Jason X Information

Jason X is a 2001 science fiction horror slasher film directed by James Isaac. It is the tenth in the Friday the 13th film series and stars Kane Hodder as the undead mass murderer Jason Voorhees, the film made $16,951,798 worldwide with a budget of $14 million. Thus far, it is the last appearance of Kane Hodder in the role of Jason Voorhees.

The film was conceived by Todd Farmer and was the only pitch he gave to the studio for the movie, having suggested sending Jason into space as a means to advance the franchise while Freddy vs. Jason was still in development hell and is set in the future so as not to confuse the continuity of the series.

Plot

In 2008, Jason Voorhees is captured by the United States government and held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. In 2010, Rowan LaFontaine, a government scientist, decides to place Jason in cryogenic suspension after several attempts to kill him. While Private Samuel Johnson places a blanket on Jason, Doctor Aloysius Bartholomew Wimmer, Sergeant Marcus, and a few soldiers hope to further research Jason's rapid cellular regeneration and try to take Jason. They pull off the blanket covering his body, but find Johnson dead instead. Having broken free of his restraints, Jason kills the soldiers. Rowan lures Jason into a cryonic pod and activates it. However, Jason ruptures the pod with his machete and stabs Rowan in the abdomen, spilling cryonic fluid into the sealed room and freezing them both.

In the year 2455, Earth has become too polluted to support life and humanity has moved to a new planet, Earth Two. Three students, Tsunaron, Janessa and Azrael are on a field trip led by Professor Brandon Lowe who is accompanied by an android, KM-14. They enter the Crystal Lake facility and find the still frozen Jason and Rowan, whom they bring to their spaceship, the Grendel. Also on the ship are Lowe's remaining students, Kinsa, Waylander and Stoney. They reanimate Rowan while Jason is pronounced dead and left in the morgue. Lowe's intern, Adrienne, is ordered to dissect Jason's body. Lowe, who is in serious debt, calls his financial backer Dieter Perez of the Solaris, who notes that Jason's body could be worth a substantial amount to a collector.

While Stoney has sex with Kinsa, Jason comes back to life and attacks Adrienne and then freezes her face with liquid nitrogen before smashing her head on a counter. Jason takes a machete-shaped surgical tool and makes his way through the ship. He stabs Stoney in the chest and drags him away, to Kinsa's horror. Sergeant Brodski leads a group of soldiers to attack Jason. Meanwhile, Jason attacks and kills Dallas and Azrael. He then tries to attack Crutch, but Brodski and his soldiers save him. Jason disappears, and after Brodski splits up his team, Jason kills them.

Lowe orders Pilot Lou to dock in on Solaris. As he is talking with the Solaris engineer, he is killed by Jason. With no pilot, the ship crashes through a nearby space station, destroying it, and killing Dieter Perez and everyone else on the Solaris. The crash damages one of the Grendel's pontoon sections. Jason breaks into the lab, reclaims his machete and decapitates Lowe.

With the ship badly damaged, the remaining survivors head for Grendel's shuttle, while Tsunaron heads elsewhere with KM-14. After finding Lou's remains, Crutch and Waylander prepare the shuttle. Rowan finds Brodski, but he is too heavy for her to carry, so she leaves to get help. Waylander leaves to help with him, while Crutch prepares the shuttle. Jason kills Crutch. On board the shuttle, Kinsa has a panic attack and launches the shuttle without releasing the fuel line, causing it to crash into the ship's hull and explode. Brodski attacks Jason, but is overpowered. Tsunaron reappears with an upgraded KM-14, complete with an array of weapons and new combat skills. She fights Jason off and seemingly kills him, knocking him into a nanite-equipped medical station, and blasting off his right arm, left leg, his right rib cage and finally part of his head. The survivors send a distress call and receive a reply from a patrol shuttle.

The survivors set explosive charges to separate the remaining pontoon from the main drive section. As they work, Jason is brought back to life by the damaged medical station, rebuilt as an even more powerful cyborg called Uber-Jason. Jason easily defeats KM-14 by punching her head off. As Tsunaron picks up her still functioning head, Jason attacks them, but is stopped by Waylander, who sacrifices himself by setting off the charges while the others escape. Jason survives and is blown back onto the shuttle. He punches a hole through the hull, sucking out Janessa. A power failure with the docking door forces Brodski to go EVA to fix it.

Meanwhile, a hard light holographic simulation of Crystal Lake is created to distract Jason, but he sees through the deception just as the door is fixed. Brodski confronts Jason so the rest can escape. As they leave, the pontoon explodes, propelling Jason at high-speed towards the survivors, however, Brodski intercepts Jason in mid-flight and manoeuvres them both into the atmosphere of Earth Two, incinerating them. Tsunaron assures KM-14 that he will build a new body for her.

On the planet, two teens beside a lake see a "falling star" as Jason's charred mask sinks to the bottom of the lake.

Cast

• Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees / Uber Jason
• Lexa Doig as Rowan LaFontaine
• David Cronenberg as Dr. Wimmer
• Lisa Ryder as KM 14
• Jonathan Potts as Professor Brandon Lowe
• Peter Mensah as Sergeant Brodski
• Melyssa Ade as Janessa
• Melody Johnson as Kinsa
• Phillip Williams as Crutch
• Derwin Jordan as Waylander
• Dov Tiefenbach as Azrael
• Amanda Brugel as Geko
• Chuck Campbell as Tsunaron
• Kristi Angus as Adrienne Thomas
• Yani Gellman as Stoney
• Todd Farmer as Dallas

Production

Development

Development of Jason X began in the late nineties while Freddy vs. Jason was still stuck in development hell. With Freddy vs. Jason not moving forward, Sean S. Cunningham decided that he wanted another Friday the 13th film made to retain audience interest in the character. The film was conceived by Todd Farmer, who plays "Dallas" in the film, and was the only pitch he gave to the studio for the movie, having suggested sending Jason into space as a means to advance the franchise while Freddy vs. Jason was still in development hell.

Music

The film score was composed and conducted by Harry Manfredini. It was released on Varèse Sarabande. Jason Xs theme song is "Bodies" by Drowning Pool from their album Sinner.

Reaction

Box office

The film made $13,121,555 domestically, making it the lowest-grossing film in the series. It earned $3,830,243 foreign for a worldwide gross of $16,951,798.

Critical reception

The film received unfavorable reviews, holding a "Rotten" rating of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 102 reviews, with the consensus being that "Jason goes to the future, but the story is still stuck in the past." Metacritic shows the film as having "generally unfavorable" reviews based on 23 critics, with a score of 25/100. American film critic Roger Ebert wrote a scathing review of the film, quoting one of the film's lines: "This sucks on so many levels."

However, the film was better received in the United Kingdom, gaining positive reviews from the country's two major film magazines, Total Film and Empire. Empires review by Kim Newman in particular praised Jason X as "Wittily scripted, smartly directed and well-played by an unfamiliar cast, this is a real treat for all those who have suffered through the story so far."

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 story lines 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 (original-classic Jason vs Uber Jason) against each other.

The scene where Jason freezes Adrienne's head in liquid nitrogen before smashing it to pieces was the subject of an episode of MythBusters. The team built several fake heads, dipped them in liquid nitrogen and attempted to smash them with a robotic arm. The myth was declared "busted" after none of the heads appeared to replicate the effect in the movie.