Grave Tidings: Slay, Lady, Slay?

By An Unpaid Intern / Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Before there were sparkly pussy vampires and musical theater sprites learning Very Special Episode lessons about being nice to fat girls, there was an epic show called Buffy The Vampire Slayer that featured vicious vampire sex machines, troubled teenage misanthropes, and a huge gay following.

Buffy is slated to return, but will we even recognize her?:

That big-screen Buffy the Vampire Slayer we’ve been hoping for is finally moving forward, but it turns out it’ll be without Sarah Michelle Gellar—and without Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon.

Whit Anderson (who wrote the mildly funny Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man) is the woman currently writing the script for Warner Brothers’ proposed reboot to the popular series that ran for seven seasons on The CW (formerly The WB).

At least Whit Anderson is aware that without Joss Whedon it’ll definitely be an uphill battle to bring in fans of the original series, many of whom may feel that this is something that shouldn’t go ahead without Whedon or even, to a certain limit, Sarah Michelle Gellar. But she’s hopeful that the fans will come, pointing to the success of Christopher Nolan‘s revival of Batman as the ultimate example of how something can be revamped for a new audience with a completely new and fresh vision.

Klarth

*shakes head* I can’t even.

I read about this on a gossip site, and someone suggested that a Nolan-like take on the concept is one of the few ways for this to not fail.

I agree, but I still don’t feel good about this.
I made the following point there, too.

Batman (and other comic characters) are different from something like Buffy because these are decades-old characters that have been passed around from team to team, with various interpretations and changes. It’s understood that there is a core character concept, but that the way it’s implemented will change, sometimes drastically, depending upon the director/writer/artist/etc.

Buffy hasn’t been around that long, by comparison. There was the film, and then the TV series already revamped it from a campy tween film with vampires to a campy yet self-aware televsion series that expanded upon and re-/defined the who concept and backstory.

In most people’s opinions, Whedon’s Buffy is the definitive Buffy, and many fans will be unable to swallow it.

It’s not like the world has changed so much since the tv series that people can’t relate to it anymore without a fresh take.

It would be hypocritical to say that Buffy should never be rebooted, but I think it would have been better received far enough down the road that it would really bring something different to the table.

Right now, anyone can watch the tv series and get what it’s about. It’s not like trying to compare early Batman comics to the work that Frank Miller did much later, where the tone is different, and the cast is expanded, and so on.
JVC

It’s just the studios looking for the next franchise for the younger generations. Harry Potter is ending, Twilight will soon. Look at Sony. Got rid of the cast, director of the Spiderman movies to go younger. On principle, I won’t watch this reboot until it’s on DVD but I am not that surprised.
jmatts78

I really wish they wouldn’t – I’m not prepared to start hating Buffy.
ericthewriter

is there some technical term for being nostalgic about last week, or have we as a culture become to lazy to imagine?

in keeping the most recent tv reboots in mind, all i can say is ’9021NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!’