Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie Teaser Thoughts
View the Five Nights at Freddy’s teaser here!
FNAF movie full cast on IMBD
The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie teaser has been released and has been the talk of the theorists ever since. I mentioned in a previous blog post that I love MatPat and his work, but his reaction and analysis of the FNAF movie teaser made me a little mad. My main argument in this blog post is that I think the analysis of the FNAF movie and any teasers/trailers/lore leaks that are released along the way need a fresh set of eyes to examine them.
MatPat has been making theories about the Five Nights at Freddy’s games since the first game was released in 2014 and has not stopped researching the franchise ever since. He, like many other theorists, probably know way too much about the games because they have analyzed every last detail–or so they think.
It wasn’t until this year that I started watching other FNAF theorists besides MatPat. I have especially gotten into videos from FuhNaff, ID’s Fantasy, and RyeToast (and their cats). I do not think RyeToast has done a reaction video to the FNAF movie teaser, but the other three have.
I appreacited FuhNaff’s reaction the most. It was so genuine, and I could tell he was very excited about the movie and the work done to create it. I guess I relate to his reaction more than MatPat’s or ID’s because it was raw and not so much focused on finding every bit of lore within the 48-second teaser video.
MatPat, who is notorious for long reaction videos, took an hour to explain his reactions to the video. In my opinion, some of the comments he made were a little off. One of those comments was about the laughter that is heard in the background of the teaser video, and he was trying to think of where he had heard it before. It was very clearly a rendition of the Balloon Boy laugh from Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, but it sounded less childlike and more maniacal. This indicated to me right away that he has spent so much time thinking about the little details of FNAF that he forgot some very basic information that is presented in the games.
Another comment he made was about how the teaser ended with a shot of the Bonnie animatronic and how from a cinematic standpoint, it would be more satisfying to end with a shot of the Freddy animatronic since it’s Five Nights at Freddy’s. I think this completely discredits the importance of Bonnie and the connection to William Afton’s character, since if you know anything about the games, you know that William Afton used the Golden Bonnie, also known as Springtrap suit to lure five children into the backrooms of the pizzeria and the rest is history.
Yes, maybe it would be more cinematically satisfying to end with a shot of Freddy, and I appreciate how MatPat focused on some of the cinematic elements of the teaser rather than how it fit into the lore timeline that he created, but Scott Cawthon, creator of the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, wrote the script for the movie alongside Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddeback. Two other people created the script alongside Scott, whereas he had a little more freedom with the games, especially the older FNAF games.
The movie is not meant to be an offshoot of the games, it is clearly meant to work alongside them in crafting a timeline of events and establishing characters, which are the two main aspects of the FNAF lore at this point in the franchise.
Next, I want to talk about ID’s reaction, which is almost three times as long as MatPat’s reaction video (probably because it was a livestream instead of an edited video). I stopped watching around the 20-minute mark, so it’s not entirely fair for me to judge ID’s reaction to the movie trailer, but from what I watched, I probably would not have enjoyed the rest of the video anyway.
Somehow, ID gathered from the teaser (again, a 48-second video), that the movie was not going to include the Phone Guy character simply because of the lady in the beginning who introduces the security guard to their new job at Freddy Fazbear’s. Now, I am not sure whether she goes back on this later in the video, but it is just a teaser to the movie and not the whole movie, so who’s to say whether Phone Guy is in the movie or not? I sure don’t want to make any bold claims about the movie from the teaser video alone.
ID goes on to say she is disappointed that Vanessa is even a character at all in this movie because she does not come up until later in the timeline. I personally don’t think the movie makes it entirely clear as to when it takes place. There are shots of Freddy Fazbear’s in it’s heyday within what I’m calling the “security guard introduction video” and there is a shot where the pizzeria is clearly closed and decaying, but there is no indication of when this pizzeria closed and began decaying, and there is also no indication of when Mike Schmidt, the main character, arrives as the new security guard.
I think what the years of researching and theorizing over FNAF has done to both MatPat and ID’s Fantasy (as well as many others) is it made them forget that the timelines they created are not as set in stone as they think. I could be completely wrong about this, but it seems like once MatPat makes a video on new FNAF lore, some of his theories are just accepted as correct and true and then it is harder for other perspectives and interpretations to come through.
I think this makes it harder for FNAF theorists who have been around for a while to let go of their hard work (and believe me, I respect them all for sticking with this extremely confusing franchise as it has kept me entertained for years). This movie is already changing the dynamic of FNAF theory as we know it because a movie is different from a game. A movie basically has to give the viewer a clear sequence of events (or at least make it clear when each scene takes place) because they can’t be an active participator like they are when they play the games. I say this as someone who has never actually played a FNAF game and has only watched others play it on YouTube.
Now, I understand that I make some pretty bold claims about FNAF theories in this post. I hope I’m wrong and that MatPat and ID’s Fantasy will take a step back and make a video on the FNAF movie teaser that isn’t a raw reaction. I hope they have more evidence to back up their claims in said videos. I respect them both for all the work they do, I just think we need more, newer voices who maybe aren’t so well-versed in the FNAF games that can speak on FNAF movie lore. But as for now, I am calling it like I see it, so consider this my raw reaction.
In my honest opinion, the teaser was executed beautifully and it made me even more excited for the movie to come out in October (perfect timing to have it come out right before Halloween, I love it!) I hope to see more teasers/trailers come out before then because I will be on the edge of my seat right up until the day I get to see the movie.