“A Nightmare on Elm Street” – Photo comics “A Nightmare on Elm Street” – Photo comics
Because of countless continuity errors in every sequel, I don’t accept anything but the first movie as canon. I treat everything else of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise as discontinuity (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisContinuity). Simply because of the fact that it’s logically impossible that the other movies play in the same universe as the first one, even though offical sources of course say otherwise. So, I use this first episode of my “A Nightmare on Elm Street” photo comics to communicate this opinion: The first movie is what “really happened”, but the sequels were just stupid ideas by the producers and writers.
But even though I discard all the sequels, I’m not someone who prefers Wes Craven’s original ending.
In fact, I would have hated that version. If Wes Craven had made the movie the way he intended it, then the whole story would have turned out to be just a dream, with only the very last scene playing in reality. I always find that stupid: So, I watch a movie for 90 minutes only to find out that, even inside the fictitious movie world, it was just fiction? And Nancy was never in real danger since the principle that people die for real when Freddy kills them in their sleep was also just part of a dream and never happened in the movie’s real world? Then the whole film is pointless. Sure, the current version has a bad ending where Freddy wins and all of Nancy’s struggles have been in vain. But in this case, the whole stuff at least happened. If they had used Wes Craven’s intended ending, then her struggles would have been in vain as well since it was just a standard nightmare with nothing supernatural being real at all. She would have woken up even if Freddy had killed her.
So, this is my comic against both alternatives: I see the movie as a standalone movie and don’t accept any sequels. But I don’t see the movie the way Wes Craven originally intended it since, after all, even though he originally created the whole story, his ending and overall intention is just an unproduced pre-version. Instead, I accept the movie the way it actually came out. And I regard the crappy sequels as the lesser of both evils. Because sequels can be ignored if they don’t conform to the spirit of the original anymore. But if Wes Craven had used his version, then that would have been the one and only “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. And had I seen that version, I would have never become a fan, simply because of the fact that the whole events of the film would have been declared null and void in the last scene.