Well I kept putting it off, mostly because I was really kinda sad about writing this. It’s like putting the last nail in the proverbial coffin (punny). This is the post I’ve dreaded making for over a week now, my thoughts on the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was initially reluctant to start watching the series because I’d been unfortunate enough to see Kristy Swanson stink up the role of Buffy in the film. After about three seasons, I turned it on and made it through part of an episode here, a couple of minutes there. By the end of season four I was a full blown addict even though Riley (Marc Blucas) was still part of the cast.

It really tells you something about the power of a show when you can fall in love with it even though you completely abhor one of the characters. That’s the sign of good writing, plot arcs, and good acting. Let’s face facts people, Buffy was hands down one of the best shows on television. In a television schedule riddled with inane reality television, tired medical shows, multiple flavors of CSI and Law and Order, and painfully bad sitcoms (Good Morning, Miami, Just Shoot Me), a show with a ridiculous title turned out to be a beacon of hope for a spakin’ new network and a huge cult favorite.

Who would’ve thought that a mid-season replacement on a fledgeling network with a bitingly sarcastic title could’ve become such a phenomenon and grow into a franchise? Furthermore, who would’ve thought that this little-show-that-could would have a wildly successful spinoff that ended up almost beating its mother show in the ratings and threatens to outlive it? Initially, Joss Whedon, Buffy’s proud creator, might not have thought that this little show could’ve grown up into something so pervasive in American culture, but he did believe that his story was not finished after the release of that disheartening cinematic experience. A few years later, Joss came back with a slightly tweaked concept and a handful of virtually unknown talent only to enthrall scores of rabid fans for seven seasons.

So now we’ve come to the end. Some little part of me still doesn’t believe it’s over. I find myself confused and lost on Tuesday nights at 8pm, and I’m not the only one. Thousands of fans including myself, laughed, squealed, and cried their way through the series finale of Buffy on May 20th. I can’t say it was the best episode of the series, but it definitely reminded you why you started watching it in the first place.

The finale had a series of touching moments. Angel and Buffy have a quarrel over who’s going to wear the trinket Angel was given by the brass at Wolfram and Heart. Buffy sends Angel away telling him that she needs him to be part of the second line of defense. The cliche lover in me wanted Angel to fight shoulder to should with Buffy in the “last battle” but I think it turned out better this way. Buffy and Angel then bicker over whether or not Buffy and Spike are together. Buffy goes home to quibble with Spike about her kissing Angel. They get past that and Buffy gives Spike the trinket to wear in the final battle. Buffy rounds up the troops and gives them an inspirational speech, and it’s cut in such a way that key elements aren’t revealed (in true Buffy/Whedonesque style). Everyone goes to their respective corners, gathers their bits and pieces, and steels their spines for the last battle. The most poignant moment in the whole episode was when the Core Four (Giles, Xander, Willow, and Buffy) have a funny little conversation
in the hallway of the high school about what they’re going to do tomorrow (providing they survive). The Buffster apparently still has a jones for shoes. Then they go to their respective posts and wait for the excitement.

I won’t bother to do a complete blow by blow of the last scenes, but it was well written and well filmed. It had a very Helm’s Deep feel to it (LOTR: Two Towers). The ending of course turns the whole concept of the Buffyverse into something absolutely HUGE. Let’s put it this way, the Buffyverse could eclipse the Star Trek universe in the long run.

Now for the things I didn’t like about the finale. Willow performs THE biggest work of magic known in the Buffyverse and she had maybe 10 minutes of total screen time. I felt very rushed through the whole thing because they tried to cram about three hours worth of material into a one hour show. I will never forgive Joss Whedon for that. The finale should’ve been more than one hour. 90 minutes would have been a lot better. Finally, this incarnation of “The First Evil” was just plain dumb. It reminded me of Boss Hog and his cronies on the Dukes of Hazard. It never came close to really putting the Scoobies and the Slayers in Training out of commission. The incarnation of The First that convinced Angel to kill himself was much more effective. If you’re going to conjure pure evil, at least give it common sense. Other than those few things, I thought the finale was swell and I am thrilled that Anya is dead. She was a bigger thorn in my side than Riley ever was.

The good thing about the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that in the future (hopefully the near future) there will be more series and more characters to make you laugh and cry, not to mention the veterans that have finally graduated from Buffy. James Marsters is also signed on to do a complete season of Angel and there will be guest appearances by other Buffy characters. Regardless of the presence of a Buffy-related show on the prime time schedule, Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles will live on in the hearts of their fans for an eternity.

On Monday I went out and saw X2 (a matinee) and I was the only one in the theatre. It was great. I had footrests galore and cupholders for the entire 101st Airborne!

How was the movie you ask? Well, honestly, it wasn’t phenomenal but it wasn’t horrible either. I think that putting the X-Men on the big screen is an enormous task and so far the film makers have done pretty well with it, from a special effects and cinematic perspective. However, what the hell is up with the scripts? I understand it’s hard to translate such an enormous universe into a series of 2 hour movies but can we have some respect for the timeline of the comics and the bloody inter-character relationships? What’s the deal with smooshing 10 years of a comic into two movies? I don’t know if that’s a precise number but it felt that way to me. Let’s take a running leap from Wolvie finding about Stryker and the Weapon X stuff to the Phoenix Saga in how many minutes was this movie? It’s enough to make your head spin!

Now here are the little things that I don’t like about the movie:

• Bobby “Iceman” Drake is from Long Island, not Massachusetts
• The Father-Daughter dynamic between Rogue and Wolverine in the movies was actually the relationship that Kitty Pryde (”Shadowcat”) in the comics, as far as I understand. After Shadowcat got all growed up and left, Wolvie became Jubilee’s big daddy type.
• The Phoenix stuff doesn’t start this early in the timeline.
• Nightcrawler, even though they did a great job with his Bamfing, is just a shell of what he was in the comics, AND he’s not furry in the movie? Maybe he’s a little blue and fuzzy but not furry.
• Colossus deserved a bigger part, but they did a great job with him.. KUDOS!
• Kitty deserves speaking parts! And for the love of Pete, where’s her computer?!
• Halle Berry is ruining Storm. She can’t play Storm. She doesn’t even try to do Storm’s accent! Like I said after the first movie, Storm should’ve been Vivica A. Fox
• Uhm.. Beast?

Anyway, aside from the obvious foul-ups in the scripts and the lacklustre performances by everyone but Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman (who does an AMAZING job with Wolvie), it wasn’t horrible. I think the rest of the cast needs to raise the bar on their performances for the next one. James Marsden’s Cyclops and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey are pathetic at best and Halle just stinks up the screen (if I haven’t said it before). I think that the next script will be just as messed up as this one, but providing the dismal portrayals of Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey can be patched up for the next one, we might have a halfway decent movie on our hands.

I have not forgotten! I saw a lot of movies and finales this week (’tis the season) and I am still digesting it. I watched it again today and I have some slightly different feelings about it from the second viewing that I have to think about before I post. I promise something will show up here about it before the end of the weekend.

As an aside, I said it once and I’ll say it again: DING DONG ANYA’S DEAD!

Definitely a load of something. This was one of the most overhyped movies of the past two decades. It was almost as overhyped as Star Wars Episode I and that’s a feat onto itself.

I took a couple of days to get some feedback from other people about this movie before I went to see it so that I’d know what I was getting into and I’d also know to go see it on discount movie day ($3.75 Tuesdays). Needless to say, I went on a Tuesday because out of 10 people I talked to only 2 were thrilled about it, 6 were somewhere in the vast vague middle and 2 abhored it. I heard better things about Episode I when that came out and for the love of Pete it was full of Jar-Jar!

So anyway, I get to the theatre and I was the only girl at this showing. There were altogether 7 people in this theatre including myself, so I still had a plethora of footrests and cupholders. Anyway, aside from being a longish movie, there were a lot of things I didn’t like about this film including the following:

• I understand that the creators of this series of films have a big story to tell and that they left some explanations out of the actual movies and did the Animatrix stuff and put some vital information in the video game, but c’mon this movie had so much filler in there you could’ve easily squeezed in 15 minutes of history and background into this movie if it was edited smarter. OH YEAH! The tribal dancing sequence.. you got 8 minutes that could be cut right there!
• Where’d all the witty dialogue go? Why am I more interested in what Agent Smith has to say than what Morpheus has to say?
• When did Morpheus become Jesse Jackson?
• Neo should be too busy trying to save the world to make out with Trinity in elevators and to stop to grab some nookie. I understand that there is an underlying love theme, but they reminded me of two college kids trying to get some while evading roommates walking in.
• This one really pissed me off: Naiobi! What a cool fucking character that was completely wasted in the movie! For months all we heard was “Jada Pinkett Smith is gonna be in this movie! She’s awesome!,” then the movie comes out and she’s not on screen for a total of 15 minutes. WASTE!
• The chase scene was unnecessarily long, and the dudes with the albino dreadlocks were also a big special effects waste!
• I didn’t like the music in Neo’s big fight scene with “The Smiths.” I thought it should’ve been more agressive upbeat techno. It would’ve conveyed more angst/confusion and it would’ve complemented the movements better.
• Why was Neo the only character that got new martial arts choreography? Trinity is still using that jump-freeze-kick routine and the jump-through-window-turn-and-shoot thing. Morpheus re-enacted his training/fight sequence with Neo from the first movie atop the semi-truck in the chase scene with the addition of some nifty handstands and balancing acts. Other than that, it was the same frigging fight. Neo re-enacts his training/fight sequence with Morpheus from the first movie with the guardian program that takes him to the Oracle.

If they edited down the gratuitiously long Neo/Agent fight sequence and the big chase, they wouldn’t have needed the Animatrix garbage at all. It’s obvious they wanted to turn this into a big cash cow, and it makes me not want to waste the money on the DVD later.

I understand that the second movie in a trilogy is usually the one that gets beaten up, and I understand that sequels rarely match their predecessor, but this movie left a lot to be desired. The cinematography was excellent, the acting wasn’t bad at all, but the script was really sub par for this kind of movie.