Battlestar Galactica Feature Film Confirmed 342
Dave Knott writes "Entertainment Weekly reports that Universal Pictures has confirmed rumours of a Battlestar Galactica feature film. Directed by Bryan Singer, and co-produced by original series creator Glen Larson, the new movie will not be related to the recently concluded SyFy Network series. Rather, it will be a 'complete re-imagining of the sci-fi lore that was invented by Larson back in the '70s.'"
Bleh (Score:1, Insightful)
Please have some new ideas. Please!
Bede bede bede (Score:4, Insightful)
I never bought into any of this re-imagining crap. It's not like how Lucas was able to squeeze more story out of the Star Wars trilogy by adding in effects that brought it up to modern-day standards (and fixed the story in parts that didn't make sense). The re-imagining of BSG was almost a totally different show with only the thinnest of veneers tying it to the original series.
I liked the show, though it was definitely too dark (lighting-wise) and the overuse of 'frak' was annoying, but I felt that it could probably stand on its own as a series.
I went back and watched several Star Trek TOS episodes and found them to be clever, campy, and very forward thinking. If I were to watch TOS and DS9 back to back, I think I'd have the same reaction as I did to BSG. The difference, of course, is that there was the excellent TNG series which bridged the gap between TOS and DS9. Any re-imagining of a series that changes the fundamental aspects of the base concept is going to run into this problem.
It's not a re-imagining. It's a cashing-in on the name value of the original concept. I think it is nothing short of a rip off for those who loved the original series. It's also a rip off for those who like the new series itself but are forced to associate it with the original series.
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Brought to you by the same minds that thought Syfy was a good name change......
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
That aside, I still consider it awesome.
They just can't leave well alone (Score:5, Insightful)
As a series BG is perfect , one of the best Sci Fi series in a generation. But no, they've got to milk the franchise until it goes moo and dies. Isn't the new Caprica series enough? Why can't hollywood producers know when something is complete and just leave it as is to be savoured , not slowly milked to death because i'll bet you this film won't be the last.
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Larson hated the new series
Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we not allowed to have adult sci-fi now? If you want to let your kids watch sci-fi theres plenty of sacharrine shit from Pixar and the like available.
"The SciFi remake even bothered me as an adult (the part where at the beginning of the series, the Cylon chick snaps a human baby's neck.)"
You're coming across as just a teensy bit wet my friend.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:3, Insightful)
The SciFi remake even bothered me as an adult (the part where at the beginning of the series, the Cylon chick snaps a human baby's neck.)
That part was pretty much intended to bother everyone, I think. I didn't enjoy the miniseries that much, but the rest of it, especially the start of season 3 and the last season, was especially awesome ... apart from a few inevitable filler episodes here and there.
But but but (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a cashing-in on the name value of the original concept.
If the jumpsuits are skin-tight, would it be all bad?? I, for one, say bring it [scificool.com] on [moviestore.com].
Whore that brand (Score:3, Insightful)
Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] talks about milking brands.
I loved the new BSG series - one of the things I've enjoyed doing most involving a screen in the last several years. But this just seems like a really shameless attempt to get more money out of me. At least let a couple years pass; I can't even buy all the episodes of BSG on DVD yet.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
the part where at the beginning of the series, the Cylon chick snaps a human baby's neck
*gasp* Not a baby!! Considering the fact that they nuke everything and anything they can see about half an hour later, the baby was lucky. Lateron in the show have breeding farms with humans, and they steal Starbucks ovary, and much later they subjugate all of humanity under the guise of "co-existence" and torture their prisoners. They steal Sauls eyeball (again with the bodypart snatching, what's up with that?). Oh, and then there were suicide terrorists. But oh dear gods, they snapped a babies neck, that really makes this show inappropriate for kids as opposed to ... all the other things.
I'd much rather have something I could take my kids to and just plain enjoy.
Feed'm Disney, or Pixar, or whatever is popular these days. Hell, I was entertained for hours with Tom & Jerry and Roadrunner back in the day. (Beware though, in some cartoons featuring Roadrunner, Wiley Coyete is violently smashed against big boulders most often followed by an explosion. This may offend you.) Most of my friends with kids have an entire shelf full of that stuff, and they tend to watch shows like BSG when their kids have gone to sleep.
Just saying, not everything needs to be suitable for kids. There's plenty of stuff that's ready made for them and is still enjoyable to parents.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:5, Insightful)
So get the original series on DVD and show them that.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Entertainment is an Industry (Score:3, Insightful)
"Milking a franchise" for writers/producers/distributors is like re-using bits of code for developers. It worked once, and with only a little bit of tweaking, it will work again. If you can bill twice for something you've already written, you do it. Obviously.
Entertainment *can* be art, like code *can* be poetry, but mostly it's not. People gotta eat.
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep hearing on this site how no media content is completely novel, and the best content is that which builds on pre-existing ideas. The BSG re-imagining is an excellent practical example of this.
AbsoFragginglutely damn it the original BSG was a re-imagining of Wagon Train which in turn was inspired by any number of Westerns. I suspect we could probably trace it all the way back to Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales but then who did he nick the idea off?
You have no idea what my tastes are (Score:5, Insightful)
And I don't see why a sci fi series dealing with adult themes should be made child friendly. Kids have enough TV of their own. Its bad enough with most films being downgraded to 12 certificates without infliciting the same on TV shows. Clearly you think the original series is rubbish or you would have shown your kids that instead.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you have no problem with your kids watching a dozen planets and billions of people being annihilated in a nuclear holocaust, people being left behind to die of radiation sickness, starvation and the like, people being executed, committing suicide - but don't nobody go killing babies?
The baby killing scene builds tension the best way possible - showing us that the Cylons had no issue with killing off the weak and innocent. She's even musing about the baby's weakness as she does it. That's why it is so effective - it tells us that there is no negotiating with them, tells us that they have no compassion and that we'd be better off hoping that the group of hungry lions don't eat the baby gazelle.
But back to my original point - why is it that you feel your kids can enjoy watching billions of people being killed, but you can't allow them to watch a single one being killed? Why is it that you feel that your kids can enjoy watching an episode like 33, where humans themselves kill a ship with a significant amount of the survivors of the attacks (I think 1,300 vs 45,000), but the sound effect of a baby's neck snapping and a mother crying out in anguish is too much?
Re:I bet he'd have liked it if he'd been in it-NOT (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:3, Insightful)
DS9 actually got interesting when they stopped dicking about on Bajor and had them some wars...
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:3, Insightful)
>DS9 actually got interesting when they stopped dicking about on Bajor and had them some wars...
I found that DS9 got tedious when they stopped dealing with the political and social situation on Bajor and turned it into yet another humans vs aliens war story.
Re:They just can't leave well alone (Score:0, Insightful)
Caprica will flop. The bulk of the people making up the BSG viewer base are not going to be interested in YATA (yet another teen angst) show.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I thought that the cylon killing the baby was more of a mercy killing so the baby wouldn't suffer when the nukes fell.
Showing the audience that the cylon had some human qualities.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
>Humans vs Aliens? You mean what Star Trek is all about?
>(Granted, it's actually Aliens vs Humans with the help of Aliens).
Star Trek was never about aliens vs humans. It was a hopeful (and a bit naive) programme about the expansion of humanity into the Galaxy. For the most part the conflict was driven by human conflict, not wars with aliens.
Re:Bleh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
DS9... was that the Star Trek about the Gas Station on the interstate?
No, it was Ron Moore's big-budget "re-imagining" of the campy Sci Fi classic "Babylon 5".
(ducks)
Re:Thank goodness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. You can't have channels with generic terms like "Discovery" or "History" or "Learning".
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I bet he'd have liked it if he'd been in it-NOT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok first of all, Bede bede bede isn't from Battlestar Galactica, it's from Buck Rogers, duh. How anyone could fuck that up so bad and still get +5 Insightful I will may never know.
Second of all the "rip off" isn't the name, it's the fact that Ronald D. Moore intentionally crippled the Blu-Rays by applying an artificial static fuzz to the entire series. I happily spent my $260 w/tax to purchase "The Complete Series" only to be so severely disappointed as to most likely never watch them on Blu-Ray. I've complained to Universal Home Entertainment that they stole my money with false advertising by intentionally avoiding notifying potential buyers of the discs that they have been intentionally distorted and degraded. Feh.
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that wasn't the point. Star Trek wasn't about inter-species conflict. The Klingons weren't just ridged headed aliens (and originally, they weren't). Star Trek was political allegory. The Klingons were the Soviets; the Federation was the U.S. The point of the whole "we won't fight directly but we'll both bully smaller planets to join our side to fight against their side" was the common theme. The result was that a higher being (the Organians) came in, bitchslapped their stupid asses and said "behave".
Almost every story and every alien world (save for filler episodes) were an allegory for modern-day problems. Everything form how we treat veterans to racism to ruthless imperialism (Cardassian occupation of Bajor) and the moral ambiguities of those situations.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is nothing new. Folks pay other people to kill cattle, swine, sheep, goats, rabbits, fish, crustaceans and poultry on their behalf millions of times every day. Most of them would have to be personally starving before they could bring themselves to be that necessarily predatory/brutal up close and personal. To say nothing of using a knife to clean the guts out of a hog before roasting or frying the tasty parts.
So, people are always in denial about reality. The cylon is being depicted as not being in denial about the billions of people they're about to kill. Being a part of that slaughter, and being committed to it, means that doing a bit of it with your own hands is a measure of your moral certainty (or ambivalence). Enjoy your hamburger at lunch today! Or, your tofu (many earthworms were killed when tilling that soybean field, you evil vegan bastards - and you know who you are!).
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough. However, I think far too many movies these days are ruined (or at least not as good as they could / should be) due to being "suitable for kids" and trying to appeal to a broader audience.
Obviously Star Wars comes to mind with Jar Jar, but you also had similar things in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Mutt getting hit in the crotch, the swinging with the monkeys), and the Transformer movies of course (the twin's being all ghetto, Bumblebee peeing on the guy, etc). These things are completely unnecessary and lower the quality of a movie.
I think kids should have kids movies, teens should have movies that are better than kids movies but not fully adult, and adults should have their movies. I'm not saying adults can't enjoy kids movies (Madagascar is great) but I really wish that the studios would stop trying to make ever super hero / sci-fi movie a "family friendly" movie. Pick your target audience, then make a film for them. When you try to target everyone, you may make a lot of money (like Star Wars), but people will always remember it as not being a very good movie.
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a re-imagining. It's a cashing-in on the name value of the original concept.
I don't get what is inaccurate about any series branding itself a re-imagining. Or I guess, perhaps I can't glean your definition of what you think a "re-imagining" is from your comment. I accept the definition that the production company uses just fine; it is an original series with imaginary settings and characters (i.e. fiction), based on a previous series with imaginary settings and characters. It is re-imagined because the settings, characters, and story have been tweaked/added/removed to the point where some significant actual imagination is required. The Star Wars trilogy thing was not a re-imagining, and no one ever claimed as such, it being a form of (mild) re-make. Same characters, same universe, same story, just a slightly altered storytelling medium.
You are right that it absolutely is a cashing-in on the name value of the original concept. No one is doubting that. But, they were honest about that up front anyway. They said this is a re-imagining of the original series. Therefore, they are explicitly using whatever power the brand name Battlestar Galactica had to market their product. No need to go into the importance of brand naming; I think we all understand how powerful that is. It is a gamble though. By using the name, you are inviting comparisons to the source material with every review and every viewing by anyone who has seen the original. Since the critical consensus was that the 2004 BSG was quite superior to the 1978 BSG, the gamble paid off quite nicely. For another example of this, see Star Trek (2009) (not saying that was vastly superior, but just that the gamble paid off there as well).
Part of the gamble is, of course, the "veneers" that tie it to the original work have to be obvious enough to justify using the same name. I can't just make a video of me making a turkey sandwich, upload it to YouTube and call it a re-imagining of Batman. The critical/public consensus here though was that there was enough similarities (a space ship called Galactica lead by a man named Adama guiding/accompanying the last remnants of the human race to a new homeworld while being pursued by a cyborg race called Cylons, among many other themes) to justify the name.
So you're right about the using the name value. But since that happens all the time every single day in a society with any semblance of a free market, you need to go farther and explain why that is bad. Since tropes [tvtropes.org] are re-used over and over throughout all fiction, just saying "same name!" is not sufficient as a criticism.
DO NOT WANT -- or NEED. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:5, Insightful)
And a whole 'nother ending, to boot. The show's ending was awful, not just for reasons of plausibility and deus ex machina storytelling but because it ended on a very idiotic "moral" that should rightly offend any technology-loving slashdot nerd. The show managed to go along the entire time without really being preachy and muddying the waters on social issues... then BAM! It hits you with "OK THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS THE BEST KIND OF LIFE IS LIVING A SHORT, BRUTAL, DISEASE-FILLED EXISTENCE, LETS GET RID OF ALL OUR TECHNOLOGY!" and everyone agrees (despite nobody agreeing on anything else in the course of the show) and everyone goes their separate ways to die their eventual brutal deaths. Also, WATCH OUT YOUR ROOMBA WILL GET YOU.
Re:I bet he'd have liked it if he'd been in it-NOT (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not a question of datedness. Some people just don't 'get' 2001. That was true when it came out -- many people left the theatre during the ape scenes. And it's still true today.
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.
Re:Bede bede bede - say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the new BSG go into territory the original didn't? Well yes, some. But *everything* that happened in the original series happened in the new one, which I give Sci-Fi kudos for. (Ok, excepting for the daggits or flying motorcycles...)
Or Apollo raising Boxey. Or landing on a casino planet with insect people that start sticking the crew into hive compartments. Or Baltar becoming the leader of the Cylons. Or Starbuck being stranded on a prison planet where the inmates are the descendants of the original inmates. Or Apollo being stranded on a frontier planet and having an old-west shoot out with Red-Eye. Or encountering Count Iblis. And there are probably more that I just can't think of right now.
I guess it depends on your definition of *everything*.
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference between billions of people dying in a nuclear attack (or in thousands dying by destroying the ship they are on), and the one baby dying are twofold: 1. the level of abstractions, and 2. simple human emotion. A billion sudden deaths are abstract. You don't see them. You don't hear them. Even those people still alive that are abandoned on the planet are abstract - they aren't dead or dying NOW and the show barely displayed any sickness or injury on them. Compare that to watching (ok, "hearing") a woman snap a baby's neck and all of a sudden the abstraction is gone. You witness one person killing another person, a "woman" murdering a baby. There's no abstraction to blunt #2 referenced above: human emotion. You get it, full force. Indeed, as you watch the scene, they even display the Cylon who does it having an emotional problem with the act she just committed. Rather than seeing how terrible they are, you actually see one struggling with the knowledge that this small defenseless innocent baby is going to die a horrible fiery death and so decides to save the baby from that fate by killing it quickly herself. If you don't get the concept of abstraction, you are either not a parent or you are an emotionless inhuman idiot (possible to be both).
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You say I should go to Pixar films. I say you should watch the Saw movies. People with your tastes have no more claim on the BSG franchise than people with my tastes.
Claim?
WTF does "claim" have to do with it?
They made a BSG series that is not for kids. So... don't show it to your kids. You might as well place some "claim" on Saw and say they should make that kid friendly.
I was just saying that I wanted my kids to be able to enjoy something that I enjoyed when I was their age. I'm sorry that's hard for you to handle.
Hey, I have an idea, then -- try showing them the thing that you enjoyed when you were their age! The original series is available both on DVD and on broadcast TV!
So there are multiple versions of a thing, and some of those versions you don't like because they aren't kid friendly. I don't see why this is a problem.
By the way, there are multiple versions of the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and some of them are not kid-with-modern-parent friendly! I guess they never should have made the version of Snow White where they force the Witch to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she died! OOOOOORRRRRRRR -- you should stick to the Disney version.
Naw that wouldn't work.
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:4, Insightful)
Never mention 1980-anything with respect to Battlestar Galactica again!
Re:Why does everything have to be child friendly?? (Score:1, Insightful)
people wanting a kid friendly show probably shouldn't look towards fiction depicting the genocide of the human race.
Re:They just can't leave well alone (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't they know when something is "complete"? Because despite all the claims to the contrary, Hollywood (indeed, the entire entertainment industry) is NOT about "art"--it's about money. There are a lot of individuals in the industry who think of themselves as artists, and there are a few (a very few) who actually are artists--or at least craftsmen--but most of the decisions about what gets produced, and how those productions are edited, marketed, and then "slowly milked to death" are made by people who are in it for the money.
Case in point: at one time there were some companies out there editing DVDs to cut out the "objectionable" parts. Directors sued because the companies in question were "ruining their artistic vision." But you'll notice that in almost every case, the directors were silent when their films were edited for television (almost the same edits that these companies were making) and they got a cut of the action.
As in most areas of human endeavor, if you're wondering why something happens a useful starting point is to look at who profits (in money, influence, power, etc)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bede bede bede (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure we caught that. And for all we know Baltar made a wonderful little farm with Caprica Six and they had a few babies together, but obviously that didn't start the agricultural revolution.
Sorry, I was admittedly not totally clear. So I said even Gaius was going to start farming, i.e. as an extreme example (even Gaius, a scientist who abhors the "farming" part of his past, is going to start farming). They wisely didn't tell us how many people were going to begin farming, but uh... what else are they going to do? Assuming these colonists are from a civilization even more advanced than ours, there would be a negligible number that know how to hunt their own food. Most likely, the easiest thing for them to do would be to gather and... plant the seeds from the foods they gather. Probably almost everyone would know how to domesticate plants, and animals that would let them. They come from a different paradigm, one where they KNOW what will happen when they plant something, rather than being forced to discover it due to population pressures.
Yes, the 'agricultural revolution' does refer to the time when population pressures in an area with relatively easily domesticable plants and/or animals force that population to invent the concept of 'food storage' to survive... and not when randomly scattered people around the world mysteriously began doing it all simultaneously. So I probably should have said "an agricultural revolution" rather than "the agricultural revolution."
It's easy to just sit back and go... "well, 150,000 years is such a long time... the knowledge would just have... faded away..." But, really, is that what would have happened? Maybe I'm the only one here (though in the company of Slashdot readers, I somehow doubt it), but I simply can't forget my knowledge of the world. Let's stop thinking in broad nebulous concepts, and actually take this step by step, i.e. less in terms of Civilization and more in terms of The Sims. Let's say I was one of the colonists. I'm sick of the war, I'm sick of eating algae, I'm sick of being on a space ship. No doubt the live-with-nature lifestyle would have appealed to me. So, I take a small group and we go off in Africa somewhere to live among pre-verbal humans. I'm sorry, but I can't degenerate to that level though. Not won't, but can't. I have not been physically trained my entire life to be a hunter. I don't have those skills, and neither does my group. I might eschew all technology, but I can't forget the scientific knowledge that I have. I can't forget the language that I can use.
I, personally, (and among 40,000 people I'm sure there's at least one person who feels the same way) would start applying my knowledge to my survival. Assuming they don't kill me outright, where the natives could teach me, I would learn from them. Where I could teach them, I would do so. If some manner of communication could be established, I would teach them about the sun, the stars, the moon. I would even teach them basic biology and animal husbandry. I would even possibly do some basic Newtonian physics if they could handle that. Why wouldn't I? I have no reason to lie or to make up myths or to adopt theirs, nor do I have any reason to lie to my offspring when I know perfectly well the reason that the sun disappears for about 12 hours every day. And I can't see any reason why they would lie to theirs either, when it really is the only thing that satisfies the ever-present human questions about their world.
I don't want the whole Cylon mistake to happen again, but so then what do I do about that? Do I just somehow knock my head against a rock until the facts I know about the universe fall out? Maybe the other 39K people would just assimilate and deny the truths they not only have been taught but have experienced. But not me - you can disagree with everything I have said up to now, but at least know this: all I'm saying is what I personally would do. And though I'm not arrogant enough to assume everyone would be the same, I believe that at least a small subset would be of that mindset. I don't expect this to be fully understood on, e.g. a Myspace comment page. But, I do expect this to be understood by Slashdot readers. At least.