Remake or sequel the Last Starfighter.(RAR)

[FaxModem1]

In the vein of the nBSG, Tron, and the Star Wars prequels. You, yes, you, get to make a Last Starfighter movie that should come out by 2014. What would you make they story about? Who would you cast? Who would you get to direct?

Would it be a sequel? A remake? A prequel?

What would you do with this franchise?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Would it be a sequel? A remake? A prequel?

What would you do with this franchise?

Artistically: nothing. The original Last Starfighter was pretty much a tech demo to showcase what you could do with CGI, even more so than Tron. It wasn't a bad movie, but in general quite forgettable.

The little George Lucas studio exec in me says that the best way to exploit this particular 1980s franchise for maximum profit is probably a remake. The original movie is less well-known than Tron and has no surviving famous and charismatic actors left, so I don't think there is much potential for a sequel. A prequel is a possibility, but doing a remake is easier.

[B5B7]

I disagree about it being forgettable. It was a classic with some great lines and scenes - "it will be a slaughter", "that's the spirit", "the last starfighter ... the last starfighter is dead!" And the death blossom.
I would say it is more memorable than Tron, and at least as well known.
It doesn't need a remake, but such could be done.

[paladin]

I would like to see it receive a treatment like Star Trek TOS. Special effects CGI updated.

[Lagmonster]

I don't think it could be remade well. O'Herlihy and Mason's performances would be hard to give proper homage to, and many of the lines and scenes just couldn't be improved upon ("We die."). More than that, the whole shunned-humanity-turns-out-to-be-saviour premise would feel wierd in today's generation by way of a video game machine (giving humans rings is so much more today).

The best thing to do is simply, as said, re-jigger the original film footage with modern special effects, ala the Lucas method.

[Themightytom]

Well I don't want the theme song to be changed...

I would prefer see a sequel over a remake, but maybe not a direct sequel. build up the legend of Alex Rogan, and more importantly his son.

Teaser
Open with a big space battle, and star fighters and a Star league command trup getting swatted like flies by the Ko Dan armada. They are trying to defend a space station that controls part of the frontier, and they're failing miserably. The pilot is the son of Alex and maggie.

He's better than any pilot they've seen, so the Star league builds a new class of super starfighter, around his physiology so it can't be stolen and outflies everything. The Ko Dan trap him by having their command ship target the incoming fighters with all of its weapons, the pilot counter's with the new and improved death blossom, which is directed along a specific course rather than requiring a pilot to fly into the midst of an enemy formation. The Death blossom saves the Star league's command cruiser but leaves the starfighter powerless.

Unfortunately both the starfighter and pilot are captured by the Ko Dan and the pilot is to be tortured/brainwashed whatever and when he cracks the Ko Dan will have the Star league's latest technology, codes for the Frontier and the pilot himself.

Act I
With time running out, the desperate league tries what worked once, and puts out a new video game to find a human pilot. The Star League turns to one of Centauri's race. This time it happens to be a female. Centauri's niece of course because the same families in every sci fi have a pivotal role in every possible sequel and or event. The starfighters of course are revealed to ALL be offspring of Griggs.

She goes to the house of the first gamer to beat the game and takes him into space. he of course is drooling over how hot she is and agrees to go, no questions asked, assuming she is just crazy. She leaves the standard android duplicate.
His android discovers to his dismay a few hours later, that the guy they took is in fact NOT the player who beat the game but rather the gamer's fast talking boyfriend. the gamer is of course a girl this time, because every time you remake something you change the gender of major characters to make sure the audience knows they are watching something new and reimagined(Tm)

Act II
While the Star League discovers that the boyfriend is actually a terrible pilot, have The Government show up at the Gamer's house and take the android and the gamer into custody. The android and gamer are surprised to be met by a celebrity, Louis, all grown up, has become a famous astronaut and advocate for the space program, hoping to one day find the Star league and uncover the fate of his brother and Maggie.

The boyfriend discovers in piloting the starfighter that not only is he terrible, but he is experiencing headaches and can't concentrate. Centauri's niece is perplexed, the starfighter is designed to take advantage of the gamer's unique reflexes and behaviors, through an advanced neural interface. Of course any pilot lacking those reflexes would be unable to fly the ship.

With no way for the Android to contact the Star league and tell them what happened, all is lost until Louis reveals that he has the original arcade game. he was never able to figure out how it worked, but he knows it somehow communicated Alex's scores to Centauri. Meanwhile the Ko Dan prepare an attack, but the gamer's boyfriend manages to bluff his way through it, impressing Cantauri's niece. The boyfriend comes clean and agrees to return to Earth to get his girlfriend.

Act III
On Earth the first Starfighter game is beaten at last. A Ship arrives completely undetected above the base until it dramatically makes its presence known. Louis tries to establish official contact, with the gamer and the android, but the man who appears from within the ship is identified by the android as the missing pilot. The pilot kidnaps the gamer, destroys the original game and leaves the planet after demonstrating how ineffective Earth weapons are and promising to return to harvest more pilots and subjugate Earth.

Act IV

Centauri's niece and the boyfriend arrive moments too late and find an injured Louise. Scanning him, she discovers he is the brother of Alex Rogan, who disappeared with Maggie 5 years ago. Louis, Centauri's niece, the android and the boyfriend launch a rescue mission.

The Gamer and the Pilot are dueling in a simulated space battle in an asteroid belt just beyond the frontier. An announcer is narrating the arena style match and comments that the fighters are using live ammunition and only the survivor will be allowed to leave the shield arena.

The pilot explains his mother and father disappeared on some expedition and that he was left alone to lead the fight when the Ko-Dan returned, which despite his skill, he felt was an unbeatable foe.Though the pilot is better, he is amazed at the raw talent possessed by the gamer, and hesitates to take the kill shot.. he begins to doubt the brainwashing of the ko-Dan, which is based on the illusion of their superiority in all things.

The Android blasts his way onto a Ko Dan space station and destroys the shield encompassing the Arena.

The simulation ends when the prototype starfighter arrives, piloted by Louis. Though not as good as the pilot, he is able to hold his own with the gamer's help. he is warned that piloting the fighter for much longer will cause brain damage and he needs to get out. The gamer and Louis escape. he stumbles out of the Starfighter and collapses.

Act V.
in a lull before the storm, the gamer, visits Louis in the infirmary. The doctors aren't sure they can repair all the damage. Louis tells her it was worth it, he saved the galaxy just like his brother, but only if she beats the Ko Dan Armada.

The surviving starfighter pilots launch to defend the base, and are being picked off one by one by the superior Ko Dan numbers. The gamer arrives in the prototype and starts trouncing the enemy. The pilot inevitably launches in his own fighter and the two duel again, again with the pilot nearly defeating the gamer.

Centauri's niece and the gamer's boyfriend rally the other star fighters, and with the prototype's engines damaged, the gamer watches as the pilot aims his death blossom at their formation. She makes it just in time to fire her own weapons, intercepting all of the death blossom blasts. She reveals however that unlike the pilot, she was firing manually, NOT using her death blossom, and because of this, her ship still has more power remaining. As the battle resumes the two starfighters have drifted to nearly point blank range, and the two pilots can talk. the pilot admits the gamer is the best pilot he has ever seen and that with more experience he would be better than even him. She tries to persuade him to join their side, and fight for the Star league and the Starfighter reveals that he can't, even if he wanted to, there are a dozen bombs on his fighter that the Ko-Dan will trigger if he turns against them.

Cut to the Ko Dan ship reporting the battle is turning in their favor once more, and the Star league Command ship is taking heavy damage. They are in range of the base and preparing to commence bombardment. it is reported that the two starfighters have reactivated and are fighting once more. As the two duel the commander finds something odd about their behavior but is happy as long as they are shooting at each other, because both starfighters are out of his way.

As the gamer duels the starfighter, they have invented a new game. She has been shooting the mines off of his ship. As the Command ship enters the range of the Star league's base, and deactivates the bases shield codes, the both starfighters intercept the salvo it fires, and then line up to combine their death blossoms.

the ko Dan are defeated, and the Star league is safe. Louis has made a full recovery, and they walk past a classroom with a bunch of obviously gamer pilots with a Griggs offspring yelling at them. Louis states it will be some time before the world is ready to find out that Earth has just joined the Star league, but in the mean time volunteers are lining up.

Louis spots Centauri's niece making out with the gamer's now ex boyfriend, and the gamer comments it was never really going to work out with them anyway, and besides she has her eye on someone else. Louis chuckles about remembering what it was like to be young or whatever.

Louis wonders if he will ever find out what happened to Maggie and Alex. the gamer promises they will find them, and they enter the launch bay where she and the pilot are preparing to lead an expedition to follow the first. Setting up either an obvious sequel, or room for imagination.

by the time they make a third movie, the actors in the original will be so old, anyone could play them.

[someone_else]

Let's be clear, a hoolywood screenplay for a prequel/sequel/remake with the usual quality standards will very probably screw everything up badly and dance on its dead bones afterwards.

I'd say just better CG to improve the original, and even then done by a director (and art director) that loved the original movie. I've seen enough movies getting modern effects that end up looking like total (shiny, modern) crap.

[Knife]

I agree that I don't think it will lend itself to remake easily. It is a good movie, but awful pop-corn and cheese. Babylon 5 would probably be more apt for a remake.

[Todeswind]

I don't know if B5 needs to be "remade" but if they still have the original green-screen footage laying around I see little reason for it not to be remastered with better special effects.

[Stofsk]

A remake is out of the question. JMS would never allow it, and he would never do it.

Remastering it in a similar way to how TOS was remastered is probably way more likely, but I don't know how the show was filmed, nor how it would look in high-def. Certainly the visual effects could stand to be completely redone.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Remastering it in a similar way to how TOS was remastered is probably way more likely, but I don't know how the show was filmed, nor how it would look in high-def. Certainly the visual effects could stand to be completely redone.

The show was filmed on 35mm film, so that is not a problem (unlike with shows filmed on SD video). However, B5 used a lot of virtual sets in order to save money. Unless the camera negatives of the blue screen scenes are still lying around somewhere, it would be quite difficult to re-render the virtual sets. Not impossible of course, but it would require more work to separate the CGI background from the actors and physical sets and cost much more. The original CGI was rendered in SD resolution, so presenting it in HD would not achieve anything.

[Zaune]

I can see an nBSG-style (ie, take the basic concept and a few character names and junk pretty much everything else) miniseries version working quite well, actually...

An indie developer brings out a game that's basically Orbiter meets LOMAC, and hosts some multiplayer tournaments at convention centres and the like. The half-dozen or so top-scoring clans collect their prize money and attend the meet-and-greet with the lead developers... who turn out to bear a striking resemblance to some of the member-races of the Rylan Star League as seen in the cutscenes and box-art.
Once the OMGWTFBBQ is over and done with, said aliens explain that this incredibly complex and realistic video game is actually a modified version of their standard flight-simulator software, and that campaign mode is a somewhat condensed version of their war with the Ko-Dan to date. And, as they might have gathered from said campaign's major Downer Ending, they're becoming sufficiently short of manpower to justify recruiting from neutral worlds.
Being the kind of people who have enough spare time to teach themselves to play a spaceflight-simulation videogame that's very nearly as hard as flying an actual spacecraft, everyone signs up without a second thought, including a certain Alex "DeathBlossom" Rogan and his love interest Maggie Gordon.

Of course, everyone starts to wonder if this is quite the dream come true it first appears after the first one of their number gets killed, but then they settle into their role as fighter pilots posted to a frontier airbase under frequent attack. It starts to seem as if they and the rest of the Alien Legion forces are playing a significant part in turning the tide of war back in the Star League's favour, but gradually some of them start to wonder if the version of events given in the game that was used to recruit them is necessarily the unvarnished and unbiased truth...

[Knife]

A remake is out of the question. JMS would never allow it, and he would never do it.

Remastering it in a similar way to how TOS was remastered is probably way more likely, but I don't know how the show was filmed, nor how it would look in high-def. Certainly the visual effects could stand to be completely redone.

Meh, whether or not the owner WOULD do it notwithstanding; it was a good story arc with good characters and could be remade. It has been 15 years or so.

As for remastering; meh. I'm currently about 1/2 through season 4 on netflix (my 13 year old daughter has simply fallen in love with the show and can't get enough) and really it stands up pretty good for 15 years. SFX get a lot better by season 2 and by 3 you stop laughing at most of the sfx shots.

[Stofsk]

I'm not saying it's necessary, but if I were WB and I wanted to make use out of the franchise (a franchise which has been woefully unsuccessful, leaving aside that the series proper was a huge success, any and all follow-up projects have been dismal) about the only sensible way to do it would be to remaster the existing episodes.

I'm not saying it can't be remade - basically everything can be after all - I'm saying that remaster project has more of a chance to get off the ground than getting a new tv show commissioned. Frankly though after 'The Lost Tales' I'm not especially keen to see anything B5-related. Speaking as a fan the only project I'd like to see is a high-definition remastering of the existing show.

And as I said before, JMS wouldn't go for a remake in a million years and I don't know but I am p. sure that anything B5-related needs to have him sign off on it. We won't get a B5 movie either because too many of the principal cast members are dead and JMS has said that it's not possible to do it with guys like Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs resting in peace. And that's JMS talking - if WB wanted to do a movie because they had complete control they'd do it; that JMS has said no suggests to me he has control over it.

[CaptainChewbacca]

They've been slowly working on a sequel (Tentatively entitled 'Starfighter') for a few years now. Mostly putting pieces together, the movie would focus on Alex's son who joins a rebuilt star league to fight against Zur's newest attack.

[DudeGuyMan]

Well I don't want the theme song to be changed...

I would prefer see a sequel over a remake, but maybe not a direct sequel. build up the legend of Alex Rogan, and more importantly his son.

This is actually a pretty decent treatment. If I ran a production company I'd at least pass you a few bucks to throw together a script.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I'm not saying it's necessary, but if I were WB and I wanted to make use out of the franchise (a franchise which has been woefully unsuccessful, leaving aside that the series proper was a huge success, any and all follow-up projects have been dismal) about the only sensible way to do it would be to remaster the existing episodes.

I'm not saying it can't be remade - basically everything can be after all - I'm saying that remaster project has more of a chance to get off the ground than getting a new tv show commissioned. Frankly though after 'The Lost Tales' I'm not especially keen to see anything B5-related. Speaking as a fan the only project I'd like to see is a high-definition remastering of the existing show.

I think remastering would be a good idea as well, but whether it can be done easily enough is another thing... anyways, I'm not sure if B5 can be considered a huge success in the business sense. The success of US made TV shows is measured by the US ratings, which were never that good for B5. They were just enough to keep the show going for five seasons (barely), but not good enough to give Crusade any slack in the ratings department. The foreign and DVD sales are just extra bonus for the TV executives, but do not really define the perceived success of any show unless they are really huge.

I still think Crusade had some potential and was killed too early. I mean compared to say Star Trek shows after TOS or SG-1, it was not that bad for a first season of a space opera show, and even B5 had a pretty mediocre first season.

[jollyreaper]

The original was light, cornball fun playing on tropes from video games and space battle movies. It was also major wish-fulfillment material with the small town kid making good. Should probably run with some tongue-in-cheek with bug-eyed alien bad guys, their speech is given the Zero Wing treatment for maximum hilarity (blame the translation software), alien ships are enormously complicated and elaborate like something out of japanese video games, and everything is bigger and 'splodier with giant death rays and gamma bombs. It'd be a hoot.

Oh, and a nice sub-plot would be the American fighter jocks sitting back at base fuming that kids playing video games are getting recruited for this fight and they're completely overlooked. So the jocks are trying to boost their score at the game to get selected and keep getting pwn'd by korean kids with nothing better to do. Have some fun with the ridiculous illogic of recruiting warriors via a video game. Have the WOW nerds going "OMG! OMG! Maybe this is a recruiting tool, too!"

[Zaune]

Oh, and a nice sub-plot would be the American fighter jocks sitting back at base fuming that kids playing video games are getting recruited for this fight and they're completely overlooked. So the jocks are trying to boost their score at the game to get selected and keep getting pwn'd by korean kids with nothing better to do. Have some fun with the ridiculous illogic of recruiting warriors via a video game. Have the WOW nerds going "OMG! OMG! Maybe this is a recruiting tool, too!"

I'm pretty sure the US government would notice, and be both alarmed and extremely annoyed, if a non-trivial number of its serving pilots abruptly resigned and disappeared out of the country soon after participating in a videogame tournament.

[jollyreaper]

They'd be even more miffed that the aliens are bypassing them to talk directly to the gamers. Could you imagine the consternation of the brass? Here's not just WWIII but galactic war number whatever and here they are sidelined. Too funny. They'd have to have shots of a war room mocked up like Strangelove with the generals just watching streaming replays of the battle. "You want in?" Hands general a joystick. "Start practicing."

[Eternal_Freedom]

^^
At least it wold be more interesting to hear on the news than political shit.