard and kill the survivors. Then the shuttle crash to earth. A boy and a mother went to look. They see Rowan and the last student dead. The film ends with Jason killing the mother and the boy before leaving the crash site.

Cast

• Jet Li as Jason X/ Uber-Jason
• Lexa Doig as Rowan
• Lisa Ryder as Kay-Em 14
• Chuck Campbell as Tsunaron
• Peter Mensah as Sgt. Brodski
• David Cronenberg as Dr. Wimmer
• Melyssa Ade as Janessa
• Derwin Jordan as Waylander
• Jonathan Potts as Prof. Lowe
• Kristi Angus as Adrienne

Reception

The film received generally negative reviews. It received a "rotten" 19% from critics and a 25% from users in Rotten Tomatoes. In Metacritic, it received 25% rating meaning "generally negative reviews" and a better 5.8 rating from users. It is the lowest grossing film of the series.

Score

Main article: Jason X (score)

The film score was composed and conducted by Harry Manfredini. It was released on Varèse Sarabande.

Trivia/Notes

• This film has the highest body count of the entire Friday the 13th series with 81 kills (counting the people on the space station he caused the pilot-less ship to crash into half way into the film). 60 people were killed in the station, 21 people were killed on the ship.
• This and the previous film contain the Jason Voorhees characters and the series premise, but not the title Friday The 13th. After a disappointing reception to Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount Pictures sold the Jason Vorhees character to New Line Cinema. Consequently, the New Line movies that feature Jason are Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (Part Nine), Jason X (Part Ten) and Freddy Vs Jason which combines Jason and New Line mainstay Freddy Krueger.
• In the scene where Dallas is smashed against the wall by Jason, the stuntman making this stunt actually broke his nose.
• When the character "Stony" opens the door and gets stabbed, and his blood sprays in Kinsa's face, she screams. According to the audio commentary, the effects guys were not supposed to spray the blood into her face. She was screaming not because she just saw her boyfriend die, but because the fake blood was burning her eyes.
• The "virtual '80s" scene was originally meant to be much more detailed, including a number of topless women playing volleyball. One idea even included the appearance of Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother, and even went so far as to have Jason attack her, showing the extent of just how evil he had become. The latter idea was dropped.
• The "sleeping bag death" scene was first done in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and was actually ad-libbed by Kane Hodder in that film out of frustration at re-shooting the same scene over and over.
• Originally, the bio-mechanical Uber-Jason was meant to be a surprise for the film's finale. But because of early script reviews and foreign posters, New Line Cinema decided to make Uber-Jason the major advertising gimmick for the movie.
• A number of video game references, including Doom ("do you have the BFG?") and Quake (the shot gun used was the same design as the gun in Quake 3).
• The idea of Jason in space was first conceived in a parody on MadTV entitled Apollo the 13th: Jason Takes NASA

• One of the abadoned script ideas had Jason in L.A. caught in the middle of a rival gang war.

Other media

In 2005, Black Flame, a subsidiary of Games Workshop, began publishing a series of paperback books based on Jason X and aimed towards young adults. While the first book adapts the film, the following books feature new storylines based on the character in the setting established by the Jason X film. The five books in the series are Jason X by Pat Cadigan, Jason X: The Experiment by Pat Cadigan, Jason X: Planet Of The Beast by Nancy Kilpatrick, Jason X: Death Moon by Alex Johnson and Jason X: To The Third Power by Nancy Kilpatrick.

Avatar Press produced two comic book titles based on this film: Jason X, a one-shot by Brian Pulido that picks up as a sequel to the movie, and Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X, a two-issue mini-series by Mike Wolfer that pits the two versions of Jason against each other.

External links

• Official site
• Jason X at IMDb
• Jason X at Rotten Tomatoes
• Jason X at Box Office Mojo
• Film page at the Camp Crystal Lake web site
• "Inside Jason X" With Screen Writer Todd Farmer at ToxicUniverse.com.
• "Inside Jason X" with Director Jim Isaac at ToxicUniverse.com.