Tuffy the Vampire Flayer?
May 28th, 2009 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: buffyBuffy’s coming back to the big screen! And when I say, ‘Buffy’, I mean just her. Not Willow, or Angel, or Xander, or Giles, or Oz, or Dawn, or Joss Whedon.
Or any reference to the television series.
So, some girl who is blonde and stakes vampires. Or perhaps she stakes vampires. One of the people involved in re-making the series is Roy Lee, whose past films include The Strangers (People struggle helplessly against evil but evil wins.), The Grudge (People again struggle helplessly against evil but it still kind of wins.), and The Ring (Well. We’ll call this one a possible draw for evil. Nah. Screw that. It wins.). I hope at some point during the hiring process someone asked Mister Lee whether or not he could make a movie in which good triumphs.
So what do you think. Will this help you not look like a decaying dinosaur when you make Buffy references to today’s impressionable youth? Or is this basically a way of turning Buffy into a brand name?
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I don’t think evil winning is what’s bad about those movies. Also, what the hell is wrong with evil winning? Whether or not the good guys triumph isn’t even a factor in whether or not I enjoy something.
I’ve always enjoyed the original film more than the TV series, so I have no problem with returning Buffy to her roots.
Will this help you not look like a decaying dinosaur when you make Buffy references to today’s impressionable youth? Or is this basically a way of turning Buffy into a brand name?
The latter, although given this is the third distinct incarnation of Buffy (including the original Kristy Swanson movie), you could argue the initial damage has already been done.
They’d never let Joss Whedon run wild with a full-blown Holywood version of the TV series, so it’s probably just as well they’re making a new version.
Will Pee-Wee be in it again? Because that was the only good thing about any of the Buffy incarnations; Pee-Wee goddamn Herman being a vampire.
@ rizzo, I second this, with a hearty recommendation of extended death scene
I don’t really see how the new Buffy will be successful at all without Whedon or any of the characters. It’s disgusting how Hollywood will eat up anything and remake it again. Remember this is not the first re-make of Buffy.
rizzo and Liquidben are absolutely correct: the worth of any remake of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie depends entirely on whether it can top Paul Reubens’ performance, and especially his death scene.
If it can’t measure up to that standard, why bother with it?
To be honest, not only am I okay with this, I welcome it. I’ve always been willing to embrace remakes, which is something I attribute to the Power Rangers.
Yeah, I should probably explain. See, here’s the thing: because there’s a totally new group of Super Sentai every year, there’s a totally new group of Power Rangers every year. At first they tried to play these off as related spin-offs, but by the time of Lost Galaxy they had given in to rebooting the franchise as a whole. They chuck out everything but the names Power Ranger and Zord, and start over completely fresh. And that, for those of you still with me on this, is what the Power Rangers have to do with Buffy. (Well, at least with my attitude toward reboots and rebrandings, which in this case relates to Buffy.)
Imagine it though. Every year we make a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Not just recasting parts, but establishing an original mythos, backstory, & setting each time. World building is a primal draw for me; no matter how much I change or mature as a reader/watcher, it will always draw me in. So let’s say this year is about Buffy Andrews, a straight-laced undergrad looking to get ahead who stumbles across a morally bankrupt genetics professor’s secret, PS the secret is he altered his own DNA to become a sci-fi vampire. Next year, Buffy Cho struggles with touching issues of identity as a second generation Chinese-American, and also struggles with Chinese vampires. They know kung fu and don’t die in sunlight! After that Buffy St. James is a rookie FBI agent on the anti-vampire taskforce trying to be taken seriously despite her pornstar name. By 2012 we can start tossing in sly references to the Summers era to give longtime fans a continuity boner.
I’m gonna add some more Pee-Wee love here, since I never watched the show.
Too many vampires try dying with dignity. It’s shameful.
…y’know… with all this emphasis on gruesome vampire deaths, one would question the need for a Buffy at all. Just make a movie called “Ka-Blam-Pire” and let the undead body count soar.
I’m sorry to see this being done. Even if we live in a world of constant Hollywood remakery, it’s just weird to remake Buffy so soon. And it seems oddly disrespectful of the creator and the show’s still-vibrant fanbase to do it like this. I have no interest in this project, and would feel weirdly … unfaithful to the show I loved.
So basically the movie will have as much to do with the tv series as the tv series had to do with the movie.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep Angel. After all, they’re going to want to cash in on the massive success of the Twilight franchise (and that’s probably the only reason they’re doing this reboot/remake/whatever in the first place).
Michelle: They CAN’T keep Angel. Fox own the right to all the characters from the TV show, and Fox aren’t interested in doing a movie from the same people who made the first one bomb, especially without Joss, and with the income that Season 8 is bringing in for no risk.
Theoretically, it might be good, but no one involved with the project has any kind of track record for producing entertaining things, so I’m not exactly holding my breath.
@HitTheTargets:
“…World building is a primal draw for me; no matter how much I change or mature as a reader/watcher, it will always draw me in…”
Same here. 🙂
“…So let’s say this year is about Buffy Andrews, a straight-laced undergrad looking to get ahead who stumbles across a morally bankrupt genetics professor’s secret, PS the secret is he altered his own DNA to become a sci-fi vampire. Next year, Buffy Cho struggles with touching issues of identity as a second generation Chinese-American, and also struggles with Chinese vampires. They know kung fu and don’t die in sunlight! After that Buffy St. James is a rookie FBI agent on the anti-vampire taskforce trying to be taken seriously despite her pornstar name. By 2012 we can start tossing in sly references to the Summers era to give longtime fans a continuity boner…”
That would be an interesting batch of different stories in the genre. 🙂 Why would all the main characters need to be named Buffy, though?