the five nights at freddy's movie was short of amazing. spoilers ahead, so this is me heeding a final warning before i talk about the good the bad and the ugly!
unfortunately, i'm biased. i grew up with fnaf. i was there when the first game released and i was there buying every game that released afterwards on my ipad when i was nine. this movie is kind of the epitome of everything i've been dreaming of as a kid. the fact that it even happened and it was possible is enough to sway me into loving the movie. but... despite all that... i'm not all that happy with the way the story was presented.
family tree crisis
if you know a thing or two about fnaf lore, you'd know the family tree by now. i'll draw a little picture to demonstrate.
listen, i wholeheartedly understand why they didn't make mike an alias and him being related to william. the afton family has such a deep complicated history and it all predates the fnaf 1 game which means that if you were to start from the beginning or even at the point where william develops the desire to kill kids, you'd have to invest a lot of run time and money into a movie that would probably flop cause you wouldn't have even gotten to the fnaf 1 location in time.
now, in the fnaf lore since evan is william's son, him dying had a severe psychological impact on william's psyche. what was even worse was the realization that souls were real and could possess the animatronics he made. this event is what drove william to attempting murder via circus baby from the sister location games. we all know that in trying to kill a child using her he accidentally killed his own daughter. but i'll talk about why evan dying and possessing fredbear was more important than elizabeth's death later.
this event also severely damages michael's psyche as well. he's forever haunted by the fact that he basically murdered his own brother or was careless enough to cause the accident. he is guilt ridden.
changes to the story
what the fnaf movie does is essentially what ghostbusters 2016 did. reboot of the original story with different characters and a different story. same general concept, done differently. done rather poorly. i feel like these changes were necessary for the fnaf game to be adapted into a film but i really wish they were done differently.
william afton basically has no motive. he is just a psychopath that loves killing kids. vanessa was really morally grey cause she went through great lengths to protect her dad knowing what he does. but at least she HAD a motive. she could potentially be in danger because her dad could've been... i dunno... threatening her. but she william didn't have the same desire to kill like the william in the games lore did. game william wanted to bring his son back and was also curious about the fact that soul possession and living beyond death was a thing. he was obsessed with it and it drove him insane enough to kill a bunch of kids. but this william? why did he kill kids? was he just... feeling extra murderous? it just doesn't make sense to me and it feels really weak. william was forgettable. this especially applies to why william killed mike's brother garret. it just makes no sense that he was just there at the camping trip. it makes mike's motivations seem stupid because the whole story behind it is stupid.
vanessa just existing kind of pissed me off. cause she wasn't the best character and i kind of hated her for not stopping her father sooner or not warning them properly. i get why, but i just thought her entire existence was so unnecessary. ESPECIALLY relating her to william. it just felt like they were trying to build some sort of romance between her and mike that just wasn't necessary. it's not shown to be like that but it's implied because of course it is.
the whole plot with them trying to take away abby was also a little dumb. i guess it gives mike reason to work there but also, it's just kind of a weak way to establish a connection between him and the pizzaria when mike or michael in the lore already had such a strong connection to it.
what i would do
i'd make a few major changes but generally keep the way the movie is formatted quite similar. mike and william are not related, but, michael and his brother evan frequently visited fredbears family diner. michael was hell bent on scaring evan since he had a fear of the animatronics themselves. it was more of a fun experience for michael, being there. so in an act of bullying michael forcecs evan to put his head between the animatronics teeth and the springlock suit's mouth clamps shut on his head just like the original story. during that moment, william is using the spring bonnie suit and witnesses the event just like michael did... except he stays around to investigate the fredbear animatronic afterwards. more on that in a bit. michael is traumatized by this, and so is his mother. shortly after elizabeth is born, she commits suicide and michael by then is old enough to have legal custody of elizabeth. william afton around this time realizes that the fredbear animatronic is being haunted by the dead child. this drives him crazy and his curiosity leads him to commit murders that lead to the death of five children convinced that if he experiments enough, he can keep his soul alive via animatronics after his death (idea taken from the novels). michael, still haunted by the pizzaria and the death of his brother ends up struggling to take care of his sister elizabeth. after beating up a random civilian and losing his job, his boss william (child murderer on the downlow) offers him a job at the pizzaria. obviously michael is extremely reluctant but he can't land other jobs and for the sake of his sister, he accepts. this damages his mental state more and most of the scares in the movie at this point are simply from michael's deteriorating mental health. the pills would be more or less for insomnia and for combating delusional episodes. at this point, i feel like the animatronics don't really have a reason to harm michael. so to give them reason, i want william to have instructed michael to wear the spring bonnie suit's head if the animatronics start trying to get into his office at night because it makes them fearful of michael. this in turn makes them think that michael is william as the kids have only ever seen their murderer being in that suit. though i'd like to have golden freddy popping up with the it's me because it would make sense as his brother is possessing the suit. he'd recognize him. whether his intentions or malicious or not, i dunno. michael is probably driven nuts by this and he realizes that his brother is haunting the suit. he brings elizabeth along to come meet the brother she never got to. somehow he can figure out that the place has been under investigation for the murders of kids ever since evan died, and by then it's too late cause he brought elizabeth to this place. he loses track of her and desperately tries to find her. the animatronics can still want to be her friends. she'd find them and they'd be nice. we can still have a sweet moment in the movie! while she's making friends with them, william kidnaps michael using the spring bonnie suit and brings him to the room with the weird freddy mask saw thing. he's going on and on about how michael started all this and the blood is actually on his hands and that he's going to give michael first hand experience on what his brother went through and how this is all for the greater good yada yada and while he's doing this elizabeth meets evan and evans like our brother is gonna die. and so she brings the animatronics with her to william and that's when the springlock failure happens. and then him going 'i'll always come back' would make sense because he knows that he's going to live to posses the suit. i want the end of the movie, if they're hinting at a sequel to do what the fnaf vhs tapes did and have william talking to himself for three decades until he's found.
better? worse? you decide! but i think i did i pretty ok job piecing a new story together based on the lore. obviously i'm not a film writer and this is pretty shit but i'm pretty confident that it's at least better than the story we got. changing a lot of the way it actually goes but keeping character motives and what scares you at the core of fnaf intact. i also didn't include vanessa because, again, she's totally unnecessary.
anyways, i still loved that we had the movie but i wish the writing team did better with what they were given. especially cause they didn't develop the main villain that great and ended up rushing the ending! :P
-eb
