Director compares movie to ‘Batman’ prequel

By RICH COPLEY

LEXINGTON (KY.) HERALD-LEADER

Michael Myers is joining the ranks of James Bond and Batman: characters whose film franchises have been rebooted.

In film, a reboot means taking a series that might be growing long in the tooth and going back to its roots.

“Batman Begins” and last year’s remake of “Casino Royale” explored the origins of their characters and were widely credited with reviving their tail-dragging franchises.

Can that work in horror?

Director Rob Zombie, whose credits include “The Devil’s Rejects” and “House of 1,000 Corpses,” is about to find out with “Halloween.”

“‘Batman Begins’ would be one of the best ways to describe it,” Zombie says. “It’s still the story of Batman. But the way it unfolds and in the story leading up to it, there’s so much more than you’ve been given before.” This “Halloween” gives us more Michael.

“In the first movie, Michael is kind of always spoken about in legend as Dr. Loomis describes him, and he’s kind of like this elusive presence throughout the film,” Zombie says. “I wanted to take a different approach because a lot of my film follows young Michael through his life, through his years at Smith’s Grove, through his escape, through his return to Haddonfield, so that you follow him and he’s a much more realistic character, not just a bogeyman presence.”