Michael Myers was a horror villain unlike any that had come before him when his first film, Halloween, debuted in 1978.
This classic 1970s slasher has been terrifying audiences for generations and is still played at movie theaters to this day.
Many actors and directors have taken on the story of this psychotic killer, with each creator leaving their own mark on the legacy of the iconic franchise.
Myers may have just seemed to be a man at first, but later films have shown that there is so much more to this masked monster.
How Tall Is Michael Myers?
Michael Myers is 6’9”, making him one of the tallest villains in the horror genre.
In the 2007 version of Halloween, Tyler Mane became the new actor behind the iconic mask and brought Myers’s height up to 6’9”.
#FunFactFriday
To date @TYLER_MANE is the tallest actor to portray #MichaelMyers at a height of 6’9 😮#HookedOnHorror #Halloween #TylerMane #RobZombiesHalloween #RobZombie #Haddonfield #HorrorMovies #horror pic.twitter.com/4TVMBzd5Hm— Hooked On Horror™ (@HookedonHorror) November 17, 2017
#Halloween
Tyler Mane is the tallest actor to portray Michael Myers at a height of 6’9. pic.twitter.com/E8JOxNRwW1— Cain Hill (@CainHillMovie) July 30, 2016
The height difference of me and Tyler Mane kills me
5’0″ vs 6’9″
one of my favorite men who have played Michael Myers 😍 pic.twitter.com/Lu4urU4Tyw— 🥀 (@brittoween) August 4, 2021
When Rob Zombie cast Tyler Mane in the starring role, Mane was able to use his experience as a wrestler to help his physical acting.
At 6’9”, Myers is taller than Friday the 13th’s Jason Vorhees, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, It’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and the Candyman.
When Michael Myers was first introduced to the world in the 1978 film, Halloween, he was portrayed by Nick Castle, who stands at about 5’10”.
Over the years, the actors who have portrayed this sinister character have only gotten taller.
When Myers was unmasked in the 1978 film, they swapped actors from Nick Castle to Tony Moran.
Since Moran is two inches taller than Castle, Myers’s height grew by two inches at the end of the original film.
For Halloween II, famous stuntman and actor Dick Warlock took on the role of Michael Myers.
Warlock stands at about 5’9”, but his decades of experience helped him create an equally menacing villain.
The next actor to don the mask was George P. Wilbur, who played Myers in Halloween 4: Return of Michael and Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers.
Wilber stood at 6’2.5” and was best known for films such as Escape from New York and Die Hard.
Even if Myers weren’t so tall, he still strikes fear into viewers’ hearts.
Is Michael Myers Supernatural?
Yes, Michael Myers has been shown to have supernatural connections, even if he isn’t directly using magic.
Each collection of Halloween films brings its own lore to Myers and often changes the backstory of how this killer became the monster he is today.
In Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers, Michael Myers was cursed as a newborn child by the Cult of Thorn, an ancient cult that worships a demon named Thorn.
Once a year on Halloween, Thorn must embody a host and sacrifice their family.
Through this sacrifice, the host is given supernatural strength and the ability to endure wounds that would kill even the strongest mortal man.
Since Thorn must sacrifice a family member of Michael Myers in order to keep his host alive, Myers becomes obsessed with killing the only remaining family member he has, Laurie Strode.
However, some films in the Halloween franchise choose to eliminate the lore of Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers and instead look at Myers as a murderous man with no connection to the supernatural.
Halloween H20 in 1998 was one of the first films to take the supernatural out of Myers’s story, which takes place right after Halloween II.
At the end of Halloween H20, Laurie Strode decapitates Michael Myers only to find that the man chasing her wasn’t the real Myers.
Instead, the man posing as Michael Myers was a paramedic who had his vocal cords crushed by the real Myers, thus preventing prevented him from ever speaking again.
Traumatized by the deaths he witnessed and his own near-death experience with the killer, the paramedic felt that he needed to be the next Michael Myers and terrorize Laurie Strode himself.
Myers has no connection to the supernatural in the Rob Zombie films, but he does in the newest trilogy.
What Is Michael Myers’s Weakness?
Michael Myers’s only weakness is his obsessive tendencies surrounding Halloween, his family, and the individual targets he seeks out.
While the killers in most slasher films are spontaneous and kill as they please, Myers is an incredibly predictable threat.
One aspect of Halloween that has remained consistent throughout the entire franchise is that Michael Myers is only actively on the hunt during the Halloween season, or occasionally only during Halloween day and night.
When Myers isn’t on the hunt, he doesn’t do anything.
He rarely talks and normally spends his day sitting in a chair without a single movement, leaving even a medical professional like Dr. Loomis feeling that there’s no way to improve his mental health or even truly understand what his diagnosis could be.
Michael Myers also has a particular way that he likes to hunt his prey, which isn’t just limited to a time frame.
In order for Michael Myers to feel prepared to hunt his family members, he must be wearing a jumpsuit and his iconic mask.
Without his mask, Myers doesn’t try to kill those around him as often as he does when he’s out in the world with his mask.
Not only do the local police officers know when to be on the lookout for Myers, but they also know exactly what he looks like.
With as many deaths as Myers has been responsible for over the years, he should be treated like a natural disaster.
October is Michael Myers season, and there should be additional support for the community at those times.
Despite how his predictability could serve as a disadvantage, Myers’s saving grace is that the locals in his hometown don’t take the threat of his presence seriously enough.
The only one who understands what kind of danger the town is in is the anxious Laurie Strode.
Has Michael Myers Ever Died?
No, Michael Myers has seemingly died multiple times through the franchise, but still keeps coming back despite him only having supernatural abilities in some of the movies.
Luckily for this masked killer, he can be saved through the power of reboot series after reboot series.
In the original Halloween from 1978, Myers is seen getting stabbed by Laurie Strode multiple times in the chest and is then shot six times by Dr. Sam Loomis.
The shots fired by Dr. Loomis cause Myers to fall from a balcony, only adding to his injuries.
When Dr. Loomis goes to look at Myers’s body after comforting Strode, he finds that Michael Myers is gone and is nowhere to be seen.
From this point on, it was clear that Myers was capable of handling much more damage than the average person.
In Halloween II, Laurie Strode shot Michael Myers in the eye and left him blind.
Not even blinding shots to the head could put down Myers, nor could the explosion in the hospital caused by Dr. Loomis.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers saw their poster boy get run over by a truck and shot multiple times, but Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers explains that the masked killer was taken in and nursed back to health by a hermit whom he later murdered.
In Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Tommy Doyle injects Myers with corrosives and beats the killer into unconsciousness with a lead pipe.
Myers was still well enough after he regained consciousness that he went and killed Dr. Loomis.
Even when Laurie Strode thought she had finished the job by decapitating her obsessive killer in Halloween H20, she later discovered that Myers wasn’t the one behind the mask.
There is no killing the evil of Michael Myers.
Is Michael Myers Mute?
No, Michael Myers isn’t mute.
He is fully capable of speaking when he wants to.
The first time audiences actually were able to hear his voice rather than hearing his doctors discuss his speaking tendencies was in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2.
Although this was not something that audiences had seen before, fans of the Halloween franchise were not impressed with the musician-turned-director’s decision to break one of the unspoken rules of Michael Myers.
Towards the end of the movie, Myers is fighting Dr. Loomis and Myers angrily exclaims, “DIE!” before fatally stabbing his former psychiatrist.
Unlike the kinder Dr. Loomis seen in the previous Halloween film, Rob Zombie turned Dr. Loomis into an antagonistic bully towards Myers and part of the inspiration for his murder sprees.
Fans were not happy with the new direction that Loomis’s character had taken and acted as another critique against the film.
Overall, the Rob Zombie Halloween films were not appreciated by long-time Halloween fans.
Some fans have speculated that Michael Myers’s refusal to speak would have caused his vocal cords to quit working, but there is no evidence that self-imposed silence has ever caused someone to lose the ability to speak at all.
The reason a person is able to continue speaking no matter how often they use their vocal cords is that the muscles used to produce sound are also used for a variety of other daily functions that help give them the constant use they need to remain functional.
Michael Myers still uses the necessary muscles for speech for other activities like breathing, swallowing, and coughing.
There have been plenty of cases of long-term coma patients waking up and being able to speak immediately.
Although he may not speak often, Michael Myers doesn’t suffer from voicelessness.
He knows he doesn’t need to speak to be menacing.
Why Is Michael Myers Called “The Shape?
Michael Myers is called “The Shape” in the credits of the 1978 Halloween film because that’s what John Carpenter had him listed as in the original script for the film.
It was supposed to be a reference to the way his mask looked when he was peering out of the shadows.
However, Carpenter wasn’t unique in calling his haunting evildoer “The Shape.”
The moniker was originally used in the final years of the 1600s during the days of the Salem Witch Trials
When someone would accuse someone of being a witch, even if there was evidence of them being at another place, they’d claim that the witch sent one of her evil spirits to do her bidding.
These monsters and ghosts would be referred to as “the shape.”
The influence of witchcraft throughout the Halloween franchise would play a heavier role in Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
This is the only film in the Halloween franchise that doesn’t include Michael Myers because it was meant to turn the franchise into an anthology series that would release routinely during the Halloween season.
The new villain for this film was Conal Cochran, an evil novelty shop owner and mask salesman who plans to kill children using his cursed masks.
Cochran sells three masks that look like a witch, a skull, and a jack-o-lantern.
These masks were seen in the 2021 film, Halloween Kills, on the most recent victims of Michael Myers.
Due to the rapid departure from the two previous films and the lack of their iconic killer, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is often skipped by fans and is not seen as canon.
With the increased popularity of the Halloween films and their masked killer, Michael Myers is no longer known as “The Shape.”
Does Michael Myers Care About Laurie Strode?
No, Michael Myers doesn’t care about Laurie Strode, and instead, he only sees killing her as part of his duty.
Some fans believe Myers decided to go after Strode in the first place because he was simply trying to protect his childhood home.
Throughout the Halloween franchise, Myers has been referred to as a man with the understanding of a child and the instincts of an animal.
If an animal were to see an unwelcome guest in its place of safety, the animal would try to remove the potential threat.
In Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers, Michael Myers feels the need to kill Laurie Strode because she is the last remaining relative he has, and he must sacrifice a family member in order to appease the demon Thorn who has possessed him since he was a baby.
Laurie Strode is the biological sister of both Michael and Judith Myers, but she was adopted after the deaths of her sister and her parents.
Despite changing her name and growing up with a completely different family, Myers still manages to sense the familial connection between them.
Despite being the only remaining siblings of a mostly dead family, Michael Myers lacks any kind of familial sentiment towards Laurie Strode or her family.
When Strode began making a habit of escaping Myer’s vicious grasp, she became an even bigger target for Myers.
When Michael Myers has decided to kill someone, he has to follow through and rarely takes detours to achieve his goal.
Laurie Strode is not a sister in the eyes of Myers, but instead, she stands as an obstacle to his short-sighted and routine plans.
Having lost her birth family to Myers, Strode doesn’t see the masked killer as an older brother.
She only sees him as her responsibility to eliminate.
