I was personally never that big on the Babylon 5 serise, but I know a lot of you out there were, hence many happy fans when it was announced that a Babylon 5 film project is underway and in pre-production. However, it looks like fans of the serise aren’t all that happy about some of the casting decisions. The good folk sover at FilmForce give us this:
While all of this seems exciting for the B5 fans, the people that helped bring the series to life seem to be the last ones to know anything about it. Actor Jerry Doyle, who played Security Chief Garibaldi for all five years of the original series, told IGNFF, “I wish them well,” indicating that he has nothing to do with the project. Other actors have stated privately that they have heard less than nothing about the project when asked for comment. Fans have already begun a campaign to keep the original actors in their respective roles, the main comment being that they didn’t buy all those DVD sets just to see a film produced with an all new cast.
Ok, I don’t know how many times I’ve said this, but while you want to make sure you have talented actors working on your project, it doesn’t matter who plays a role! The 2 most important things that go into making a film good or bad are:
1) The Director. He/She is the single most important element in a film. I don’t care if you have the greatest actors on the planet, without a good director a movie is doomed.
2) The script. What is a movie without it’s story?
As long as the actors you cast are talented, it really doesn’t matter who you get to play a role. Get the best person you can, cast who you think would “fit” the best, but just make sure they’re talented. After that it’s really up to the Director.
As far as Babylon 5 The Movie goes, personally I think it’ll never fly. It just didn’t have broad enough appeal or a large enough audience to sustain a good performance at the box office in my opinion. Before you start writing me hate mail, please notice I didn’t say that a Babylon 5 movie would be bad… I just said I don’t think it was popular enough to do well at the box office. Your thoughts?
The beauty of B5 was always the fact that it was one storyline across and epic number of episodes, that’s why the writers were snapped up by Voyager and Deep Space Nine so quickly, they were deemed hot property and when DS9 adopted that idea it great and grew…until it stopped!
Continuity of characters, plot and the development of these from episode to episode made it an amazing space opera.
Two points here, first is that very device is lost in a single movie and your rely on the strength of a single episode (albeit movie length) and a few storylines.
Second, is that in the case of B5 it was the very characters themselves that made that story work. Taking in new actors into existing characters wouldn’t work for the fans, and creating new characters just attempts to create another storyline in the the B5 universe but play it out in a short space of time – see first point.
I agree that the movie will probably bomb (though I will be first in line at my local theater to see it). And I agree that, in general it doesn’t matter who plays what role in most movies. However, I think that only applies to movies where there isn’t an established person playing the character. With Babylon 5, you have an established character. A certain personality behind the on-screen persona. Whether or not another actor would do a good job at portraying that character is unimportant. By changing the actor, you change the feel of the show, and you lessen it for people who stayed with the show for every episode (who will obviously be 90% of the audience).
I am going to disagree with that any talented actor will fill the job. The Babylon 5 was not centered around one actor. There was a synergy among the crew and I hardly doubt you can create that again that easily.
Wow! As a huge fan of B5, I am ticked! JMS is a very talented writer and storyteller, but for me, the cast and the characters are what made the series great. Remove those familiar characters and what do you get? Crusade…Legend of the Rangers – both failures. They didn’t capture that original B5 magic.
I am very skeptical about the success of The Memory of Shadows on the big screen. Sounds more like a Sci-Fi original to me.
One more nitpick, JMS needs to get Christopher Franke to compose the music for this new “movie.” The music used in Crusade and Legend of the Rangers was crap.
JMS – if it ain’t broke, don’t go trying to fix it.
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