Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Movie Vs. TV Series

 In 1992, the original "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" movie was released, and my reaction... as well as the reaction of many others... was one big yawn. When the series first went on the air in early 1997, I didn't even bother watching it because I disliked the movie so much, only catching up with it a couple of months into the third season (thanks for those "Watcher's Guide" books keeping me up to date with previous episodes). But when I started watching, it turned out to be my all-time favorite show, and clearly one of the cleverest, best-written ever. So how did it happen that "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" turned out to be the one and only TV series based on a movie that actually improved on the original movie? Read on for a few reasons.

PASSION. In my hub "What Makes A Good Movie?", the first thing I list is passion: the passion of one creative person to tell a story they feel needs to be told. The original "Buffy" script was born out of Joss Whedon's passion to break the rules of horror story telling that always had the small blonde cheerleader type as a helpless victim of the monsters. But the studio took his passion-born concept and decided that they could make more money with a bubble-headed valley girl saying and doing wacky things and slaying vampires in the process. It was mildy (VERY mildly) amusing at times, but it was a concept inserted into the story by the studio simply to make money. The series was pure Whedon through and through. Obviously, that came through strongly.

WITTIER HUMOR. Whedon wanted "Buffy" to be funny at times, genuinely scary at times, a little bit of everything. So considerable damage was done to the premise just by turning it into a total farce, but that could have been minimized if the humor had at least not been so basic and sophomoric ("Does the word DUH mean anything to you?" was about as witty as the movie ever got). But the TV series was filled with non-stop barages of pop culture references, sarcasm, and genuinely clever wordplay. Xander: "I laugh in the face of danger... then I hide until it goes away". Buffy, in the musical episode: "So, Dawn's in trouble. It must be Tuesday".  The movie could barely begin to approach the sophistication of the TV show's humor. And that's not even to mention the dry wit of laid-back characters like Giles and Oz.

A BROADER SPECTRUM OF EMOTION. As I stated, the TV series really was a little bit of everything. One episode could be terrifying horror ("Hush"), one could be slapstick humor ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"), another could be a serious study of how grief over the loss of a loved one effects us ("The Body"). And the best of the episodes were the ones that combined all the various elements in a single show ("Once More, With Feeling"). Real life isn't all one emotion, and Whedon's realization of this and determination to make the series as real-life-like as a series about vampires and various demon-like creatures could possibly be is an important ingredient in making it so much more powerful than the film.

BETTER ACTING. Kristy Swanson as Buffy? A pathetic brainless valley-girl. Sarah Michelle Gellar in the role? A real teenager having to deal with emotions and situations nobody her age should have to go through, and surviving. Luke Perry? Oh, come on! Mr. 90210 personified couldn't hope to achieve anything on the same level as Nicholas Brendon, David Boreanaz, Seth Green or the others. Even when the movie managed to get some talented actors in certain roles it didn't work. The great Donald Sutherland as her watcher Merrick seemed to be barely awake as he sleepwalked through his role (Anthony Stewart Head as Giles is SO much better), and while Ruger Hauer should have been one of the most terrifying vampires ever he didn't seem any more emotionally connected to his role than Sutherland was. Only Paul ("Pee Wee Herman") Reubens managed to be memorable in his funny vampiric role. But that's not enough. Actors like Alyson Hannigan and especially James Marsters as Spike, one of the great vampires in the history of movies or TV, put everyone in the movie in the shade.

THE SYMBOLISM. The movie was only a story about teenagers and vampires. The TV show was a story about teenagers facing all the metaphoric demons we all face as we grow up. Our fears of connecting emotionally in relationships with others? Our fears of those we love becoming somebody different once we get into relationships with them? Our fears about what kind of life we'll have as adults? Even our fears AS adults about the everyday events and problems of our lives? Every one of these had a paralell in a monster or a storyline from the series. There's nothing wrong with a show that's just about vampires, but when you have a show that's about vampires AND the terrors and dangers of real life, that's another thing entirely. The TV series was capable of being light and fluffy if the occasion called for it, but the way it could also be so much deeper is, more than any other single aspect of it, what really made it memorable.

All of this is what really terrified me when I heard the recent announcement that some of the people involved in the production of the original movie were planning to make a new "Buffy" movie for theatres that would not feature any involvement from Joss Whedon whatsoever. Having proven what a disaster they can create when Whedon IS involved, what can we possibly expect from this project. I've never given any serious thought to attempting to sabotage the making of a movie before... not even any of Rob Schneider's movies... but I'll have to reconsider that policy now. In the meantime, at least the original series continues to exist on DVD and online and various other formates for us all to watch and remember how a concept like this can make for brilliant TV when it's done with the passion and commitment that a creative mind like Joss Whedon's can give to it. We may just have to settle for that. (Unless anyone is interested in forming a sort of group of saboteurs to stop the making of this movie...)