Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome teaser

[Aniron]

Edit: I keep hitting quote instead of edit. Sorry.

[jollyreaper]

The original BSG, absolutely. I can't find the cite now but I'd read an article years back about how the success of Star Wars helped get the show green lighted. ABC wanted in on the bandwagon.

The network also meddled a bunch to keep the show all-ages appropriate just like Star Wars, though I would say it felt slightly more kiddie at times, a lot more at others.

Also, they hired some Star Wars guys for the model work which is why the ships have such a great similarity. I could be quite comfortable seeing battlestars and xwings in the same fleet. Something like a starfury would feel a bit out of place, even accounting for the differences between physical models and cgi.

[Batman]

For a variable value of 'great similarity'. Other than having a lot of moderately pointless but visually interesting outer hull details the great similarities between the Wars and oBSG ships are-what, exactly?

[jollyreaper]

The whole aesthetics of combat. If we were to consider the visuals of Trek, BSG, Star Wars and Buck Rogers, one of the shows doesn't fit. BSG and Buck Rogers are very similar due to both being Glenn Larson projects and sharing production staff. Aerodynamic flight for starfighters, WWII-style capital ships, blasters as stand-ins for machine guns but not much in the way of guided weapons, anti-fighter defense looking like WWII artillery with lasers rather than SAM's, etc. Classic Trek had a different visual vocabulary. Could partially be attributed to the era. TNG is of newer vintage than BSG but still kept the feel of the old Trek with updated effects.

But back to the basic question. What kind of atmosphere was the original BSG striving for? It's pretty much Star Wars, a sanitary war story that's safe for all ages. The reimagined BSG is trying to be gritty and grimdark. Quite a different tone from the original. As to whether someone prefers the original or the remake is a subjective opinion.

If one were to make a comparison in the here and now, I would say that the Golden Compass and the Narnia movies were cash-ins on the success of LOTR and Harry Potter. Either of those projects would have been greenlit on their own but the subsequent projects had an easier time getting sold thanks to the established success of big-budget fantasy efforts.

Can you tie something like the Hunger Games to Twilight? It stands the sniff test for a basic comparison. I don't have any hard facts on that, though. Would have been interesting to see the pitch meeting for the novels and later the pitch for the movie.

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't think it was directly tied to Twilight's success. The Hunger Games books were already pretty successful when the rights were picked up, and likely would have been made into a movie regardless of the Twilight movies because of the inherent advantages of an adaptation (particularly the fact that it's popular with girls and can appeal to boys).

[Alkaloid]

I'd argue that you have to tie them both to Harry Potter, because it kicked of the realisation of how massively profitable a young adult series can be in all mediums. As I recall Twilight and the Hunger Games were both pushed pretty heavily by the publishers quite early rather than picking up popularity on their merits and then being capitalised on. (Not to say the Hunger Games has no merits, I haven't read it. Twilight has none) The Hunger Games advertising has certainly capitalised on the Team Edward/Jacob thing from twilight, but I wouldn't say its success was tied directly to Twilight, it was tied to the HP franchise.

The Golden Compass has the look to me of the same thing being tried, and then the films production company realising that they had picked completely the wrong source material to try and make a film series a lot of parents would be happy to take their kids to and that they would have to effectively launch an assault on the Catholic church to do it.