The Little Engine That Probably Couldn't Have In Real Life

I'm still dealing with "Friday the 13th Part Four". I mentioned how the character of Tommy Jarvis is a problem. Today I'll try to explain why. Tommy Jarvis is actually a major running character in the franchise, first appearing in Part Four and then returning in Part Five and Part Six (each time to be played by a new actor). In this first film, he's played by the precocious Corey Feldman, whose acting ability and personal life I have no reason to fault here.

Little Tommy Jarvis is the youngest child of a single mother, He has an older sister, and they all live in an extremely remote lakeside cabin. Tommy is innately talented and knowledgeable about virtually everything that comes up during the film. He is evidently as good as Hollywood specialists at rendering things like photo-realistic masks and puppets (this of course comes up at a critical time), and he is also seemingly an extremely competent auto mechanic.

He very quickly gets up to speed on the ongoing mythology of Jason Voorhees, learning that Jason had supposedly drowned as a young boy. He also learns that Jason is very susceptible to anything that looks like him or his mother. Tommy then proceeds to shave his head in a bid to look like young Jason. This occurs while his sister is fighting for her life against Jason downstairs, and takes little enough time that Tommy comes downstairs to intervene in a matter of moments.

Tommy then not only stuns Jason into a stupor with his resemblance to a young version of the villain, he then manages to kill Jason (only seemingly, of course) with a machete. Needless to say, wielding a machete to such lethal effect ordinarily requires more physical strength than a pre-pubescent boy can bring to bear. For the level of superhuman strength, speed and intellect he displays, I rate Tommy Jarvis as one of film history's least believable child characters, ranking right up there with Lex of Jurassic Park (who, as you'll recall, is a gifted enough computer prodigy to instantly operate the park's insanely sophisticated network) .