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Babylon 5 Theatrical Movie Falls Through
duck2ducks writes "According to a post from JMS, the Babylon 5 feature film has been cancelled. This is sad news indeed for all fans of one of the best sci-fi stories ever produced." From Straczynski's post: "In the end, however, the deal could be put together, and it did not
look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable
future. So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes,
the project has dead ended."
Paramount is expected to announce a new Star Trek movie unrelated to previous Star Trek characters on Monday.
Christopher Franke - Babylon 5 soundtrack - Sleeping in Light - End Titles
This is sad news indeed for all fans of one of the best sci-fi stories ever produced.
I really don't see what this has to do with Firefly.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
It's the Enterprise Effect.
1. Enterprise gets very low ratings.
2. Enterprise is sci-fi.
3. B5 is sci-fi.
4. B5 will get low ratings (attendance)
Behold, I have become Rich Berman, the destroyer of sci-fi.
Around here it aired at 12:05 am on tuesday nights/ wednesday mornings.
I loved it, too-clean spaceships and cheap-looking interiors and all, until I saw the secret of the Vorlons, and I just didn't want to be watching a show about space angels. Good makeup though, and the psy sidestory was quite enjoyable.
But did they really have a good enough story for a feature film, or were they banking on fanboys alone?
You can't take the sky from me...
expect some weird confusing letters from our IP rights dep.
- yours, george lucas.
Does this mean we may see him revisit his previous Enterprise effort?
A friend of mine has loaned me B5 on DVD, and I keep at it, but I'm not entirely sure why.
The most interesting thing about it is the long story arc. There's a lot good to be said about it, though I've seen others do it better. The costuming and sets are nicely done.
But other than that I just can't find anything to like. The acting is generally incompetent; it looks for all the world like the actors are only barely off book. Or maybe it's because the dialogue is so stilted nobody could make it sound good. A few of the regulars manage to carry it off; one or two even mange to look good.
But many of the regulars, nearly all of the non-famous guest stars, and even a few very talented guests sound completely incompetent. I just watched an episode with the hugely talented Michael York, and he chewed his way through the scenery as though it were chocolate.
I'm an actor and director myself. It's hard to separate out blame in the finished product without being on set, but it seems to be the fault of the writing and directing even more than the actors themselves. But I've heard people praise Straczynski's writing to the high heavens. I just don't get it. I don't care about the cheesy CG effects or corny music; it's the parts between the interstitials that set my teeth on edge.
Yeah, I already skipped through most of the first season. I'm now well into the third season, which was supposed to be pretty good. If it weren't for the fact that I'm trying to figure out why it's so important that it makes the front page of Slashdot, I'd long have given up.
So I don't believe I'm trolling when I ask: can somebody explain to me why I shouldn't consider the failure of this to become a movie anything other than a benefit to mankind?
The nice thing about Babylon 5, was that it had a complete story line before the first movie was even made. That means a completely intermixed story. The exact opposite from most other sci-fi shows that were out there at the time. Something that happens in the first episode actually means something, in one of the last episodes. (Londo's dream of how he will die.) And that is just the most obvious link. I for one had hoped that Crusade would have picked up where B5 left off, but it died a rather quick death. The movies were always good and it would have been great to see a new addition to the line.
This dissapointment feels similar to the season 4/season 5 fiasco. For those of you unfamiliar, the show was planned as 5 seasons, but the network told them near the beginning of 4 that the show was being cancelled. In response, they crammed all the plot for both seasons into season 4. Of course, when the season was over, the network uncancelled the show, allowing for a 5th, and somewhat mediocre, season. Oh well. The movie will happen some day.
"Kaylee, that's the buffet bar." "But how can we be sure unless we question it?"
Link to the damn post! I followed the only link in the body and got royally confused by it.
Yeah, I figured it out quickly enough, but without a real link isn't this just hearsay?
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I loved the B5 series and miss it. But given the [poor] quality of the B5 spinoff series (Crusade) and telemovies (Call to Arms, Legend of the Rangers), is this really so bad? Sorry, but this had to be said.
What's a sci-fi movie geek to do??
Ok, we got Episode III coming out, but I don't think I'm alone in saying that my expectations for Star Wars have been decidedly jaded in recent years.
I guess it'll have to be all about stuff like War of the Worlds, which I personally have very high hopes for after seeing some preview stuff, and moreover, Hitchhiker's Guide, which will either be the greatest sci-fi comedy since Space Balls (if not, dare I say, better?) or else it will be despised and insulted to levels of previously untold fury. I mean, it's the same problem faced by Peter Jackson for LotR. You have such a truly great literary work, and you have to turn it into film, carefully balancing the unwashed masses who've never read the book on one side, and the die-hard purists who've memorized it line-by-line on the other.
This is going to just fade quietly into the night, but a crap show like Enterprise gets cancelled and we have the budget of a small indie movie being spent on full page ads in the NYT or something.
I hate Americans.
b5: in the beginning was a great movie. the best b5 movie so far and one of the best sf movies at all.
can't see how jms could top his masterpiece
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
"In the end, however, the deal could be put together, and it did not look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable future. So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes, the project has dead ended."
Well I guess it's time for all those "obsolete business model" people to put their money were their mouth is, and fund this movie.
In canceling Enterprise, the powers that be eliminated a great source of suckiness. Now, to balance that, a great source of anti-suckiness must also be eliminated.
... it's understandable, it's 2005 now, B5 is OLD. So much has come after it. In a world that contains Farscape and Firefly, B5 does look childish, dated and a bit hackneyed. However, you have to remember that when this first came out it really was groundbreaking sci-fi. Most of what came after owes it a big debt.
So, you probably won't get it now. It's too late. If you'd watched it in 1994, you'd get it.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
The big missed oppurtunity was, when they were granted a 5th season, to do the Psi war on Earth. That would have been a good season.
I'm not a fanboy, but I was sufficiently entertained by the thing. You know what I liked the most about B5? It was so NOT the Trek universe of no money and everyone performing in string quartets in their free time. In B5 there was an economy, and trading, and the conflicts arising from such things. The telepaths were licensed and it was a professional position. One character watched old Daffy Duck cartoons in his spare time, and was building a motorcycle in his quarters. There were prejudices and factions and ill will from bulkhead to bulkhead. Space travel was a large and involved endeavor requiring complicated instrumentality.
And best of all, at least some of the aliens were not bipedal. Hell, I'd take space angels over the bumpy forehead of the week rut that trek got stuck in.
Is it me or is that one hell of a troll? It's like going "Star wars could beat up Star Trek" or "Picard is better then Janeway!" in the playground..
I like muppets.
The rule of thumb in Hollywood is that for every thousand scripts that get written, only a few dozen get into development, and out of those, only one will ever get made...if that.
A little over a year ago, I was approached by a company that wanted to make a Babylon 5 movie. They optioned the rights, and commissioned a script. (It's worth mentioning that I, not WB, own the rights to a B5 movie. When we were negotiating the original B5 deal -- by whose terms I will never see a dime in profit -- the one thing they did let me have were the movie rights, figuring they'd never be worth anything in the long run.)
Anyway...on December 27th of 2003, the script for "The Memory of Shadows" was turned in, and the process began of trying to make the deal work with all the various forces involved. It is, to say the least, a very difficult process on any movie where the studio does not directly take the financial reins. In terms of B5, Warner's position was esssentially, "We only do big-budget movies with big names, so you're on your own." If there were big-name movie actors in the film, they'd get behind it; without that, things become very problematic, especially as far as the financing was concerned. You much have to put together a consortium of international interests and business plans rivaled in complexity only by the Allied invasion of Normandy Beach.
Nonetheless, every attempt was made by the people involved to get this deal in place. This was not being done by Doug or myself, but rather by the company/individuals who approached us and optioned the rights. At times, it seemed we were inches away from a deal...stages were reserved at Elstree, actors were contacted, a director was in place, the script went through many revisions, a few key staff were hired, again not by me...it was really a year-long roller coaster ride. During that time, the people involved, with every good intention, tried very hard to pull the necessary pieces together on the deal. The option expired in late December 2004, but I renewed it without cost, to give those involved more time to try and make things work.
In the end, however, the deal could not be put together, and it did not look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable future. So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes, the project has dead ended. Nor do I think this particular incarnation will arise again at any point in the future, though prognostication has always been a tricky art, especially if you have to do it without the benefit of hindsight.
This was not the first time someone's taken a run at a B5 feature film, and it will not be the last. Eventually it will happen, because such things are simply inevitable. If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that sooner or later, somebody's going to do a B5 movie. The only thing I can say without equivocation is that when that day comes, as the rights-holder, I will make darned sure that it's done right, because I'd rather have no B5 movie than one that doesn't live up to what fans and I myself would want to see.
To that end...I can wait.
Anyway, just thought you should know the story.
jms
Since Richard Biggs is dead, any new Babylon 5 production wouldn't quite have the same aura as the TV series. Dr. Franklin was a strong supporting character, whose presence would be sorely missed.
> No wonder WB likes B5 -- they don't have to pay you anything for it.
That's the great irony of the situation. The criteria told to us right up front while we were producing B5 was that each of the series on PTEN had to show a profit *in that year* in order to stay on the air and be renewed. So we'd have these meetings with studio heads who were congratulating us on how much money the show was making for them (again, while we were still making for it), and then look at me, realize what they'd said, and hurriedly add, "Though technically we're still in the red."> Kind of puts a different light on buying the DVDs and stuff, knowing
> we're just supporting some fat-ass studio execs and not the actual
> talent.
The show, all in, cost about $110 million to make. Each year of its original run, we know it showed a profit because they TOLD us so. And in one case, they actually showed us the figures. It's now been on the air worldwide for ten years. There's been merchandise, syndication, cable, books, you name it. The DVDs grossed roughly half a BILLION dollars (and that was just after they put out S5, without all of the S5 sales in).
So what does my last profit statement say? We're $80 million in the red.
Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits.
But then again, I knew that was the situation going in...I saw the writing on the wall (and the contract) from the git-go. I didn't do this to build an empire, I wanted to tell this story...and that's worth more than anything else.
Doesn't mean I can't tweak 'em about it, though.
jms
At least they did not recast original characters! And I think after "Firefly" movie will be a HUGE success - "Babylon 5" will also be revived (B5 has huge DVD sales, even for cancelled spin off - "Crusade").
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
I think you're ignoring the "one of the" modifier?
The profit margins just weren't there. Normal movies made for guys at least have girlfriends to drag to the movies.. so they get double the revenue.. But scifi dorks, who will probably pirate the movie anyway.. just can't bring in the numbers without the "girlfriend who was forced to go" crowd.
This really sucks. Babylon 5 was one of the best sci-fi epic's to have been produced, and of course no that the main series has played out no one cares. Good sci-fi is hard to come by :(
This movie. It is awful.
"There is a crowd of children yelling "Fight! Fight!" Robert, clad in a torn old fashioned gold Star Fleet officer's tunic is fighting a bigger kid. He is hit hard and goes down. Shatner enters again and tells Robert that perhaps gold is not his color and he should wear something that won't start fights. Robert incrediously tells him that he was the one who started the fight, "...because he (the other kid) said Han Solo was cooler than Captain Kirk." "Kick his fuckin' ass," responds Shatner. Robert wakes up and proceeds to down his opponent with a classic Shatner double-foot drop kick to the chest, and beating him senseless."
After The Legend of the Rangers, is there really any question why the film didn't get greenlit?
... also due this year
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
If you want good acting, and good writing, ignore B5 and go straight to the DS-9 box sets.
I wanted to like B5 and couldn't get into it for the exact same reasons you lay out. The acting and dialogue is absolutely abysmal. The B5 stories are very good, but not good enough to make the show watchable (for me).
-- John.
Ok that probably only means anything to dedicated B5 fans but I don't care.. I'm a B5aholic.. ;)
Too bad the new B5 movie got cancelled. Well, at least we got the theatrical version of Firefly and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to look forward to.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
(message content (c) 2005 by Synthetic Worlds, Ltd. Rights to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine)
I love JMS!
How about some NEW Sci-Fi? I agree on the Star Trek thing.. Given TNG, B5, Voyager, Enterprise, etc., I'm a bit OVER the whole Star Trek Universe.. B5's writing was nothing more than a re-hashing of racial and political strife.. Some might call it good writing that transcends all time and place constraints -- I call it HACK tripe.
I want to see someone come up with some NEW SCI-FI content without having to go back to the well on Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien, etc. The Matrix was a nice new take on things, Battlestar Galactica is cool, but part of me is tired of the 'hoping to find earth' theme that Voyager beat into the ground. The show's well made and the acting is decent (sure beats B5).
So, how about more truly NEW stuff like the 4400 and such?
Having been previously burned by the Start Trek:Next Generation movies (ie, they sucked enormously) I have trouble getting excited about a B5 movie, no matter how great the original TV series may have been.
A typical 1 hour TV show minus commercials is about 42-45 minutes. And a typical movie is around 90 minutes. So, A B5 movie would be approximately the same length as a 2 part TV episode. So what is the point of 2 more B5 episodes?
Now, if he was trying to put together a 6-8 part TV mini-series, that would be pretty cool. With a TV series you can take your time and develope a story over several episodes, and if one of those episodes sucks, so what, you just move on to the next one.
But a B5 movie is pretty much guaranteed to suck simply because they have to try to cram as much as possible into this one movie, since there's no telling when there might be another one.
Yes, this looks fantastic - I have some really high hopes for it. Christian Bale has been the epitome of cool since Equilibrium, and there's nobody I'd rather see play the Dark Knight.
The future is indeed brighter than I originally thought. (Although I'm still holding out on Logan's Run, haha. Looks like that might take a few more years though.)
I'm an actor and director myself.
Really? Care to share your IMDb entry with us?
Posting from memory here, but one of the reasons he said he could not save Enterprise was because he was busy... .. now that he's not busy...
If this allows JMS to have more time to sell Paramount on his Star Trek treatment then all the better. After season four, Babylon 5 did not hold the same gripping storyline and passion so I can't say it's bad for him to move out of the B5 universe.
Read here.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I've heard people praise Straczynski's writing to the high heavens. I just don't get it. I don't care about the cheesy CG effects or corny music; it's the parts between the interstitials that set my teeth on edge.
...followed by the statement:
Yeah, I already skipped through most of the first season. I'm now well into the third season,
So... you didn't see most of the first season, and aren't even finished with the third. B5's story spans all five seasons and is the best thing about the show that casual and diehard fans name time and time again. The story, which you have seen less than two-fifths of, and so it gets a passing mention of...
There's a lot good to be said about it
though I've seen others do it better.
You haven't even seen the whole story - how can you say for sure that someone else has done it better? You don't even fully know what it is that you're comparing!
Then you expound on the acting for a while after that. Yes, there is an acknowledged inconsistent quality in the acting.
I'm an actor and director myself.
In the IMDb, are you? Not that this means everything, but honestly, anyone can be "an actor an director." Whether you've made anything worth a damn to anyone but yourself is a totally different story.
I've heard people praise Straczynski's writing to the high heavens. I just don't get it.
Of course you don't. You haven't even finished half the story.
can somebody explain to me why I shouldn't consider the failure of this to become a movie anything other than a benefit to mankind?
Because you've barely seen anything of the series and therefore cannot make an informed judgment. Is that a good enough explanation?
The coolest voice ever.
No wonder I heard a bunch of nerds screaming in unison earlier in the IT division at college.. Ears are still ringing.
I came to Babylon 5 rather late, after it had originally aired. I remember seeing individual episodes from the first season, and thinking that, meh, the effects were pretty spiffy but I really didn't know who anyone was.
I watched the whole thing last year and came to a somewhat different conclusion. jms ruined me for lesser SF. I can no longer stand most TNG or DS9 episodes. (Though I may yet watch DS9 as a whole---maybe it's good that way.)
jms made a five-year novel-for-television. We shall not see one man's vision so clearly transferred to the small screen for a long, long time, if ever again.
This is just a final middle-finger from the industry to jms. Punks.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They weren't space angels. [...] that those that observed them would perceive them as holy beings [...] to make them think you're the messangers of some deity
If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck...
I knew that, 'cause I did start watching again a year later, but then they pulled a main-charater fake-death season-finale cliffhanger, and frankly, I got disgusted, again, and stopped watching once more.
You can't take the sky from me...
It seems like Star Trek's problem was that it was a Paramount property
and was at the mercy of corporate decision-making, which means having
a "creative vision" is just a luxury that can be dispensed with. B5's
problem was that it never really had corporate backing therefore JMS
was at the mercy of the problems that come from limited financing.
You basically have to eat sh*t in hollywood when you don't have enough
backing and you're just at people's mercy to finance you. B5 was
successful but never quite successful enough to give JMS the clout he
needed to see it through, and this is just another chapter in that
story. The only other alternative is to self-finance like George
Lucas does, and the fact that he has more money than God means we get
movies that reflect his vision, but also his absolute need for
control. So which of those three devils do you sell your soul to?
Glad to know that I'm not the only person who found himself thinking "oh thank god."
The middle three seasons of B5 were some of the best storytelling I've seen on TV or for that matter any other medium. But let's face facts: Straczynski burnt himself out writing all the episodes of season 3 and 4 without any help, and by the time S4 ended, he really had nothing more to say. But still the show plodded on through the lackluster final season and the inevitable spinoffs, seemingly more out of a sense of contractual obligation than anything else.
Crusade was bad, and "Legend of the Rangers" was just embarrassing. B5 wasn't supposed to be "some Deep Space Franchise" -- let's be glad that no one seems to be able to turn it into one.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Remember that time in Star Trek when there were a race of aliens that hid behind an exo suit from human eyes, the episode called "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"?
The ones where the aliens were excellent navigators and/or pilots, but were said to be so ugly that the human mind couldn't cope with seeing their true form?
Remeber how we'd be shown only glipses of the light coming out of their opaque enclosure as it was opened by someone?
I sure did whenever I watched a B5 ep where they discussed the Vorlon's hiding their true self, expecially when we got a glimpse of their true form's light shining out as someone was opening their opaque encounter suit.
I'm also reminded of that anytime someone mentions that B5 "unlike ST" had the occasionnal cameo from a non-humanoid alien. Despite their many, many humanoid alien races.
by myowntrueself (607117) Alter Relationship on Saturday February 26, @04:33PM (#11789285)
Remind me, in which episodes do we get to see tholians?
But I'm guessing from that lil' reply of yours that you meant to imply that B5 is better than ST because they had better looking non-humanoid cameos? When that has nothing to do with being B5 or ST, and everything to do with the current state of SFX technology and the budget of the show.
Then again, I'm sure you can find any number of 15 year olds to get on the board "old shows with bad SFX were bad because they're OLD" boat.
You can't take the sky from me...
lol!
You can't take the sky from me...
...but I'm going to come right out and say I'm n ot a B5 fan. Give me any Star Trek movie over a B5 movie any day. That's not saying much as the last few Trek movies have been pretty bad. Hmmm... I wonder if there will be a Star Trek Voyager movie... ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Now it's time to do it ourselves.
Take 2
WB wouldn't do it, so two independent producers without any credits to their names got involved trying to make it work. How about the fans hiring some people on their own and financing the production? It's a high-risk enterprise, and they would absolutely need to hire industry professionals. But they might be able to see some of the gross income that way.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Really.
The special effects were great for the time. The characters, setup and arc were intriguing.
But I cringed each time I watched an episode.
I kept watching until the second season when I figured it wasn't getting better.
It was just too painful.
Cliched, hackneyed writing with college level actors. Really.
I was disappointed.
I checked in every so often and was shocked when I saw that Harlan Ellison was involved later. My brief glimpses of later episodes produced slightly fewer cringes per episode, but were still below par.
I saw that J. Michael Straczynski was a writer and sometimes producer for He-man and the master s of the universe, Murder She Wrote, and other such pap.
Then I understood.
Then came Farscape and there was much rejoicing.
Believe it or not, Slashdot is a forum where readers are occasionally allowed to disagree. :-)
To appreciate "Babylon 5", it perhaps helps to have been there when it first aired. This was ten years ago, when ST:TNG was an uncategorical success by any measure, ST:DS9 was well underway with plenty of funding, and studios were jumping on the sci-fi bandwagon left and right.
After several years of ST:TNG, we get B5 -- a somewhat gritty, dirtier version of the future which resembles our present world a heck of a lot better than Roddenbery's universe. The aliens are more alien. The technology follows the known laws of physics (well, aside from hyperspace). And the effects? Well, they may look substandard today, but at the time that was cutting-edge CGI and it was being used on a weekly television program. In fact, JMS was proud of saying that his show would come in consistently under budget because of the cost savings over model-based special effects.
It was a breath of fresh air for sci-fi fans who were tired of the sanitized Star Trek universe and wanted something more realistic now. On top of that, it employed a multi-season story arc which, despite the kinks thrown in by actors leaving and the fifth season almost getting cancelled, worked incredibly well and was a radical approach to television. (To look at it another way, of course, is to say the departing actors and near-death of season 5 illustrates exactly why television shows usually approach each season open-ended.)
And what a story -- it looked like just aliens fighting it out diplomatically and Earth getting caught in the middle. Instead we get galactic-scale alien civilizations stretching millenia back into time, alien religious prophecies coming true, a conspiracy to take over Earth's government and implement fascism in its stead, telepaths running their own plan for controlling everything, all while this little tin can orbiting Epsilon 3 at the @$$-end of space is dealing with union strikes, budgetary constraints, refugees from alien wars, and the occasional drug bust.
Simply put, it was the kind of thing we knew we'd never see in Star Trek. DS9 came close to it (partly because it was, intentionally or not, borrowing heavily from JMS's ideas), but B5 was there first. Roddenberry's edict was basically that Starfleet and humanity in general appear pristine and perfect to project hope for the future; JMS declared that humans in the future would be just like humans today, and despite that (or because of it) we'd still grow to be masters of the galaxy in the millenia to come.
Oh, and there's also Ivanova. Regardless what you think about the acting, it's impossible not to like Ivanova.
Oh, and as a postscript: despite what I said about respecting others' opinions, and regardless of your experience in the field, if you think Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar is an ineffective actor, you're just not paying attention.
...Shit happens! It 'taint no career limiting move or chick repulsing force field. Just a typo. :) --M
Then again maybe it's just me; I was in ice rescue training today and my frontal lobes might still be frozen.
Offtopic(-1)
"Nothing's the same anymore."
For those of you who can go to Hollywood: There's a show benefit for Richard Biggs' kids on the 19th of March.
Some of Rick's colleagues from Days of Our Lives, Babylon 5, and General Hospital will be there.
http://www.richardbiggs.com/
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
And I just blew my money on a new 100 GB hard drive to hold the digital theater version of it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's worse. He's now busy for the time they would be filming if they got new investment, and he has said yes to running a TV show in the fall of 2006.
Nuts!
The silver lining is that some actors who weren't available this time might be available later.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Berman, is that you?
I have a show-runner position for you. You'd have to work out of Eastern Siberia, but you'd have full creative control and guaranteed to stay on the air for 7 years. How about it?
Babylon 5 is quite an excellent show. It's got several awards, so clearly you don't understand what makes Babylon 5 great.
Anyone that has watched much scifi can pick up on the "that's old" stuff - that's not what sucked about B5. What sucked was the _horrible_ acting.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed it - when you think about the whole story, you think, "gee, that's pretty cool"...but each individual episode - man, most of them were just not that good! Good acting and realistic emotional responses, at least from humans, _matter_. Scifi needs to be held to a higher standard.
Even TNG, which I loved, suffered from this a bit. Firefly and Farscape show that _even_ scifi can have humans acting like humans probably really would, given those situations.
B5 as a whole, and many individual TNG episodes had _really_ deep and profound ideas. Firefly and Farscape lack this to an extent, but they more than make up for it in other ways...
Good acting isn't a "new" thing - watch some highly rated classic old movies. The second-in-command, Yivanva (sp?) for example - that woman couldn't express emotion if her head was set on fire.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
1. Battlestar Galactica gets huge ratings (and downloads)
2. Battlestar Galactica is sci-fi
3. B5 is sci-fi
4. B5 will get high ratings (attendance)
Or did I do my math wrong here?
Too bad you didn't keep watching. The Vorlons are the bad guys.
But did they really have a good enough story for a feature film, or were they banking on fanboys alone?
That's a good point... probably would've been a disappointment, because there's not really much they could do with only a couple hours.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
Even if it takes a thousand years, we will have our movie :)
Also a lot of the political stuff from just before the secession of B5 from Earth almost mirrors the post-911 mood in the US and the puppet newscasters practically scripted FOX News.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
As the effects company is the same as the one used for Firefly... What you are watching are things they developed on Firefly (e.g. the use of a zoom lens which gives that shaky feel.) This was to create a consistancy with how the rest of the show was shot. Once the company got the Battlestar G. gig, they just used their prior experience to create neat visuals for the new show.
.02
B5 did not use zoom effects and the jerky then focus effects you see in B.G. At the very least if you compare how the effects shots are done, the various B5 series did not try to emulate use of a zoom lens like in Firefly and B.G.
In other words... B5 has its own merits, so do B.G. (and Firefly). Any similarities are by accident and/or at worst of the sort of "that looks cool, lets try it over here."
just another
Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999) (TV) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146455/
Crusade also 1999, B5-CTA was it's pilot.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0149437/
"Outlaw Star" (1998) [TV-Series]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266171/
OK and with the Outlaw Star reference, I am being snotty about Firefly and referencing an old snide comment of mine about Firefly here on slashdot.
But still, given the poor performance of Legends of the Rangers, I can see why it would flop. G'Kar made B5 (amongst others) and it was nice to see him but he wasn't staying and neither were the audience.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Or the whole of Deepshit 9. And saying that I hate (truely and deeply hate) Jar Jar. Also Super Milk-chan has clearer plotlines.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
How many people have actually followed the series on TV? How many of those would go to the movie? It's far less than any Star Trek franchise, so it won't happen.
I suspect only two good possibilities can come out of B5...
1. The SciFi channel buys the rights to air whole series, runs it, and then produces an original movie or mini-series to finish it off.
2. The producers/writers for the movie just make a book based on the plot of the movie. Doing so leaves the characters and the special effects to the imagination of the reader (much like the Star Wars books), and won't cost alot of money to produce. If we're lucky, perhaps they'll make an audio tape with some sound effects and dialog from the TV cast members.
-ez
Acting/dialogue: The human crew was boring, but the alien ambassadors (Londo, G'Kar and Delenn) were brilliant! If you can't see that, I refuse to believe to believe in your stated credentials.
Production value: The special effects were great for the time, and for the rest the show managed to produce something comparable to the ST of the time for half the price not bad.
But even though I believe the alien ambassadors and the CGI alone should make B5 remembered, that is not what made B5 a phenomen. It is the story. It was huge, in any way you see it.
Remember, at the time tv-series came in three categroies. Episodic series, where everything was back to normal at the end. Soaps, where everything could change but there were no direction in the change. And mini-series, which were kind of like a movie (with a beginning, a middle, and an end) split into 4 or 6 spisoded. Here came a store told in more than 100 episodes!
It changed the way I watch tv. I can't watch drama shows that reset in the end bores me.
And the scope of the story, a key point in the evolution of sentient life in our part of the galaxy, was similarily magnificent.
I think B5 is the TV show for people who like books. Who watch for the story.
As a B5 fan, I'm glad that this didn't get off the ground. The movies were all somewhat unsatisfying, and I've seen the script to this one, and it's the worst of the lot. Way too much Technomancer bollocks.
They wanted Framestore to do the FX, but they didn't have anything like enough money. Basically the regular financers saw the long line of made-for-TV movies, and thought "How is this going to be any different"?
You know, replace the term "Babylon 5" with "Star Trek" (and I do mean Trek circa Shatner), and your comment is equally valid.
I find in really weird that all these geeks and nerds whos bread and butter sci-fi has been Star Trek can't get past the same flaws in another series which manages in include new types of characters, as well as include new types of storylines only possible because of the plot continuity.
Perhaps we need a "Babylon 5: The Next Generation" to bring more to the fold.
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[I] felt like the steam went out of it towards the end, when he had to mangle the novel a bit to deal with the realities of casting, etc.
Indeed. I missed Ivanova in the fifth season. And it felt as if they were just wrapping up loose ends much of the time. jms had originally intended to end the fourth season with 'Intersections in Real Time'. (And here I thought 'Z'Ha'Dum' ended S3 on a downer...)
Still, Londo's story wasn't finished, and I thought it was worth telling. The telepaths, meh, shadow of the Vorlons, we all knew that already. The Drakh, though, shadow of the Shadows, much spookier. And I nearly cried when Londo flashes back through his career on the station, forward to his dream of death at G'Kar's hands, then turns to accept his fate and that of his people. Whew.
And I almost cried at the final episode, but then again, who didn't? The music... so sad... jms's one single appearance ever... ah, we'll miss him.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca