Jamie Lee Curtis, Transphobia, and Bad Takes on the ‘Halloween’ Franchise

After ending Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis is taking on long-term PTSD, transphobia, and terrible opinions about her most beloved franchise

Affable teenager → Middle-aged-survivalist → Lovable grandma → Trans Mom Icon

At first, I was with The Filmcast (YouTube), particularly Jeff (and somewhat Dave), who say that Laurie Strode’s arc is disrupted by where she begins at the opening of Halloween Ends.

In Halloween (1978), Laurie faced an unimaginable boogeyman named Michael Myers while she was still a teenager. In Halloween (2018), she faced Michael as a middle-aged survivalist. In Halloween Kills (2021), the regretful aid of a few firemen disrupted what should have been the end of Michael Myers, costing Laurie her success and most of what family she had left.

See also: Is “Halloween Ends” The Biggest Retcon In The Entire Franchise?

In Halloween Ends (2022), Laurie now lives back in Haddonfield. She’s a carefree grandma. She’s writing a memoir. She mourns the loss of Judy Greer from the franchise, as do we all, but she keeps the hope of a flashback cameo close to her heart.

This grandma has still got some fire in her pockets, such as when Laurie runs across some Jordan Peterson fans bullying the local misfit. Laurie offers a knife to the misfit. No, not to hurt the bullies. So he can knife their car tires and get a little revenge. Seems almost innocent, though, compared to the antics of a woman who so recently resembled Halloween’s version of Sarah Connor.

Does it really make sense for Laurie to start Halloween Ends as anything other than an even more extreme survivalist?

But then I thought about the horrors from my own past. I thought about the serenity that comes only after you hit rock bottom. I thought about the path forward when you’ve faced your worst fear, lost everything you love — and still survived.

You have nothing to live for, and yet you live.

What do you do next?

“People said, ‘She’s happy’ and I said, ‘No she’s not.’ Laurie Strode will never be happy again.” — Jamie Lee Curtis

Laurie Strode faced Michael Myers as a young woman, and it devastated her for what could have been the rest of her life.

She lived with a nearly-incurable PTSD. She turned into a survivalist. She took every reasonable and unreasonable precaution should Michael ever escape.

These precautions weren’t just to keep herself safe. The real twist at the end of Halloween (2018) was that Laurie planned for Michael to come for her. They were to lure Michael into a trap, to blot out the Shape that’s haunted Haddonfield for decades and finally write an ending to this horrifying saga.

And none of it mattered

Laurie pushed all in as a survivalist. She gave everything she had — over forty years of her life — to taking on Michael Myers. She lost.

Everything she did was a waste of time. Michael survived her trap. Michael killed her daughter. And in the end, Michael is still free.

So for Laurie to start Halloween Ends as a carefree grandmother writing a memoir?

Yeah…

Actually, that makes sense.

The real lesson of “Halloween”

[Jamie Lee] Curtis told Spanish radio network Cadena SER that [her daughter] Ruby, who came out publicly as trans in 2021, faces “threats against her life” just for “existing as a human being”.

“There are people who want to annihilate her, her and people like her,” Curtis said.

She continued: “The level of hatred is … as if we had not learned from fascism, as if we hadn’t learned what the result of that is. The extermination of human beings. That’s terrifying.” — PinkNews (offsite)

David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy has a clear message, particularly given that Halloween Ends does deliver an ending to Michael Myers (absent cult shenanigans by Paul Rudd). And no one summarized it better than its star after reading the final film’s script for the first time.

“I was very happy that Laurie Strode has been given some trauma therapy, grief counseling,” Jamie Lee Curtis said to The Hollywood Reporter (offsite). “That we honor the fact that in fact, people in these kinds of terrible situations do, now, get people coming and helping. Back in 1978, Laurie Strode got nothing. She went to school two days later. Now at least Laurie Strode is being given a little bit of support.”

I have run from you. I have chased you. I have tried to forgive you.

In the end, hiding didn’t save Laurie. It simply deprived her of the life she could have lived. Once she came out of hiding, support made all the difference in her ability to reclaim all the years left to live. Jamie Lee Curtis is determined to provide that support for others in the real world, too.

Curtis, like Laurie in Halloween Kills, could have kept her own family in hiding. But the bigots, like Michael Myers, will find us anyway. They will come for us. They will take their shot.

Curtis recently went to the red carpet with her daughter by her side. But while the photographers were there to celebrate the next big movie, Curtis was there to celebrate her daughter coming out as transgender.

“[Support means] speaking a new language,” Curtis recently told People magazine (offsite). “It’s learning new terminology and words… You slow your speech down a little. You become a little more mindful about what you’re saying. How you’re saying it. You still mess up, I’ve messed up today twice. We’re human.”

“I’m not gonna let this happen to you.”

At the time of this writing, I haven’t finished watching Halloween Ends. I did finish listening to that podcast episode of The Filmcast, so I sorta know how it ends. I’m curious whether I’ll still have the same feelings once the credits roll.

Note after finishing: these guys are wrong, Halloween Ends was great

Here’s that episode of The Filmcast (YouTube) if you want to shout your own hot take at them.

In the meantime, I can’t help but wonder what Terminator: Dark Fate would have been like if filmmakers had taken the same approach to Sarah Connor.

What if she hadn’t become a harder version of the character from T2?

What if, after losing her son to a Terminator anyway…she’d instead tried to go back to a normal life? As normal as things can be when you can’t figure out who gets the Burley Beef.