Friday the 13th characters Tommy Jarvis

Tommy Jarvis

Tommy Jarvis is by far my favorite of all Friday the 13th characters not named Jason Voorhees. Played by 3 different actors and most notably to fan boys Corey Feldman. And to my opinion played the best by Thom Mathews. As part of making this more of a complete Friday the 13th site I want to start adding characters and tidbits about the films, comics, and series. And really, Tommy Jarvis is the only character to truely kill Jason Voorhees. If Tommy had not dug up Jason in Friday the 13th Part VI Jason Lives then our hockey masked friend would have never seen the light of day. Or more so not done in on a night in which it was coming a damn severe thunderstorm. Also, Thom Mathews performance as Tommy leads me to believe that he was Jason's best opposition. Anyway, below is a rundown of all that is Tommy Jarvis from Wikipedia.

Tommy Jarvis is notable for being one of the series' few recurring characters, and for being a significant rival to Jason Voorhees. He was portrayed as a child by Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and as an adult by John Shepherd in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and Thom Mathews in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. It has been rumored that Tommy will apper in the new remake (2009), but it seems unlikely.

In 1984, Tommy made his first appearance in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter as a young boy with an affinity for making his own masks and make-up effects. When Jason Voorhees brings his blood bath to the Jarvis cabin, Tommy is forced to fight for his life along with his sister Trish. In an attempt to trick Jason, who is attacking Trish, Tommy shaves his head to make himself appear as Jason was when he himself was young. Distracted by Tommy's appearance, Jason is attacked by him with a machete and knocked to the floor, apparently dead. While embracing Trish, Tommy notices Jason beginning to stir and proceeds to go into a maniacal state, brutally attacking Jason with his machete while screaming "Die! Die! Die!", ignoring Trish's desperate protests for him to stop. The film ends with Tommy visiting Trish at a hospital an unspecified time after killing Jason and being hugged by her, while starring emotionlessly and blank-faced at the camera. [79]

Tommy returns in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning as a 15-year old, now living in a halfway house, having spent the last three years in a mental institution. When Roy Burns begins committing murders in the style of Jason Voorhees, Tommy's sanity begins to slip away again and he starts suffering hallucinations and nightmares of Jason. Tommy is later forced to kill Burns in self-defense, and this seems to push him over the edge; the final scene of the film has a hockey-masked Tommy preparing to stab the halfway houses assistant director, Pam. [69]

In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, a more stable Tommy decides to confront his demons and, along with a friend, goes to Jason's grave, planning to dig it up and destroy Jason's body by cremating it. Tommy's memories of Jason still linger heavily though and, at the sight of Jason's corpse, flies into a rage and attacks it with a metal fence pole. This pole, which Tommy leaves imbedded in Jason's chest when he returns to his senses, winds up attracting lightning which, upon hitting the pole, resurrects Jason as an undead and unkillable being. As Jason kills his friend by ripping his heart out, Tommy flees the cemetery in his truck. Trying to make amends for his mistake, Tommy warns the sheriff who, being familiar with Tommy, locks him up and later runs him out of town, thinking he's had another psychotic break. The pile of bodies Jason racks up only convinces the sheriff that the killer is Tommy (despite the fact that his own daughter can vouch for Tommy being somewhere else at the time of two of the murders).

Time is running short as Jason makes his way to the renamed campgrounds. With a plan in mind, and aided by the sheriff's daughter Megan (a counselor at the newly-reopened Camp "Forest Green") who releases him from her father's holding cell, Tommy lures Jason into the very same lake from which the Voorhees legend started. Although he nearly drowns in the process, Tommy succeeds in chaining Jason to the bottom of the lake. After regaining consciousness thanks to Megan swimming him ashore and performing CPR on him, Tommy grimly notes that it's finally over, and Jason is at last home. [67]

The novelization of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives reveals that what happened between Tommy and Pam at the end of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning; the book explains that Pam had managed to return Tommy to his senses and, when Tommy was put back in a mental institution, she helped him recover. [46] The novel Friday the 13th: Carnival of Maniacs references Tommy, revealing he has written at least six books about Jason and Crystal Lake, with the title of one them being mentioned as My Life of Hell: One Man's Fight Against Jason Voorhees, which is decried as a "whiny piece of garbage" by a character. [1]

It was Joseph Zito's original intention to have Tommy become the antagonist and "new Jason" in any subsequent Friday the 13th films created after the fourth. [80] The ending of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning leads up to this, although due to the negative reaction to that film, the idea was dropped. [81]

Mezco Toyz has released a statuette of both Tommy and Jason, depicting the scene of the two grappling with each other underwater from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.