Alien vs. Predator, Rocky vs. Whoever, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Kramer vs. Kramer … the cinema world is replete with films about the conflicts between archetypal enemies. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, but one thing they generally share is a run time between 80 and 180 minutes.

Not so with my dream film. Buffy vs. Bella would run maybe 10 minutes at the outside.

Bella, for those who don’t know, is Isabella Swan, the insipid teenage heroine of the Twilight novels and films. She’s in love with Edward, a 108-year-old emo* vampire who drinks only animal blood and gives new meaning to sparkle motion; he can’t go out in the sun without turning into a glittering human disco ball. Bella is beautiful, smart, talented and totally insecure; she never doubts for a moment that she has nothing to offer her glittery crush.

Edward loves Bella because she’s beautiful, because he can’t read her mind and because the scent of her blood stirs his beyond bearing. His inability to read her mind blinds him to the fact that she’s utterly transparent. He’s crippled: he’s a 108-year-old guy who can’t figure out a 17-year-old girl even after decades of high school. Bella loves him because he’s beautiful and mysterious. She at least has something of an excuse for her failure to figure him out.

Buffy, for those who don’t know, is Buffy Anne Summers, popularly known as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy begins her cinematic life as a vapid cheerleader before learning that she possesses a gift for fighting vampires and demons. She’s not happy about the situation and struggles to fulfill her role on her own terms, but throughout she’s the anti-Bella: a strong, capable and at times heroic young woman determined to master her fate.

Buffy would have little sympathy for Bella’s raging insecurity and hopeless dependence upon Edward as the source of her happiness, but her distaste for Bella would pale beside her reflexive dislike of Edward. He’s a vampire, he’s hitting hard on a young woman 90 years his junior, and he’s unbearably smarmy. True, he doesn’t kill humans for food, but that virtue is small recompense for the rest of the package.

So that’s the setup for my film. Bella is the very definition of needy, which makes Buffy simultaneously impatient and protective, and Edward is the enabler of Bella’s helplessness, which makes Buffy annoyed. She’s already touchy about her personal situation, she’s already capable of killing vampires with relative ease, and in short order Edward is going to do something that leads an exasperated Buffy to take him out and free Bella from her fixation.

This might sound cruel, but it’s for the best. The superhumanly strong Edward no longer has to worry about accidentally breaking Bella—he no longer has to worry about anything—and Bella is free to pursue a more suitable relationship with Jacob, a buff, shape-shifting Native American who loves her fiercely and won’t turn her into an immortal Princess Sparkle Pony; she’ll still be able to hit the beach without drawing attention beyond what an attractive woman ordinarily commands.

Edward’s death will also forestall an even creepier situation involving involving Jacob and the infant child of Bella and Edward. The author of the series is a Mormon. I don’t know whether the novels reflect male-female and adult-child relationships within the church, or just the author’s own neuroses, but on the whole they’re pretty twisted.

I saw the current Twilight film last night, for one of the two reasons you might expect to find a guy my age there. The Bella of the films is better than the Bella of the novels: less passive and overtly insecure. And there’s one moment—literally, a moment— in which she’s genuinely admirable and demonstrates the capacity to get over Edward.

But he still needs to die, for everyone’s sake. Oh Buffy, Buffy, wherefore art thou, Buffy?

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* I can never hear or use the word “emo” without flashing on the immortal Emo Philips.

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