Anyone familiar with Sam Raimi’s (‘Oz the Great and Powerful‘) ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy tends to love it. What many fans don’t love, though, is the convoluted mess it can come off as. With ‘Army of Darkness 2‘ in the works Bruce Campbell felt that it was finally time to sit down and properly explain how the original trilogy was supposed to play out.
When you think about it, Ash died at the end of the first ‘Evil Dead’ film. In the second one it seemed as if he somehow lived, escaped, and then returned with a new group of friends. Finally that one somehow ended up transitioning to ‘Army of Darkness’ even though the follow through on getting there didn’t fully sync up.
So want to know what really happened? Well, the way it was supposed to work is that the first movie ended exactly how it was supposed to. There never was supposed to be a sequel, but things being as they are in Hollywood, that doesn’t mean anything.
The second film saw the filmmakers without the rights to the first movie, so instead of continuing where the first one left off and finding a way to for Ash to live, they decided to just reshot a recap the first film with different actors as an introduction of sorts. That’s right, the movie wasn’t really a reboot and the beginning of the film, isn’t Ash going back to the cabin with a new group of friends. It is instead a retelling that ended how they needed it to end in order to have an actual sequel. It wasn’t a sequel, it wasn’t a reboot, “It’s a requel” Campbell joked. As for the last in the trilogy, ‘Army of Darkness’, once again, the filmmakers didn’t own the rights to properly move forward so had problems with the recap in that one as well.
So with all of that convoluted explanation of why it didn’t mesh up right do you want to know how the movies should be watched? Well Bruce has you covered there too!
“If you really want to do it right you take the first ‘Evil Dead’ up to where the evil entity hits me. Cut off all the recap. Go right into Ash being thrown through the trees at the beginning. Lands. Play the movie. Then when he falls from the sky in ‘Evil Dead 2’ have him land in ‘Army of Darkness’ and start the movie. It would all make perfect sense.”
Anyone want to make a cut of all three movies in that order for me? OK that’s wishful thinking.
You can check out Campbell’s full explanation below (the video works better in Chrome) or head over to Den of Geek US.
