[continued from previous message]   
      
   > dedicated lieutenant. Apollo, Starbuck, and Sheba are brave and daring   
   > soldiers. Serena is a loving mother. And so on. Of course to keep them   
   > believable they are not perfect. Adama sinks into despair when his wife   
   > is killed and neglects his responsibilities. Starbuck is a gambler and   
   > a womanizer. Etc. From a literary point of view, they are all   
   > characters that we can like and care about. From a realism point of   
   > view, they are people we can readily see playing important roles in   
   > saving their civilization from destruction: they have the stature and   
   > the ability to make things happen.   
   >   
   > The remake tears all the heroes down. Starbuck (who is curiously recast   
   > as a woman) becomes an obnoxious troublemaker who is in and out of   
   > prison. Tigh is indecisive, petty, and an alcoholic. Adama is not   
   > widowed but divorced. Apollo is a self-centered jerk.   
   >   
   > In the original, Adama's son Zac dies bravely fighting the enemy while   
   > politicians dither about sending help. In the remake, Zac dies in a   
   > training accident and it's all Adama's fault because he pressured him   
   > to join the military when he had no desire or ability to pursue such a   
   > career. A loving father who grieves for his son is replaced with a   
   > tyrannical father who destroys his son's life -- literally in this case   
   > -- by setting standards that he cannot possibly meet. Wow, we've never   
   > seen that character in a Hollywood production before.   
   >   
   > The producer explained that they wanted to make the characters more   
   > "realistic". Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that this sorry   
   > set of losers could succesfully unstop a toilet, never mind save a   
   > civilization on the brink of destruction. Maybe people who spend their   
   > lives spaced out on drugs, who are consumed with petty jealousies, who   
   > cannot get along with any other human beings ... maybe such people can   
   > be succesful Hollywood film producers, but they rarely achieve great   
   > things in the real world.   
   > Pointless PC   
   >   
   > Oh, I mentioned that Starbuck, one of the fighter pilots in the   
   > original, was recast as a woman. I presume this was a nod to political   
   > correctness, but if so, it was rather pointless. The original already   
   > had a number of female fighter pilots among its characters. In the   
   > remake, as far as I could see they left out all the female fighter   
   > pilots, and then turned some of the male fighter pilots into females.   
   > Huh? They even changed a black male -- Boomer -- into a white female.   
   > Doesn't this just leave them even on the PC score card? They also   
   > changed Tigh from black to white, but maybe after they turned him into   
   > a drunken moron they figured it would be less PC to leave him black.   
   > Future Faith   
   >   
   > In the original, the people have a religion that at least some of them   
   > take seriously. Of course it's not Judaism or Christianity or Islam,   
   > because these religions are rooted in historical events that these   
   > people would know nothing about. So instead their sacred scriptures   
   > talk about how God saved their people when they fled the planet Kobol   
   > and that sort of thing. I found this one of the most interesting things   
   > about the original series: They had a religion that was not   
   > Christianity, but that was the sort of religion that a Christian would   
   > expect people living far away on another planet to have. Their religion   
   > is tied to specific historical events, it involves belief in God, and   
   > it inspires people to hope, ro right moral conduct, and to the pursuit   
   > of truth.   
   >   
   > In the remake, religion is something that inspires fanatics to kill   
   > innocent people.   
   > The way the future was   
   >   
   > In the original, the characters are proud that their technology is   
   > superior to that of their enemies. Technology is viewed as a creative   
   > act that people engage in to solve their problems. Their enemies use   
   > technology too, of course. Indeed their enemies are technology --   
   > they're robots. But this just means that technology can be used for   
   > good or ill. Indeed, this is pretty much the whole point of one   
   > episode, "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero": technology can be used for good   
   > or for evil, and it is the responsibility of people to use it properly.   
   >   
   > In the remake, people are afraid of technology. The fact that their   
   > technology fails them in a crucial scene shows that it is dangerous to   
   > rely on it. The fact that their enemies are robots is one more proof   
   > that technology is evil.   
   > Not unique   
   >   
   > Battlestar is far from the only example; it's just the last one I   
   > happenned to see.   
   >   
   > Remember Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible? The original series was about   
   > a group of dedicated, intelligent, highly-skilled spies who fight   
   > communism. Indeed, in the classic American tradition, they don't even   
   > work for the government: they're some kind of independent spy   
   > entrepreneurs. I don't recall the characters ever debating whether or   
   > not freedom is better than tyranny. The answer was obvious: they just   
   > went in there and did their jobs. In the remake, they are turned into a   
   > bunch of corrupt manipulators who kill innocent people just to protect   
   > their own positions. For of course, to modern Hollywood, the idea of an   
   > independant American who fights corrupt foreign governments as a "hero"   
   > ... they just don't see that as a believable character. It's almost a   
   > side note that the remake was completely unable to reproduce the thing   
   > that made the original series interesting -- their complex plots and   
   > sophisticated gadgets. The best they could come up with was a miniature   
   > hidden video camera. How clever.   
   >   
   > Remember A Very Brady Movie? The original was about a (mostly) loving   
   > family who solved their problems with honesty, integrity, and hard   
   > work. In the remake when the father talks about doing what's "right"   
   > it's a big joke, and the family is portrayed as a bunch of simpletons   
   > because they don't realize that homosexuality is okay now, etc. As the   
   > end credit rolls by, they play a song from the original that talks   
   > about a "time for change". But in the original the context was that a   
   > boy was growing up and now becoming a man. In the remake the context is   
   > clearly that morality has changed and these people just didn't get it.   
   >   
   > In the war movies of the 50's, courage and patriotism were the ideal.   
   > When a character ran from the battle this was a tragedy: If he was the   
   > hero in the story, in the end he would return to the fight braver than   
   > anyone. If he was the villain, his shame would be left as a disturbing   
   > message for all. In modern Hollywood, the character who stays to fight   
   > is portrayed as either a crazed killer or a dupe of the corrupt   
   > establishment.   
   >   
   > In the romance movies of the 50's, marriage and fidelity were the   
   > ideal. When a character considered an affair or divorce this was a   
   > tragedy: If she was the hero in the story, in the end she would return   
   > to her husband and repair the relationship. In modern Hollywood, a   
   > woman who abandons her husband is portrayed as liberated, finally   
   > overcoming societal conventions that would trap her in this loveless   
   > marriage. (Of course to make the story work, the abandoned spouse is   
   > always portrayed as inconsiderate, abusive, or otherwise at fault.) In   
   > the old Hollywood the ultimate romance was marriage. In the new   
   > Hollywood the ultimate romance is a one-night stand.   
   > Hollywood Revisionism   
   >   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)