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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."
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.
... 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.
I like the story and ideas, and the production is secondary to me. I recognize that a lot of the acting is pretty bad, and the dialogure isn't great in a lot of spots, but that's just not what I'm watching for.
I'd rather see good ideas poorly portrayed than bad ideas expertly portrayed.
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.