Easy. Hamlet doesn't have any superpowers.

Pointy | September 17, 08:41 CET

Plus, Buffy is so much hotter! I bet her hair is ten times prettier than his.

Nebula1400 | September 17, 09:58 CET

How cool would it be to see Sarah Michelle Gellar do Hamlet? (Totally serious. I saw Patrick Stewart do a white Othello with black players in the Italian roles. Best production of Othello I've ever seen, stage or screen.) Sarah Michelle can handle any dialogue!

[ edited by Pointy on 2006-09-17 08:27 ]

Pointy | September 17, 10:07 CET

Plus when Buffy dies she doesnt stay dead.

BD | September 17, 10:09 CET

If Hamlet comes back to life at the end, it's a comedy! (Or a problem play.)

ETA an acknowledgment that that's not what anyone meant.

[ edited by Pointy on 2006-09-17 09:23 ]

Pointy | September 17, 10:24 CET

In fairness we don't know Hamlet stays dead either.

Hamlet 2: Procrastinate Harder
Hamlet 6: The Undiscovered Country
Hamlet 9: Return of the Revenge of the Bride of the Son of Mega-Hamlet !

Saje | September 17, 13:51 CET

Pointy, haven't we had enough of these sex and nudity comments lately?

So, to sum this up in my own dim way: There's a play called Chinese Whispers in which Buffy and Hamlet are both characters? The Dane I can see, but wouldn't Inara be a better choice than Buffy? She at least speaks the language.

jaynelovesvera | September 17, 14:12 CET

Then there are the spin-offs.
Ophelia "She's back and she's mad!"
Polonius: The Loan shark years.

Lioness | September 17, 15:14 CET

Why would anyone want to be Hamlet?

TamaraC | September 17, 22:35 CET

A question, TamaraC, humankind has pondered since it was first raised by Hamlet, who was not at all sure he wanted to be he. If Olivier was right, Hamlet was a temporizer who could not make up his mind, and then he died. And so what?

Other folks think Hamlet’s struggle with his dilemma produced a deeper experience of the complexities, contradictions and paradoxes ™ of life, an experience that, as philosophers through the ages have taught us, sucks. But is worth it anyway, of course, for the heightened consciousness, deeper awareness, growth as a person and other edifying unpleasantness.

In the First Folio version of the play, Hamlet comes to terms with death, a very big deal philosophically, in the final scene. “If it be now, 'tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now; yet it will come; the readiness is all.”

This key line does not, however, appear in the Second Quarto version of Hamlet. If memory dis-serves me less than usual, in 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, James Shapiro posits that the Second Quarto is closer to the stage version of Shakespeare’s day. The Folio version was an earlier draft, more philosophical in approach. The Second Quarto’s Hamlet is more of an action hero, who thinks he can fix what stinks in Denmark with a pointy object. Both versions, however, end in a signature bloodbath by the Peckinpah of Avon.

To make the case for the importance of coming to grips with life’s complex nastiness, Shakespeare scholars often cite “This Side of Paradise." Sure, Spock is happy for once in his life on Omicron Ceti III after the spore flower goes poof in his face. But happiness is overrated. And it just isn’t Spock. In the end, Kirk has to beat it out of him, so the two of them can go on saving worlds.

Of course, Buffy’s consciousness gets pretty heightened by all the pain and she still saves the world and doesn't die permanently. In conclusion, slayers beat Danish princes.

[ edited by Pointy on 2006-09-18 01:58 ]

Pointy | September 18, 00:41 CET

I'd like to see SMG as Ophelia - really angry, terrifyingly crazy, putting-the-whole-Danish-court-in-a-funk, Ophelia. Showing whoever playing Hamlet as as negligible as Hamlet really is. I don't love that character.

dreamlogic | September 18, 13:27 CET