Plot
Synopses
Buffy:
the Motion Picture
Buffy
and the Scoobs discover a new threat, a pan-dimensional being with the power
to absorb a being entirely, drawing it body, psyche and soul into itself,
and possibly replicating itself as a mobile exploratory unit in the form of
someone it has consumed, sort of like a combination of Cub Scout-dissecting
Adam and mind-tasting Glory, but as chatty as either.
It ends up eating some Slayerette that the audience has never seen
before, but the Scoobs apparently know well, and walking around in her body.
Since the Scoobs are shaken by this, as well as her former wannabe
Watcher / boyfriend, another character we’ve never met who acts all bossy
and important since she is ‘his’ Slayer-in-Training-Pants, we are supposed
to care.
After
many harrowing CGI encounters and a long, boring, stately, Christophe Beck
soundtracked trip into the creatures extra-dimensional cubbyhole, they manage
to awaken Dawn’s Keyness and sir-not-a-Watcher-any-longer and his not-a-Slayerette-any-longer
get sucked into an alternate universe where the Companion and her Watcher
Zephram can live out the rest of eternity without consuming any more helpless
beings in this reality.
Buffy
II: the Wrath of Dawn
Sick
of her abandonment and seething with resentment that has built up over years of
dropped storylines, mischaracterized behavior and forgotten plot arcs, Dawn
manages to open a portal to Hollywood, where she discovers an evil production
firm that she refers to as ‘the First Enemy.’
She
begins to devastate this placid collection of crack-addled writers,
transporting in demons, monsters, dragons, lawyers and farm animals, and
ambushing people and teleporting them to scenic, but deadly, places like
Quar-Toth, Pylea, the heart of the Sun, Baghdad and Detroit with her
freshly-reactivated Key powers.
Being
that the ‘First Enemy’ somehow creates and maintains the stability of the
‘Jossverse,’ ripples begin to travel throughout the Buffy continuum. With the tragic loss of Jane Esperson, Clem
begins to fade into nothingness, becoming as incorporeal as Phantom Dennis,
while Xander temporarily becomes smarter.
After sending Marti Noxon on a one-way trip to Uranus, Spike and Buffy
inexplicably lose interest in each other, and rediscover their sex drives, both
entering healthy and successful, but highly improbable relationships with
people who actually like them.
Clearly
this madness cannot continue, and the Scoobs assemble to stop this threat, to
reign in the terror and restore the Jossverse to normalcy. Willow manages to teleport them, along with
assorted nameless extras, one of which we learn is Xanders never-before-seen
cousin Billy-Bob Harris, and they begin to fight various demons and monsters
transported in by Dawn, amidst sets and props that look disturbingly like the
homes they’ve lived in for years.
Xanders
cousin dies, valiantly, while a bunch of SiTs break and run, staying at his
post saving the life of David Fury, who has gotten tangled up in a giant Olaf
costume (he was trying to disguise himself as a monster, hoping the demons
would ignore him), and getting killed by the real Olaf, who happened to be one
of the creatures Dawn summoned in her reign of terror. No one cares, but Buffy has Billy-Bob’s
blood on her blouse for the rest of the show.
Finally,
most of the monsters repelled (and the costume department following the Scoobs
and covertly skinning the fallen monsters to use as props for later shows), the
Scoobs converge on Dawn, who is now glowing with deadly green Key radiation
that makes everyone forget why they’re present and who the glowing chick is with
every wave, except for Spike, who is able to resist it and valiantly closes the
distance, trying with Herculean effort to remember her threat as he staggers
forward through the wave of green penlight effects. He reaches Dawn but she ends up passing out from an attempt to
shut down her powers. Spike is forced
to bite her, drawing Key blood into himself and beginning to glow a sickly
green, particularly around his teeth. Flashing a disturbing glowing-toothed Palpatine smile, he manages
to reverse the effects, causing everyone Dawn has transported away to return,
more or less intact (the lack of atmosphere on Uranus not seeming to have
caused Marti Noxon any visible brain damage), and all of the monsters to return
to wherever they came from. But he too
is wracked by this use of power and ends up falling into a portal to draw the
mystical backlash away from the grieving Scoobs.
They
shrug, gather up the still slightly smoking body of the exhausted Dawn and
Willow wiccas them home. In a teary
funeral, while Xander plays the bagpipes, they push Spikes DeSoto off a cliff
into the sea, to commemorate his tragic sacrifice.
Buffy
III: the Search for Spike