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Teen Wolf Trailer: MTV Removes Fun, Replaces With Twilight

This particular Vulture correspondent is in no way an unbiased observer of MTV’s stodgy remake of Michael J. Fox’s eighties pop classic Teen Wolf: Thanks to whatever vague, arbitrary forces make these life-altering decisions, the original Teen Wolf was almost always on cable during our formative television-watching years, and we now love it sincerely and dearly. (For a while, also, we owned a rare double-feature DVD, with Teen Wolf on one side and Jason Bateman’s inferior but still-worthwhile Teen Wolf Too on the other). So our response to the newly released trailer for MTV’s take — in which all lightheartedness has been excised in favor of, arguably, the most blatantly Twilight-indebted vibe yet to hit the market — is as predictable as it is just: How dare you, MTV?

Look, MTV has as much a right as anyone else to rip off Twilight — but what’s the point in calling it Teen Wolf? Likely, when the network first green-lit the remake they assumed the end result would be a more faithful adaptation, and only switched gears later in the process, when they realized the wolf angle would allow them to shoehorn certain timely teen obsessions right on in. But, again, what’s the point of calling it Teen Wolf? Does the Teen Wolf association really hold any kind of sway over the desired demographic? The reason this is upsetting is because a serialized remake of the original Teen Wolf that maintained the comedy and pumped up the self-awareness could actually be pretty great. How about this for a compromise: MTV changes the name of its remake to Angsty Wolf, leaving the door open for a real Teen Wolf remake to happen at some point down the line. Alternately: If MTV adds in some gratuitous van surfing, that may also be satisfactory.

Teen Wolf Trailer: MTV Removes Fun, Replaces With Twilight