Soldato
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There's a line from the sitcom "Spaced" that springs to mind...
Babylon 5 to be rebooted as a cinematic film!
- Thread starter CAT-THE-FIFTH
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and is 'rumored' to have basically pinched the entire plotline from a 'pitch' meeting for b5, which paramount (iirc) rejected
As much as I love star trek (tng especially - it even had G'Kar's Andreas Katsulas in it as a Romulan) ds9 just didn't really have the strength of characters that b5 had, there were only 2/3 ds9 characters in my opinion that really had the sort of presence that b5 had in abundance and they weren't even main characters
. I'm thinking of quark, martok and maybe weyoun, played by Armin Shimerman, J. G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Combs (also played the blue andorian shran in enterprise amongst other roles of note and Harriman Gray in b5)Michael Ansara wasn't bad in ds9 either, he played Elric the technomage
Got to love how ds9 and b5 were using the same actors, including arguably the most 'famous' female actress from Star Trek franchise lol... they had
Lady Morella played by Majel Rodenberry (Lwaxanna Troy, the computer voice, Nurse Chapel / Lt. M'Ress...).. you couldn't get much closer in character to Lwaxanna, Lady Morella was 'high class' telepathic type character lol
and is 'rumored' to have basically pinched the entire plotline from a 'pitch' meeting for b5, which paramount (iirc) rejected
I watched both week by week as they came out and i'd say it's more than rumour, you could see the DS9 storyline echoing B5 year by year. Remember DS9 started out very "story of the week". As B5's arc became more and more noticeable, DS9's story structure change significantly.
As far as I know, B5 was the first TV show to do an arc story effectively. Whenever I rewatch the Pilot i'm shocked at the foreshadowing seeded throughout that they come back to seasons later.
There's quite a funny outtake where one of actors who played a character on B5 turned up on as a general on DS9. In the outtake someone enquires to his whereabouts, the answer is "he's not availabe, he's on DS9."...i'm paraphrasing of course.
EDIT: Just found it on this link... http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Robert_Foxworth
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It's not rumour at all, its fact.
Strazunski ( erm bad spelling) wrote the whole B5 plot out, and all the characters, he took it to a few studios, Paramount showed the most interest at thet time, so he opened up and talk about it with them, They declined and he went to Warner Bros, who took him up on it.
A slight trade off was the FX money for the "shape shifting security character he wanted" which was a blessing for having Garibaldi instead, who was excellent. Instead he got all the space scene completely CGI, which was a first.
Sure enough, Paramount and the watered down DS9 comes out, with his characters and the shape shifting security character, he said out of all of it that hurt the most, that they directly just stole his ideas like that.
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If it goes ahead, they need to get JMS away from it, make him a producer or something but keep him away from the scripting and directing. B5 died on its arse in season 5 and every attempt to further the franchise has been a complete disaster.
And Londo's hair.
From memory the main reason S5 was bad was because they basically had to round up the main story in Season 4 because right up until the last moment they didn't know if they'd get a season 5 (the last episode of season 5 was produced to go at the end of S4 if they didn't get renewed, so at least the story would have completed).
Since then he had Crusade which was basically a mess due to the Studio wanting it "sexier" and from memory not showing it in the correct chronological order before cancelling it (I can't remember the exact quote, but the execs basically wanted more almost naked Orion slave girl types, hence in part the look of the thief character they picked up*).
After that it was basically very low budget attempts by him and the cast to do more stories, but without the money to do the idea justice whilst retaining the look.
If he can get the funding and potentially work out what he wants to do with it in a complete arc (possibly broken down into films length segments) he could do quite well, I think the books for the series and the comics from memory did a good job of expanding the story, it's just getting them onto the screen.
*Who was quite out of place compared to almost any other character in the B5 universe in her dress from memory.
that wasn't really JMS' fault iirc, the networks decided to cancel it part way through or something and they needed to 'shorten' the ending to give it 'closure'.
Crusade wasn't 'that bad' it needed more time to develop like b5 did, lets be honest b5 got better in the later seasons too, and it wasn't all that bad it had the cheap version of Kevin Bacon in it
The lost tales were kind of filler or bridge episodes, they didn't add anything new although it could act as a link to crusade and the movie a call to arms (galen technomage) which I actually enjoyed because of Tony Todd (aka worfs brother and the candyman
). Also B5 was never really about quick stories it was about the overall arc. Having said that the less said about the film the legend of the rangers the better... that was pretty dire in comparison to b5.
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I had to watch this bit on loop for a while as I was so ZOMG about humans turning into pure energy/encounter suits in a billion years time... Just like the Vorlons ffs!!!
Looking at the plot details of the failed 2004 B5 movie I don't hold out much hope unfortunately.
Although I utterly loved B5 (and watched the first couple of seasons again a few years ago) once the Shadow War was over and the First Ones went beyond the Rim with Lorien it lost some of its appeal for me as the amount of omg and mystery about the older races and the whole range of tech etc between the races was what hooked me. Sadly the Psy war left me a little cold.
Watched the Lost Tales a while ago too and it was aaallllrightish.
Looking at the plot details of the failed 2004 B5 movie I don't hold out much hope unfortunately.
Although I utterly loved B5 (and watched the first couple of seasons again a few years ago) once the Shadow War was over and the First Ones went beyond the Rim with Lorien it lost some of its appeal for me as the amount of omg and mystery about the older races and the whole range of tech etc between the races was what hooked me. Sadly the Psy war left me a little cold.
Watched the Lost Tales a while ago too and it was aaallllrightish.
Yep, studios mucked him about something horrendous, it was a total joke, lots of CG stuff didn't make it and lots of promises broken to him, such a shame, to actually have a follow up season AFTER the big "war" is unheard of, could have got so many better conclusions, but im grateful we got something.
Also such a shame about the footage going missing, JMS filmed the whole thing in 16:9 which looks odd if you watch it in the format, cause it wasn't popular then people seem to strangely stand close to each other on screen in the middle lol.
He also kept raw footage figuring that CGI would become the norm and so cheap in the future that they could redo all the CG bits and refresh the whole thing.
I'd love to get B5 re-done with all new CGI, keep all the other stuff exactly the same, just a CGi upgrade. Can you imagine the shadows now
Actually...maybe it's not a good idea, Michael Bay would probably get his hands on it and we'd have transformashadows.
The funny thing is, I work in 3D design and I don't think it needs a major update to the CGI, if you take it too far it would look out of place with the sets and 'fashion' of the cast.
One of the worst things for me with CGI work is when they make it 'obvious CGI', now I don't mean transformers level because we're expecting it but when you know it's been done with CGI, say a space scene, but they then go and add on a load of things that only CGI can do to make it look 'pretty' (bit like Bay and lens flare lol) but the same 'pretty' effects can't be done with the people acting. CGI should fit the show/film not look like it's a cut and paste job if you get me.
Also the only real things they'd be improving is the 'bluescreen' bits (it can look a little rough but it was early tech) and updating the textures in most cases, the models themselves are pretty good overall, the shadows being a race/creature is a little less than what you get now but the ships/station etc are fine, especially when you consider what they used to make the models (amiga's iirc).
One of the worst things for me with CGI work is when they make it 'obvious CGI', now I don't mean transformers level because we're expecting it but when you know it's been done with CGI, say a space scene, but they then go and add on a load of things that only CGI can do to make it look 'pretty' (bit like Bay and lens flare lol) but the same 'pretty' effects can't be done with the people acting. CGI should fit the show/film not look like it's a cut and paste job if you get me.
Also the only real things they'd be improving is the 'bluescreen' bits (it can look a little rough but it was early tech) and updating the textures in most cases, the models themselves are pretty good overall, the shadows being a race/creature is a little less than what you get now but the ships/station etc are fine, especially when you consider what they used to make the models (amiga's iirc).
I do agree with you that the CGi suits the feel of the show. The only thing that gets to me a bit is some of the movement is a little stilted and too sharp. The starfury maneuvering for example.
Generally given the time it was done, it still looks pretty decent, i'm just a graphics whore
Quite impressed that all the CGI was originally done on an Amiga.
http://www.geek.com/games/cgi-first-introduced-to-tv-in-babylon-5-by-mit-presentor-771051/
Generally given the time it was done, it still looks pretty decent, i'm just a graphics whore
Quite impressed that all the CGI was originally done on an Amiga.
http://www.geek.com/games/cgi-first-introduced-to-tv-in-babylon-5-by-mit-presentor-771051/
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maybe he'll get a chance to tell the story how he intended it this time, although it'll take a miracle for this to be good and be good enough that enough people watch it and for it to be renewed.