Once upon a time, there was a sub-par action-comedy movie called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Based on a script by Joss Whedon, the movie is now known best for having served as a precursor to the television show of the same name. Now, the original Buffy movie’s director is planning a remake… without Joss Whedon or Sarah Michelle Gellar.

I have to say that I think this is a spectacularly stupid idea. The plan is to abandon the current canon and create an alternate universe for the story, much like Star Trek did earlier this year, and its original creator has been dead for quite a while. The problem is that Star Trek is now 40+ years old. Buffy has been off of television for barely more than six years. The original creator, whose writing is generally acknowledged as being the reason that Buffy was so beloved, is alive and well (and making Dollhouse).

Here’s the biggest problem, though — there’s no reason to remake Buffy, especially if one is planning to ignore the show’s storyline. Other Buffy fans may be annoyed by my saying this, but the basic Buffy mythology simply isn’t that special. The specifics of Buffy’s origins may be unique, but a super-human girl fighting vampires (which is, really, the only part of the mythology that the Kazuis really seem to want to harness)? I could go to the fantasy/science fiction section of any bookstore and find you a half dozen books and/or series that have almost exactly that premise.

It’s not even like they need the Buffy name to get people to buy tickets to the movie. There are enough people out there who’ll pay to see anything vampire related (see: Twilight) that the movie can be pretty successful without the Buffy name (and, honestly, enough of those might be turned off by the idea of Buffy without Joss (much less Buffy without Sarah Michelle Gellar) that they’d be better off without the name).

Of course, you could get all of those people at once. Get a budget together, let Joss write and direct, and create a Fray movie with the idea of creating a franchise in mind. That would be at least as good an idea as this stupid Buffy relaunch plan.

I had planned to let yesterday’s post be the last Star Trek post, but since it garnered an actual comment (two, technically, but both from the same person), I’ve decided to continue with the Star Trek posts for one more day.

According to MSN, Star Trek brought in about 50% more money opening weekend than Paramount had projected, coming in at $76.5 million. Unfortunately, that still puts it behind Wolverine‘s (*spit*) opening weekend of $87 million.

In the article above, I found this to be the most interesting point:

“It’s the same weekend drop as (‘X-Men: The Last Stand’), the last one. That tends to be what fan-based movies do,” said Chris Aronson, senior vice president of domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox. “To have $130 million in the first 10 days is sensational. We think we withstood the attack of ‘Star Trek,’ if you will, and will settle into a long, successful run.”

Here’s something else that The Last Stand had in common with Wolverine: it sucked (at least in comparison to the first two Xmen movies). The first X-men movie, which was very good, dropped 56.92% after the first week. The second X-men movie, which was excellent, dropped 53.21%. The Last Stand dropped 66.89%, and Wolverine dropped 68.26%. Note that those last two numbers are significantly higher than the first two. But, weren’t those as “fan-based” as the others? Why does Chris Aronson only compare Wolverine to The Last Stand? Could it be that he’s just trying to spin the drop in Wolverine‘s receipts?

Of course, I’m probably just reading more into this than I should; Star Trek is probably a big contributor to Wolverine’s drop, more so than the fact that Wolverine sucked.

Note: I mean “ultimate” as in the comics line

My biggest complaint about the movie qua movie (as opposed to the movie as a restart for the franchise) is the directing. J.J. Abrams is generally very fond of the shaky cam, and I get that. Heck, I even like it to an extent. But what was with all the lens flares and such? They were often bright enough to trigger headaches!

Anyway, that aside… spoilery nitpicking comments.

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Glenn pointed, yesterday, to this ranking of the Star Trek movies. With the new movie out as of 7:00pm tonight, I thought I’d do a quick ranking of my own (and if that provides filler for a blog post that I didn’t actually get around to writing yet today, so much the better!).

1. (TIE) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn: On a purely objective scale, Star Trek II is probably the best of the Trek movies, as in the Armchair Commentary post linked above. But Star Trek IV is a great movie, and it’s the first Trek movie I remember watching, so it gets bumped a little higher for that.
3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Where Star Trek IV was the first Trek movie that I remember seeing, Undiscovered Country is the first one I remember really being excited about (before that, I had watched Trek, but hadn’t been a big fan). The mystery of exactly who the traitor was, and watching Kirk deal with his prejudices against the Klingons, make this one a good movie.
4. Star Trek: Generations I know this one was largely panned, but I liked it quite a bit.
5. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock I’ll be honest here… this movie is just here because it’s not really one I loved (as the ones before it were) nor one I hated (as some of the ones below are). I honestly don’t remember it all that well; it’s probably the movie I’ve seen the least.
6. Star Trek: Insurrection Other than not remembering it, what I wrote for III stands for Insurrection, too. I didn’t love it or hate it… it was pretty much just an average TNG story, turned into a movie. It doesn’t deserve the hate piled on it, but it doesn’t deserve accolades, either.
7. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier This movie wasn’t that bad when I saw it as a kid… but, I was pretty stupid when I was a pre-teen.
8. Star Trek: First Contact This one’s generally considered the best of the Next Generation movies, but I hated it. It wasn’t a bad action sci-fi movie, but action sci-fi isn’t really what Trek is supposed to be about, especially not the Next Generation.
9. Star Trek: The Motion Picture I haven’t got much to write about this one. It sucks. That’s pretty much it. It scores above Nemesis only because it opened the door for much better movies.
10. Star Trek: Nemesis I hate that this was the last TNG movie, because that crew deserved a better send off than this. I wish there’d been something more Undiscovered Country-like for this crew.

(WordPress Word Count: 448. Notice the time — I got this in just under the wire.)

My wife and I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine Saturday night, and I have to say that I was very disappointed. As I was walking out of the theater, my impression was that this movie did a bunch of things wrong, but it’s altogether possible that my disappointment was because I expected something that this movie was never intended to be.

If you’ve seen the commercials, you might be expecting something a little bit like the first three X-men movies (which, in truth, were pretty much just Wolverine movies with a more developed supporting cast), with Team X (including Deadpool?) standing in for the X-men. That’s not what you’re going to get. In truth, this is more like the Forrest Gump of superhero movies. Wolverine’s story briefly touches on the stories of the characters shown in the commercials, but only briefly, which makes their use in the commercials seem a bit… dishonest. Most of the other characters in the movie play very short roles, with the exceptions of the movie’s two main villains, Victor Creed (Sabretooth) and William Stryker^[a].

This movie was a huge disappointment, but I’m still cautiously optimistic about the proposed next installment in the X-men Origins series, Magneto.

One other quick note before I jump into spoilers. I wasn’t quite able to separate my disappointment in their treatment of the other characters from my appreciation of the movie’s other qualities, but my wife said it was a decent action movie. She did point out, however, that the fact that the hero and most of the other main characters in the movie can’t actually be hurt takes a lot of the dramatic tension away.

Now… spoilers.

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1. The next two largest roles are Kayla Silverfox and Gambit. Silverfox is believed to be dead for a major portion of the movie, and Gambit isn’t even introduced until pretty late in the game. Even then, Gambit’s biggest contribution (outside of the initial fight that any two superheroes must have on their first encounter) is flying Wolverine from New Orleans to Three-Mile Island. [↩]