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Mrs. Fenris Watches "Five Nights at Freddies" (SPOILERS)
2 years ago
(SPOILERS)
I suppose the FIRST thing I should say is that I have never played a single FNAF game. Oh I've seen MARKIPLIER play one or two of them, but who hasn't? I know that there's creepy mascots that jump out and go "BOOGABOO", there some guy who's a child killer, and people wanna fuck Chica.
But that's probably about it.
On October the 27th I descended to the city to go and see Five Nights at Freddy's, the Movie, (FNAFtM?) a mystery not even Scooby Doo and his gang could solve.
The movie theater was filled (at least as full as theaters get these days) with a parade of children and young adults. More than a few were dressed as some form of anthropomorphic animatronic.
In the theater they stumbled and milled about, squinting through the shadows at one seat after another, asking the air "Is this our row? Is this our row?" while the screen behind them tried to convince us The Hunger Games was still relevant, and more serious than ever and not just a rip-off of Battle Royale run by Willy Wonka.
Then the movie started. And... ...I was intrigued. It seemed pretty spooky. I had wondered "how does one make a movie out of a game whose mechanics and set-up are preposterous, and of which the story is only highly suggestive?" Yet, it seemed like they could do it.
...And then a little girl with the shining showed up, everyone started building a blanket fort with the evil animatronics, and it ended with a guy in a robot suit mind-controlling ghosts.
As the movie had gone on I sat, becoming ever more confused. No, not about the plot, because that was as simple as could be, but about small things, like
"...Wait, is Mathew Lillard really the same guy who kidnapped the main character's little brother? In Nebraska?"
"Has the little girl with the shining ALWAYS been talking to the FNAF ghost children? Even before her brother went to work at Freddy's?"
"Why is it called FREDDY'S, when it seems like the bunny suit character is the owner?"
"Why would you build an animatronic to be a robot AND a suit, and build it to be an evil death-trap you couldn't get out of? ...Did Mathew Lillard INTENTIONALLY build ghost-trapping evil robot suits? Did he study F Murry Abraham's ghost-trapping technology while he was in Thir13een ghosts? I thought it was just incidental that he hid the children's bodies in the suits?"
"Why TASE the robots? Why not shoot them with bullets? (Oh because I guess they're bullet proof 9_9 )"
I dunno. I guess the stuff that had me kneading my brow didn't matter, because the rest of the theater loved it. Believe me, they certainly did. I knew, because they would erupt into enormous applause all the time, more enthusiastically than I have seen anyone be enthused for any other thing in my entire life. What it WAS they were excited about I wasn't always sure. My wife was there to whisper to me occasionally, and say that the waiter that walked on-screen was a youtuber cameo that everyone was excited to see, and things like that, but other times the audience rose to standing ovation over stuff as innocuous as a casual line from a character or a spoopy shadow in a doorway.
I guess you have to have played the games to get subtle things like that.
So, in summary, I guess the movie just wasn't for me. It was for people who've played the games, and like the games.
Me, I ask questions like "I thought the scary animatronics were the bad guys in the games, so why do I see so many people attributing finely detailed and nuanced personalities to these things as though stuff like that was revealed canon? Why, when they're stuffed with dead children, do so many people want to fuck Chica, or Foxy? (ESPECIALLY Foxy, if the theater audience was to be used as a barometer). Would this have been better if it was just ghosts possessing animatronics, or if the ghosts were left out and it was all advanced, evil robots that went crazy, instead of trying to be BOTH?"
Never have I felt so out of touch.
Oh, and I also learned that Mathew Lillard's child-killing character was definitely not a pedophile. JUST a child-killer. Who did creepy stuff like wear a bunny suit, lure children away in his spooky pizza parlor, and then kill them. But he definitely didn't touch them while he was doing it. This was made VERY clear to me.
I suppose the FIRST thing I should say is that I have never played a single FNAF game. Oh I've seen MARKIPLIER play one or two of them, but who hasn't? I know that there's creepy mascots that jump out and go "BOOGABOO", there some guy who's a child killer, and people wanna fuck Chica.
But that's probably about it.
On October the 27th I descended to the city to go and see Five Nights at Freddy's, the Movie, (FNAFtM?) a mystery not even Scooby Doo and his gang could solve.
The movie theater was filled (at least as full as theaters get these days) with a parade of children and young adults. More than a few were dressed as some form of anthropomorphic animatronic.
In the theater they stumbled and milled about, squinting through the shadows at one seat after another, asking the air "Is this our row? Is this our row?" while the screen behind them tried to convince us The Hunger Games was still relevant, and more serious than ever and not just a rip-off of Battle Royale run by Willy Wonka.
Then the movie started. And... ...I was intrigued. It seemed pretty spooky. I had wondered "how does one make a movie out of a game whose mechanics and set-up are preposterous, and of which the story is only highly suggestive?" Yet, it seemed like they could do it.
...And then a little girl with the shining showed up, everyone started building a blanket fort with the evil animatronics, and it ended with a guy in a robot suit mind-controlling ghosts.
As the movie had gone on I sat, becoming ever more confused. No, not about the plot, because that was as simple as could be, but about small things, like
"...Wait, is Mathew Lillard really the same guy who kidnapped the main character's little brother? In Nebraska?"
"Has the little girl with the shining ALWAYS been talking to the FNAF ghost children? Even before her brother went to work at Freddy's?"
"Why is it called FREDDY'S, when it seems like the bunny suit character is the owner?"
"Why would you build an animatronic to be a robot AND a suit, and build it to be an evil death-trap you couldn't get out of? ...Did Mathew Lillard INTENTIONALLY build ghost-trapping evil robot suits? Did he study F Murry Abraham's ghost-trapping technology while he was in Thir13een ghosts? I thought it was just incidental that he hid the children's bodies in the suits?"
"Why TASE the robots? Why not shoot them with bullets? (Oh because I guess they're bullet proof 9_9 )"
I dunno. I guess the stuff that had me kneading my brow didn't matter, because the rest of the theater loved it. Believe me, they certainly did. I knew, because they would erupt into enormous applause all the time, more enthusiastically than I have seen anyone be enthused for any other thing in my entire life. What it WAS they were excited about I wasn't always sure. My wife was there to whisper to me occasionally, and say that the waiter that walked on-screen was a youtuber cameo that everyone was excited to see, and things like that, but other times the audience rose to standing ovation over stuff as innocuous as a casual line from a character or a spoopy shadow in a doorway.
I guess you have to have played the games to get subtle things like that.
So, in summary, I guess the movie just wasn't for me. It was for people who've played the games, and like the games.
Me, I ask questions like "I thought the scary animatronics were the bad guys in the games, so why do I see so many people attributing finely detailed and nuanced personalities to these things as though stuff like that was revealed canon? Why, when they're stuffed with dead children, do so many people want to fuck Chica, or Foxy? (ESPECIALLY Foxy, if the theater audience was to be used as a barometer). Would this have been better if it was just ghosts possessing animatronics, or if the ghosts were left out and it was all advanced, evil robots that went crazy, instead of trying to be BOTH?"
Never have I felt so out of touch.
Oh, and I also learned that Mathew Lillard's child-killing character was definitely not a pedophile. JUST a child-killer. Who did creepy stuff like wear a bunny suit, lure children away in his spooky pizza parlor, and then kill them. But he definitely didn't touch them while he was doing it. This was made VERY clear to me.
(checking his Wikipedia page, yyyep, he sure is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Cawthon)
Some of the later games do introduce the animatronics in their not-trying-to-kill-you states and they do have personalities, though while they're more fleshed out and 'alive' than Exceedingly Basic Programming like you'd expect of animatronics, I definitely wouldn't call them Nuanced. There's a layer of mystery on things, so there's ROOM for that nuance to exist, I suppose, but. Egh.
My take on the horny thing is very much something I apply broadly, which is that it's very easy for people to lift visual designs out of their context, or discard elements that are undesired, to transform them into new ideas in their head. Especially if they're first introduced to these designs and characters outside of their original context, e.g. furry artists. (And even for those who are building on the fan-lore and not just taking an anthro design and making it fuckable, not a lot of people really focus on the age of the ghosts if the ghosts are even relevant, in my experience.)
Really, I think the important takeaway from all of this, for me personally, is that Lillard is still getting work.
Freddy is the main character of the pizzaria.
There's two walk-around suits, both yellow-gold in color.
One is of Freddy, which is the damaged one you see collecting Abby, which is the fifth ghost kid, the blonde boy that actually talks to the main character.
The other one is of Bonnie, which is the one you see Afton wearing, I think purposefully since Bonnie's a sidekick character and thus wouldn't be the center of attention.
I don't even like the actual game-play of the first 4 cause I'm not good with multiple task management, but I will absolutely research the hell out of them to find every last secret I can. Its why A: I'm looking forward to seeing the movie this up coming Tuesday (Matpatt from Game Theory is part of a cameo in it along with (supposedly) Markiplier). B: I have tons of FNAF stuff from the games (post FNAF 4) to all the books and even a few pieces of merch.