It’s an idea so astoundingly stupid that when we first heard it we checked the calendar to make sure that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day!
It wasn’t. Unfortunately . . .
Though Universal Studios have denied the reports, the rumors are persisting that they are planning to remake the original late-1970s Battlestar Galactica TV series . . . The latest rumour has it that Universal is close to signing a deal with X-Men, Superman Returns director Bryan Singer to helm the remake.
But hasn’t there been a recent Battlestar Galactica “reimagining” which had a successful four season run (as planned) on the SyFi Channel? you’d ask quite reasonably I believe. Yup, but the keywords here are “remake” and “reimagining.” Whereas the SyFy Channel show successfully turned the basic concept behind the old cheesy TV show into something very different but also far, far better, the planned movie will be a straight-forward remake and not feature any of the 2000s TV series’ actors, characters or storylines. It will be a remake plain and simple.
In the original series the Cylons – a race of warrior robots - were created by a now-extinct reptilian race (presumably killed off by their own creations). After a thousand year war with humanity, which lives on twelve planets in a distant star system, the Cylons are ready to make peace. But it turns out to be a ruse: the Cylons attack and wipe out the colonies with the help of a human traitor named Baltar. You know the rest from the closing narration: “Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest - for a shining planet known as Earth."
By the way, despite the opening narration ("There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.") all this supposedly took place in 1980 if the controversial (read: cack) Galactica 1980 TV series is anything to go by.
The irony is of course that the original Battlestar Galactica was a Star Wars knock-off that lasted only one season (unless you count Galactica 1980 of course) . . .
Battlestar movie definitely going ahead
Friday, 14 August 2009 06:52
UPDATE: According to a recent report in Variety X-Men / Superman Returns director Bryan Singer WILL both produce and direct a big screen version of Battlestar Galactica for Universal Studios.
According to reports the new movie will "will not have anything to do with the popular Syfy television series of the same name." Instead it will be "a complete reimagination."
(Note: this movie will have nothing to do with the recent Syfy Channel show but will be based on the original 1970s show.)
I knew hollywood was getting desperate for ideas, but come-on! this is beyond scrapping the bottom of the barrel! What's next the movie version of 'Greatest American Hero'??? Or maybe 'Space Rangers' or lets rehash another 80's cartoon, Rainbow Brite or maybe Care Bears?? Or better yet the movie version of Survivor, show the thing over like three or four, two hour blocks... I better shut-up before they get ideas.
Time for some new talent in hollywood.
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'alright you primitive screwheads, this is my Boomstick!'
The SyFy remake of Galactica was awesomely well done.
The original was so bad that Harlan Ellison, in a review of the series, referred to it as "Cattlecar Galaxative."
I felt then and now that the major problem with the original can be summed up also in the tag that ended each episode: “Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet on a lonely quest..." In the original series, the humans, with the notable exception of Commander Caine (Lloyd Bridges) and the battlestar Pegasus, did not seem intent on rebuilding a war fleet and taking the fight to the Cylons, to take back what was theirs. All they ever did was run, fighting only defensively. That's not a palatable thing to the American mindset. When we fight, we much prefer to fight to win - assuming the politicians will let the military fight to win in a sane way (as they did not during Vietnam). The original series was made while we were still smarting from the national humiliation of having pulled out of Vietnam with our strategic goal of running the Communists out of South Vietnam denied us. Even though as Gunny Highway observed in Heartbreak Ridge we won all the battles, in the end we still lost the war since the bad guys took South Vietnam. I don't see how a producer can make a movie based on the original premise and make it palatable to movie audiences unless he has the "ragtag, fugitive fleet" re-equip for war and counterattack with the objective of exterminating the Cylon vermin.
But then, I think Down Periscope is a worthwhile movie when everyone around me derides it, so what do I know?
I remember watching the original series when I was growing up. I really liked the new "re imaging" on the syfy channel (or however they spell it now).
Nostalgia aside I thought the newer version was far better than the original.
While its science fiction the syfy channel version was able to make everything seem more "real". Such as using reality based physics and inertia in their space dog fights (pilots flipping their fighter around 180 degrees and using their forward guns to shoot back at their pursuers while still maintaining forward motion).
And using projectile based weapon systems instead of generic lasers.
I always liked the anti fighter flak cannon and guided missile defense grids on the large capital ships portrayed in the syfy version. Seems like a more real life way of dealing with enemy space ships.
The whole series just seem overall better done and more violent, dark, harsh, and real as opposed to the clean cut fantasy tail of the original series. Perhaps this was due to the times in which the original was filmed or the age group it was aimed at but the series is about a large conflict and war after all and wars are a messy thing filled with dark, violent, tragedy.
I never knew there was a difference between a "re imaging" and a "re make". Hollywood really is running out of ideas.
And using projectile based weapon systems instead of generic lasers.
I always liked the anti fighter flak cannon and guided missile defense grids on the large capital ships portrayed in the syfy version. Seems like a more real life way of dealing with enemy space ships.
In my Navy days, we played a Sci-fi computer game called "Cosmic Balance" - it allowed us to design our own ships and fight against each other - two player. Most guys used the basic Star Trek designs, and one guy used Battlestar Gallactica - we could put 'fighter swarms' onto the ships if big enough.
I had a bright idea, looking at a photo of the Battleship New Jersey. I designed her into the game. She kicked butt bigtime! The Gallactica fell quickly, once her fighters were expended.......
I just re-watched "The Last Starfighter" recently and loved it all over again, I think that one would be a great candidate for a modern re-make...with the tech available today the story would be relevant in these times and could look spectacular.
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Blaming guns for violent acts is like blaming the keyboard for your poor spelling.
The heck of it is, there is so much great science fiction from the Golden Age and later that would make excellent movies or series that no one is looking at, especially with the advances in motion capture and CGI. Here are a few I'd like to see them do.
F.M. Busby's Rissa Kerguelen Saga. Synopsis: an evil omnicorp has stolen the secret to .999c spaceflight from an alien race. Obama would love UET; they have made 90% plus of humans into welfare clients, while the other 10% rule Earth and the extraterrestrial planets. Rissa escapes from being Welfared by winning a lottery and getting off Earth. She links up with Bran Tregare, captain of the only armed UET ship to Escape from UET's control. Tregare has a plan: to organize and arm the Escaped ships in the Hidden Worlds (extrasolar planets UET does not know about), and return to destroy UET and free the Earth from UET's tyranny.
Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern series. Orbiting the star Rukbat in the constellation Cassiopeia's Chair are two planets. One, Pern, is earthlike. It is home to a colony of people who have forgotten Earth completely. The other planet, which the Pernese call the Red Star, throws off spores that can travel across the gap in the planets' orbits. Every 200 years or so, for 60 years or so, the orbits align in such a way that the spores from the Red Star can reach Pern and propagate if they reach the surface and land on soil. They excrete acid and are dangerous to carbon-based life, animal or vegetable.
The planet is defended by by telepathically sensitive people mind-linked to a native Pernese life-form called Dragons because they can breathe fire and look like Terran fictional dragons, with big wings and four legs. They also can teleport as well as fly, though they must be trained to use this innate skill properly. the Dragonriders are a sort of military-noble class, who exist on tithes from the various Lord Holders (think of them as feudal barons), as they spend all their time training to fight Thread, as they call the spores.
Due to irregularities in orbital mechanics, the Intervals between the Thread attacks can extend to 400 years. This is called a Long Interval.
A Long Interval is coming to a close. During this Long Interval, the number of Weyrs ( dormant volcano homes where the Dragonriders and their mounts live) have declined from the six required to defend the planet to only one, Benden Weyr. A new Weyrleader, F'lar, rider of bronze Mnementh, has located a new Queen Rider, Lessa, who has Impressed on Ramoth, the only gold queen dragon remaining on Pern. F'Lar and Lessa have a serious problem: How is one understrength Weyr (usually there are three queen dragons per Weyr, not just one Queen Dragon for the whole planet) to defend an entire planet against the Threads when in all previous Passes of the Red Star it has taken six to do the job?
Lessa devises a dangerous plan to solve the unsolvable problem - one which puts her and Ramoth at risk of death, and all of Pern with them, should they fail...
David Drake's Hammer's Slammers Saga. In the future, there are many worlds other than Earth. These worlds are at odds with each other frequently, as are nations on Earth today. Some worlds are settled by one nation of old Earth; others are colonies settled for exploitation of resources; some are joint ventures with colonists from two nations or worlds that are at odds with each other. Inevitably there will be wars. Some nations maintain armies. Others don't. And there are mercenary companies whose business is warfare.
One of these companies is Hammer's Regiment, nicknamed "Hammer's Slammers." They are an armor regiment, the only mercenary armored regiment in space. Originally an auxiliary regiment formed by the Dutch-descended plated Friesland when its own army and armor could not get a job done, and commanded by a skilled Friesland officer, Alois Hammer, the Slammers can be hired - if your planet or political movement has enough money. They are virtually unstoppable.
The Regiment rides fusion-powered hovertanks and combat cars armed with powerguns (think of these as Han Solo's blaster on mega-steroids). They can go anywhere and win against anybody, from Friesland regulars to teleporting aliens to Francophone combat engineer/infantry regiments whose specialty is mines capable of stopping even one of Hammer's tanks. They are a force to be reckoned with, be they on your side or the other guy's.
Hammer sees that all this fighting is symptomatic of a larger problem. Civilization is just about to slag down because people can't find a way to get along. He dreams of taking control of a planet with enough resources that will allow him to impose order and prevent a new Dark Age. No one ever said he was modest in his goals...
Space Viking, by H. Beam Piper. In a far future, worlds settled by spacegoing freebooters have become civilized, but still send out privately owned ships to raid other worlds. Baron Lucas Trask of Traskon has spoken against this, seeing the Space Vikings as draining the best and the brightest off his planet. When his newly-married wife is killed by an insane nobleman from his planet who hijacks a spaceship being built by Trask's overlord , Trask turns Space Viking himself to hunt the killer down. Along the way, he learns a great deal about Space Vikings, the fragility of civilization, and himself.
You see what I mean? There's plenty of good stuff that has never been done by Hollywood. They just lack the guts to go looking for it and the vision to make these science fiction classic into wonderful movies.
In my Navy days, we played a Sci-fi computer game called "Cosmic Balance" - it allowed us to design our own ships and fight against each other - two player. Most guys used the basic Star Trek designs, and one guy used Battlestar Galactica - we could put 'fighter swarms' onto the ships if big enough.
I had a bright idea, looking at a photo of the battleship New Jersey. I designed her into the game. She kicked butt bigtime! The Galactica fell quickly, once her fighters were expended.......
That weakness - that if you can get past her airplanes, any carrier is dog meat -is true of any aircraft carrier. That very weakness is why the Navy retained eight 8-inch guns in four turrets forward and aft of the islands in the pre-war carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga when they were converted from battlecruisers into carriers. They were not removed until after World War II had begun.
As far as putting the New Jersey into such a game: Congratulations. You have recreated the Space Cruiser Yamato from the early anime series of that name. It was seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s here in America as Star Blazers.
That weakness - that if you can get past her airplanes, any carrier is dog meat -is true of any aircraft carrier. That very weakness is why the Navy retained eight 8-inch guns in four turrets forward and aft of the islands in the pre-war carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga when they were converted from battlecruisers into carriers. They were not removed until after World War II had begun.
As far as putting the New Jersey into such a game: Congratulations. You have recreated the Space Cruiser Yamato from the early anime series of that name. It was seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s here in America as Star Blazers.
Oh yeah! I am a BIG Star Blazers fan! And I wrote both the Iowa class and the Yamato into the game - it came out a draw.
Either one, armed with three plasma blasters - once charged in staggered order (took three turns to charge), they were unstoppable!
I did the same thing in a WWII battleship game. Same thing - both ships came to a draw. Japanese had slightly better guns and armor, US had better radar giving longer effective range. They pummeled each other into hulks.....
There is a book I would dearly love to see made into a modern CGI movie (can't recll it's title - it'll come to me) - Planet Texas is a ranching world, with the people raising "Meekers" (Meat critters) for the galactic market. Basically, some tiff develops between the ruling Federation Empire and some rebel worlds, with Texas leading the rebels. Looks like it's curtains for the good guys, til Texas invents the "Darlene Space Rifle", a ship-board cannon firing a powerful nuke shell with trans-warp drive - it can deliver it's shot right into a force-field protected line battleship! Problem is, Texas has few ships with the warp drive, and once warped, they are sitting ducks while recharging - until they develop a 'double warp drive' and can warp in, fire and warp back out! The Federation is in deep kimchi then........
A rousing good tale that predated Star Wars with many similarities - I often wonder if Lucas read that same book.......
Big Dog, you'd definitely enjoy anything by H. Beam Piper. I'd recommend Space Viking, Four Day Planet and Lone Star Planet to you for a start. Maybe The Cosmic Computer, too.
Piper also wrote the Little Fuzzy trilogy, which had a fourth book added to it by William Tuning based on situations Piper set up in the other books. (The series: Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens, Fuzzies and Other People, and Fuzzy Bones [the Tuning book].) This one had a very minor impact on the Star Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles." David Gerrold had named his little critters "fuzzies," and Paramount's legal department sent a memo to Gene L. Coon, the series producer, telling him that they didn't want to name the critters fuzzies lest they be sued for copyright infringement. So Gerrold sat down and invented a whole bunch of nonsense names, and selected "tribbles" as the best of the lot, thus assuring him a minor bit of science fiction immortality.
. Hollywood really is running out of ideas.
