New ‘Halloween’ Nearly Kept ‘Halloween II’ Canon

One story component that has been heavily featured throughout much of the Halloween franchise is that Michael Myers is motivated by murdering his lineage, whether it be his sister or niece. This year’s sequel ignores that narrative thread completely, which was established in Halloween II, largely to the delight of fans.

“I hung on tight to Halloween II for a while, and [co-writer Danny] McBride was always trying to get me to let it go,” director David Gordon Green shared with CinemaBlend. “And then when we were talking kind of ultimately about the path, and once we got actually into the writing itself, we were just thinking it’s scarier if it’s random.”

In the original 1978 film, Michael Myers kills his sister on Halloween night and is locked away in a mental institution until he escapes 15 years later. Myers heads to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) finding herself at the center of his murder spree.

In Halloween II, which was written by original writers John Carpenter and Debra Hill, it was established that Myers targeted Laurie because they were siblings, with Myers returning home to finish the job he started 15 years ago. In the years since the film’s debut, Carpenter has regularly expressed his regret over this narrative decision, which became nearly as defining of Myers as his iconic white mask.

The reason Green decided to ignore this piece of mythology came down to a scene in the new film where Myers attacks at random, regardless of his potential relation to his victims.

“Our collaborator, Jeff Fradley, wrote the sequence where Michael goes door to door, and had just this thing in his head of this whole one shot thing, and then we’re like, ‘Oh yeah!’ And then when I read that I was like, ‘Okay, but that only works if he’s not just trying to kill his sister, you know?’” Green detailed. “And so that, that was a pivotal scene for me, not only just in the effort that we had in production trying to rehearse it and get it right, but also in terms of accepting that I was going to have to say goodbye to a movie that really liked.”

The earliest reports about the film claimed that the filmmakers were ignoring a majority of the sequels in the franchise, with the first trailer for the film confirming the sibling connection would be ignored, with two characters dismissing the rumor that Laurie and Michael were related. Despite the events of that film being ignored, multiple Easter eggs and references appear in the film that serve as homages to the 1981 sequel.

The new Halloween is in theaters now.

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[H/T CinemaBlend]