Why Joss Whedon Not Coming Back For Buffy Re-make is Good
So something I struggled with over the past few weeks is the news that the right holders of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer were going to remake the superpowered vamp slayer for the big screen but without the help of creator Joss Whedon.
“I think that’s something better left untouched by me,” Whedon tells Entertainment Weekly. “So I wish them luck.”
My reaction to this was puzzlement and then a realization that I couldn’t be angry because that would make me a hypocrit. Afterall I was down with a fresh and new take on Star Trek and the movie rocked my world even after I had reservations all the way up to the release of the film.
So why would Whedon’s Buffy character be any different? Like Trek it was a cult TV show with a massive fanbase and at the time it was one of kind that owed itself to Whedon’s ability to combine My So Called Life into a Vampire slayer, with some Salem’s Lot thrown in. The show that had heart, pain, sex and a real inside to the idea that growing up is hell especially every week when the world rests on your soldiers.
I have been watching Seasons 2 - 7 over again since hearing about the re-make made me so angry I had to ingrain myself back into the world of the complex and cute vampire slayer and her Scooby gang of friends. When watching the series I realized something. The utter brilliance of the show but also the experiments by Whedon that went completely wrong.
For example: Season 1 of the series took forever to find itself and watching it you wonder how did it make it to a second season? with exception of quick witted and chatty excellence of Sarah Michelle Gellar, the villian was weak and formula was okay. Then came Angel, a vampire who helps Buffy? WTF! The show had its brilliance but it also hads its failures. Flashforward past Season 2 and 3, which remain the best writing in television I have seen to date (exception is Lost). Then you hit Season 4, Buffy goes to college, conveniently in Sunnydale, where she went to high school and every possible apocalypse was thwarted. However Season 4 had its problems, basically revolving around character development (Where do we go from here?). Whedon must have asked himself, what if there was a group of American military commandos, aware of demons and vamps, and the activity of them in the hellmouth? What would they do? Presumably Whedon was a fan of the short lived British series, Ultraviolet, featuring a clandestine military organization that hunts vamps. It seemed like a cool idea but in the context of the 7 seasons of the series it is the weakest season in the show’s history.
Without diving into the rest of the series and spoiling it for everyone who hasn’t seen it, my point is that with the brilliance and hipness to the show that precessed shows like Smallville, Heroes, Lost, Alias, all of which pay homage to Buffy in some way, it still had a bunch of flaws. It had utter moments of WTF? areas of nonsensical bull shit that was probably a result of Whedon and his writers being torn between the Angel spin-off as well as 1 partial season of Firefly. Creative juices being spread thin.
So with this exploration, I wonder can Whedon bring anything new to a new Buffy? Can he do something different giving the chance to reboot his character? Sure he probably could but why would he want to? How different would it be from what we have already seen?
On the Complete series box set Whedon wrote a letter to fans and it said,
“Buffy has been the greatest, most difficult and rewarding experience of my career thus far would actually be to undersell its significance. It represents the best work (again, so far) of so many talented people I can’t possibly name them all here. David Greenwalt and Marti Noxon, who ran the show with me are more responsible for its shape and terrible than I ever intend to give them credit for, do spring to mind. But so many great writers, actors and crew labored beyond the beyond to make this show happen that it extended, as true art does, beyond my reach. This show ran me, not the other way around. It told me what to say, what to show, when to give comfort and when to draw blood. This show, seven years of it, is a living thing. Put it on your shelf, and go to bed. It’ll whisper to you in your sleep”
Reading this makes you understand Buffy is the single greatest thing Whedon ever did and may ever do, though Serenity and Firefly was pretty epic in its own right. It should be because he wouldn’t have a career with out it. The thing is maybe a new Buffy will be better off without Whedon and I say this for a few reasons.
1.) Originality. You have something new and fresh. A new writer and director could make Buffy do something that Whedon never thought of. Abrams wasn’t a Trek fan and had things he disliked about Star Trek in general. He took the opportunity to make the Trek movie he’d want to see. Buffy could be the same way.
2.) Why would Whedon want to return to a labor of love just to redo it? Such a “rewarding experience” as he would call it, a remake would just take that away. It would be like Michael Phelps trying to relive the Beijing Olympics. Sometimes you have to move forward and Whedon is shining example of that throughout his career. He has Dollhouse on a network that screwed the pooch on Firefly, he is making another movie, his first since Serenity, I think Buffy is something that will remain for him what it was and lives on through the comics and his memories. Whedon is a guy who understands his fanbase and I think he knows that a remake from him may be detrimental to them because Whedon’s involvement creates the idea of his movie remake would be an erasement of the painstaking labor of love that was the 7 seasons of Buffy.
3.) Look at the things that didn’t work on the series and the things that did work? Personally a majority of things that didn’t flesh out right outweigh the things that did work. That being said the things that worked were awesome beyond belief (i.e. introducing Dawn, Spike, Angel, Onya, Buffy’s Mom and a Musical episode).
4.) Like JJ Abram’s Star Trek, one can look at Buffyverse the same way. JJ’s version is an alternate reality within the Star Trek canon. Rodenberry fans can always go back to their Star Trek while this new Trek will not kill the original canon. A new Buffy can be the same way. I will always love Whedon’s Buffy, it will always be something that I can go to bed and it will “whisper in my sleep.” A new Buffy will be new and that is it. I do not consider the first film part of the series so why should I consider the next one (remake or not) part of the Buffyverse I love. It will just be that alternate universe of Buffy and I am cool with that.
