Ok, here's a mental exercise for you:
George Lucas goes (even more) batshit insane and turns the Star Wars reins over to Ron Moore. Moore takes stock of Star Wars, decides many elements are too silly, and aren't real and gritty enough, and have FAR too few post-911 and Iraqi War references.
Out goes turbloasers - in comes bullets and missiles. Out goes lightsabers - in comes steel swords. Gotta keep it REAL...turbolasers and lightsabers are so scifi...
Han Solo is female, but retains all the qualities of the old male Han Solo - except she's mad and depressed about the Empire taking over the galaxy.
Moore eliminates all the "silly" stuff from Star Wars, like Chewbacca, droids, and Luke's father being Darth Vader. Stormtroopers look more like Sam Fisher from "Splinter Cell" now.
The camera work looks like someone punched the cameraman in the balls, even during the dialogue scenes.
Would you watch this version of Star Wars?
I get your point- as far as you're concerned, oBSG was space opera- and nBSG explicitly rejects Space Opera. RDM's essay on the topic:
Battlestar Galactica: Naturalistic Science Fiction or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera
Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series. We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.
Call it "Naturalistic Science Fiction."
This idea, the presentation of a fantastical situation in naturalistic terms, will permeate every aspect of our series:
Visual. The first thing that will leap out at viewers is the dynamic use of the documentary or cinema verite style. Through the extensive use of hand-held cameras, practical lighting, and functional set design, the battlestar Galactica will feel on every level like a real place.
This shift in tone and look cannot be overemphasized. It is our intention to deliver a show that does not look like any other science fiction series ever produced. A casual viewer should for a moment feel like he or she has accidentally surfed onto a "60 Minutes" documentary piece about life aboard an aircraft carrier until someone starts talking about Cylons and battlestars.
That is not to say we're shooting on videotape under fluorescent lights, but we will be striving for a verisimilitude that is sorely lacking in virtually every other science fiction series ever attempted. We're looking for filmic truth, not manufactured "pretty pictures" or the "way cool" factor.
Perhaps nowhere will this be more surprising than in our visual effects shots. Our ships will be treated like real ships that someone had to go out and film with a real camera. That means no 3-D "hero" shots panning and zooming wildly with the touch of a mousepad. The questions we will ask before every VFX shot are things like: "How did we get this shot? Where is the camera? Who's holding it? Is the cameraman in another spacecraft? Is the camera mounted on the wing?" This philosophy will generate images that will present an audience jaded and bored with the same old "Wow -- it's a CGI shot!" with a different texture and a different cinematic language that will force them to re-evaluate their notions of science fiction.
Another way to challenge the audience visually will be our extensive use of the multi-split screen format. By combining multiple angles during dogfights, for example, we will be able to present an entirely new take on what has become a tired and familiar sequence that has not changed materially since George Lucas established it in the mid 1970s.
Finally, our visual style will also capitalize on the possibilities inherent in the series concept itself to deliver unusual imagery not typically seen in this genre. That is, the inclusion of a variety of civilian ships each of which will have unique properties and visual references that can be in stark contrast to the military life aboard Galactica. For example, we have a vessel in our rag-tag fleet which was designed to be a space-going marketplace or "City Walk" environment. The juxtaposition of this high-gloss, sexy atmosphere against the gritty reality of a story for survival will give us more textures and levels to play than in typical genre fare.
Editorial. Our style will avoid the now clichéd MTV fast-cutting while at the same time foregoing Star Trek's somewhat ponderous and lugubrious "master, two-shot, close-up, close-up, two-shot, back to master" pattern. If there is a model here, it would be vaguely Hitchcockian -- that is, a sense of building suspense and dramatic tension through the use of extending takes and long masters which pull the audience into the reality of the action rather than the distract through the use of ostentatious cutting patterns.
Story. We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other clichés of the genre. Our show is first and foremost a drama. It is about people. Real people that the audience can identify with and become engaged in. It is not a show about hardware or bizarre alien cultures. It is a show about us. It is an allegory for our own society, our own people and it should be immediately recognizable to any member of the audience.
Science. Our spaceships don't make noise because there is no noise in space. Sound will be provided from sources inside the ships -- the whine of an engine audible to the pilot for instance. Our fighters are not airplanes and they will not be shackled by the conventions of WWII dogfights. The speed of light is a law and there will be no moving violations.
And finally, Character. This is perhaps, the biggest departure from the science fiction norm. We do not have "the cocky guy" "the fast-talker" "the brain" "the wacky alien sidekick" or any of the other usual characters who populate a space series. Our characters are living, breathing people with all the emotional complexity and contradictions present in quality dramas like "The West Wing" or "The Sopranos." In this way, we hope to challenge our audience in ways that other genre pieces do not. We want the audience to connect with the characters of Galactica as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in a enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can.
They are you and me.
Of course, nBSG doesn't adhere to the above "manifesto" strictly- if it did there'd be no FTL.
In any event- would I watch Star Wars that was basically
not, in any way, Star Wars, as I understand it?
Fuck no. You couldn't make Star Wars an allegory for real life, it'd fail misreably. You'd have to throw out
everything.
The difference though, IMO, is that oBSG wasted it's premise entirely. When I think of what a rag-tag fleet fleeing genocidal robots would be like, oBSG just doesn't ring true. Also, another difference from Star Wars- oBSG just wasn't that successful, unfortunately. Remaking SW is a whole different proposition (even if you could "reimagine" it according to "naturalistic scifi") for that reason alone.
To clarify a point- about me being too young- of course, I wasn't even alive when Star Wars came out. I was 2 when RotJ hit cinemas. TESB was the first movie I can even remember watching and SW captured my imagination ever since then. If I had watched oBSG when I was a kid, I suspect I'd have a different POV, but I'm positive I'd still appreciate nBSG.
And as another aside- I think Stormtroopers who look like Sam Fisher would rule so hard.