Jason Goes to Hell is a strange entry in the Friday the 13th franchise, but perhaps could have been made better through the inclusion of Tommy Jarvis in the lead role, as was once intended. Jason Goes to Hell introduced a wide variety of plot points, characters, and rules to Jason’s power and abilities that were ultimately discarded immediately after the movie. The plot follows Jason’s spirit as he possesses different bodies all the while trying to make it to a member of his bloodline so he can be reborn.
Throughout the movie, a bounty hunter named Creighton Duke, played by Steven Williams, maintains that he’s the only one who knows how to kill Jason. Simultaneously, Steven Freeman sees his mother-in-law, Diana, killed in front of his eyes, and learns that in order to save his wife and their daughter he has to defeat Jason.
According to director Adam Marcus, Steven Freeman was originally written to be Tommy Jarvis, but New Line Cinema only owned the rights to Jason and not Tommy or even the Friday the 13th name, so the character was changed. Jason Goes to Hell has a lot of problems, but what might have been different if Tommy Jarvis had been the lead?
Probably one of the biggest problems with Jason Goes to Hell, and the most common complaint that audiences have with the movie, is its convoluted plot. A large part of this issue is the number of characters in the film. The only person in the movie who stands out is Creighton Duke, the bounty hunter, who is an interesting character, but only shows up on the periphery of the plot. However, if the main character is Tommy Jarvis, the audience instantly has someone on screen that ties the movie they’re watching into the rest of the franchise’s continuity. There’s also some balance for Creighton Duke to play off of as well. Additionally, Tommy has already established his knowledge of Jason and ability to fight him in other movies, so the stakes become higher — the audience is suddenly much more invested in his ability to finally defeat Jason for good.
Unlike Steven Freeman, who isn’t super memorable or relatable throughout the movie, Tommy Jarvis is an established part of the franchise canon and a character that audiences already connect with. Having him fight Jason as his mother-in-law and then wife are killed and he struggles to save his baby daughter is much more compelling than watching some random guy do the same thing. Alternatively, another way that Tommy Jarvis could've been included in a more interesting way would be to merge the main character with Creighton Duke’s character. Creighton Duke shares a lot in common with what Friday the 13th audiences would expect to see in an older Tommy Jarvis. So, it could also make a lot of sense to have Duke be replaced with Tommy Jarvis, as his knowledge of Jason would make way more sense. Tommy has fought Jason since he was a child.
This not only rids the movie of one extra character, slimming down the number of names and faces that the audience has to keep track of, but also reduces some of the busyness in the plot if the two characters are merged. While Jason Goes to Hell obviously has a lot of issues, it is a shame that Tommy Jarvis wasn’t able to be included, because he really might have made a difference in allowing the movie to be a bit more compelling. The addition of Tommy Jarvis couldn’t have saved this particular entry to the Friday the 13th franchise single-handedly, but he certainly would have been an improvement.