Since 1978 when the first installment of the Halloween film – one of the most popular American horror movie franchises – premiered, its main protagonist, Michael Myers has never died. This franchise comprises 13 remarkable films. In all these films, Myers always reappears after every major tragedy, leaving fans fascinated by his apparent immortality. So, why can’t Michael Myers die in the Halloween movie franchise?
Who is Michael Myers?
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Michael Myers (fictional character) is the main antagonist in the Halloween movie franchise. He features in all 13 films in this horror movie franchise except Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which tells a different story from the other films in the franchise.
Myers made his first appearance in the film in 1978 when the first movie of the series, Halloween, was released. The first movie was directed by John Carpenter and produced by Debra Hills. Both collaborated in writing the script.
The third film, which came out in October 1982 was written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. It was then produced by Debra Hill and John Carpenter. This movie departs from the original slasher genre, introducing a “Witchcraft” theme merged with a few elements of science fiction.
Unfortunately, the third installment of Halloween didn’t perform well in Box Office, forcing the writers to reintroduce Myers in the subsequent installments. The fourth installment “Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers” came six years later.
The movie starts with Myers as a possessed young lad, who escapes home after killing his elder sister Judith Myers. He returns home to Haddonfield, Illinois, after fifteen years of captivity to kill more teenagers. In the first film of the franchise, Myers is referred to as The Shape.
He’s represented by Nick Castle in most of the scenes, but he’s later replaced by Tony Moran in the last scene where Myers’s face is exposed. This character, which was created by Carpenter, appears in 13 films of the franchise, as well as its novels comic books, and video games.
Apart from Castle and Moran, who wore a mask in the first Halloween film, six more people represented the Myers character. Of the six actors, only Castle, Tyler Mane, James Jude Courtney, and George P. Wilbur have represented Myers severally in the film.
Furthermore, only Courtney and Mane have played this role more than once in consecutive installments of the franchise. As the main antagonist, Myers is depicted as an extremely evil person by everyone who’s involved in the franchise, including screenwriters, directors, producers, fans, and participants in surveys.
In the first and second films, this character puts on a white Captain Kirk mask, which is made from an actor of William Shatner’s face. This mask was initially used in the popular horror movie “The Devil’s Rain” in 1975. The name “Michael Myers” came from the now-obsolete British company “Miracle Films.”
Myers was the distributor of John Carpenter’s earlier film “Assault on Precinct” in England in 1977. So, Carpenter chose the name as a way of celebrating his success in distributing his film. In Halloween, Carpenter depicts Myers as a supernatural force that’s immortal.
Why Can’t Michael Myers Die?
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As noted above, the director and producer of Halloween, Mr. John Carpenter, chose the name Michael Myers to pay tribute to the successful distribution of his previous film in Britain by his distributor Myers. So, he decided to portray this character as a supernatural force of nature that can’t be killed. This character is an extremely evil and loose force. According to Nicholas Rogers, Michael Myers is an elusive, mythical bogeyman with supernatural strength. This character can’t be killed by mere bullets, fire, or stab wounds.
Carpenter reveals that his inspiration for this character and the evil it embodies came when he was in college. They were on a trip to a mental facility in Kentucky when he came face to face with the most severe cases of mental health. One of the patients he encountered was a 12-year-old boy who gave him a “schizophrenic stare”, which he describes as a “real evil stare.”
Carpenter further describes this stare as “unsettling”, “completely insane”, and “creepy.” This experience inspired Carpenter to characterize Myers. One of the scenes that best depicts Myers as extremely evil is when Myers murders a German Shepherd dog.
The final scene of Myers getting shot 6 times and vanishing after dropping off a balcony is meant to keep the audience guessing. Carpenter also tried very hard to create a sense of suspense by keeping Myers’s identity hidden. Even when he’s gone, Myers is still very much around.
Nobody seems to know how Myers manages to get away from serious assaults. The only way to make sense of this is to assume that he’s a supernatural force protected by some immortal powers. Josh Hartnett, who played the role of John Tate in Halloween H20, describes Myers as an “intangible” force that everyone should be afraid of. He further describes him as someone who will just appear from nowhere. But he insists that he’s not a real human being that you can speak with.
“No remorse. It’s got no feelings. That’s the most frightening thing about it.” Some critics of this movie franchise consider Myers to be irrational and extremely angry about life. Richard Schickel, one of the film critics, describes him as someone primitive with an obsession with intelligence.
Schickel also defines this character as a “good monster.” He claims that Carpenter makes the character appear “less human” but with enough intelligence to “be dangerous.” Myers only speaks at the start of the film as a child.
In the subsequent installments of the film, Myers doesn’t speak completely. It is also believed that Michael Myers couldn’t die in Halloween films because the Cult of Thorn had cursed young people from his ethnic community, giving them superpowers that kept them alive. Unfortunately, these superpowers led Myers to kill his family members in order to retain the immortality of his cult members.
These superpowers are even described in the latest trilogy “Halloween Kills”, where Laurie Strode presents a monolog explaining her conviction that Myers transcended and got transformed into something more than human. This occurs in the final act of the film where Myers is captured and led into the streets by a group of irate locals where they violently attack him.
In this scene, Myers appears to succumb to the assault, but he suddenly rises up and kills the mob after hearing the revelation by Laurie. In the last seconds of the final act, Myers can be seen emerging from the darkness inside the Myers House. It’s safe to say that the main reason why Michael doesn’t die is because he’s a supernatural being.