NileQT87
Billowy Coat, King of Pain
So, I recently stumbled upon a series of A.I. videos in the style of '50s Panavision trailers, and low and behold, two creators of them have done this to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Some of these would be actually awesome and more interesting to make into period piece reboots than updating and recasting everything always into an achingly tedious modern setting with all the wrong instincts on how to modernize it. Boom! showed quite clearly how that can go terribly wrong fast. Also, focus on writers' pet favorites that don't always align with who the main characters actually are.
Two versions of it (one looking like the original cast and the other an imaginary '50s-looking cast):
I'd actually watch a '50s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think it would actually work really well, as the character archetypes would be quite easy to make into their retro counterparts (Scooby Doo is from the '60s-'70s, after all, and Anne Rice--the Fanged Four owe their biggest debt to her--first published in 1976--and these trailers have shades of Nancy Drew, which is obviously far older than those). I'd even love to see treatments of the same basic story/characters dropped into other eras and adapted accordingly.
The original '90s setting (both 1992 and 1997) already feels a bit distant already. The high school years as is couldn't be made believably in a post-Columbine setting at all. It's Zero Tolerance policy violations everywhere with a whole arsenal of medieval weaponry in the school library. Two episodes were already held back for months because one depicted what seemed to be a school shooter that was really a suicide attempt which Buffy talked down scheduled to air a week after Columbine and the other had the students rising up to fight the Mayor and blowing up the school! The fact that there aren't any cell phones ("If the apocalypse comes, beep me.") changes the way characters act when they're in danger and the believability that the vampire slaying and monster hunting isn't being filmed and photographed all over social media. Hard to have "Sunnydale Syndrome" where the town seems oblivious to living on a Hellmouth in the age of social media.
Or better yet, a historical Tales of the Slayer that doesn't need to trample on the '90s-'00s canon (all 254 episodes of Buffy and Angel) at all and gets around the nasty idea of recasting and rebooting the whole thing by throwing the original away. So much room for period pieces baked in to the mythology already.
The Buffyverse is explicitly multiversal, so this actually might not be a terrible way to reboot it. Rather than trying to cater to a young, hip modern audience, aim for something a bit more high-concept like this alternate universe where the story is adapted to another time period. And the period drama of it all could actually be the selling point for people who would otherwise never watch a YA show. We've seen the shows do little period pieces with all the flashbacks, so imagine the main drama adapted to the time period it's set in.
Some of these would be actually awesome and more interesting to make into period piece reboots than updating and recasting everything always into an achingly tedious modern setting with all the wrong instincts on how to modernize it. Boom! showed quite clearly how that can go terribly wrong fast. Also, focus on writers' pet favorites that don't always align with who the main characters actually are.
Two versions of it (one looking like the original cast and the other an imaginary '50s-looking cast):
I'd actually watch a '50s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think it would actually work really well, as the character archetypes would be quite easy to make into their retro counterparts (Scooby Doo is from the '60s-'70s, after all, and Anne Rice--the Fanged Four owe their biggest debt to her--first published in 1976--and these trailers have shades of Nancy Drew, which is obviously far older than those). I'd even love to see treatments of the same basic story/characters dropped into other eras and adapted accordingly.
The original '90s setting (both 1992 and 1997) already feels a bit distant already. The high school years as is couldn't be made believably in a post-Columbine setting at all. It's Zero Tolerance policy violations everywhere with a whole arsenal of medieval weaponry in the school library. Two episodes were already held back for months because one depicted what seemed to be a school shooter that was really a suicide attempt which Buffy talked down scheduled to air a week after Columbine and the other had the students rising up to fight the Mayor and blowing up the school! The fact that there aren't any cell phones ("If the apocalypse comes, beep me.") changes the way characters act when they're in danger and the believability that the vampire slaying and monster hunting isn't being filmed and photographed all over social media. Hard to have "Sunnydale Syndrome" where the town seems oblivious to living on a Hellmouth in the age of social media.
Or better yet, a historical Tales of the Slayer that doesn't need to trample on the '90s-'00s canon (all 254 episodes of Buffy and Angel) at all and gets around the nasty idea of recasting and rebooting the whole thing by throwing the original away. So much room for period pieces baked in to the mythology already.
The Buffyverse is explicitly multiversal, so this actually might not be a terrible way to reboot it. Rather than trying to cater to a young, hip modern audience, aim for something a bit more high-concept like this alternate universe where the story is adapted to another time period. And the period drama of it all could actually be the selling point for people who would otherwise never watch a YA show. We've seen the shows do little period pieces with all the flashbacks, so imagine the main drama adapted to the time period it's set in.
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