Michael Myers: Then and Now

I just went to see Halloween II with my sister and I was thinking of the new Michael vs. the old Michael. (It has to do with zombies. I promise.)

In the old Halloween movies, Michael is practically a machine. He moves with a single mindedness that is insane. He moves slowly, yet steadily towards his victims. He makes absolutely no vocal noise and exhibits no humanity at all. What does this sound like? I think he is a very large zombie. Not a zombie that eats brains, but just a walking dead person. How else could he survive being shot multiple times in the chest and falling off of a balcony? He is either a zombie or he has read The Zen of Zombie by Scott Kenemore and decided

he wanted to be as like a reanimated corpse as possible. (I'm reading the book currently and it's awesome so far. It talks about attaining zen and achieving life goals through emulating zombies.)

In the new Halloween movie, Michael is much different than I have ever seen him. I think Rob Zombie wanted to emphasize that although he commits unhuman acts, he is i

ndeed human. Michael actually made noise in this film. He didn't speak, but he would grunt with effort or pain. He has never done this before, so it was really weird for me. It was also inconsistent with the previous film. They also showed him eating which I thought was pretty unnecessary (and gross since the meal was a dead dog), but it accomplished Zombie's objective.

I find that I much prefer John Carpenter's original vision of Michael Myers. I don't think of him as human at all. Rob Zombie's film is an interesting and valid re-imagining, but it doesn't measure up to the original in my heart.