Stargate reboot incoming - it will be a trilogy

[Borgholio]

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/new-sta ... tarted-715

A television series spun off from a feature film doesn't typically become a bigger success than its big-screen parent, but we'll have to make an exception for the Stargate franchise. Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner expanded on the story within Roland Emmerich's STARGATE to create Stargate SG-1, a hugely successful sci-fi series which ran for ten seasons and spawned two spin-offs. Neither Emmerich or his writing/producing partner Dean Devlin were involved in the TV shows, beyond handing over the rights, but they've always wanted to return to the film which started it all and finish telling their story.

As Dean Devlin tells Variety, at the time they made STARGATE, "every single studio in Hollywood had told me that science fiction was dead, and Roland and I really love science fiction, so I think that’s partly why it worked and resonated. It wasn’t a cynical attempt to try and make something that was crowd-pleasing.” Even back in 1994, Emmerich and Devlin had envisioned a trilogy of STARGATE films but "because of what happened with the rights and changes at the studio and all kinds of strange things, we never got to do parts two and three.” It was announced that the pair would be working on finishing that story several years ago, but rather than following the first film, they've decided to just reboot the entire thing.

It’s not a story that can take place 20 years later. So the only way to really tell that trilogy is to go back from the beginning and start the story all over again.

Ever since the Stargate television franchise shut down with the cancellation of Stargate Universe, fans have been hoping to see its return. Unfortunately for those fans, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin don't plan on using much from the continuity of the TV franchise, but Emmerich told Empire that they will be borrowing a few elements which worked, namely, a larger ensemble cast.

Elements of it will flow into the reboot, definitely. The amount of characters, for instance. It's not a two-hander like the first one with James Spader and Kurt Russell, this time it's a bigger group. Yes, there's still the James Spader character and the Kurt Russell character, but other people are equally important. James and Kurt won't come back – maybe as cameos – it'll be a younger cast.

Although I recall enjoying it, it's been some time since I last revisited the original STARGATE film. The idea of stepping through a wormhole using ancient technology and traveling to various alien worlds is still incredibly appealing however, and even after the feature-film and the hundreds of episodes, I still feel like there are plenty of adventures left untold. Hopefully Emmerich and Devlin's new trilogy will be able to show us something new.

[bilateralrope]

A reboot that takes the property being rebooted in a completely different direction is a good thing in my opinion.

[Borgholio]

Yeah I'm looking forward to this. The fact it's the original producer saying he wants to finish what he started is better than some random guy coming out of nowhere to reinvent a classic movie for some money.

[PREDATOR490]

I wont believe it until I see it in the cinema.

Not to mention I really do not see how they can go in a different direction. When you have went through 3 different series worth of stories it is going to be a bit difficult to make a film that is going to be completely new. Unless your gonna make it grim-dark or turn it from Star Trek series into action movies.

[Crazedwraith]

I wont believe it until I see it in the cinema.

Indeed. They've been banging on about this for years without it happening.

I thought Emmerich was all tied up with more ID4 sequels?

[Batman]

Given the original Stargate movie was pretty Meh I'm not all that enthusiastic about this. The best thing about the movie was that it spawned the SG-1/SGA franchise.

[Borgholio]

Given the original Stargate movie was pretty Meh I'm not all that enthusiastic about this. The best thing about the movie was that it spawned the SG-1/SGA franchise.

I must be in the minority where I feel the opposite. While I did like the SG TV series, they had a different feel from the movie and I felt that the movie was more fun to watch. The series at times felt like a "monster a week" deal, or where the bad guy always got away to come back later to vex the team. Plus I felt that Richard Dean Anderson was the wrong actor to play O'Neill.

[PREDATOR490]

I wont believe it until I see it in the cinema.

Indeed. They've been banging on about this for years without it happening.

I thought Emmerich was all tied up with more ID4 sequels?

Well, I suppose that would make for new direction if they tried to combine Stargate and ID4 into the same universe. Insanely strange as it might be I could kinda see that being the grounds to create a new bunch of sci-fi action movies.

[The Romulan Republic]

A reboot that takes the property being rebooted in a completely different direction is a good thing in my opinion.

Indeed.

To me, the whole point of a reboot, creatively, is to take an interesting concept and have the freedom to run with it in a different direction.

A reboot that just rehashes the same old stuff is hack work- at best, it'll be a cash-in on nostalgia, in all likelihood.

[Iroscato]

Nope. Not happening. Already deleted from my memory banks. Perception filter engaged.

[Formless]

A reboot that takes the property being rebooted in a completely different direction is a good thing in my opinion.

YOU GET IT. Over on i09 not only have I seen so much salty bitching from SG-1 fans refusing to give Emerich a chance it just amazes me that more people failed to understand the point of this reboot. Its so bad that even suggesting the same thing got at least one snide asshole saying he thought I was Emerich himself defending a film... that hadn't even come out yet.

i09 used to be cool.

[bilateralrope]

To be fair, if Emerich wants to go with the plot he had in mind when he made the first Stargate movie, he is going to be rather limited in what he can change for the first movie in the reboot trilogy.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm on board with a Stargate reboot- its a cool premise and you can do a lot with it.

My main regret is actually that its Emerich doing it again. His films, in my experience, are mediocre at best and tend toward the derivative- in fact, the original Stargate is perhaps the best I've seen from him, and at the end of the day, it was at best a fairly light middle of the road sci-fi action film in execution, even if the premise had potential for more.

[Purple]

A reboot that takes the property being rebooted in a completely different direction is a good thing in my opinion.

I'll be in the minority here, I am sure. But to me if you are going to take a property in a different direction you might as well not take the property at all. That is why I dislike reboots. If you were a fan of the old stuff a reboot gives you something completely different instead of more of what you liked. And if you were not a fan than its still a disconnect from everything that came before much like a movie adaptation that has nothing to do with the original book. I don't like that.

This is no way to reboot a duck.

[Elheru Aran]

To be fair, if Emerich wants to go with the plot he had in mind when he made the first Stargate movie, he is going to be rather limited in what he can change for the first movie in the reboot trilogy.

I'm curious. Elaborate if you please?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well if he has the same plot as before this first film in the trilogy won't be a reboot so much as a remake with different actors.

[K. A. Pital]

From the person who, after abandoning the rights to Stargate, has made such stellar works as White House Down, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow (the lowest Hollywood shit I can think of?)...

Yeah. Oh Roland, I have zero confidence in you and your partner.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I will agree with you on the latter two, but White House Down did at least manage to be an entertaining Die Hard derivative.

[Khaat]

SG-1 was a different direction all by itself, so they could even go back to the original film and press on from there.

A million and a half years ago, I read some pre-SG-1 Stargate "sequel" books. I liked the vibe (humans out of their depth, but blundering along, aliens, drama, tension, whatever.) This direction instead of where SG-1 went would be entertaining.

[Elheru Aran]

If the basic Macguffin remains the same-- 'walk through portal and end up on another world'-- there are any number of directions they could go with it, many of which were explored by SG1, so the obvious plots are going to be hard to avoid. Basically, you're dealing with a highly advanced alien civilization, which may or may not still be a thing. If it's a thing, you're going to be seriously outclassed (see baseline Human civilization vs. Ancient technology). If it's not a thing, you might have a chance, but depending on whatever level the civilization you run into is at... see Humans vs. Goa'ulds, Tollan, Aschen, and so forth.

[NecronLord]

From the person who, after abandoning the rights to Stargate, has made such stellar works as White House Down, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow (the lowest Hollywood shit I can think of?)...

Yeah. Oh Roland, I have zero confidence in you and your partner.

Not to mention the Stargate Prequel he has already made with the IP filed off, AKA 10,000 BC, in which primitives unite to throw off the oppression of a false god who enslaves them building a pyramid. It was execrable.

Yeah, no thanks Roland.

[PREDATOR490]

I do not think Stargate is going to do well in a remake simply because 20 years is a long time for things to change and the original premise does not age well. Thus you have a film that will either require a premise to fit the times or the times changed to fit the premise.
One of the most insanely tedious / ludicrous aspects of SG-1 was the consistent requirement for Earth to be the centre of attention to the point that everything from King Arthur to the Pyramids to Atlantis etc. were all aliens.

Frankly, I do not think the franchise is going to manage more films simply because any possible direction they decide to go in has been done.
1: Remake Stargate - Humans discover Stargate. Insert what amounts to an 'origin' movie.
2: Remake Stargate Independence Day - Essentially Stargate Continuum featuring a new cast
3. Remake Stargate Universe / Atlantis S1 - Humans go through, get into trouble and then have to fix it / kill it to get home.

I suppose if we are going with the latest trend in fucking over franchises for new directions - They could make the new Stargate team all women.

[Gandalf]

I hold this as good news. The worst that can happen is that it's terrible, and so we watch the original film again.

Also, points for ignoring the TV continuity. That was a fucking mess.

[The Romulan Republic]

I do not think Stargate is going to do well in a remake simply because 20 years is a long time for things to change and the original premise does not age well. Thus you have a film that will either require a premise to fit the times or the times changed to fit the premise.

What about the Stargate premise is in any way dated?

When you get down to it, its basically- "Military team goes through portal to other worlds, has adventurers, liberates oppressed aliens", crossed with Ancient Aliens as the backstory. The former will be no more dated (except for one thing which I'll get too shortly) until such time as we actually have the ability to send military teams casually to other worlds, at least, and the latter is no more ludicrous now than it was 20 years ago.

Sure, if you go with the original origin story for discovering the Stargate, more time will have passed since then before its used, but that's a fairly minor detail, and in any case, its all pseudo-science anyway, so you can just say it took them a couple decades longer to make it work.

I will allow that alien conspiracy stuff may not be quite as big a part of popular culture as it was 20 years ago, but it didn't stop the X-Files return from getting high ratings, even though in my opinion it was mostly shit writing-wise.

Likewise, the main concept for the villains, aliens possessing and controlling humans, while far from innovative, is one that never really seems to get old- variations on it include Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Borg, Cybermen, and even vampires, zombies, and demons if you stretch the comparisons far enough. Its horrifying on a visceral level, and let's you do all sorts of things with paranoia.

The one thing I think might be a bit dated now is the "America fuck yeah!" interventionist undertone of the whole plot. A heroic US military team liberating a vaguely Middle Eastern world from false gods has connotations now that it didn't back then.

But to be blunt, there's still a market for that, most audience members probably won't put a lot of thought into it, and ultimately, it is a fictional world, not the Middle East.

There is some other stuff that might cause controversy, and might be more likely too now, but its more specific plot points than basic premise.

One of the most insanely tedious / ludicrous aspects of SG-1 was the consistent requirement for Earth to be the centre of attention to the point that everything from King Arthur to the Pyramids to Atlantis etc. were all aliens.

I don't see how this makes Earth the centre of attention. If anything, it says "we're this little backwater that's constantly having our fate dictated by outside forces we're not even aware of". Its not like aliens didn't do shit to other worlds in Stargate, and all the big power blocs were off Earth, at least initially.

In any case, you're talking SG-1, not the original film. In that film, I don't recall anything establishing Earth as particularly important except insofar as it happened to be the world Ra visited way back when, and it happened to be one of the worlds with a Stargate on it.

Frankly, I do not think the franchise is going to manage more films simply because any possible direction they decide to go in has been done.
1: Remake Stargate - Humans discover Stargate. Insert what amounts to an 'origin' movie.
2: Remake Stargate Independence Day - Essentially Stargate Continuum featuring a new cast
3. Remake Stargate Universe / Atlantis S1 - Humans go through, get into trouble and then have to fix it / kill it to get home.

There are always new twists and interpretations if you've got creative writers. I'm not sure how much that can apply to Emerich, though, sadly.

And in any case, it seems like you're just complaining no matter what might happen. They change it, you'll complain that its been changed. They do something they did before, you'll complain about that.

I suppose if we are going with the latest trend in fucking over franchises for new directions - They could make the new Stargate team all women.

Yes, because its such a terrible thing to have a predominantly female cast, and lord knows what made all those franchises great was that it was men in the lead roles.

Seriously, I'm not sure how much this is misogyny vs generic "they changed it so its ruined" fan whining, but since you went out of your way to make a jab at predominantly female casting in remakes, without it having anything to do with the rest of the conversation as far as I can see, it looks like you have an ax to grind on this issue.

Though on that note, both the original film's casting an SG-1's left something to be desired.

Original film was, as I recall, very heavily a white cast outside of the transplanted natives of the alien world, who were mostly non-white, although from the cast list on IMDB, usually not from the Egyptian background the characters were supposed to be (but I'll give them a pass on that, partly because I doubt their are a lot of ancient Egyptians left who haven't mixed with people from other places). It was also very heavily a male cast. At the time, that might have been a bit more justifiable, but we now live in an age where women are allowed to be front-line infantry and will likely soon be required to register for the Selective Service, so purely in terms of realism, I think a more diverse cast might be warranted.

SG-1's initial main cast looks, to be blunt, like it was cooked up by a marketing or PR committee. Not because its more diverse- that's great. But because it is so in a very predictable, by the numbers fashion. You have your generic white male action lead (albeit this is a carry over from the film, and O'Neil is perhaps a bit older than that kind of character usually is). You have your one blond female team member, who has sexual tension with the white male action lead. You have your one black character (who's also the alien, effectively, on the team). And you have your secondary nerdy white male character.

Now, obviously, the characters grew way beyond that. But it doesn't change the fact that the initial cast looks very much like it was paint by numbers drawn up by a committee.

I wouldn't particularly buy an all-female team here, because its the US military which is a) still mostly male and b) to my knowledge does not use gender segregated teams. But I wouldn't mind seeing them play with the casting a bit.

[FedRebel]

A reboot that takes the property being rebooted in a completely different direction is a good thing in my opinion.

...yeah....right...

You do know what Emmerich's original vision was...there were a few novels...be afraid, very afraid.