Few horror franchises are worthy of the pervasive respect that Scream has accumulated; it may have had a dubious hiccup with Scream 3, but perhaps only Final Destination can claim to have remained consistent after north of three films, and with Scream VI continuing that trend and Scream 7 having already been greenlit, the saga of meta-horror’s number one bastion continues.
Nevertheless, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the franchise didn’t peak during its first two bows; the introduction of the Carpenter sisters may have injected a breath of fresh air into Ghostface’s escapades, but with Scream having first cooked up the franchise’s brilliant approach on its own and Scream 2 arguably managing to improve upon it, subsequent films may not have been much worse, but we’ve certainly yet to be shown something better.
And while Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courteney Cox will always and forever be the backbones of the franchise, you can’t count out the contributions of the many Ghostfaces we’ve gotten over the years, especially if that Ghostface is one Timothy Olyphant – the talent behind the stab-happy Mickey Altieri in Scream 2.
And, just as Olyphant helped elevate Scream 2, Scream 2 helped elevate Olyphant. In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, the Book of Boba Fett star happily reminisced about his time on Wes Craven’s set, which sounds akin to getting struck by lightning in all the best and most exhilarating ways.
“That day, that whole movie was like, overwhelming and exciting. [I] auditioned at least twice or maybe more to get the gig, y’know; huge opportunity, and then I showed up, and everybody on that set was people I had been watching on film and television… Liev Schreiber… Laurie Metcalf… just everybody involved, it was big. I remember just feeling so intense and being like ‘I need to get this right!'”
Say what you will about Mickey’s fake-out death, Olyphant more than nailed the responsibilities bestowed upon him by the Ghostface costume. And while we won’t cross our fingers for a Scream 7 return, who’s to say a surprise double-down isn’t totally off the table if he’s already faked his death once?