When news broke in June 2009 that Teen Wolf , Michael J. Fox’s cult 1985 movie, was to be brought back to life as a TV series, I was skeptical. I figured it was MTV’s way of hopping back on the supernatural bandwagon it prematurely hopped off of in 2004. (Back then, Paramount’s MTV Films division owned the rights to the first Twilight book — and even went as far as commissioning a script — but eventually sold them to another studio.)
As the first installment of Breaking Dawn, the two-part finale of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, hits theaters in November, MTV hopes that the legions of hysterical teens and twentysomethings would have had enough of moody, sparkly vampires and finally rally round manlier monsters: werewolves. It’s a waxing and waning of a slightly different sort.
Two years and six episodes later, it’s time for a status report: Teen Wolf, the small-screen reboot, has all the makings of a hit. While the series is being promoted as an ensemble show, the main attraction is clearly Tyler Posey, its lupine lead.
Bitten By The Beast
The 19-year-old, who played Jennifer Lopez’s precocious little boy in 2002’s Maid in Manhattan, is perfect as Scott McCall, a lacrosse-playing outsider whose werewolf creation story begins when he is bitten by the mythical beast. Mexican on his mother’s side and Irish-English on his father’s, Posey is the type that can cross ethnic lines. (To me he resembles a young, Native American Richard Gere, though he could just as easily look Middle Eastern or Indian. In full wolf make up, he’s one part Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, one part Joe Jonas.)
The mixture of dorky vulnerability and adolescent recklessness he brings to the role is believable and that honesty, freighted with dollar signs waiting to happen, is essential in selling youth to youth. He lost the role of Jacob Black to Taylor Lautner three years ago, and this could very well be his revenge.
The Halloween party known as high school wouldn’t be complete, of course, without a sidekick. As Stiles, newcomer Dylan O’Brien provides the punchlines, coming in when things are about to get too dark and heavy almost like a Seth Cohen for the Facebook era.
Tweaking The Template
This Teen Wolf is essentialy a buddy movie stretched across ten episodes. On the one hand you have an underdog who is coming of age as a creature of the night, and on the other you have the BFF who eventually buys into the tale. In the middle is Allison Argent, the love interest who, unlike Bella Swan, is not a pitfall-ridden heroine. Played by Crystal Reed, this new girl has a lot of secrets, which adds a Romeo & Juliet undertone to the story. When it comes to an obvious nemesis, Scott McCall has Jackson Whittemore, his lacrosse teammate. (Fun fact: Colton Haynes, who is cast as the bad guy, played a werewolf in ABC’s The Gates.) His frenemy is Derek Hale, an older mentor werewolf brought to life by ex-7th Heaven star Tyler Hoechlin.
Riding the coattails of The Vampire Diaries and True Blood, the reimagined Teen Wolf has tweaked the template to suit its young audience and, hopefully, freshen up the genre. Laura Webb (500 Days of Summer, A Lot Like Love), the show’s music supervisor, has so far introduced bands and artists familiar only to sound snobs, raising the zeitgeist quotient: Lykke Li, Miniature Tigers, Oberhofer, Oh Land, James Vincent McMorrow and Kids of 88. (The cool tunes are there, I suppose as an incentive for those who view Teen Wolf as a guilty pleasure rather than a fervent passion.)
Then there are the add-ons. Thanks to MTV Comics, fans can read the series on the site. Teen Wolf also has an official Tumblr (teenwolf.tumblr.com), filled with highly rebloggable photos and gifs. The 30-year-old network seems determined to become relevant again by balancing crazed reality shows about pregnant teenagers and rowdy guidos with more scripted programming: Teen Wolf may just be the success story the Skins remake was supposed to be. But more than that, it could also be the series that marks the beginning of pop culture’s post-vampire era.
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