Sanguis Sanies
Amarr
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Posted - 2009.06.22 12:36:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Munchees
Roland Emmerich and his writer Dean Devlin (who basically created Stargate), then sold the rights to MGM. [...] The series completely butchered everything Dean Devlin envisioned.
How do you know what these two "envisioned"? that's very presumptive of you. Other writers and production teams are allowed to work on old ideas, every TV show has a multitude of writers, some only write a few episodes, some write for all the shows run. The ideas that writers contribute to the story are no less or more "valid" then the creators ideas. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin wrote a story and created a universe, when they sold the rights they allowed others to build and expand upon this universe.
Originally by: Munchees
My main complaint however is that the original idea of Stargate is that travel between planets was only done with Stargates (the huge floating pyramid in the movie used a Stargate). The writers of the TV show decided to throw in genre cliches such as warp drives, spaceships. and many other things that were best left to be done by Star Wars or Star Trek.
The "floating ship" didn't use a stargate, the stargate was contained in the pyramid which Ra's ship landed on. Ra's ship is clearly seen taking off and landing, the ship landed on Earth at the very start of the film and kidnapped Ra's new host, then it lands on Abydos after Daniel Jackson and O'Neill arrive, you don't seriously think that Ra spent the intervening millennia travelling at sub-light speeds?
You seem to praise Battlestar Galatica later in your post and yet that also deals with "warp drives" and "spaceships", also why should Star Wars and Star Trek have a monopoly on Sci-Fi space stories? These are simply story telling devices, Gene Roddenberry invented the teleporter to save on production costs so they didn't have to pay to have a shot of the shuttles arriving and leaving the planet every episode.
Originally by: Munchees
Dean Devlin is now trying to retake control of his creation and create two new theatrical films that will ignore every horrible thing the television series did.
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin had originally envisioned it as a trilogy, they are now getting a chance to complete their ideas after making the other films you mention.
Originally by: Munchees
Anyway my point is if you are going to try and make a modern sci-fi show for the love of all that is holy make an effort in the special effects department because for the entire run of the series it felt like I was watching something from the 1980's (the reason this is a valid complaint is because MGM gave an estimated $1 million budget for each episode in SG1), which is why Battlestar Galactica Re-Imagined and the new Star Trek movie has given the science fiction genre a new lease on life.
US$1,000,000 per episode has to pay for EVERYTHING which includes the producers, writers, cast, crews and consultants salaries, it also covers the cost of building the sets (very very expensive) and the costumes (which can be expensive). also if MGM gave them that same amount of money then inflation would mean that it was actually worth less and less, so US$1,000,000 in 1997 would buy less than it would in 2007. If you watch Star Trek then you will notice that most of the shots have one (maybe two) ships in space not doing much surrounded by blackness, if you have a shot of a spaceship orbiting a planet then you need to create that planet which costs money. In part the reason that shows like Battlestar Galatica and the Star Trek movie can have such good special effects is because of shows like stargate driving down the cost of production and giving CG artists experience.
I view the Stargate movie and the Stargate series as two separate stories, to be enjoyed separately. I have the Stargate movie on my DVD shelf followed by all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 (and two movies) and 4 seasons of Atlantis (Season 5 is yet to be released.) I will also be watching Stargate Universe. |