Reboot Still Happening

I feel like, for myself, there is no downside to more Buffy. If it's good, great! If it's not, the original show doesn't lose anything. It will still be there.

It all started with Star Wars in 2015. Can you in all honestly say there's no downside? I remember what it was like before the Dark Times, before Disney. Star Wars was universally beloved, and anything new with the brand name was guaranteed to have some level of quality that would live up to that legacy, because everyone involved truly loved it. How can you not? It was cool to make allusions to it in pop culture. Billy Dee made a cameo on That 70s Show; Tina Fey's character Liz dressed up as Princess Leia to get out of jury duty on 30 Rock. But in 2015, something changed. Suddenly, the people calling the shots really couldn't give less of a crap how it turned out, or what the fans cared about. It was all about ticking boxes to make the most widely acceptable, barely palatable mush that vaguely resembles Star Wars to all three people out there who haven't actually seen the movies, but clearly had no intent to do anything with the IP other than profit off of selling the brand name. Star Wars' legacy was diminished, and now, despite a gluttony of tv shows coming out on their Disney+ service, nobody cares. People hear or see anything with Star Wars, and go, "Meh. Whatever."

Where there was once universal passion, and a sense of camraderie with other fans, now all that remains is apathy. That's a legacy worse than death. A dead franchise may not get anything new, but we'll never forget how brightly it burned when it was around. But mediocrity breeds apathy, and apathy...is the path to the dark side. Nobody cares, and nobody wants any more.

Good shows have their time, and they should know when to take their bows and leave the stage. Very few are lucky to have been around long enough to even make it to that point. Why take a show that did go out on a high note, and bring it back only to continue it without fresh ideas?

Especially with hit shows and beloved actors, it's very unlikely any replacement is ever going to out-do or compete with the original.

People need to just let the past be the past and come up with original ideas for a change. I wish this sick reboot culture would just die already.
 
People need to just let the past be the past and come up with original ideas for a change. I wish this sick reboot culture would just die already.

That is unlikely to happen as long as the IP owners can make a few pennies more than it costs to do so, rather than create original content. It even has the possibility to get worse; we are very nearly at the point where episodes of old series could be created with the original cast as they looked back then. Even if the actors are now dead, and without any real people playing the roles.
 
No! Just No!
I'm so tired of Hollywood rebooting classic shows and movies because they got nothing left. No fresh ideas. I liked the original Night Court and the cast. Magnum Pi reboot? P.ease,pffft. Tom Selleck will always be Thomas Magnum and John Hillerman rest in peace will always be Higgins. SMG is Buffy.

But if you saw the movie, Kristy Swanson is Buffy and she came first.
 
Unless you saw the film second. In which case she came second. Purely from a personal timeline point of view. 🙂
But then from that perspective anyone that sees the NEWEST NEW rebooted Buffy first, to them, THAT would be the real Buffy and SMG would just be an old actor that played the character.
 
But then from that perspective anyone that sees the NEWEST NEW rebooted Buffy first, to them, THAT would be the real Buffy and SMG would just be an old actor that played the character.
A perfectly valid point!

It is all just a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.
 
It would be hard to argue that SMG was not the definitive Buffy.

I really think that the best way to 'advance' a franchise is to do a 'next generation' and respect the original.

That or you do a Shakespeare. You (mostly) respect that the text is the text, the story is the story and you simply have new actors portraying the same 'golden' words. It is very limiting, but it has the advantage of preserving the core elements. This would freeze the TV show as something in the 90s/00s and eventually, like most Shakespeare it would be comprehensible to fewer people and less popular fiction... I think Buffy may in 30 years be worth PERFORMING -- doing word for word -- but i don't think it would fly now because it's too close to the time of the original and it would be dated. In 30 or 40 years, it would be a revival of something from the long ago past (and thus be fashionable rather than simply 'dated') and most of the creators and most of those of us who watched would be dead or very old.

And no one really wants a word for word Buffy revival now because no actor alive really wants to be compared to SMG and the core characters to see how they 'deliver' the 'Whedon'/Shakespeare.

The problem with most 'reboots' is they are always COMPLETELY money driven... Everything has to be somewhat money driven. The participants have to be paid and no matter what you make, there's a cost. So people come back to what they know is popular -- like the thousands of iterations of spiderman and batman.

They rewrite the idea of Batman or Spiderman etc enough to make him 'contemporary' and thus supposedly appealing to the modern audience. I'm torn. I know that I could not relate to a Batman from the original comics. I do enjoy Spiderman from the original comics (I've read those) but I also enjoy Tobey Maguire, who is probably 'my' Spiderman of choice. What, you don't know who Tobey Maguire is? Well, that's because they've reinvented Spidey and even the whole spiderverse more than once since Tobey Maguire... (the most recent animated versions which include Gwen Stacy as spidergirl and the infinite spideyverse are interesting and somewhat original.)

As I've said before, I like 'the next generation' - aka TNG approach best as a way of returning to great source material and probably always will... but as long as there is something that is as powerful an idea as BUFFY, there will be people lining up to try to do some version of it... I think the fact that it hasn't happened yet may be partly because the original is so iconic AND core of us who adore Buffy are still kicking... even if some of us are fossils.

The BIGGER problem we have at the moment with reboots/remakes is that people aren't doing original things with the source material when they mess with it. It's ONLY a money grab and that gets annoying. 'You' may remember H5O with Jack Lord, but there are many, many people who weren't born when that show was on, who only know the new Hawaii 5 0 - that is the ONLY version that exists. Even if they know that it's a remake, it's far in the dusts of time.

I agree that Tom Selleck is the only Magnum, but Magnum wasn't great art and I'm not that torn up about someone making a 'new' Magnum... of course, I haven't watched a single episode of the 'new' Magnum - when i have wanted a Magnum fix, I've mostly watched the show that reminds me what the world was like when I was in my teens!

With Hawaii 5 0 and Hawaii 5 O - I actually watched both and liked both... though i never saw all of either show and I always wished they'd made the younger version the son of the original or some relative of his. The distance between the two series is so big that there really is a full generational remove. 1970s to the present is a good long time.

2004 to 2024 is 'just' 20 years. Even all the primary cast of Buffy are still alive and most are still acting.

The real problem for remakers is that Buffy the series was iconic. Like Star Trek the original, there's NOTHING like it. There is unlikely to be anything 'like it'. This makes any remake something that will be constantly subject to scrutiny and criticism.

Speaking of iconic...

Very occasionally, (IMO, the series Wednesday about Wednesday Addams did this) they take the source material - in this case mostly the characters and the mood - and they build something that is almost entirely new, but which is also fundamentally true to the original. I am not sure if it was entirely successful (I didn't like some of their casting choices), but it was different and it was interesting and it stands by itself as its own thing. I have yet to see season 2, so i don't know if season 1 was lightning in bottle never to be repeated.

The interesting thing about The Addams Family of course is that IT already had two very strong iterations... One was the original TV show. The second was the movies with Raul Julia as Gomez . They rocked. I have heard very few complaints about those movies and lots of people including me really enjoyed the Wednesday series.

So I think coming back to the same material -- and doing it in the same medium (TV) can be done successfully and creatively... But... the movies had Raul Julia and the second TV iteration has Tim Burton!

Now if someone like Tim Burton were involved with a Buffy 2.0, I'd definitely watch!!!
 
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It all started with Star Wars in 2015. Can you in all honestly say there's no downside? I remember what it was like before the Dark Times, before Disney. Star Wars was universally beloved, and anything new with the brand name was guaranteed to have some level of quality that would live up to that legacy, because everyone involved truly loved it.

What in the world are you talking about. Star Wars was already in “the dark times” in the early 00s. Everyone HATED the prequels, and before that everyone was talking about how Return of the Jedi was bad. RedLetterMedia basically became a “thing” online in large part due to their Mr Plinkett bashings of The Phantom Menace, and that was well before the sequels.

nobody cares. People hear or see anything with Star Wars, and go, "Meh. Whatever."

Where there was once universal passion, and a sense of camraderie with other fans, now all that remains is apathy.

And this is just straight wrong. Star Wars fans have always been arguing amongst themselves, and there’s always been the fans who like abc but don’t like xyz and vice versa. A lot of people still enjoy the franchise, otherwise they wouldn’t be making the shows, upcoming movies, comics, or books that they have been for the past decade.

Star Wars’s #1 enemy has always been the fan base, and the sequels didn’t change that. The only reason they’ve gotten it “worse” nowadays is the rise of the alt-right movement’s prominence online and the prevalence/ease of use of the internet in general. Whereas people used to be “that line about sand was dumb” now it’s a very vocal minority saying “they’re ruining our strong male character by making him beaten and broken by the burden of his own legacy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 women ruining franchise!!!! Go woke go broke!!! 😭😭😭😭😭🍼🍼🍼🍼🍼 Kathleen Kennedy needs the electric chair!!!!!”
 
The only reason they’ve gotten it “worse” nowadays is the rise of the alt-right movement’s prominence online and the prevalence/ease of use of the internet in general ... now it’s a very vocal minority saying “they’re ruining our strong male character by making him beaten and broken by the burden of his own legac
That is pure bullocks. It's like saying that everyone who supports a woman's right to choose is far left. In my opinion comments like the above are also a large part of the problem. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, not be an alt-right. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, be a far-left.

Why bring politics into it?
 
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DeepBlueJoy
DeepBlueJoy
it's young bulls? Uhm. OK.
That is pure bullocks. It's like saying that everyone who supports a woman's right to choose is far left. In my opinion comments like the above are also a large part of the problem. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, not be an alt-right. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, be a far-left.

Why bring politics into it?
Although I agree with your assessment here, I think Plasma was trying to point out how the influence of "anti-woke" media figures has led to a lot more politically-inclined criticism of the Star Wars franchise.

While back then most of the criticism had to do with the writing, the acting, and the overuse of special effects, now the obsession of a large amount of fans over certain characters or topics is obviously political.

You are asking why bring politics into the criticism of that franchise, while this is exactly what leads to these neverending conflicts among the fandom. It has seemed inescapable in the past few years. Whether you are on one side or the other, it's extremely difficult to like or dislike Star Wars products without receiving some form of label.
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
but there is a huge difference, in my opinion, between anti-woke and alt-right.
Well, that was one hell of an anti-woke rant right there. I'm glad you got that off your chest, but how is any of what you said related to my point about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be called woke if it had been created today, within the current political context?

Imagine it! Creator of the series proclaims openly that he is a male feminist! There are multiple females on the writing team! Lead character is a young woman with preternatural strength! She was gifted these incredible powers, so she never had to train to obtain them! Such a Mary Sue! The leading man is an awkward, goofy, somewhat sexist beta male who can't defend himself most of the time! He makes men look bad! There's so much focus put on a lesbian witch! Oh and she was not initially a lesbian, but they turned her gay midway through the show to please all the woke kids! So woke, so forced! Anya? A vengeance demon who spent hundred of years torturing and killing men, yet the writers keep apologizing for her, making jokes out of her history of murder and mayhem! Who cares about men, right? What's next? Did you notice how almost all of the men Buffy sleeps with turn bad? I guess all men are just terrible people.

This is just what I could come up with on the spot. I can't imagine the amount of quotes from the show that would be picked apart by anti-woke people to prove without a doubt how the show has a political agenda, that it wants to put men in a bad light... Watcher's Council, anyone? Caleb? And many more examples! Oh and there are so many "go girl!" moments. The sequence in 'Chosen' with all the girls? So cheesy and political. The woke enterprise is literally trying to force-feed us all of this crap! So much wokeness! It is awful!

You see what I mean? I've been around these circles for over a decade, I know all of their arguments, all of the ways they find to validate their wokephobia. The point is, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would easily be qualified as woke if it was released today. I don't know what else to tell you. If the day ever comes that the Buffyverse is brought back to life, you can bet that there will be a crowd of anti-woke people who start screaming about it.

You clearly didn't read my post at all. Don't give me TL DR as yours was long and I read yours right to the end so you could at least do me the courtesy. I counteracted every single one of those points you bring up and explain thoroughly the difference between woke fiction and simply having a female lead.

I also criticised the anti woke crowd too, but the fact that you just dismissed my post as an anti woke rant shows you didn't read a word of it.

Meanwhile Xander is not a beta or whatever. He saved the world in the season finale and gets off with lots of babes, isn't made fun of for being white or male, gets to call the female hero out over things like Angel etc. Angel and Giles meanwhile are strong male characters, Oz is the most sympathetic character apart from Tara, and whilst they did make Willow gay right the way through, you'd probably get more SJW fans complaining that Willow was acting like bisexuality didn't exist. (I have seen SJWs criticise it from that perspective actually.)

Meanwhile Spike becomes good as a result of his relationship with Buffy and saves the day in the finale? Also Anya WAS an unbelievably shit character. The only reason she has any fans at all is thanks to Emma Caulfield being both gorgeous and a likable, funny, charismatic actress. They should have cast Emma as a different character, hell even just a Cordette who was moved by the graduation day battle or something as Anya is crap in terms of how she is written.

You absolutely 100 percent can say that Anya's inclusion did preach double standards against men. Warren kills TWO women, both in fairly quick ways (one was an accident) and the show tells us he deserves to be slowly tortured to death, flayed and burned into ash. Anya, tortured and killed hundreds and thousands of innocent men in the most horrific ways, including condemning them to eternal torture, and for the exact same bigoted reasons as Warren (my relationship with one broke down, they are all pigs, why didn't one want me etc), she is presented as a bubbly, quirky, likable character.

However to be fair Buffy was 30 years ago now almost. Society changes. That's like holding up a 60s Star Trek or DW and saying the way they portrayed women (Star Trek) or black people (Doctor Who) wouldn't fly today. Of course they wouldn't, same way perhaps some aspects of how Buffy portrayed men wouldn't fly today. Back in the 90s we thought it was just so refreshing for a woman to be dominant over a man in any situation because of girl power and women being pushed into the background before, where as now we are more aware of how women can abuse men physically too, so things like Buffy absolutely pummelling Spike in their relationship wouldn't be glossed over quite as much.

That's the problem with the SJW things. THEY are old fashioned in how they write men and how they write women. On the one hand they write the women characters as though it's the 50s, and they are the first people to ever have female heroes, yet they go even further than any double standards in old 90s girl power shows like Buffy, Xena and Charmed ever did. I made all that clear in the post above.
 
That is pure bullocks. It's like saying that everyone who supports a woman's right to choose is far left. In my opinion comments like the above are also a large part of the problem. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, not be an alt-right. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, be a far-left.

Why bring politics into it?

And I said that all the criticism levied at all Star Wars products is political…where exactly? My point was more that it is now a factor whereas it wasn’t before. Agree or don’t, whatever, but it’s impossible to ignore that there is a part of the fandom that does this exact thing, which was the point of what I was saying.

Though your jumping to conclusions and failure to read what was actually said is, as usual, no surprise.
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Whatever. The attitudes and arguments in this thread, self included, have gotten out of control. We’ve all clearly gotten way off topic somewhere along the way.
 
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Though your jumping to conclusions and failure to read what was actually said is, as usual, no surprise.
You said "'the rise of the alt-right movement’s prominence online and the prevalence/ease of use of the internet in general ... now it’s a very vocal minority saying they’re ruining our strong male character by making him beaten and broken by the burden of his own legacy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 women ruining franchise!!!! Kathleen Kennedy needs the electric chair!!!!!'" implying anyone that agrees with those statements is with the online alt-right movement of which you speak.

That is why "normal" people are afraid to speak up and say what they dislike, because they are fearful of being called this or that. And I think it is far too easy for someone to read something and instantly label a person based upon what they do or don't want to see in their (former) favorite franchise as one inflammatory term or another. It's also very easy to devalue a person's opinion simply because it runs counter to your own.

But yeah, it has nothing to do about the Buffy reboot.
 
That is why "normal" people are afraid to speak up and say what they dislike, because they are fearful of being called this or that. And I think it is far too easy for someone to read something and instantly label a person based upon what they do or don't want to see in their (former) favorite franchise as one inflammatory term or another. It's also very easy to devalue a person's opinion simply because it runs counter to your own.

Unfortunately, it's always been that way. It's just gotten A LOT worse in recent years. I call it the Stepford Wives Syndrome. Luckily, I've never succumbed to that particular ailment.

The current, idiotic trend of purposely miscasting actors in a project (just so EVERYONE feels "included") is ruining the film industry. Disney is playing a big part in this, but never fear, there's enough blame to go around. Making Snow White a brown skinned Latina? Excuse me, we DO remember why her name is Snow White, don't we? Oh, and the dwarves...aren't dwarves?

Coming soon, more reboots! Old Yeller will feature a cat instead of a dog, and Flowers for Algernon will include a platypus instead of a mouse. The Godfather remake will feature the Corleone Family: Suzi, Michaela, and Frederika. Plus their mother, mafia boss Vicky Corleone. And let's not forget the classic, Thelma and Louise. However, the characters are now known as Tommy and Larry... because, y'know, that's how things are.

Thank God for DVDs!!!!
 
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Ethan Reigns
Ethan Reigns
Identity politics is wonderful - if your intention is to destroy society.
That is pure bullocks. It's like saying that everyone who supports a woman's right to choose is far left. In my opinion comments like the above are also a large part of the problem. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, not be an alt-right. You can not like the sequels, not like how the characters are written, not like the plot points and, believe it or not, be a far-left.

Why bring politics into it?
i agree that politics don't need to be in the discussion. Good or bad reboot questions don't have to have anything to do with politics.
 
No! Just No!
I'm so tired of Hollywood rebooting classic shows and movies because they got nothing left. No fresh ideas. I liked the original Night Court and the cast. Magnum Pi reboot? P.ease,pffft. Tom Selleck will always be Thomas Magnum and John Hillerman rest in peace will always be Higgins. SMG is Buffy.

I love Magnum P.I. ! Selleck and the whole original cast are timeless. I didn't know Night Court got a reboot.
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Unless you saw the film second. In which case she came second. Purely from a personal timeline point of view. 🙂

It's easier to get away with a reboot I think when the original is more of a cult classic. The mini-series Shogun could fall into that category. Original was popular, successful, yes, but not a mega-blockbuster.
 
Yeah, there's some appeal to seeing things like "Frasier in Autumn," but "Night Court, but it's 30 years latter, all the actors are dead," I don't know where that one came from.
 
That is unlikely to happen as long as the IP owners can make a few pennies more than it costs to do so, rather than create original content. It even has the possibility to get worse; we are very nearly at the point where episodes of old series could be created with the original cast as they looked back then. Even if the actors are now dead, and without any real people playing the roles.

We shouldn't pretend this is entirely down to IP and profit

We still tell stories with the Greek Gods, with Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes.

Hell, the entire concept of "public domain" seems to be that eventually people will want to tell their own stories with someone else's characters.
 
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