Battlestar Galactica

Jon Starr said:
Honestly, the complaining about re-makes is just getting tiring. I used to do it, everyone I know does it, but hey, we're still going to go see "X" film right?
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It sucks, but it's life, and I for one am just trying to accept it because nothing can be done.
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I have pretty much resigned myself to the fact that remakes and adaptations are going to take over completely. So you're right, eventually it just becomes a waste of energy to complain about remakes. I'm gonna just hope that Bryan Singer does a great job with his version of BSG.

With this one, what really made me mad was that it is just too soon. Basically, this is like someone dying and during their funeral, some of their relatives and friends standing over the corpse arguing about who gets what. I also worry that this remake will completely derail Caprica. Will Universal want two conflicting BSG properties playing out at the same time? I doubt it. The lesser financial evil for them would be to just nix Caprica and declare it a failure.

I mean District 9 had to have Peter Jackson's name attached to it because it had a new director, new actor, and fresh storyline to it.
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Yep, talk about being in the right place at the right time. Not to discredit Neill Blomkamp's talents, because he is very talented just by looking at his short films. Any filmmaker would probably love to have Peter Jackson in their corner at the beginning of their career. But the fact is would he be making a theatrically distributed feature if Peter Jackson hadn't plucked him from relative obscurity for Halo? Maybe eventually he would have made a film, but not so soon I would guess without Peter Jackson's support. He made District 9 because Halo fell through. Had that not happened he would probably have made that instead.

But this remake obsession doesn't bode very well for anyone wanting to make original cinema. Even the cost of indie stuff is rising. And let's face it, indie cinema is pretty limited if you want to do any kind of action, sci-fi, or fantasy type of film. Not that it can't be done (Pi, Primer, Moon), but that even if done well, the indie world seems somewhat averse to these types of films.

What it also makes me wonder about is how to break into this industry anymore. If we hit a point where almost everything is a remake, how much longer until an amazing indie film or an award winning yet commercial spec script no longer mean anything to the money people? I mean look at the spec screenplay market. It is pretty much on its death bed. Will the studios just start to hire the offspring of Micheal Bay, Spielberg, etc... basically, we could be entering an era of extreme nepotism in the film industry where anyone on the outside isn't even looked at as a possible writer or director no matter how good they are.
 
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But this remake obsession doesn't bode very well for anyone wanting to make original cinema. Even the cost of indie stuff is rising. And let's face it, indie cinema is pretty limited if you want to do any kind of action, sci-fi, or fantasy type of film. Not that it can't be done (Pi, Primer, Moon), but that even if done well, the indie world seems somewhat averse to these types of films.

What it also makes me wonder about is how to break into this industry anymore. If we hit a point where almost everything is a remake, how much longer until an amazing indie film or an award winning yet commercial spec script no longer mean anything to the money people? I mean look at the spec screenplay market. It is pretty much on its death bed. Will the studios just start to hire the offspring of Micheal Bay, Spielberg, etc... basically, we could be entering an era of extreme nepotism in the film industry where anyone on the outside isn't even looked at as a possible writer or director no matter how good they are.
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You're right. As much as I want to say "I'll just accept it," it does hurt us in the long run. I mean how are we to come out with anything original?

I think what it is, is learning to accept it. What I mean by that is if we want to break into the industry, we have to be willing to first work on some re-makes. Then once you have a name established for yourself, you can propose original stuff.

Let's look at it from a businessman's point of view again. Would you hire the no name director/writer that has a non-branded film (even if it's the most amazing peice of work ever), or the no name director/writer that has a re-imagined GI Joe script (that is so so)? Unfortunately it's the latter one, simply because as a businessman, you'd be taking less of a risk on the branded material, because you know it already has a fan base. As for the amazing script, we'll it's all subjective, and it may not sell well.

So perhaps rather than writing original content, we should just be trying to acquire rights and adapting books, re-imagining stories, etc... It's an ugly reality, but maybe it's the only one coming our way.

I'd love to pick up a sign and protest to the big guys and say "stop this branded none-sense, come out with something original!" but what can we really do? Just hope one of us becomes a big name executive producer and takes chances on the small guy.

Heck even Caprica was an original script that they decided to work into the BSG universe instead. I forgot his name, but it was some AI story, and they didn't want to make it, but they partnered the guy up with Ron Moore to adapt it and make Caprica instead.

I just wonder how long Hollywood has been doing this? I mean I know that recently has been excessive, but I know lots of books were made into movies, and movies got re-made every few years, like the Maltese Falcon. Even things you didn't know were books beforehand.

But yes, BSG movie too soon, all this re-make stuff aside.

EDIT: Oh, another thing. Just an observation more than anything. Look at district 9. Original, indy roots, etc, and doing well for itself. However anytime District 9 comes up, there are always people talking about the Halo movie. Either people want him to make the Halo movie if District 9 is good, or not if it's bad, or wonder if it'll get made now that District 9 is done, etc... So even despite it's originality, all people can talked about is the branded film he was supposed to direct. *sigh*
 
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Jon Starr said:
I just wonder how long Hollywood has been doing this?
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Since before the industry was even centered here. The old New Jersey and New York silent studios mercilessly ripped off each other's productions, frequently before projects were even completed.
 
My wife and I are watching through the series on Bluray (looks incredible) We're smack dab in the middle of Season 3... and while there are occasional "bleh" episodes, I truly believe, watching through it again, that those episodes are necessary for the "punch" of the really good ones... Looking forward to seeing my wife's reaction at the end of Season 3! :D We should be able to finish the rest this week.
 
I actually prefer not watching it in HD. The grittiness and low-resolution of SD adds appropriately to the atmosphere.
 
Hm, I think it still maintains the grittiness on Bluray. It has the same feel as when watching on DVD, just not as pixelated.
 
Brandon Rice said:
Hm, I think it still maintains the grittiness on Bluray. It has the same feel as when watching on DVD, just not as pixelated.
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In some scenes, the grain seems to be heavier, probably due to the extra resolution.

Also:

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2010/03/syfy-mulls-more-battlestar-gives-three-inches.html

Sci-fi, sorry... SyFy is mulling over the idea of doing some more BSG spin-offs in the near future. So far I'm really enjoying Caprica, so I'm all for them producing something else good with another aspect of the BSG-verse. I mean, if we can have all these Stargate spin-offs, why not some more for Battlestar?
 
I'm way tardy to the party.

Just finished watching the Battlestar series. I thought seasons 1-3 were some of the best tv I've seen. Season 4 left me dumbfounded though; I had such high hopes for the final arc of the show. I figured they hadn't let me down thus far and I was excited for the wrap up.

After the first few episodes it was clear they were jerking around the audience and weren't clear on how to wrap things up. So much buildup and so little payoff.

Angels, Starbuck Christ, the survivors voting unamaiously to destroy their ships, characters behaving erractically (example: why did Heilo suddenly have a change of heart on blowing up the resurrection ship? At first he thought it was genocide and now he just goes along w/o batting an eye).

Season 4 was simply a mess; blame the writers strike I suppose.

BTW, anyone besides me notice how similar this series was to Robotech. Not saying they ripped off robotech but the similarities are too big to miss.
 
Stumbled upon this thread again -- it was one of the best, most insightful, and respectful discussions that's ever been on DVXuser. A pleasure to read (even if some of the references to episodes just aired at the time of certain posts are little lost in memory).
 
David Jimerson said:
Stumbled upon this thread again -- it was one of the best, most insightful, and respectful discussions that's ever been on DVXuser. A pleasure to read (even if some of the references to episodes just aired at the time of certain posts are little lost in memory).
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Yeah, civil and interesting.

I found BSG to be the best filmed story I have ever seen. Period.
 
I had seen bits and pieces of BSG on tv when it first aired, but never watched it religiously, meaning I kept getting confused about the story after missing an episode or two. So I kind of lost interest.
I saw the BSG BluRay box set are a steal on Amazon so finally got around to watching the whole show recently.
Best show ever!
I see a lot of hate about the final season here and elsewhere, but I got to say I loved it. It worked for me, though the finale was a kind of a gut punch (in a good way).
Now to go and watch that other show that aired around the same time that I kept losing track of; Lost....!
 
I put off watching for years. I like Sci Fi but was like "So these guys are fighting robots for five seasons? Meh." Then I watched it. It's pretty spectacular. Gets a little slow for me maybe last two seasons, and the end was a trip. I think I dig the twist but not sure. Watched Caprica too. Not nearly as good, but serviceable. Would've kept watching if it had continued.

"Lost", I think was solid four the first four seasons. Then it kinda just. . .I don't know. And then the ending. Oy.
 
Caprica had a lot of potential, and I was quite disappointed. Westworld proves the concepts had market traction. I think Galactica was an amazing study in marketing, and changed a lot in terms of how scifi is made. Unfortunately, some executives at the network got the wrong idea when they saw that women were being drawn in. They then decided that the female audience should be the goal, and proceeded to completely misinterpret what brought this segment in. They tried to make Caprica and Stargate Universe into Lifetime Original Movies, thinking that that's the material women are looking for, and they get bored in between the crying. Which is pretty far off from reality, and sunk both shows.

I never did get into Lost. Something just didn't click for me on that one.
 
So I'm working my way through Lost along with a friend who never saw it. He's loving it.
And I gotta say the show has aged really well. The special effects hold up pretty good, and the production values are really impressive.
The individual episodes are all good fun, even though I know the overall story doesn't work too well when all is said and done, at least each episode is well put together and entertaining in its own right.
I'm liking Lost a lot better the 2nd time around than I thought I would.
 
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