Rebooting Buffy

There are a number of articles across the internet about how Warner Bros. is going ahead with a remake of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The link there is one of those articles. And it has a snippet of Joss Whedon's reaction to this news.

Joss Whedon, if you aren't aware, is the creator of Buffy and all her related characters. Originally, Buffy was bound to be a big-screen heroine in a horror/action/drama with snappy dialogue, much like the TV show eventually turned out to be. But the producers wanted to turn the story of a cheerleader turned fighter-of-evil into a comedy. 'Cause who would believe that a cute blond from LA could seriously be a superhero without being made fun of.

Thankfully, Whedon got a second chance with his creation and moved her to the television. I don't feel the need to get into how awesome the show is when I already got into it earlier this month.

My reasoning behind writing this post isn't about how awesome Buffy the Vampire Slayer already is. It's about how lame Hollywood is. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, it seems these days that the people in charge of our entertainment simply can't come up with an original idea to save their lives.

How many of these "reboots" have we had to endure in movies and television over the last few years? Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The A-Team, The Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, Hawaii Five-O. And then there's the super-hero movies. Batman Begins restarted that franchise less than a decade after it's most recent sequel. Granted, that last sequel was one of the worst movies ever made and Batman Begins was pretty freakin' awesome. But I think that was a real exception to the rule.

Can't come up with a coming-of-age underdog story of your own? Why not remake The Karate Kid? Can't come up with a compelling story continuing the saga of Peter Parker as he ventures further into adulthood? Why not start the whole thing over? Recast all the main roles and put him back in high school. That's an awesome idea.

I get that after so many years of writing stories, eventually you're gonna come back around to something that's already been told. But give it some time to be immortalized in the halls of pop culture. Surely there are some board games that haven't had movies made about them. Where's the Candy Land feature film? Chutes and Ladders? Connect Four?