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Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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staring straight ahead as he drives, looking focused and determined. His expression<br />

and the delivery of his dialogue draw the viewer to his assuredness, but again his<br />

mental condition is questionable, and his trustworthiness as a character is called into<br />

question. The franchise viewer will be familiar with Tommy, and in spite of the<br />

<strong>final</strong> shot of A New Beginning, where it implies that he is the next Jason-style killer,<br />

this has apparently not come to pass, and he appears more talkative and stable than<br />

the mute 17 year old Tommy from the previous film. Because of this, the franchise<br />

viewer is more likely to invest trust in Tommy and identify with him more readily.<br />

Finally, both the franchise viewer and the new viewer are made aware that Jason is a<br />

part of Tommy’s past, but the new viewer is not given enough information to know<br />

the exact relationship between the two. The franchise viewer will likely be aware<br />

that Jason has killed Tommy’s mother and has terrorised him and his sister, and later<br />

the thought and memory of Jason is closely linked with the killings during the events<br />

of A New Beginning. The new viewer is left with little context as to Tommy’s<br />

history and motivation, which again hinders identification.<br />

This lack of defined motivation on Tommy’s part is never fully resolved, but<br />

identification becomes easier once Jason is brought back to life in the following<br />

sequence. The new viewer knows that Tommy is potentially a victim, and wants to<br />

destroy the antagonist so that he does not hurt anyone again, but the fact that he digs<br />

up Jason’s grave in the first place because he has “gotta be sure,” will appear to be<br />

motivated by paranoia to the new viewer, though it will seem at least somewhat<br />

reasonable to the franchise viewer, considering Jason’s penchant for coming back to<br />

life. The only clip from a previous film in the franchise comes as Tommy stares at<br />

Jason’s decayed corpse in the coffin. The camera is framed tightly on Tommy’s face<br />

in close up, and the audio track from the end of The Final Chapter, with Tommy

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