Freddy vs Jason (Franchise Comparison): Who's The REAL Victor?!
Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees are two of horror’s most iconic and beloved serial slashers. Ever since New Line Cinema teased the possibility of them sharing the screen together at the end of 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, fans were chomping at the bit to see this head-to-head showdown come to fruition. It’s a good thing that no one held their breath, however, because this horror-movie crossover had been in development hell since 1987, and it wouldn’t manifest into a reality until 2003 when the aptly named Freddy vs. Jason released (just over a decade after Jason Goes to Hell flirted with the concept).
Freddy vs. Jason may have gotten the two brutal murderers together, but screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift eschewed favoring one over the other, crowning the blood-soaked versus battle a (somewhat disappointing) draw. Who can blame them though? After all it’s hard to choose a favorite — especially when you’re a fan of both. But here at Viddy Well, we’re all about considering cinema’s tough questions, so today we’ll be looking at who the real victor is, Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. To do so, we’ll be breaking these two icons down over seven different categories to find out once and for all which horror franchise really reigns supreme.
In order to determine a victor, we’ll break things down into the following categories to see who comes up on top: most interesting backstory/mythos, most powerful, most terrifying, most iconic, least likely to escape alive, highest rated franchise, and total franchise box office earnings. We realize a lot of these are loaded questions and that they’re open to interpretation, so be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below!
With an odd number of categories, this should reduce the possibility of a stalemate, so without further ado, let’s get into it!
Most Interesting Backstory/Mythology:
Like most things, when it comes to Freddy or Jason, it’s all about what you’re in the mood for. Do you want something straightforward and simple (Friday the 13th), or do you want something with more personality and complexity (A Nightmare on Elm Street)? However, regardless of the difference in taste buds, when we put Freddy and Jason’s respective backstories and mythologies side by side, it’s pretty easy to see which one is more interesting — and more well thought out.
In terms of backstory, both characters have it pretty rough, but one is clearly more disturbing than the other. Interestingly enough, they’re both framed around the concept of revenge; although, one franchise uses this more prominently and to much greater affect.
Jason’s is the simpler of the two. He drowned in Crystal Lake because of some irresponsible camp counselors, and then sought out revenge over the decapitation of his mother. From there, his motivation for killing becomes driven by the immoral actions of his teenage victims and/or his own rage over having drowned as a child.
Freddy’s mother, a nurse at an insane asylum, was locked in room with criminals and raped repeatedly, earning him the moniker "the son of a hundred homicidal maniacs" since his true biological father couldn’t be determined. Later in life, he was adopted by an alcoholic Alice Cooper who severely abused him, until Freddy murders him as teen. He tortures animals and takes to self-mutilation before becoming a serial killer who murders the children of the adults that bullied him when he was a child. When the parents of Springwood, Ohio band together to take the law into their own hands, Freddy is burned alive, but his spirit lives on in a dream realm, allowing him to lay havoc on new generations of Springwood teens.
Throughout the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason’s mythology is in a constant state of evolution; he goes from deformed fish-creature to a hulking mongoloid to a decayed, zombified murderer to a supernatural thingamajig to a nano-tech space killer. It hardly feels consistent, as if the creators were making it up as they went along. On the contrary, Freddy’s mythology is firmly cemented in the first film, with each new entry shading in depth and darkness to what was already there. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise also plays with mysticism in more effective ways, particularly with New Nightmare where he becomes a tulpa. With all that said, we think Freddy gets the edge here.
Winner: Freddy Krueger.
Most Powerful:
Both of these slashers are powerful in their own right, so for this category, we’ll look at sheer power. When we frame it in that sense, one of the two is not only more tangible, but their power is also not contingent on any external factors whatsoever.
One of the things that makes Freddy so terrifying is the fact that he can get you while you’re sleeping; however, that also limits his power. He’s restricted (for the most part) to the non-reality fantasy of dreams and dream space, which he manipulates to induce fear and kill his victims — but only if he’s powerful enough to do so. His power is dependent upon him being remembered by the teens and inhabitants of Springwood, and like Freddy vs. Jason show us, if the Springwood residents manage to forget him, he loses almost all of his power and abilities.
On the other hand, Jason is not restricted at all. Campers share stories about him around the camp fire as a kind of spooky urban legend, but he’s not contingent on those stories or his remembrance to exist or reek havoc. As the later entries in the Friday the 13th series show us, he’s not even restricted to Camp Crystal Lake; he’s essentially free to roam as he pleases or sees fit (and he occasionally enjoys taking a cruise to Manhattan on weekends for a nice relaxing getaway). He’s also a hulking mass full of brute force, which gives him the upper hand in this section.
Winner: Jason Voorhees.
Most Terrifying:
Okay, so this one is definitely the most loaded and subjective category in this list. None of us would want to be stuck in a room or situation with either of these dudes because they’re both scary as hell in their own ways.
Freddy evokes a nuanced fear, scaring teens (and moviegoers) by the idea of falling asleep — something which is supposed to be relaxing and revitalizing. Once he has you in that dream world, he milks the scenario, too, toying with his prey like a cat does a mouse, which just adds to the terror.
Jason is a more simplistic, fight-or-flight kind of terror. He doesn’t usually toy with his victims, opting for a swift (and often brutal) death. The fear his encounters produce may be short-lived, but they’re no less terrifying — at least from our perspective.
Trying to answer this dilemma is like asking yourself whether you want to die quickly (say by a heart attack) or slowly over a period of time (say by a terminal illness, like cancer). Sure, one is more sudden than the other, but it’s also surprising and deeply unsettling. The other allows you to accept things and make peace with the situation, but it’s also slow and agonizing. However you boil it down, both options are not great. It may be a cop out, but we’re calling this one a stalemate.
Winner: Draw.
Most Iconic:
Both have of these killers have their iconic qualities and have made their mark on Pop Culture. However, when you start to break things down, one is loaded with more iconography than the other and uses it more consistently across the franchise.
Aside from his large, imposing shape and facial deformity, the qualities that make Jason iconic can be counted on one hand; the machete, the hockey mask, the weird breathing chant of “ki ki ki, ma ma ma.” His giant, hulking silhouette is a rural, wooded riff on Halloween’s suburban stalker Michael Myers, which kind of reduces his impact in our opinion. He also doesn’t always leverage these characteristics in every film. Sometimes he wears a sack on his head. Sometimes his mask changes. He doesn’t always kill with a machete, and, well, you get the point.
Freddy has a lot of more going for him in this respect. He’s got the burned facial disfigurement, his grimy red-and-green striped sweater, brown fedora, and his signature metal-clawed, leather glove. Unlike Jason, Freddy is adorned in these characteristics for the entirety of the series. There’s also not another slasher figure before him that gives him a derivative feel, making him the more innovative of the two. On top of all that, Freddy has personality in excess. He makes us laugh as much as he makes us sweat with fear; whereas, there’s not much humor at all in Jason’s character.
An easy way for us to decide this one is by looking at the two characters as the only dress-up options for the Halloween holiday. When we frame it that way, we absolutely would want to be Freddy, as he’s the more fun of the two and there’s more to him. More so than the visual components that define them, character plays a part in bigger ways when it comes to Krueger, which (for our money) gives him the edge here.
Winner: Freddy Krueger.
Least Likely To Escape Alive:
For this section, we’re looking at the victim’s perspective and deciding which one of these two horror figures presents the least probable likelihood of survival. They’re both effective and efficient killing machines, but if we really split hairs, we think one presents more leeway than the other.
When it comes to Freddy, we feel like there might be some small room for reason. One might be able to strike some kind of deal with Mr. Krueger or talk themselves out of being slain. Not to mention that Freddy’s reign of terror gives his teenage prey time to band together to find a means of collectively taking him down, which is a luxury Jason doesn’t usually provide.
With Jason, there’s no reasoning or discussion. You simply cannot discourse with a hulking mass once its resolved to split you in half with a machete. In most cases, Jason’s victims don’t even know they’re victims until they’re already dead. Aside from tricking him into thinking you’re his mother or a younger version of him (a la Corey Feldman), the only way to escape is to run away, and, well, that just doesn’t work out so swell for a lot of folks. It’s also extremely difficult to formulate a survival plan when you never truly know what you’re up against. No one can really even tell what Jason is thinking, or if he possesses the ability to show mercy, which makes him the more serious threat in our opinion.
Winner: Jason Voorhees.
Highest Rated Franchise:
We aggregated the scores from four major movie databases (iMDB, Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic), convert them to a ten-point scale, and averaged them out to determine which horror icon is the “freshest” of them all. With sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritc, we’ve combined the audience and critic score and averaged them to get the total. We also included both remakes in the results as well. Below are the average score per film, along with the total average score across each franchise:
Friday the 13th:
Friday the 13th: 5.8
Part 2: 5.2
Part III: 4.7
The Final Chapter: 5.3
A New Beginning: 3.8
Jason Lives: 5.7
The New Blood: 4.5
Jason Takes Manhattan: 3.9
Jason Goes to Hell: 3.4
Jason X: 3.8
Freddy vs. Jason: 5.4
Friday the 13th (2009): 4.7
Average score: 4.7
A Nightmare on Elm Street:
A Nightmare on Elm Street: 8.1
Freddy's Revenge: 4.9
Dream Warriors: 6.9
The Dream Master: 5.7
The Dream Child: 4.7
The Final Nightmare: 4.1
New Nightmare: 6.8
Freddy vs. Jason: 5.4
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): 4.1
Average score: 5.6
Winner: With only 9/10s of a point between them, Freddy Krueger takes this one.
Total Franchise Box Office:
To determine this category, we’ll look at the collective, worldwide box office totals for each franchise.
The Friday the 13th franchise has grossed over $529 million at the box-office worldwide. The franchise was initially conceived as a cash in on the success of 1978’s Halloween, so there’s little surprise that it has amassed such fortune. In terms of the U.S. box office, it was once the highest-grossing horror franchise, until it was dethroned by the release of 2018’s Halloween, which put that franchise in the number one slot.
However, we’re not just looking at domestic revenue but that of the world, and the Nightmare on Elm Street films collectively grossed $750 million at the box office worldwide — and that’s amassed across 9 films to Friday the 13th’s 12 — which gives Freddy another victory.
Winner: Freddy Krueger.
So Who’s The Real Victor?:
With one category ending in a stalemate, Freddy Krueger claims a 4-2 triumph over Jason Voorhees, making Freddy the real victor here.
What do you think? Did your horror icon wind up on top?! We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments below, and as always, remember to viddy well!