No, no they won’t. They couldn’t possibly, never in a million years. They are? What? Those pricks! Those god damn selfish pricks! Just one of the thousand reactions I experienced upon reading that the Buffy reboot is going ahead. If it is horror they are after then they’ve got it because this is the most horrific thing I have ever heard in the world of movies.
Despite my hatred of the current vampire trend I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I absolutely loved it, I was obsessed with it (IMPORTANT NOTE: I have never written my own fan fiction). Why wouldn’t I (I hear you not say)? In fully fledged pubescence by that point and doting on Sarah Michelle Gellar I didn’t start watching it because of the vampires if you know what I am saying (I fancied Sarah Michelle Gellar if you don’t). That said it was a great show and an important one, without Buffy there would be no Angel, no Firefly, no Smallville, no revived Dr Who, I could go on and on and on. It’s not all Nathan Fillion, Kryptonite and sonic screwdrivers though, there has been a terrible domino effect in its wake, Twilight which was no doubt influenced by Buffy has gone on to make vampires popular creating a niche for such shows as True Blood and those Vampire Diaries, and finally a Buffy reboot.
Buffy was something special to those who watched it, I’m under no illusions that it was anything other than that shitty vampire thing to those who didn’t watch it, but there would not be one fan who would think a Buffy reboot is a good idea, let alone a Whedon-less one. Joss Whedon is the reason why Buffy was great, why Firefly was great and why the forthcoming Avengers movie could potentially be great (potentially) and a Buffy film could only ever work with him at the helm. Not only is Whedon a talented writer he holds a reputation with science fiction fanboys and girls which is pretty much unbreakable, and as he has already spoken out against the idea of a reboot his legion of geeks will take his side to their death.
That said if anything was to damage his reputation it would be his involvement in a Buffy reboot. Even with Whedon it wouldn’t work for many reasons. As Buffy was a series it was able to lay out plots and character development patiently and effectively whilst also being able to tell standalone episodes which had little or no consequence to the bigger picture, much like The X-Files (which lost its charm when translated to the big screen).
If you remove the concept from this structure and put it in a two hour movie it will not work. You have the premise thus, Buffy, a sixteen year old cheerleader has been chosen to be a slayer, she slays some vampires, might fall in love with one, slays some more, the end. There won’t be time to create all of the relationships forged in the series, hours were spent doing that and if you asked fans who their favourite characters were in the show there wouldn’t be one definitive answer. The show became more about the “Scooby gang” than Buffy and there isn’t time in a film or even a trilogy to develop a whole group of characters and give them enough screen time.
Of course I might be damning it before it’s even had a chance and it could be AMAZING…ly bad. There’s just such a long list of reasons why it wouldn’t happen, who will play Buffy? Will there be a watcher? Who will play him? Oh no, it’s Queen Latifah, will there be a “Scooby gang”? Will Angel be in it? Who will play him? Oh it’s Justin Bieber, will Spike be the bad guy? Oh no he’s not bad, because it’s fucking Justin Bieber playing him as well.
Of course I might be damning it before the film studio have even told us who’s writing it, imagine if Edgar Wright was involved, that might be good oh wait it’s Whit Anderson. ME NEITHER! Announced with the news of the reboot was the reveal that Whit Anderson will be writing the film. A young writer/actress who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page but has a gig writing a fucking Buffy movie! She was quoted saying “I didn’t really watch much television at all, but I always watched ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’”. It doesn’t matter if you always watched it, I’d expect a writer especially one with the task of writing a Buffy film to have watched just about every god damn TV show out there. The correct quote should have been “I fucking loved TV I couldn’t get enough of the shitting thing but if it was between Dallas and Buffy, Dallas could fuck right off”.
Of course I might be damning it before it’s even been made but the reboot is only based on the original Buffy film which if memory serves me right was just horrible. Because the rights are for the film only none of the characters from the series other than Buffy will be in this adaptation, so there will be no “Scooby gang”, no watcher, no Angel, no Spike, just loose archetypes of these characters. What you have in essence is just the idea of a teenage girl fighting vampires, the Buffy name is purely an attempt to garner interest in the project but the absence of Joss Whedon and the original cast of the series along with the presence of an unknown writer and the affiliation of the original film will do nothing but put people off.
This will be something we have to accept but not like, they’ve said it’s happening and we have the current Vamp trend to blame. Trends come and go and this will probably be fast tracked into production before we all love pirates again. The above rant is about a show I’ve not seen in years, just imagine the anger and wrath of the hardcore nerds who really love it.
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