25 replies to this topic

[Sybeck1]

http://www.rottentom...estar_galactica

Universal Pictures has signed Bryan Singer to produce and direct a feature version of the popular sci-fi TV franchise, Battlestar Galactica. Bryan Singer's career got started with the award-winning The Usual Suspects, but most fans might best know him as the director of the first two X-Men movies and 2006's Superman Returns. Years ago, Singer had been developing a new Battlestar Galactica TV series, but reportedly plans were scrapped after the events of September 11, 2001, when it was felt a TV show about a city being attacked and destroyed wouldn't be well received. A few years later, Ronald Moore produced his own take on a Battlestar Galactica relaunch, and the show just went off the air after 73 episodes. It is unknown if Moore will be involved at all with this new Galactica movie, and it's being produced by Glen Larson, creator of the orginal 1970s show. Since Singer's approach is being called a "complete re-imagination," it's expected that there will be no direct ties between Moore's recent series and this new movie, which will relaunch the concept for a second time. There's no word yet as to who will be writing the script for this new Battlestar Galactica either. My hunch is that we can probably expect Singer's Galactica to have a lighter tone than Ronald Moore's rather dire and dark TV series. I'm basing this upon a suspicion that Singer's inspiration will be the actual original 1970s series (as opposed to Moore's version). That would gel with a lot of what we know about Singer's tastes, as he's long talked about developing a Logan's Run remake, and his Superman Returns slavishly paid homage to 1978's Superman. So, Bryan Singer definitely likes 1970s science fiction properties, which suggests he might like the original Battlestar Galactica more than the 2000s remake, right? Having said that, here's hoping he doesn't include the cute little kid and his robot dog.

[Sybeck1]

Can anyone say overkill!

[BadBunnyMike]

Yeah, why would they try and make a movie of it, if a series didn't catch on too well recently....they should ATLEAST wait another like 5 years before trying something again.

[Commodore Kor'Tar]

Yeah, why would they try and make a movie of it, if a series didn't catch on too well recently....they should ATLEAST wait another like 5 years before trying something again.

My theory is that maybe they are throwing as much as they can against the the wall to see what sticks .

[JMW326]

Yeah, why would they try and make a movie of it, if a series didn't catch on too well recently....they should ATLEAST wait another like 5 years before trying something again.

What do you mean? The new series was widely popular and very successful. Moore is the one who decided to end it.

[Wildcard]

I think he was meaning "Caprica" JMW.


Although I would love to see what Singer would do, can Hollywood NOT come up with something new and exciting? Why all the remakes/re-imaging/reinventions?

[JMW326]

I say let them do t if they want. What will it hurt? Glen Larson and others have been wanting to do a project like this for years. I am a fan of the original and the new show. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. A movie based on either one could be good. We wont know until the do it.

[VulcanFanatic]

I am a fan of Singers "Superman Returns", because it was made in the style of the original Superman movies, which i also like. When i saw the movie, i was pleasantly surprised that someone in hollywood actually cared about preserving something rather than trying to make it different. That being said, i hope any future Battlestar Galactica movie with also hearken to the original as well. improving the original is fine, throwing it out the window and completely changing it is not. I like series that you dont have to be ashamed to watch with the kids in the same room. If i want to watch skanky women sleep with everyone on the show, i will turn on an HBO channel, let us have a family friendly, intelligent scifi drama like the original series was. I looked forward to each episode every week and was thrilled every time i watched it. For those who are not old enough or missed it first run back in the day, the thrill may not be there as much now because 30 years have passed and technology is better. The staggering cost of the show back then (1 million an episode) was a big part of the reason it was canceled, along with a less than desirable timeslot. I hope this turns out to be a great movie, and i will actually pay money to go see it, and that honor is pretty rare these days, due to high cost of movie tickets and sorry selection of movies that interest me these days in the theater.

[Gothneo]

Well... The "Sci-Fi" channel is basically a premium channel, like HBO, that you pay extra for. It's not available to allot of households, so I wouldn't say its a "Family" channel to begin with.

That being said what is really family friendly these days? I mean would you really want your kid to sit down and watch something like "2 & 1/2 Men" VF? That show is nothing but a parade of women sleeping with the main character (and it's not even really that funny) but it seems like it's shown non-stop on the local channels here. Around the time kids get home from school no less.

[VulcanFanatic]

Well... The "Sci-Fi" channel is basically a premium channel, like HBO, that you pay extra for. It's not available to allot of households, so I wouldn't say its a "Family" channel to begin with.

That being said what is really family friendly these days? I mean would you really want your kid to sit down and watch something like "2 & 1/2 Men" VF? That show is nothing but a parade of women sleeping with the main character (and it's not even really that funny) but it seems like it's shown non-stop on the local channels here. Around the time kids get home from school no less.

2 1/2 men is trash tv, not fit for kids to watch. Stargate SG-1(after it left Showtime) was a pretty decent show in my opinion. Contrary to what hollywood thinks, tv shows can be made that people will watch that dont have to be filled with vulgarity and profanity. I would rather watch the "Andy Griffith show" than 2 1/2 men.

[TheHSBR]

I fell asleep during Superman Returns and so did my friend who is about 30 years older than me. I thought that was one of the worst comic book movies made in the last 10 years. The story was just way too slow. If we get that Singer count me out. However Singer's X2 & X3 were much more quick and interesting so that may translate better into a feature film. Im with the group that its way too soon for something like this. If it were a spinoff or a prequel Id be fine but a second complete re-imagining is just too much. Ill wait until I see some pics of the costumes , ships, etc but Im not anticipating this in the least bit.

[VulcanFanatic]

I believe we have discussed in other topics that it seems younger folks have grown up with faster paced shows, and now cant stand to watch anything that does not have constant action or other visual stimuli to keep folks interested, like Sex and violence. Its a dangerous path to go down, because addictions require more and more to sustain that thrill high. I wouldnt be a bit surprised if most if not all of the mass murderers in recent history were heavy into ultra fast action, violence and sex laden movies and wanted more eventually than the movies and video games could give and went across that line and started killing real people. I remember years ago, in texas, there was a mass murder in a restaurant, and i read somewhere that the guy was made up like the Terminator, glasses, mannerisms and all, but we never heard much about that because that would have implicated the entertainment industry, and what media outlet would want to do that? Now, i think i have sense enough to know the difference between reality and fiction, but there are a lot of folks out there, more than you might think, that dont know the difference, or may know the difference, but dont care. I think this is an addiction, just like eating way too much food, especially junk food, is an addiction. There are many addictions out there besides drug junkies. The way i tie this into this thread about a new Battlestar Galactica movie is this, The original BSG was made 30 years ago, when life wasnt as fast paced as it is now, and moral behavior was still in abundance on TV, and families could watch this, and many other shows without worrying about outright filth being thrown at them. If Singer can recapture the morality and nobility of the original, and improve upon it, add in some action, then it will be a good movie.

[Sybeck1]

Bring Back Dirk!! Make him Admiral or Commander Starbuck!

[VulcanFanatic]

Bring Back Dirk!! Make him Admiral or Commander Starbuck!

I would like to see Dirk Benedict in a new BSG movie. Heck, i would like to see all of the surviving cast, even the traitor Richard Hatch in it.

[Wildcard]

I don't think that age has anything to do with fast pasted movies or not. I'm 32 and I love some slower paced movies as long as the story line is strong, the cinematography is lush, and I'm not constantly being bombarded by senseless fart jokes. And I'll be honest, I didn't like Superman Returns because of the execution of the story itself....which was somewhat controlled by Singer but also not. I liked his imaging and cinematography. His pacing was ok for what he had to work with.

[Cpt. Phil T. Berns]

If Singer does to Galactica what he did to Superman, I won't even bother to watch it. Superman Returns is based on the pre-crisis Superman, which was a bad idea to begin with. Superman comics only got good after the John Byrne reboot. And with the comics, the animated series and the Lois & Clark TV show going one way Mr. Singer decided to go the other way. There's no going back in life. Yes, I would love to live in the seventies again. I would love to see my grandfather who passed away in 1985 again and I would love to see my grandmother who passed away this July again. But there's no going back. In today's world you can't have a younger version of Roger Moore playing James Bond. Things change. And Superman Returns was on one side a direct sequel to the early Superman movies but on the other side they had cell phones and internet. THANK GOD FOR REBOOTS!!!

On top of that Singer decided to have his Superman behave in an unsuperman way. Using his abilities to spy on Lois should be above Superman.

Bottom line, I don't think Superman Returns will ever have a sequel. It was the worst piece of ... I have seen in a long time. I would hate to see him do the same thing to Battlestar Galactica. Especially after the great Ron Moore version.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

I am a fan of Singers "Superman Returns", because it was made in the style of the original Superman movies, which i also like. When i saw the movie, i was pleasantly surprised that someone in hollywood actually cared about preserving something rather than trying to make it different. That being said, i hope any future Battlestar Galactica movie with also hearken to the original as well. improving the original is fine, throwing it out the window and completely changing it is not.

Why not? The original BSG was a cheesy, lame sci-fi movie and TV series that existed soley to cash in upon the rising popularity of sci-fi in the late '70s.

I like series that you dont have to be ashamed to watch with the kids in the same room.

That's why most people watched NuBSG after the kids were in bed! You know, we live in a world populated by people of all ages, and TV should not always be tame family-friendly fare. And it doesn't do little kiddies any harm not to be always in front of the TV, watching with parents or not.

If i want to watch skanky women sleep with everyone on the show, i will turn on an HBO channel,

Wow! That's pretty sexist amd judgemental - what about the "skanky" guys sleeping with them? I understand your neo-con leanings, so maybe you object to NuBSG because it challenges some of your moral assumptions. Besides you must have watched quite a lot of NuBSG to even be able to make a judgement about the amount of sex in the show!! However, the large amount of sex in NuBSG pretty closely approximates what goes on in our world today, as does the mixed cast. It's supposed to be challenging and at times uncomfortable to watch. It's not superhero TV for kiddiewinkies - thank goodness!

What Moore did with BSG is take an essentially over-priced and dumb white elephant and with almost Shakespearean grandeur, turn it into something contraversial and genuinely intelligent. It stole a march on Trek by really holding a mirror up to our attitudes to human and personal relations. It had a properly mixed cast of equal numbers of men and women sharing the important jobs and relating to each other professionally and sexually in the manner of the real world of today. The running gag with Balthar and Caprica 6 was meant to be massive comment upon the propensity of certain men to be led around by their trousers, as well as being a touching, co-dependent relationship between two entities on opposing sides. NuBSG was bold in its dealings with age, sex, religion, prejudice, and how we dehumanise the enemy in order to vent the darkest aspects of ourselves. It played with the orginal show's cod Bibilical plot and developed an interesting debate on religion and the foundations of religion. It tackled such hot potatoes as abortion intelligently, and while I didn't agree with the show's solution or Adama's endeavours to infleunce the lady president using emotional blackmail, it was balanced in showing all sides of the debate and I appreciated being challenged by a TV show that wasn't giving cookie-cutter PC responses to important issues.

There were other challenging things to provoke discomfort: a trenchant commentary on the way prisoners of war are abused, and how some people (deemed to have sided with the Cylons) were thrown out airlocks by self-determined, underground vigilantes who administered vengeance without trial. NuBSG was complex and challenging. Occasionally uplifting, but always engaging the intellect and emotions.

If I want kiddie-friendly, I watch C Beebies.

let us have a family friendly, intelligent scifi drama like the original series was.

Huh? For a start,not every darn thing on TV should be so innocuous that it satisfies the home-schooled kiddie community, but you're also inaccurate in portraying the original series as in any way "intelligent" in the way intelligent people understand the word, or indeed that innocent. I'll prove that...

Back in the day, the orginal 1979 movie was being touted as a sexed-up version of Star Wars. The publicity tag-line - at least here in Britian - was that women in BSG were "chased" and not "chaste" in a show that was aiming to bring sex into sci-fi. Much was made of the "sexy" good looking cast and while it was supposed to be for all ages with vile Boxy and his dumb robotic dog, the content was also laughably sub-adult and included Cassiopeia, a "socialator", a sci-fi euphenism for "prostitute". Not only was one of the women a call-girl, the only character to make any kind of a moral judgement about that occupation was the only other female character of note, Athena, who took umbrage purely because Starbuck fancied enjoying Cassiopeia's wares for free! The original Count Balthar was debauched dictator in a floating pleasure palace. Some of this edge may have been blunted int the subsequent TV spin-off I grant you, but it was never designed to be that family friendly!

I looked forward to each episode every week and was thrilled every time i watched it. For those who are not old enough or missed it first run back in the day, the thrill may not be there as much now because 30 years have passed and technology is better.

You see, I am old enough! In fact, for its time, the technology portrayed and the FX were cutting edge, a fact that is recognised in NuBSG where they have tinkered very little with the basic designs - just used them as a base-line and added their won "improvement" to show how technology, especially that of the Cylons, evolves.

The staggering cost of the show back then (1 million an episode) was a big part of the reason it was canceled, along with a less than desirable timeslot.

More likely that it was camp and cheesy and rather silly. It failed to find an audience, much like Enterprise, which also fell victim to the enormous cost of a show watched by very few. In fact, there is a correlation between the two since ENT claimed to be sexed-up and missed the mark.

I hope this turns out to be a great movie, and i will actually pay money to go see it, and that honor is pretty rare these days, due to high cost of movie tickets and sorry selection of movies that interest me these days in the theater.

Maybe less of recommendation than my indictment of snubbing a dumbed-down, kiddie-lite version of a franchise made into a show that was spectacularly reborn and a hit with the critcs - if that's what this turns out to be.

[VulcanFanatic]

Sorry Jules, but i stand by my earlier post. I will not try to convince you otherwise or argue about it.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

I believe we have discussed in other topics that it seems younger folks have grown up with faster paced shows, and now cant stand to watch anything that does not have constant action or other visual stimuli to keep folks interested, like Sex and violence. Its a dangerous path to go down, because addictions require more and more to sustain that thrill high.

I think when you aim that stuff specifically at young people to attarct them in, I would agree. There's a marked difference though in the way sex and violence is aimed at somebody of my age because I'm not addicted to sex and violence, and I demand a good reason for its inclusion. In NuBSG it is always properly justified.

I wouldnt be a bit surprised if most if not all of the mass murderers in recent history were heavy into ultra fast action, violence and sex laden movies and wanted more eventually than the movies and video games could give and went across that line and started killing real people. I remember years ago, in texas, there was a mass murder in a restaurant, and i read somewhere that the guy was made up like the Terminator, glasses, mannerisms and all, but we never heard much about that because that would have implicated the entertainment industry, and what media outlet would want to do that? Now, i think i have sense enough to know the difference between reality and fiction, but there are a lot of folks out there, more than you might think, that dont know the difference, or may know the difference, but dont care. I think this is an addiction, just like eating way too much food, especially junk food, is an addiction. There are many addictions out there besides drug junkies. The way i tie this into this thread about a new Battlestar Galactica movie is this, The original BSG was made 30 years ago, when life wasnt as fast paced as it is now, and moral behavior was still in abundance on TV, and families could watch this, and many other shows without worrying about outright filth being thrown at them. If Singer can recapture the morality and nobility of the original, and improve upon it, add in some action, then it will be a good movie.

Perhaps Singer will find a pretty woman to play the prostitute in order to be true to the original moral tone of old BSG!!!

Seriously, you can't classify all sex on TV as "filth" - because sex is healthy when practiced in loving respectful relationships of whatever duration. Without it we don't have our families. Whenever casual sex is shown in NuBSG, we, the audience, get to decide if the act is well-advised or not. Besides, there are plenty of family-friendly movies out there, high-toned morality won't play out for the likely target audience of a big sci-fi action movie.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

Sorry Jules, but i stand by my earlier post. I will not try to convince you otherwise or argue about it.

That's fine. You and I stand at opposing poles on certain issues, I know that! But other people will see my acurrate refutation that the old BSG was some kind of moral show and make their minds up for themselves. In fact, NuBSG examined the moral aspects of the way in which the colonials of the old show treated the Cylons in the manner of a vengeful creator (sound familiar?) and characteried the attitude in a imple phrase deliberately designed to degrade the moral, spiritual, and intellectual capacities of their mechanised enemies - they referred to them as "toasters".

What's more moral? A show that assumes that humans are superior to those they created even when those creations become their intellectual equals and rebel, or the show that flips the script and examines what lies beneath?