Psycho’s Sequels Made Norman Bates The Hero (& It Worked)

Psycho’s Sequels Made Norman Bates The Hero (& It Worked)

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Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho instantly cemented Norman Bates as an all time great horror villain, but the movie’s sequels turned Norman into the hero.

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Psycho’s Sequels Made Norman Bates The Hero (& It Worked)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho instantly cemented Norman Bates as an all time great horror villain, but the movie’s sequels turned Norman into the hero. Part of the reason Norman worked so well as the bad guy in the first Psycho was that on the surface, he seemed like a fairly likeable person, albeit with an odd penchant for taxidermy. The fact that Anthony Perkins so easily conveyed a sense of innocence and vulnerability served to make the perception of Norman as a good person even more apparent.

That was by Hitchcock’s design of course, to make it all the more shocking when Norman – or at least Norman’s alternate persona – turned out to be the killer himself at the end of the film. With serial killers, it’s often the people one would least suspect to be the culprit, and that was certainly the case for Norman Bates. Psycho ends with Norman’s normal side seemingly gone for good too, as “Mother” plots and schemes to convince doctors that she’s no longer dangerous.

For the longest time, it seemed like Psycho would be the end of Norman’s story, but in 1983, along came Psycho 2. Widely considered a misguided idea at the time, Psycho 2 has since developed a large following, and a big factor in that is the unconventional way it handles the return of Norman Bates to society.

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Psycho’s Sequels Made Norman Bates The Hero (& It Worked)

While decade-plus gaps between sequels have become more common since, when Psycho 2 came out 23 years after the original, many didn’t know what to make of it. Thankfully, the time that had elapsed was used to benefit the story. After being locked up for two decades, Norman Bates was finally deemed mentally rehabilitated, and allowed to return to the house he shared with his mother. While this could’ve been an easy setup for Norman to return to his murdering ways, it turns out he actually has had a breakthrough, and no longer gets taken over by his violent “Mother” persona.

Psycho 2 certainly contains a good amount of kills, but in the end, it’s revealed none of them were committed by Norman, and that people were actively working to try and cause Norman to lose himself, kill again, and get locked up again. Norman is the clear protagonist of Psycho 2, as most of the film is seen through his eyes, and he’s the victim of malevolent acts. Sadly, the events of Psycho 2 do lead him to snap and return to killing in Psycho 3. Yet, Norman is still in there, and emerges from Mother’s grip at times. When Mother makes him kill the woman he’s come to love, Norman lashes out, seemingly vanquishing his alternate identity for good, and finding peace despite his return to a mental institution. While Norman is technically the villain of the film, he’s again clearly the protagonist, and again presented in a sympathetic light.

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Completing Norman’s transformation to the hero of the Psycho films – or at least the troubled antihero – was 1990 TV sequel Psycho 4: The Beginning, which chronicles Norman’s entire life, using the framing device of a once again released and rehabilitated Norman calling into a radio show episode about sons who kill their mothers. Sure, Norman kills a good amount of people in the past segments shown, but it’s made quite apparent that it was his mother’s abuse that made him the way he became. He’s determined to kill his wife in the present, a nurse who helped care for him at the institution, but not because he’s crazy, because she’s pregnant, and Norman fears his mental illness will be passed on. In the end, he overcomes this urge, and looks set to live happily ever after. For all that he’s done wrong, the viewer can’t help but be happy for him, his heroic metamorphosis now complete.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/psycho-movie-sequels-norman-bates-hero-good-worked/

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