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Babylon 5 May Finally Get a Big-Screen Debut

Posted by timothy on from the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-back-on? dept.

Ars Technica reports that "J. Michael Straczynski will shortly begin work on a rebooted big-screen version of his 1990s sci-fi TV series [ Babylon 5]." From the article: According to JMS's latest announcement, the new script will be targeted at a 2016 theatrical release and will be a reboot of the series rather than a continuation. This is necessary for both dramatic and practical purposes—the series was in regular production from 1994-1998, and the cast has simply aged too far to credibly play themselves again during the series’ main timeline. Additionally, several of the foundational cast members — Michael O'Hare, Andreas Katsulas, Richard Biggs, and Jeff Conaway — have passed away. ... The movie rights to the Babylon 5 property remain in JMS's hands, but the creator is hopeful that this time around, Warner Bros. will choose to finance the film instead of passing on it. Nonetheless (at least according to TV Wise), JMS is prepared to fund the movie through his own production company if necessary — something that wasn't a possibility ten years ago — suggesting that B5 will in fact come to the big screen at last.

46 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. And so it begins... by I'm+just+joshin · · Score: 4, Funny

    The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

    1. Re: And so it begins... by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At least he had a good story on the TV series, which really was important. A lot of the CGI effects were at the time decent but today they wouldn't measure up. At least the CGI effects were in most cases only backdrops, so it didn't really matter that they weren't fully realistic. A good thing was that it held stories within the grand story.

      The story itself did leave a lot of threads to follow outside the station with several untold stories. The technomages are still a bit of a mystery, who are they actually, and what were their origins?

      Gideon: I thought you said you never hold a grudge.
      Galen: Well, I don't. I have no surviving enemies... at all.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re: And so it begins... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The story jumped the shark at the end. I'm sorry, as much as I loved Babylon 5, it simply doesn't stand the test of time when you watch it in your 30s rather than as a teenager. It was awesome at first, a character driven Sci-Fi show, and then Sheridan came back from the dead with a Messiah Complex. Delenn always had one of course, even the Vorlons were smart enough to know that (watching Jack the Ripper torture this character flaw out of her was priceless, too bad it didn't take for the long term) as they set her up as their Emissary or whatever the hell she was. What really irked me was the human characters betraying their oath to Earth and going native after they had kicked Clark out of office. The Whitestar fleet or at least one example thereof should have been turned over to Earthforce R&D after the war, but that would required Sheridan to surrender power, so of course it didn't happen.

      There's also the complete mess that was Season 5, though here I cut JMS some slack because he was kind of screwed when it looked like the show was getting the axe. The most important piece of back story was pretty damned stupid, the Minbari have thousands of years in space but start a war of annihilation (a pathetic one at that, only 250,000 deaths in two years of war, JMS needs to read about the Eastern Front....) over a botched first contact? Then they stop the war because of some religious nonsense?

      In fairness the show did have highlights, Garibaldi was the best human character I think (he was Babylon 5's Chief O'Brien) flawed in every way and very easy to relate to. Londo and G'Kar never jumped the shark, their respective stories stand the test of time. Even the stupid parts (the Earth-Minbari War) had highlights, the President's speech towards the end of "In The Beginning" still chokes me up when I watch it, and the way JMS wove all of the stories together was amazing.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    3. Re: And so it begins... by qpqp · · Score: 2

      It is also the only sci-fi series (AFAIK), where the characters have to go take a dump.

    4. Re: And so it begins... by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      I know it's difficult, but the series arc works better if you ignore season 5.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    5. Re: And so it begins... by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, wait, you're upset that the characters were flawed? Aliens acted in ways that made little sense? That's what made the show good - no one was perfect, the "good guys" did stupid shit too, and not everyone seemed rational. I liked it.

      But yeah, season 5 had little to offer.

      For me the show's attraction was watching Andreas Katsulas, Peter Jurasik, and Stephen Furst playing against one another, and the arcs of their characters. Londo discovering morality too late to do anything but suffer for his sins, G'Kar discovering what it means to be a religious leader (some of JMSs best writing IMO), and Vir showing that even in the most corrupt society, a strong moral compass serves you well in the long run.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re: And so it begins... by mrbester · · Score: 3, Informative

      The CGI was groundbreaking and a great deal more than just "backdrops". Every ship, planet, piece of debris, weapons fire as well as the interior of various parts of the station was made on *Amigas* with zero model shots. When they had enough money for a small render farm they could create large space battles in real time.

      They kept the details secret even though big names like ILM and Paramount wanted to know how the hell they did it with so little equipment and a shoestring budget (we didn't see the battle of Wolf 359, only the aftermath and even that was a few years later because it was too expensive to make). They released old methods to the big studios on a seasonal basis: Mars Attacks used Season 2 quality, ST:Voyager used Season 4.

      Yes, the effects look dated. Because they are. But no one else could do what they did 20 years ago.

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    7. Re: And so it begins... by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you want to know about the technomages then read the books about them. There is a trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos. Most of the books in the series are pretty good and fill in the gaps that were left by the series.

    8. Re: And so it begins... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Except that the series jumped the shark when Sherdian came back from the dead, which was always part of the arc.

      FWIW, I never saw it that way. With the powerful races that are in play by that point in the show, it needed someone from the younger races to do something that appears miraculous from our perspective to put us in the same league and make the final outcome to the main plot arc credible. What happened to Sheridan was that something, and it was clear from well before the critical event that the older races knew and understood things about what was happening that the younger races in the show and, by extension, we as the viewers did not, so personally I didn't find it either out of character or a random deus ex machina twist.

      Season 5 is best viewed as a collection of disparate standalone stories, of which there are actually a few redeeming ones.

      There I definitely agree. JMS didn't get to finish things quite the way he'd hoped, with the potential cancellation after season 4 obviously causing some reordering and early resolution of major plotlines, and things like losing a major cast member for related reasons that they couldn't fix in time when they did get the green light for season 5. However, a few of the individual episodes in season 5, particularly the ones that looked at the station and characters we had become so familiar with from a very different perspective, were some of the best single episodes of the whole series IMHO. There's a great little moment at the end of "A View from the Gallery", where something happens just in time, and it puts the often grand themes and seemingly awesomely powerful characters we normally see in the show in a very different light.

      I wonder whether a reboot of the main series is the best way to go, though. It's hard to believe anyone could play characters like G'Kar and Londo with the brilliant individual performances and wonderful chemistry of the original actors. I can watch the new Star Trek films and enjoy a big space fight with the best of them, but I don't see Kirk and Spock, I see a different ship, a different crew, and a very different (read: Hollywood) style. It's more like ST:TNG compared to ST:TOS, a familiar environment but different characters and stories. I'm not sure trying to retell the original B5 story with a bigger screen, a bigger budget, bigger SFX, and none of the original magic is a winning move (although if there's anyone who could pull something like that off, JMS would be the one, and if they manage some exceptional casting as well then it might be worth watching).

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    9. Re: And so it begins... by kenwd0elq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As somebody who got INTO Babylon 5 in his 40's, I disagree; Babylon 5 was the best program on TV ever. (Barring, of course, the hot mess that resulted from the on-again/off-again cancellation of Season 5.) There were a few discontinuous episodes in Season 1, but seasons 2-4 were like old soap operas; you didn't dare miss an episode, or you wouldn't be able to catch up.

      Even though I generally despise "reboots" of old favorite stories, I'm glad that JMS is doing it, and I wish him the best of luck in it.

    10. Re: And so it begins... by Mascot · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry, as much as I loved Babylon 5, it simply doesn't stand the test of time when you watch it in your 30s rather than as a teenager.

      I watched it for the first time in my 30s and still found it absolutely brilliant. Just sayin'.

    11. Re: And so it begins... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Part of the "jumping the shark" was due to money craziness, and the problems when core actors decide they need to do other things with their career. The switch of captains was an enormous problem for fans and the story line, but we'd come to terms with it. The switch of first officers as well, was crippling.

      The reboot of Star Trek was, admittedly, a failure. It lacked Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future as a better place as a more mature place and time with a frontier that tested and showed people who'd learned to engage frontiers with the hard-won wisdom they'd learned, who were actually making the galaxy a better place by sharing that wisdom But I was personally very pleased with the "Enterprise" series as an attempt to restart the series in an earlier period and recapture the exploration of a less mature series.

      And for Star Trek/Babylon 5 comparisons, there can only be the Deep Space 9/Babylon 5 comparison. Anyone who didn't see parallels simply wasn't paying attention, and it was fascinating, as fans, to see how much better of a storyline Baboylon 5 was, and how much having a larger studio and a larger budget and franchise was able to help Deep Space 9. I really found myself wishing that Paramount, JMS, and the remainders of Gene Roddenberry's core crew and estate could have worked something out for Babylon 5 to have been told in the Star Trek universe with the larger budgets and resources.

      I'm forced to admit that as a fan, I was delighted and thrilled to see Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, renowned as Gene Roddenberry's supportive wife, as Nurse Chapel and Lwaxana Troi and the voice of all the computers in Star Trek, pop up as the wife of the emperor in Babylon 5. It was wonderful to see the woman, herself, show her support of the excellent work at Babylon 5 by appear in a small bit fascinating role.

      And Walter Koenig's hop from roles as Chekov in Star Trek to Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 was... well, you have to go watch the shows to understand the _completely_ different role Walter Koenig plays, and to applaud the acting and the writing that created it.

    12. Re: And so it begins... by marsu_k · · Score: 5, Informative

      Regarding the Sinclair -> Sheridan switch (which I didn't mind, I never particularly cared for Sinclair), there was a quite good reason for it.

    13. Re: And so it begins... by Zxern · · Score: 2

      Which thankfully isn't a problem nowadays. Otherwise shows like Game of thrones or Walking Dead would suffer the same fate and poor ratings that Babylon 5 did.

    14. Re: And so it begins... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bzzt. The pilot was made on Toasters, yes. The series was made on a render farm of NT workstations. Then somewhere around season three, they started compositing in some practical FX with the digital (improved explosions). There was no "secret", it was simply very good use of Lightwave, and there was no "real time"-- the CGI was rendered one frame at a time, and assembled / composited on digital tape. The primary benefit was cost-- Build one Hyperion class heavy cruiser, swap out the name plate texture, now you've got another... duplicate it a few times across the screen, create an Omega class destroyer, duplicate it a few times (and during "Severed Dreams", get the name plates wrong at least once), throw in a few dozen Star Furies-- you've got an Epic Space Battle-- whereas the model guys are shooting the same scene over and over and over and moving things around by hand. CGI made it faster and cheaper.

      Paramount, and specifically the Star Trek crowd, insisted that CGI wasn't good enough, and they would only use model shots... well, that, and the computer generated stuff ILM filmed at fantastic expense for the first season of ST:TNG. One of their complaints was the harshness of shadows in space due to the lack of atmospheric scattering-- which is accurate, but looks jarring.

      Foundation Imaging (the wiki page is badly flawed) had among it's team Ron Thornton (designed among other things the White Star, if I recall), an old hand at special effects-- he did a lot of work during Peter Davison's era on Doctor Who.

      Then Foundation Imaging and B5 parted ways at the end of season three, and Doug Netter set up a company to do the CGI work for seasons four and five (and Crusade and the B5 tv movies).

    15. Re: And so it begins... by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Star Dreck was shit from the start, and Rottenberry's "vision" was at best naive claptrap and at worst unredeemable drivel.

      That was kind of the point of Star Trek, or at least the point of TNG and to a lesser extent TOS. I'm sorry that you didn't get that, it wasn't for everyone, but it was and is the reason why the reboot completely sucks ass and has nothing in common with Star Trek other than the title and character names.

      Is the near-utopia presented in The Next Generation attainable? Probably not, human nature being what it is, though if anything made it possible it would be an abundance economy with virtually limitless supplies of energy that can literally make food and consumer goods out of thin air. The notion of people working towards the common good rather than personal enrichment is a lofty one, hence the fiction part of Science-Fiction.

      It was a lot more enjoyable than the dark depressing crap that passes for entertainment these days, like Law and Order Rape (err, I'm sorry, Special Victims Unit) or even some of the darker Sci-Fi stuff, like the really misanthropic episodes of Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica. Yeah, I get it, character conflict is fun to write. Does anybody know how to write uplifting stories anymore? It'd be nice to have something more grown up than Frozen to turn to when I need to escape for two hours.

      Bad "science" (only loserboy nerds known as "trekkie pedophile geeks" can delude themselves into believing any of that shitty technobabble can ever be related to real science)

      Star Trek at its best was never about the "science". It was about the story and the characters. As long as they remained consistent about the fake science who cares? Go watch the third, fourth, and fifth seasons of TNG or any of DS9 or TOS. The technobabble was there, but it played by a known and consistent set of rules. The particle of the week deus ex machina technobabble crap was primarily a 7th season TNG problem (the writers clearly ran out of ideas) and long running Voyager phenomenon.

      B5 was vastly superior to DS9 (which was a shameless ripoff)

      The only parts of B5 that DS9 ripped off were the Messiah Complex/Emissary crap of the Commanding Officer. Coincidentally, that was also the least watchable part of DS9. I wanted to shove Sisko out an airlock when he stopped talking about "wormhole aliens" and started talking about "Prophets".

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    16. Re: And so it begins... by Shakrai · · Score: 2

      The White Stars were joint creations of the Minbari and Vorlons and they didn't have to turn over a damn thing. Earth had no claim over them.

      Who commanded them in a war against his own people? Who had previously sworn an oath to Earth? Who killed (rightly or wrongly) thousands of humans and left Earth nearly defenseless? Sheridan treated the White Stars as his own personal toys, with full support from Delenn, it's not a huge reach to imagine Earthforce getting their hands on one, particularly if Sheridan had actually upheld his oath once Clark was gone.

      You want to know what would have been a good story in the B5 universe? The Minbari Warrior Caste nutjobs actually seizing power (hopefully killing that religious zealot Delenn in the process) and going on a vendetta against a weakened Earth. Let Sherdian reap what he sowed in leaving Earth nearly defenseless, then have him build an alliance to combat that threat, to save something we actually give a shit about. That would have been infinitely more compelling than trying to figure out why all these humans are fighting and dying to stop the Shadows, whom never really expressed any interest in harming humanity. All they did was stir up chaos amongst races that the audience rarely saw and was never overly invested in caring about. Yawn.

      As it happened, the most compelling story JMS had (President Clark and the Civil War) was the one that got short shrift because of the looming threat of cancellation. More's the pity.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    17. Re: And so it begins... by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Regarding the Sinclair -> Sheridan switch (which I didn't mind, I never particularly cared for Sinclair), there was a quite good reason for it.

      Wow, I didn't know. For O'Hare to be struggling with mental illness, and still be concerned about the rest of the cast, and for the show to continue, shows character like you seldom see anymore. And JMS trying to accomodate O'Hare where it was in his power to do so, even when it put the show at risk, shows integrity over and above what one would expect from the entertainment industry. Really puts today's spoiled, intolerant divas in a different light, doesn't it?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    18. Re: And so it begins... by Uberbah · · Score: 2

      Have you considered Colon Blow to treat that uptight pedantic Hatorade?

    19. Re: And so it begins... by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      What I hated was how the networks treated the show. They'd shift it around in time or cancel it, without giving advance notice to viewers. So it was a real chore at time to keep watching. At once point when it was announced that the next season was moving to the TNT channel the local broadcaster decided to cancel halfway through the season with no warning (but managed to catch a rerun of one of the missed episodes at 2am from a neighboring market that I could just pick up if I held the antenna right).

      What was surprising was that the networks picked on B5 so much even though there was nothing else on at the time worth watching (and that includes DS9).

    20. Re: And so it begins... by mjwx · · Score: 2

      And Walter Koenig's hop from roles as Chekov in Star Trek to Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 was... well, you have to go watch the shows to understand the _completely_ different role Walter Koenig plays, and to applaud the acting and the writing that created it.

      JMS's first choice for the role of Bester was Patrick Mcgoohan and the character was primarily written with him in mind, that being said, Koeing did a fantastic job of taking the character and running with it. JMS did a very good job with the regular antagonists. Morden was another good example, like Bester designed to completely retard sympathy.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    21. Re: And so it begins... by osu-neko · · Score: 2

      What really irked me was the human characters betraying their oath to Earth and going native after they had kicked Clark out of office.

      They didn't betray their oath. Arguably they upheld their oath better than others. They did what was in Earth's best interest, even when Earth's government (and probably most of its people) would consider them traitors for it. Their oath was to Earth, not its government, and they chose the path of true loyalty rather than blind obedience. You seem to be confusing loyalty to your country with loyalty to your government. Sometimes the former requires defying the latter.

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    22. Re: And so it begins... by darrellm · · Score: 2

      I somehow completely missed that Michael O'Hare had died in 2012 although I had heard about the deaths of the other three, After reading this story I went to IMDB and saw JMS explanation about his schizophrenia. I agree that most people seemed to think of O'Hare's Sheridan as wooden. I agree this type of personality is not as marketable in a lead actor, but to me there seemed to be an earnestness about him that gave me more of a sense of trust in him. This earnestness really came into play during his final explanation of his destiny in 'War Without End' part 2. He was very moving and I thought he really blew it out of the water and it's something that I don't think Boxleitner could have pulled off as well as O'Hare did. But I always felt badly about Michael O'Hare's fate after Babylon 5 and hearing about his mental illness makes it even more tragic. My own father suffered from a mental illness as well so I guess this makes me feel closer to him.

  2. Netflix Time Now? by Oliver+Wendell+Jones · · Score: 4

    Maybe they could get around to putting the series up on Netflix so that the rest of the world, other than hardcore scifi nerds, will get a chance to view it and be ready for when it comes to theaters?

    --
    A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
    1. Re:Netflix Time Now? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's a reboot, not a continuation. It starts from the beginning, so you don't have to see the TV series in order to watch the movie.

    2. Re:Netflix Time Now? by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, there isn't anything they can do about that without a huge infusion of money. Basically, they lost all of the FX material and it would all have to be redone from scratch. That's the problem with a relatively low-budget production.

      Even if they still had the material it would have to be redone - low polygon count models and low res textures don't make good HD images.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    3. Re:Netflix Time Now? by quantaman · · Score: 2

      And, heck, arguably B5 has a better story than Trek ever did.

      Star Trek had a story? What made B5 great was that there was a story arc. Star Trek never seemed to have any continuity from one episode to the next.

      Different kinds of story.

      Star Trek at its best was short fiction told in space. The main characters left to themselves would be fine, but external events turned them into foils against which the actual story unfolded. After the story they'd generally reset so the next episode could tell a new story.

      B5 was a character drama told in space. The main characters left to themselves generated the story. They had to evolve in order for the story to advance.

      --
      I stole this Sig
  3. This was the best... by McLae · · Score: 2

    This was the best series on TV. And best of all, of you watch on DVD, you see the hints and snippets that point to later plot threads. I cannot count the many times I realized the current plot started 3 episodes ago, but now is the main action. And best of all, this was the first series to kill off 'major' characters, after three of four episodes to get you familiar with the poor lamb. Now common, this was the first with the guts to start. Oh, and the strong women (I found my own Ivanova!!)

    1. Re:This was the best... by Martin+Blank · · Score: 2

      "And best of all, this was the first series to kill off 'major' characters"

      That's not true. Off the top of my head, MASH killed Henry Blake, and that was probably the first time a major character was killed off in a major series (other than a cast member dying). It was much more sporadic before the 90s, but it did happen.

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  4. Noice! by dicobalt · · Score: 2

    This series deserves a reboot and maybe even more seasons, let's go Doctor Who on this thing.

  5. What's a reboot? by frovingslosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I loved B5. I hate reboots, at least as I understand the word. I have no problem with replacing the actors. That happens frequently in movie franchises. James Bond has been played by a number of actors, and even the gender of a major supporting character was changed in that franchise without calling it a reboot. In my mind a reboot is when the producers and/or director want to take advantage of the name and existing fan base, but decide to do two other distasteful things: First, change key story concepts that have already been established, and second, they usually want to retell yet another origin story. Why is this being called a reboot, and is JMS calling it a reboot himself or are others just misusing the term? I'll gladly go see a new B5 movie (and I really don't go to many movies), but I'll avoid a B5 reboot like I would avoid an Ebola infected missionary. If JMS wants to tell a completely different Sci-fi story then I would welcome that too, but he should not reuse the B5 name, If he wants to pick back up story telling in the B5 universe then he shouldn't try to tear down what has already been done.

    On a side note, the list of lost actors from the B5 production should include Tim Choate who played my favorite character, Zathras.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:What's a reboot? by Snard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would say that "reboot" can mean different things, in much the same way that "Zathras" can refer to more than one individual, depending on how you pronounce it :) There is the one you describe (change the story line / concepts), but I think it's also possible to simply retell the story, or perhaps tell "more of the story" (i.e. start a bit earlier in the arc, or give additional background). Our technology has changed a bit since 1994 (I mean, gad, we were still running Windows for Workgroups back then!) so it makes sense that we can better imagine the future from this perspective. I respect JMS and believe he would not tamper with the core precepts in the series. And while there are lots of faithful fans who remember the original series, there is also a huge audience of people who aren't familiar with the original series & would enjoy an excellent space opera.

      --
      - Mike
    2. Re:What's a reboot? by GNious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I heard they wanted to do a reboot of Star Trek, which I guess could be interesting ... I mean, it's been 12 years since a Star Trek movie was last released.

    3. Re:What's a reboot? by msk · · Score: 2

      True, and it looks like we'll never have another Star Wars movie.

    4. Re:What's a reboot? by quantaman · · Score: 2

      I loved B5. I hate reboots, at least as I understand the word. I have no problem with replacing the actors. That happens frequently in movie franchises. James Bond has been played by a number of actors, and even the gender of a major supporting character was changed in that franchise without calling it a reboot. In my mind a reboot is when the producers and/or director want to take advantage of the name and existing fan base, but decide to do two other distasteful things: First, change key story concepts that have already been established, and second, they usually want to retell yet another origin story. Why is this being called a reboot, and is JMS calling it a reboot himself or are others just misusing the term? I'll gladly go see a new B5 movie (and I really don't go to many movies), but I'll avoid a B5 reboot like I would avoid an Ebola infected missionary. If JMS wants to tell a completely different Sci-fi story then I would welcome that too, but he should not reuse the B5 name, If he wants to pick back up story telling in the B5 universe then he shouldn't try to tear down what has already been done.

      On a side note, the list of lost actors from the B5 production should include Tim Choate who played my favorite character, Zathras.

      I'm not opposed to the idea, but it's important to remember that it's no guarantee of success. Consider all the elements that can cause a TV show to fail, cast, characters, writing, concept, plots, etc. With the reboot you're starting out on familiar ground so you avoid a lot of potential pitfalls, but you still have a big risk of making a dud.

      The original B5 was great, but to be honest it's not doing anything anymore. The people who watched it have already extracted all of the joy they can, and the small minority of people who will watch it in the future will be thrown off by the clunky 90's style writing and special effects.

      If there's a chance they can take the concept and try to tell it again, leveraging on the mythos of the old story, I say great. It will probably fail but even if it does I don't see it doing any harm.

      --
      I stole this Sig
  6. Fuck me by future+assassin · · Score: 2

    please dont reboot!!!! A continuation of the world but no fucking reboot.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  7. It may be too late, by westlake · · Score: 2

    "Guardians of the Galaxy" was not a sequel or a reboot.

    It suggests as well that audiences have grown more than a little weary of "dark" sci-fi and fantasy.

    As much as I admire B5, I think its time may have passed.

    1. Re:It may be too late, by Wraithlyn · · Score: 2

      B5 was full of lighthearted moments and humour (admittedly less so towards the end). Thinking about Londo going "but in purple... I'm STUNNING" still cracks me up just thinking about it. Or G'Kar getting drunk with the grail seeker "They made a very satisfying.. THUMP when they hit the ground". Lennier and Vir commiserating, "they never listen...". Or Sheridan's terrible jokes.. "Kosh who?" / "Gseundheit!". I could go on all day. :)

      Sure there was a serious, epic plot underlying it all.. but you can say the same thing about Guardians. I mean, let's not forget that Ronan's goal was to murder billions of innocent people.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
  8. The Jackson-Hobbit Syndrome in reverse by tverbeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So JMS wants to take a story originally told in over 4700 minutes, and condense it down into a 120-minute feature film (or is he thinking a series of five of them)? What could possibly go wrong?

    Seriously, one of the things that makes B5 a classic of the genre was the way it gradually unfolded an epic tale over the course of five years. Sure, there were a lot of B sub plots and C plot-of-the-week elements that didn't contribute directly to that overall storyline, but they provided the texture that made the A plot matter. For example, the viewers cared about the fate of the Centauri because they'd come to know (and seen the transformation of) Londo and Vir; without that, they're just a bunch of space vampires. To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of the soap-opera approach to storytelling that's become fashionable in hour-long TV dramas and monthly superhero comics... but B5 was a rare example of how it works. Without that format, without that scope, it would become just the Reader's Digest edit of The Lord of the Rings in Space.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  9. Re:More Shadows, less Psi's by Wraithlyn · · Score: 4, Informative

    They thought they weren't getting a Season 5, which is why they rushed to resolve all the major plots by the end of S4, leading to a rather underwhelming S5.

    So what you say is true, but not really their fault.

    --
    "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
  10. In breaking news by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Funny

    J.J. Abrams is signed to direct. He's never seen a single episode of the TV show, but he's sure that, if he uses enough lens flare and explosions, no-one will ever notice.

    1. Re:In breaking news by glwtta · · Score: 2

      Just... fuck you.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
  11. Re:...but there are already films by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It was also very dependent on the cast. It takes a lot for the audience to relate to guys in alien costumes, even SF nerds like me. I'm doubtful the magic will happen again.

    Wow, a lot of the cast died so young - Jeff Conaway to drugs, Andreas Katsulas to smoking, Richard Biggs at 44 to a heart condition. Good to see Stephen Furst still going (aside from playing my favorite character on B5, he successfully changed his dangerous lifestyle during the B5 years, losing almost 100 pounds).

    But whatever else goes wrong, at least the fighters "in space" won't fly like jets. Did any other SF TV series or movie get that right? The space battles are still cool to watch, aging effects and all, just because it makes some physical sense.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  12. Last Exit to Babylon by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    Speaking of Babylon, I wouldn't mind seeing a movie of Roadmarks. In the mean time, perhaps I'll dig the book out of the closet and re-read it...

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  13. Re:An Unconditional Truth by Hartree · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. There is another.

    "Ivanova is god."

  14. B7 by Princeofcups · · Score: 2

    Any word on the proposed Blake's 7 movie? That one show that deserves a resurrection.

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.