Guest Article: Buffy The Vampire Slayer 2012?

Today we have a guest article courtesy of online journalist Laura Chamberlain as news breaks of a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer feature:

Joss Whedon (centre) and the core cast of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

So there's talk on the internet and a press release from creator Joss Whedon that a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer film is in writing. One major problem: Joss Whedon isn't involved and, even worse, the director of the first Buffy film Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, who Whedon maintains ruined his script for the original movie and resulted in its failure, were the ones who gave the rights to make the film to Warner Brothers.

I can see why they think now might be a good time for a Buffy revival: vampires have never been hotter. For a vampire lover like myself, however, they are getting far too mainstream.

The problem with selling a Buffy film now is this: the series only finished seven years ago. Your mainstream film audience- now twentysomethings- grew up with the series and I'm not convinced that the teenage girls who obsess over the Twilight Saga wouldn't have caught the tail end of Buffy's popularity.

As a self-proclaimed Buffy geek I think I can speak for the fan base when I say making a film without Joss Whedon's approval, let alone his input, will draw massive resentment from its core audience.

I also think that if you take a closer look at why vampires are popular now, there are other clues to this film's potential failure.

Vampires have been popular for a long time because there's something about battling with the dark side of our human nature that has always fascinated people, but when Buffy came along, something changed.

Take the films shortly before Buffy came to air. We have Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) which is entertaining but doesn't deserve the Bram Stoker pre-fix as it misses the point of the book entirely, and Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994). These were the prominent titles in the genre, post-Hammer. Very traditional perspectives, although the latter does explore the blurry line between what makes good and what makes evil.

This was also done post-Buffy in Russian feature Night Watch (Timur Bekmambetov, 2004). The line between the forces of light and those of darkness is unclear from the outset and forms the basis of the rest of the film. The same goes for sequel Day Watch (Bekmambetov, 2006).

But here's the interesting thing: when our 'hero' Anton first meets the little boy who becomes so pivotal to the plot of Nightwatch, Buffy is on the television in the background. This is more interesting when we look at the episode that they chose. In the short segment we see playing, Buffy is talking to Dracula. This was not an accidental choice. Dracula represents the traditional vampire and Buffy the modern day 'damsel', who no longer is all that distressed.

Dracula's seduction of Buffy

In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula seduces leading lady Mina from her pure ways. Although, in an interesting mirror to Buffy, she is considered in the book as a 'new woman'. She is intelligent and is not just there for her beauty. She may know her place but compared to the other female characters she is actually a very empowered woman.

Although Dracula may make us question the morality of our 'good' characters, he is evil through and through. This is what has changed dramatically in modern Vampire portrayal.

They chose that particular episode of Buffy as it depicts this contrast. Long-serving Buffy vampire Spike voices his dislike for Dracula early on.

So a film that questions the line between good and evil shows us an example of the old vampire vs the new. But where's the relevance? Dracula seduces Buffy into allowing him to bite her. He is very powerful despite his traditional demeanour, but this eventually lets him down. When he makes her taste his blood she sees the evil in herself, in her power. She embraces this evil as part of herself and so is not seduced by his. Subsequently, he does not utilize his humanity to defeat her.

This is what Buffy made mainstream. Take one small but powerful woman as your heroine – men fancy her, women admire her- bring in one mysterious vampire with a difference, Angel, the vampire with a soul, turn him evil once, give him back his soul, send him to a hell dimension and WALLAH! What is he really? He isn't human as he can't have happiness without submitting to his demon side, he isn't demon as he has a conscience.

How did this change cinema? 

Compare pre-buffy with the vampires of today and you'll find a big difference. Before, vampires were driven by evil even when they were also driven by good. Now we have Twilight, we have True Blood, we have vampire heroes who may have a dark side but are simultaneously good soulful creatures. They battle against traditional vampires but they always come out on top because they utilise their evil and their good.

Twilight: Good, soulful creatures

The only true exception is 30 days of night (David Slade, 2007), adapted from a graphic novel. Here the vampires are truly evil, but there is still an element of the humans having to embrace their dark side to defeat them at the end.

So how would Buffy fit in now? To me it would seem like a step back from the current evolution. Vampires are now not the seductive tempters, they are the romantics and the lovers. A theme that Buffy introduced and played with but that has evolved quickly into something new. I think that to a new audience the Angels and the Spikes wouldn't resonate as strongly. They aren't the romantic vampires we now see. They are tortured souls battling against their own evil. It wouldn't be adding anything new to the genre. It would seem somewhat stale.

Is a new Buffy film doomed to failure? I say yes. If they stray too far from the original characters and the original set up, their core audience will be instantly lost. For an audience that is consuming stomach churning romances with a bit of added vampire, the Buffy format is now out of touch.

The only way out now is for someone to take a brave return to the evil vampire. They need to echo fear into our hearts with the sound of their screams because if the genre continues as it is going, we will lose sight of why they were interesting in the first place. They are creatures of the night, they are evil and seduce us away from our good intentions.

It's all well and good to blur the line between vampire and human as long as they are still a dark reflection of ourselves. They cannot survive as merely pale, light-deprived people who offer more humanity than the humans. A Buffy revival in the current vampire genre would make this oh so obvious and if the audience starts to clock this, once the twilight saga ends we could see a Buffy revival kill the mainstream genre altogether. But maybe this is what it needs. 

Maybe after a much-needed break from vampires someone can come in with a renewed, darker perspective.

-Laura Chamberlain

Laura- aside from being a huge Buffy fan- writes regular beauty blog Killer Lips and you can also visit her website.

Interestingly, the recently released Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) promises to be the fresh take on the vampire genre Laura was after. Could it be? Expect a full review shortly.