Vol.1 - Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Ironically, for my first full column, I’m going to concentrate on a remake of a TV series that was a remake of a film itself. Keep following the rabbit down the hole, you’ll find a whole new world there...
“Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires and stop the spread of their evil, and the swell of their numbers. She alone, is the Slayer."
And so with this explanation begins the saga of Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Rescued from humble beginnings as a movie that was a relative flop, the franchise found a new audience that followed the weekly antics of Buffy on the small screen - I can't think of many other properties that took this route successfully, nearly everything else moves in the opposite direction. Running for seven seasons over two different networks, it is a shining beacon that proves that failing once doesn’t mean that you should quit.
Back in 1992, Twentieth Century Fox backed a concept that had been written by a still wet behind the ears writer called Joss Whedon. At this point, Whedon had not been involved in the Oscar winning Toy Story, or even been involved in the script for Alien: Resurrection.
But his tale of a schoolgirl who learns that her destiny is to become the Slayer, the torment of those undead bloodsucking fiends known as Vampires, struck a chord. An untapped market of girl power – before the Spice Girls made it popular – mixed with humour and horror. A decent cast of known names and flavour of the month actors were assembled, with Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer rubbing shoulders with Luke Perry, Kristy Swanson and young actors like David Arquette and Hilary Swank.
The film was released in the summer of 1992 in the States and in October in the UK. It didn’t do the kind of business Fox were hoping for, although it did more than cover its budget, and so Buffy Summers died for a while; not for the last time either!
Fast forward a few years, and Whedon and Fox were happy bedfellows once more. The writer had a fresh slant on his teenage creation and pitched a TV series to the network. Fox gave the programme a chance, using it as a mid-season replacement and commissioning twelve episodes. The camp-ness of the movie was erased, and a more knowing humour was injected into the scripts. A fresh young cast was put together and the only link to the film, aside from the name of course, was the fact that it was hinted in the first episode that Buffy had burnt her previous school gymnasium to the ground because it was full of Vamp…uh, asbestos.
The series fell into typical Beverly Hills 90210 territory, with a fresh faced and pretty cast. Set at Sunnydale High, a fictitious Californian school - although it was the same school set used for 90210 - Buffy Summers transferred in and learnt all too quickly that she couldn’t escape her destiny. The school librarian, the very British and very stuffy Giles, was appointed to be her Watcher and, as much as she protested, Buffy’s adventures were just beginning. Unlike 90210, it was clear very early on that this series had its roots very much in the horror genre. With the school sitting on top of a Hellmouth, a clever twist on the old Indian burial ground excuse for weird goings-on, the programme followed a ‘monster-of-the-week’ format, with a wider story arc in the background.
Of course, anyone who saw the show and stuck with it found that it turned into something else entirely. A programme where, thanks to a fantastic team of writers and directors not to mention the cast, you actually cared what happened to the characters on the screen. Ask anyone who loves the show what the best thing about BTVS was, and they will tell you that it was the writing and the characters. Amazingly, Whedon has gone on record to say that he doesn’t think that he’s very good at writing dialogue. If that’s the case, you have to wonder what a film or programme would look like if he felt that he could manage to nail dialogue! Personally, I can't wait to see what his version of The Avengers, coming out next year, will be like.
After seven seasons Buffy bowed out, a show perhaps with more to offer, but self aware enough to get out before it started to drag itself down. With the confirmation of the Potentials all turning into fully fledged Slayers, there was the opportunity to open the programme up into a 'Slayer of the week' series, but then it would have lost the rich central hub of characters that everyone had fallen in love with
It had become a weekly analogy showcase encased within a horror paradigm. The viewers grew up with the characters and the social and supernatural issues that they had to deal with.
The cast and crew moved onto other things, some more successfully than others.
It hadn’t had the smoothest run on TV. The WB (Warner Brothers network) actually cancelled the show after series five, leaving the show with a dead protagonist – although it wasn’t the first time! – and a fan-base left in limbo. Until, that is, UPN picked it up and agreed to broadcast the continuing adventures.
There was the direct spin-off show of Angel and further spin-offs for Spike, Giles and even Faith were bandied about, but nothing came of them.
An animated series was touted and a short pilot can be found here if you fancy a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnUvZP7-5LM
But it seemed that Buffy and her Scooby Gang had made like a Vamp and disappeared into dust.
Until recently that is.
Warner Brothers have announced that they are rebooting the franchise from scratch with a movie, having optioned the rights from Fran and Kaz Kuzui.
No-one from the original film or TV series will be involved, not even, and probably most importantly, Whedon himself.
Whedon has been very vocal about the fact that he doesn’t “love the idea of my creation in other hands”, but also accepts that there is nothing he can do about it. Perhaps his strongest viewpoint and the closest we'll come to him actually spitting blood on the subject was when he stated that the project is “a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths.”
It is being written by Whit Anderson, who doesn’t appear to have any writing credits in the movie or TV industry. That is not to say that she cannot make a good job of the script. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, but the concern here is that Warner Brothers may be jumping on a very Hollywood bandwagon.
Out with the old and in with the new...
You see, at the moment there is a sub genre of media that is doing very well for itself because of the success of a certain book series by Stephanie Meyer. The Twilight series has transferred to film and has been very successful, making Vampires more accessible to a teen demographic. But I prefer my Vampires evil and menacing, standing in the shadows, waiting to pounce on their next meal. I don't like them “sparkling” as some have put it. Added to the fact that shows like True Blood are also doing well on the small screen, it is a veritable goldmine. You have to question whether Warner Brothers are just grabbing onto these coat-tails and hoping some of that shiny moolah ends up in their pockets. Is this the reason that they have looked to reboot a Vampire related series that doesn't need rebooting? Is this the reason that they have put a female scriptwriter in place instead of involving Whedon again? (And before anyone says anything, I don't intend that to come across as a sexist comment in any way!)
Your host on this column attempted to speak to some stalwarts of the show, but some were too busy with other projects to reminisce about a show that is in their past. Which is fair enough, after all life does go on. Others did not wish to give an interview about the remake – make of that what you will, but I shall take it as their damning indictment about the reboot. The writer of the new script did not return e-mails and Warner Brothers themselves declined to comment. The only sound-bite I have found from an apparent insider is that although “this is not your high school Buffy, she’ll be just as witty, tough, and sexy as we all remember her to be.”
Is it just me or does that sound like something the female network woman in The Simpsons would say? Also, does that quote mean that the film would pick up from where season seven left off, with the Potentials now all powerful Slayers in their own right? There is no confirmation that any of the Scooby Gang will be returning. Will we see a friendless, older and wiser Buffy Summers carrying out her Slayer duties as those did before her, alone?
However, Sarah Michelle Gellar herself has recently gone on record during an interview with CNN, stating her point of view. To quote, she has said, “They don't need to make another one. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.” Alternatively, Kristy Swanson, who played the Slayer in the original iteration on the big screen has put forward her take on the project, saying “Let Buffy live, why not! If they wanted me to be a part of it, I think that would be fantastic and that it would be a blast.” But, considering her career since playing the titular Miss Summers, perhaps that's no great surprise.
When you consider the fan-base that the show had, combined with the vehement vitriol that you can find spewing across the internet about the reboot, you would have thought that Warner Brothers would be happy to put the record straight, or at least offer a little bit of information to appease those fans. But nothing has been forthcoming.
And herein lies the issue with remakes. A beloved title is announced as a reboot or remake and it automatically gets the back up of the fans of that franchise. With nothing concrete to base facts or opinion on, those fans will leap to the defence of the show or movie that they love so much. They don’t want the title to be sullied or diluted from the pedestal that they have put it on.
Before I am flamed for such comments, I would like to add that I loved the show and have all the series on DVD, so I am not overly enamoured by the idea that Warner Brothers are rebooting something that doesn’t need rebooting. In fact, I think that the TV series was a fantastic piece of work and should be left alone. However, I like to consider myself level headed and so I am always prepared to look at anything from both sides of the argument.
I’ll admit that there are a lot of remakes that don’t improve on the original in any way, but there are also the odd few that do. Who is to say that Ms Anderson will not be able to create a new Buffy-verse that is enticing to both new and old fans alike? Until we see some finished work, either in script or preview form, we can only air uneducated opinions. It may all end up being five by five, as Faith would say.
So let’s pick through this phenomenon a little shall we?
The original film was campy and lives in the category of “so bad it’s good”. It was a larger idea that was squashed and condensed into 90 minutes. Whedon’s original idea about a scary film with a strong female protagonist was changed by the studio into a pop culture comedy about what people thought about Vampires at the time.
The television series was a mid-season replacement for a show called Savannah, and its original central theme was high school as a horror movie. It worked on a number of levels, using supernatural story lines as metaphors for real-life issues such as drugs, lesbianism, growing up, love, loss and tragedy. Some fans say that the show changed their life. Some claim it actually saved theirs.
The franchise has continued to enthral outside of the confines of the television, with a continuing eighth season in comic form (and a motion comic on DVD and Blu-ray from that eighth season), multiple books, games and numerous other memorabilia. It influences pop culture even today and, due to the ways in which the universe that Whedon created has continued to keep the franchise in the public domain, it doesn’t feel like eight years since that synonymous title music by Nerf Herder last played on our screens.
As previously stated, I was unable to secure any interviews or quotes, albeit not for the lack of trying, so I leave the final say to the fans themselves. I have asked fans online to state what they think and the results have been a little surprising, but are not entirely representative of the whole fan-base. To find that out, this column would be a lot longer and littered with expletives, I'm sure.
Most are against the idea of raping and pillaging a beautiful corpse, stating that if the property was ever to be remade, it should have a longer waiting period. Such a short turnaround time points towards a lack of originality. Sure, but then isn't that an accusation that could be thrust at all remakes? They feel that to revisit Buffy and her adventures without the input of Joss Whedon is nothing short of sacrilege.
But some are actually open to the idea, receptive to the idea that someone else should have a crack at the Buffy-verse. They feel that if you look around enough, there are new tales to be told, highlighting the deep quality of some of the fan-fiction that is doing the rounds out there.
Then there are those who sit very much on a middle ground, with a morbid curiosity towards the project. They're interested to see what could be made from it, although they are wary of spending money to see it at the cinema, perhaps waiting to see it on DVD. One argument is that it can't be as bad as the original movie, can it?
Perhaps in the next couple of years, we may be able to find out. Of course, with Hollywood involved, the project might end up in development hell, sitting on a shelf never to be made.
Okay, so if the project does go ahead - dream cast time?
For the role of Buffy, I would like to nominate Alyson Michalka, from television's Hellcats. She seems pithy enough and hell, she plays a cheerleader in her show. Or maybe Amber Heard? I'd go for someone like Emma Stone for Willow and David Henrie for Xander.
I'm sure you've got your own ideas…………
Until next month - JD
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Other articles in Remake Hell - by Jon Gillam
Remake Hell Vol 6: On Reflection 14 November 2011
Remake Hell Vol 5: INCOMING! 14 October 2011
Remake Hell Vol 4: Platinum Dunes Special 14 September 2011
Remake Hell Vol 3: Total Recall 14 August 2011
Remake Hell Vol.2 : Comic Book Heroes 14 July 2011
Remake Hell in Movies 04 May 2011
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Ironically though, I'd wager that if you dug into it a little, Stephanie Meyer probably took a lot of inspiration from the Buffy/Angel relationship.
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