Buffy TVS to be (ugh) Rebooted

Don't see the point, won't be watching.

I'll put this up there with the mooted Alias remake - What's the point when you can easily watch the original series already, which isn't exactly ancient.

 

Even if we put you on a megaphone I don't think you'll be heard.

 

Yeah, that was me... until I channel-surfed into an episode midway through Season 2.

 

Neither did I. Figured it was yet another bit of TV fluff not worth my time, for years and years.

Fortunately, I decided it was worth a look and realized how silly I'd been to think so. Because at the end of the day, the premise almost doesn't matter; it's just a backdrop for the characters. And they are a wonderful bunch of characters.

 

The point of a remake is rarely, if ever, to appeal solely to the audience for the existing property. The point is usually to find a way to bring the property to a new audience, to make it interesting to viewers who weren't too interested in the old version or who managed to miss it. Generally there's a desire to do that and to make it appealing to at least the more open-minded members of the established fanbase, since the bigger your audience is, the more money you make. But no established fanbase is large enough on its own to be the primary target of a remake.

And it's clear that this is going to be something very different from the TV series. The only point of commonality will be the Buffy character herself, and the movie version of Buffy was somewhat different from the TV Buffy at that (since the TV series was a sequel to Whedon's original movie script, not to the radically different version that ended up onscreen). And it sounds like this version is going to be rather different from the '92 movie version as well, not a high school student at all. So it doesn't sound like it'll be more of the same.

 

Although I had once hoped for further spinoffs that would build on the existing Buffyverse, I set aside those hopes after the cancellation of the DTV movies and have been happy to accept that the Buffyverse has come to a close as far as filmed entertainment goes. So if the reboot film is made and turns out poorly I can just ignore it. It'd have to be really good, though, to win me over as I'd find it difficult at this point to accept a new take on Buffy and a new actress in the role.

 

Over at AICN, Hercules pointed out that the lack of an attempt to enlist a writer with any experience or reputation whatever is indicative of the lack of ambition or real interest here. Basically, they're employing someone who can be put across as a Stephanie Meyer "type" for PR purposes.

 

Some reactions from people who were associated with the Buffy TV series:

Emma Caulfield (Anya):

David Boreanaz (Angel), via Hart Hanson (creator of Bones):

Amber Benson (Tara):

Eliza Dushku (Faith):

Juliet Landau (Drusilla):

 

Boycotts and protests would only give it publicity - people would go see what the fuss was about. Far better for it to be released to a tsunami of apathy, disinterest and shrugged shoulders.

 

I'd ask what's gone wrong in my life if I standing outside a cinema in a protest about a cheesy vampire film. Christ, you can't people out into the streets during one of the worst recessions in history and yet they'd turn out for this.

 

That's some immature, fanboyish, dumb-fuckery right there.

Why the hell do people get so attached to things like TV shows? If you had one wish, why wouldn't you wish for the Buffy movie to be... I don't know... GOOD? Wouldn't you be pleasantly surprised if it was? No? Easier to wish everyone associated with the project gets ruined financially?

Seriously people, it's just a TV show. The existence or quality of this movie is not a personal insult to any one of you and will not erase or diminish the quality of the series you obviously love. In the words of Shat: get a life.

You know, after fifteen years or so, the cynicism of the Internet is getting a bit boring. It's easy to be cynical, you know, requires no effort at all.

 

I wouldn't waste a wish on it one way or another. Vampires as such don't intrigue me all that much, and this is just another vampire movie.

If I were to wish for something, for the sake of argument, I'd wish for the return of BTVS as it was. Beyond loving that show, I have no dog in this fight.

 

Or better yet, just give it the same fair chance that any creative work deserves. Lots of fictional creations have multiple incompatible versions, from Greek myth to Sherlock Holmes to Batman. If someone wants to try to do a Buffy movieverse running independently from the Whedonverse, that's their prerogative, and it doesn't diminish Whedon's achievement in any way.

If you want to boycott or protest things, there are a ton of causes out there that actually matter to people's lives. Protest discrimination in the workplace or sweatshop labor or deforestation or voter suppression or something important. Don't waste your activist passion on a work of entertainment. As long as no creators' rights are being infringed upon, as long as no one's being cheated or plagiarized or defamed or discriminated against, it doesn't hurt anybody.

 

This is just plain sad. Don't tell me, the movie will be in 3D too. It's soooo tired.

 

Plenty of people have taken to the streets in protest in this recession.

 

To those calling me an immature fanboy for my boycott/protest rant, I was trying to make a point with a bit of hyperbole. I don't expect any of that to happen and I know that if it did, it wouldn't make much of a difference (and as someone pointed out, probably gain publicity for the movie, if anything), but I maintain that making this movie without Joss Whedon is blasphemy.

I read up a bit on the writer - this 29 year old woman with no previous writing credits. She is quoted as saying she's a fan of the show, as she used to watch it in college, and is excited about rebooting it for modern times. I tried to understand how someone who claims to be a fan of this show could be anxious to bastardize it as a franchise.

I figure it's kind of like John Logan with "Star Trek: Nemesis". Here's a guy who claims to be a fan of the franchise (even specifically identifying his favourite episode as "Balance of Terror" and his favourite alien species as Romulan) who still wrote a travesty of a movie for it. I imagine this turning into a similar debacle.

Sometimes a self-proclaimed 'fan' is the worst person you can give stake (that pun was totally spontaneous ) in a franchise. Sometimes the people who call themselves fans of something are the most deluded about what it needs for its legacy to be honoured. Everywhere I've seen this story, there are endless comments from Whedon fans under the article, and they all say the same thing - without Whedon involved, this is bullshit. This makes me happy.

And to all the people saying they don't care or never watched the show because of its title - that's the same unfair, closed-minded reason why this ridiculously award-worthy show never won any Emmy or Golden Globe awards for acting and only won for writing once (and also why no Star Trek shows ever won for anything but make-up or special effects). Don't judge a book by its cover.

I always say that it seems like most people have some show they grew up watching as a teen that they could relate to because of the way it dealt with teenage issues. For some, it's "Beverly Hills 90210" or "Dawson's Creek". "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was THE coming-of-age show for me. All the supernatural mumbo jumbo that the title implies was not the main appeal to me.

I got used to it, and sometimes I liked it a lot, but the main attraction was its insight and empathy towards the teenage/young adult experience. I was so into that, I even forgot about all the supernatural stuff sometimes. I'm not sick about this as my original hyperbolic statement suggests, but it just saddens me to think something I care about so much could have such a poor product share its name. Surely that must be understandable to some here.

 

She is a twenty-nine year old actor whom you've never heard of, which means that her career window is closing...yesterday. Fronting for this production is her last shot.

 

I just imagined a Firefly reboot without Nathan Fillion, not written by Joss Whedon. I think I'm going to be sick.

 

One supposes that Whedon could go ahead with his own counter-revival in some other medium if he had a mind to - which it doesn't seem that he does. He's got the comics, right?