I noticed that the old thread had exceeded its limit, and since there's some new news out today, I figured this would be a good jumping off point.
HitFix is saying that none other than Bryan Singer is now attached to produce (and maybe direct) a new theatrical BSG movie, completely unrelated to Ron Moore's series but possibly related to the original and BSG 1980 series.
I'm having a hard time seeing how this isn't going to be just a terrible idea.
edit: For some added confounding talk, read the comments on that link to see loads of people who flat-out hated the SyFy series, but can't wait for the guy who did Superman Returns and Valkyrie to take a shot at it. "Facepalm" doesn't even begin to describe it.
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This is just great. I've been trying to convince my friends to give the series a try, and they're all like, "Yeah....maybe." Then this'll come out and they'll be like, "I'll just go see the movie" and of course I will say "No don't go see the movie" and they'll be all "I'm gonna go see the movie" and then they'll go see the fucking movie and they'll be all "You mean you actually like this stuff" and I'll be like "NO."
Whenever I talk about Bear McCreary and how he's the best cinematic composer ever people laugh when they hear that he wrote for BSG.
Now they will have a reason if they see this stupid movie that's going to be awful why would they do this.
Did the series just cause a quality imbalance that the idea of BSG couldn't handle. They felt it went too far to outshine the original series and decided they needed more suck
Between Tom DeSanto and Richard Hatch, I just keep scratching my head over what it is about the original series that people think needs revisiting. They had two chances already to get this thing right, and audiences didn't bite. The R&D series is already a legend and milestone of quality television, and offered just about everything I feel this series could strive for, surpassing even that quite often.
Totally confused.
The Plan's not on there either. I downloaded all the individual webisodes and keep them on my computer, but Face of The Enemy all compile together lasts 1 episode, so they should have included it in Season 4 somewhere really.
But there is some big royalty fiasco with the webisodes apparently, after the Resistance they almost didn't make any more.
Bunting, Owls and Cushions! Feecloud Designs
I also didn't like Roslin or Adama very much.
But it's still a quality show (until the last season)
Not to flame, but what is it about the old show that you found so much more involving than the Ron Moore version? Cheap costumes and sets? Campy adventurism? Lorne Greene?
By 'the way things were' I mean the previous seasons
He has it all planed out how the end of BSG meets up with Blade Runner and has ideas about what happened after the end of the series
edit: To expand on the previous stuff, while I very much enjoyed the characters and setting, I found more or less every reveal or significant plot development disappointing in some way or another, and while the show did at times manage to convince me otherwise after the fact, this did not stop me longing for the old more often than I enjoyed the new.
This.
Everything after the beginning of the third season was a MASSIVE disappointment. The quality of the writing and acting took a huge nosedive. Went from being one of the best shows on TV to something I could barely muster the enthusiasm to watch. The finale was just laughably bad.
... and this coming from a guy who teared up during the liberation of New Caprica.
It was after that I kind of felt the show started to meander into its rather clumsy finale. I was really engaged all the way up until the final episode which fell really flat to me.
annoyed the pure fuck out of me. I mean
Holy shit, this show is so good. I ignored it forever for no good reason.
Spoilered for spoilery track names/plot match-ups
My favorite from Disc 1 has to be "Kara Remembers" - plays exactly as you hear it in the episode, and there's this awesome section in the middle with just some doodling on the piano that was probably buried in the episode mix (I don't remember hearing it in the scene itself).
"The Cult of Baltar" is a very cool interpretation of his theme, with some Sanskrit choir chanting "Gaius Baltar" at times.
The version of "Gaeta's Lament" that opens the album is awesome - it is a re-recording, and I think I'm starting to prefer it to the version heard in "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?".
Definitely worth your time if you've enjoyed the music in the series.
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I tear up when I listen to "An Easterly View".
I could only see this working if say, Singer was going with the tv show and helping fill in some plot holes with the cast we've become attached to.
However, because it isn't, I can only assume that "Battlestar Galactica: 1980 Revisited"'s opening day in theaters will be uglier than a town hall meeting on universal health care.
Personally, I LOVED the series till the end. I will re-watch it though so I can see what everyone was against just to understand the other side's point of view.
When does Caprica come out (the season, already have the pilot on DVD)? And where can I find the webisodes? Are they still up.
Not everyone. I thought the last 10 episodes were some of the best of the entire series.
Please tell me you haven't gone three whole seasons calling the guy by the wrong name.
And I think the Plan comes out in September?
But I got to say the Singer version is going down in flames. Hard.
A BSG without Admiral Adama, Tigh OR nr. 6?
Doomed to failure.
Sure there will be characters named Adama and Tigh, but they wont be the concentrated awsome that we know from the series.
Why watch a pathetic reboot when you can watch the real thing.
Kinda like who wants to watch Superman returns instead of Superman 2
The closest to the actual moment would be
is sooooooo terrible
2. What the fuck did happen to all the Cylons on the nuked Earth? Like, was it some Cylon on Skinjob uprising that wiped out every single Cylon from both factions except the final 5? Or is there even more survivors from there floating about with subluminal speeds?
MWO: Adamski
2. There are no other survivors besides the Final Five. Pure Cylon, like pure Human, isn't strong enough to survive.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I'm not exactly asking them to give scientific details so that we can reproduce "jumping" and have faster than light travel. But I would like to have plot points more elaborate than the sarcastic "rocks fall and everyone dies" ala SomethingPositive.
MWO: Adamski
How excited is everyone for "The Plan"? When I saw the BSG crew at Wizard World: Philadelphia my thoughts were:
1.) This is going to be awesome because they seem to really love the show
2.) Kat has really smooth, even skin.
3.) How will they explain away the missing Starbuck/Apollo/Roslin awesomeness? Did those guys just not want to do the movie? Will they even appear in future BSG works?
But I can forgive that given how great the rest of the series was and honestly, 2 episodes in Season 4 part 2 were so good that is my true "finale" to the series. I don't need anything else to be perfectly happy.
Instead, I'm looking forward to fresh annoyance: The BSG movie directed by Bryan Singer. (spoilered for length)
Granted, it's easier to take such a hardline position when the show you're defending is NOT a cheezy piece of pandering bullshit, but is, in fact, one of the most well-recieved pieces of televised Sci-Fi ever, and definitely one of the most influential filmic works of the last 10 years in terms of style. The protestations seem so much more righteous when you're defending something worth a shit, even if the people who love(d) the show are split on it's last 10 hours and it's (un)success, depending. I personally count myself amongst those who would call the film the finest Sci-Fi show ever made, and the finale as a piece of tonal perfection.
So, taking that into account, I've done my fair share of tantrum throwing and public ranting, wild-eyed and foamy mouthed. I'm in the calm down period, where the rationality seeps in around the edges as I take deep breaths, and the realization is this: I'm going to watch the fucking thing in 2011. I could posture and bullshit about principle, but the fact of the matter is, regardless of how good the show was, it was just a TV show. Principle is wasted on such things as popular entertainment. What kind of an asshole doesn't see a movie out of principle? Don't get me wrong, I understand not seeing a film because you think it looks shitty, the ads are awful, the director is crappy, the actors piss you off. Those are valid reasons based on the quality of a finished product you've been exposed to in some form, more than likely marketing. But to say "I won't see Battlestar Galactica on principle, out of deference to Moore?" I can see not visiting an eatery because it's owners mistreat their workers. I can see not visiting a nightclub because it's ownership has been shown to be mildly racist. I can see not purchasing a certain brand of personal cleanser because of animal testing. But such stands of moral fortitude are fucking stupid when it comes to TV and movies. You can't talk about principle if you don't couple it with perspective, otherwise you're just being a grandstanding prick. Just like the people who STILL haven't watched Moore/Eick's BSG because they disagreed with their ideas on principle. Their massive loss. If only for the fact they missed out on Bear's score, one of the finest pieces of film music since John Williams set pen to paper in the late 70's.
I don't want to be that kind of asshole. And Bryan Singer is a pretty good director. Combine that with my sense of curiosity, and unless the ads look mindless and the early critical reception is pure poison on a Uwe Boll level, I'm pretty certain I'm going to see this thing. I hear word of Singer taking meetings with Justin Timberlake, and I know there's a chance he's going to be Starbuck in this revamping of the core concept, and I grind my teeth. I like Timberlake, and I think he's got a good film career in him. Maybe as Apollo, I can see it. But not as Starbuck. Even so, even with the knowledge that all we're getting is an Adama wholly different than Greene or Olmos, and a Starbuck that isn't Katee Sackhoff OR Dirk Benedict, and a director whose last shot at a beloved property was a self-indulgent, bloated, reverential mess? I'm gonna see it. I know I'm gonna see it. I'm not gonna start cheerleading for the thing, don't get me wrong. But this movie isn't going to replace that complete series box set at any time. It won't even replace the 78 series. It will be its own thing, and it'll be interesting to look at, even if it's only interesting in the same way a lot of BSG fans are discovering that 78 series on Hulu with chortles, guffaws and winces. People still sought it out, and gave it a shot. The show came up short, but they still at least gave it a shot.
I'll give this a shot. A fair one. If it fails, it fails, and so what, I didn't fuckin make it, it's not my baby, it's just another shitty movie I saw in a theater one day. I'm still VERY skeptical. The speed that this thing is coming together with tells me that Universal doesn't give a shit about the quality, only about the potential for having their own homegrown "Star Trek" revival. It's misguided thinking at best, not looking at why Star Trek was dead, why that revival worked, not devoting an ounce of thought beyond "They got one of those at Paramount, do we have one here at Universal?" The whole thing just feels crassly blatant in its cash-grab, fuck-the-quality feel. Almost like when ABC threw money at Larson because they saw Lucas shoving millions by the fistful into his still nascent neck-pouch-goiter-thing. And we ended up with a pretty looking, empty, stupid, pandering shitpile of sci-fi entertainment.
My hope? They rescind the statement that they're not going to play in Moore's sandbox, and they tell a story set on the Battlestar Galactica, during the First Cylon War in Moore's timeline. No Adama commanding, no Apollo, no Starbuck, no journey across the stars, no quest to find earth, no apocalypse. Just a straight up War Movie set in space featuring a bunch of young bucks on the decks of a badass spaceship shooting holy fuck out of robots? I might start getting out pom-pom's for that. It's distanced from both shows, and presents enough of a blank slate. It's reimagination on the level Universal seems to want, without having to explore the now exhausted concept of apocalyptic footrace across the cosmos yet again. Hell, have the Galactica fight another colony's Battlestar, pre-Cylon War. From when the Cylons did all the Colonials dirty work. There are options here.
Those options won't be explored, because Larson is almost devoid of skill as a storyteller, and Singer isn't great at coming up with a story, either (Superman Returns, his initial BSG pitch about 6 years ago) and we'll end up with Timber-buck getting his pew-pew on as another revamping of Stu Phillips' classic theme rumbles in the background. And I'll be in the theater watching it. Either being disappointed and rolling my eyes at this waste of money and time. Or being pleased at how something called Battlestar Galactica ended up being a decent movie in spite of its goofy name. Just like in 2003. Until then, the rage I'm seeing and feeling is too impotent. There's nothing to it. At least, nothing yet.
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