Xander + Oz = Pike
This probably isn't a very original thought, but...
As I was lazing about last night, thinking about getting active but instead just whimpering in the oppressive heat and trying to ignore the screams of the raccoon outside my house, I stumbled across the original Buffy movie on one of HBO's many and various sub-channels. So of course, I had to watch. As I always do.
I know that a lot's been said about the movie, and certainly there are some things that didn't age well, but a few things struck me, characters and attitudes and portrayals that were obviously saved and put away for safe-keeping until Joss Whedon got another stab at it on TV. (I mean, it's obvious that the principal, handing out detention slips to dead students, was resurrected in Principal Flutie, right?). Every time I see the movie, I notice, (then forget it until the next time), how much Sarah Michelle Gellar's early mannerisms, facial expressions, body language, etc., echo Kirsty Swanson's - I don't know if it was intentional, but there's a definite overlap, I think... I can definitely take this as the same character played by two different actors.
And Pike - he's this strange, weird, lovely amalgam of Xander and Oz. The van-driving musician who's so far outside the cool crowd so as to have his own brand of unassailable cool, combined with the motor-mouth snarkiness and self-deprecrating heroism of Xander ("at least I didn't faint this time"). Of course, a lot of it is the Whedon-speak, but at times I could hear those same lines coming out of Nick Brendon's mouth. (Bennie: "I'm hungry!" Pike: "You're floating!")
Of course, the series left the movie in the dust, but it's fun looking at it - like sort of Buffy in an alternate universe, everything just a step to the left.
As I was lazing about last night, thinking about getting active but instead just whimpering in the oppressive heat and trying to ignore the screams of the raccoon outside my house, I stumbled across the original Buffy movie on one of HBO's many and various sub-channels. So of course, I had to watch. As I always do.
I know that a lot's been said about the movie, and certainly there are some things that didn't age well, but a few things struck me, characters and attitudes and portrayals that were obviously saved and put away for safe-keeping until Joss Whedon got another stab at it on TV. (I mean, it's obvious that the principal, handing out detention slips to dead students, was resurrected in Principal Flutie, right?). Every time I see the movie, I notice, (then forget it until the next time), how much Sarah Michelle Gellar's early mannerisms, facial expressions, body language, etc., echo Kirsty Swanson's - I don't know if it was intentional, but there's a definite overlap, I think... I can definitely take this as the same character played by two different actors.
And Pike - he's this strange, weird, lovely amalgam of Xander and Oz. The van-driving musician who's so far outside the cool crowd so as to have his own brand of unassailable cool, combined with the motor-mouth snarkiness and self-deprecrating heroism of Xander ("at least I didn't faint this time"). Of course, a lot of it is the Whedon-speak, but at times I could hear those same lines coming out of Nick Brendon's mouth. (Bennie: "I'm hungry!" Pike: "You're floating!")
Of course, the series left the movie in the dust, but it's fun looking at it - like sort of Buffy in an alternate universe, everything just a step to the left.