u/Designer_Search_4228

As a kid I had a plastic SpongeBob tumbler/juice cup that I remember was blue and yellow and the cup itself had a blue repeating printed jellyfish design on the outside of it semi transparent and the lid was molded to look like sand but with a border on the outside and the top of it had little SpongeBob and Patrick figurines/models glued to the top with this exact pose and a straw entrance in the sand part. I’ve searched literally everywhere online for it and I can’t find it anymore. I know a lot of the old SpongeBob merch I owned as a kid was mainly bootlegs like a backpack design I saw that was confirmed to be a bootleg but I’m fairly certain this one was licensed because it had a bunch of licensed branding shit all over it

all it’s missing is a casio sk1

This is a long-winded rant but bear with me.

Watching the movie, you sorta realize that TNG is probably the last movie we got that showed an actual true to the OG vision “accurate” leatherface (minus a few creative liberties here and there of course obviously). That sounds inherently stupid but let me explain.

In terms of the being mentally unstable and easily overwhelmed by loud noise and frightened and having the sexual ambiguity, we never saw that again past part 1 except for MAYBE to a lesser extent part 2 and 3D. Part 3 and the remakes and everything else never really touched on any of that and instead went for the whole “I’m disfigured and angry and want revenge for being bullied” try-hard edgy route which is not what leatherface is supposed to be. Christ he even listens to heavy metal and drives a truck in part 3. As cool as that is, I think the whole point of his character is that he shouldn’t even be capable of doing or understanding these things due to his mental disabilities and isolation from the normal functional world. He’s supposed to suffer and loathe the treatment of his family, but in his mind it’s just normal and supposed to happen because he literally doesn’t know anything else, and has no real grasp of what the outside world is like or what “normalcy” is except for what is brought back to his home.

The masks in TNG suck, there’s no question, but I WILL admit the TNG version of pretty woman is scary in the sense that it borders the line between human skin and expensive realistic drag queen prosthetics which honestly kinda makes sense for a version of the family that exists in the 90s as opposed to the 70s (having money from the illuminati company that keeps them around or whatever the explanation is for this universe, better access to modern quality makeups and retail stores, not being cannibals and instead just killing and keeping masks and trophies solely, etc). It’s an alternative universe where the family is more modern and less stuck out in the country while still retaining the whole scary isolated ultra rural semi-traditional but lost over time mentality. It feels more grounded for a more modern killer that’s still dimwitted. It was always implied in the original movies that Bubba didn’t make his masks anyways or couldn’t be disciplined and patient enough to; it was Hitchhiker/Nubbins or Chop-Top/Bobby that made them for him. I’m assuming Vilmer did the same in this iteration.

Robert Jacks’s leatherface feels simultaneously scary and pathetic, which adds to the whole disturbing mind of a child in a giant almost 7 foot tall dangerous man motif, which leatherface was always intended to be about that dichotomy. He screams out of frustration and covers his ears when overstimulated, he gets angry and kicks bodies of people he already killed like a toddler’s temper tantrum, he puts his hand over his mouth in fear and acts submissive given his mask choice at the moment and/or when his family raises their voices or gets violent, etc.. He actually FEELS like a dangerous mentally stunted impulsive clumsy serial killer instead of just a generic vengeful quiet stoic slasher. None of the movies past a certain point have revisited that aspect of his character that was so memorable in the first one. He doesn’t hate people. He’s scared of them. I think TNG pays decent homage to that idea.

None of this is to say that TNG is a great Texas chainsaw, it’s not. In terms of being weird and humorous and having leatherface act how he used to though, it gets some points. But the costume design and writing and etc definitely detract from all that. All that being said, I think Robert Jacks was one of the more strong elements of the film that redeemed it at least a little bit, and I think he deserves more credit and respect for that instead of shitting on his performance when that wasn’t even the weakest aspect of the film by a long shot, or lumping him in with the rest of the forgetfulness of the film and making him seem like the most forgetful leatherface. He doesn’t hold a candle to Gunnar Hansen or Bill Johnson/Bob Elmore, but the bar was set so high from them that it would be hard for anyone to reach that level of artistry and understanding of what made the character so great, and how to balance humor and horror without going too far in any one direction.

I know his personality changes with each mask, and that he isn’t even really AWARE that what he’s doing is “wrong” per se because he has no concept of normalcy outside of his brothers and home, but I wonder if when he wears his killing mask is when he feels his most confident and brutish. Still doesn’t make sense for him to take sadistic pleasure out of what he does if for him it’s just self-defense/work that needs to be done, and seeing how panicked he was when he first saw her and the other survivors, fearing the safety of his home has been compromised, and fearing his brother’s retaliation for not doing a better job at being watchdog. Do you think it’s moreso a brief spike in confidence over catching a trespasser and thinking he did a job well done? Or do you think despite his disabilities, he still has that instinctual predator/prey dynamic that gives him adrenaline couple with his innate human cruelty from being a smart sentient creature (I use the term smart loosely), or do you think it’s a combination of both? Or maybe just an accidental oversight from Gunnar and Tobe that they left in the take?