The question doesn’t yet seem settled over whether the new Battlestar Galactica movie will focus entirely on remaking the original, or whether it will take some elements from the TV remake as well. Personally I would like to see the movie be a bit closer to the original. Not because the original was better; obviously, the remake was a lot better. But fans of the original – and there are a lot of them – probably deserve something too. The point of the remake was that the original show had a good premise but did almost everything wrong. This was not very far from the truth, but it’s also true that the original show charmed and excited a lot of people, particularly kids. A movie that tried to emphasize what the Glen Larson show got right (while adding a better budget and more consistent scripting, if possible) might add something to the franchise, whereas a movie that tried to be dark and adult would just seem like it was trying too hard to imitate the excellent TV remake.
The question doesn’t yet seem settled over whether the new Battlestar Galactica movie will focus entirely on remaking the original, or whether it will take some elements from the TV remake as well. Personally I would like to see the movie be a bit closer to the original. Not because the original was better; obviously, the remake was a lot better. But fans of the original – and there are a lot of them – probably deserve something too. The point of the remake was that the original show had a good premise but did almost everything wrong. This was not very far from the truth, but it’s also true that the original show charmed and excited a lot of people, particularly kids. A movie that tried to emphasize what the Glen Larson show got right (while adding a better budget and more consistent scripting, if possible) might add something to the franchise, whereas a movie that tried to be dark and adult would just seem like it was trying too hard to imitate the excellent TV remake.
Besides, from a cynical commercial point of view, appealing to childhood nostalgia is usually a better bet for a big studio movie than appealing to fans of a cult cable TV series. Someday there will be intense nostalgia for the smart adult sci-fi shows of the ’90s and ’00s, and then we can get a movie based on the Ron Moore Galactica. For now, it’s time to throw the 1978 Galactica fans a bone.
I don’t think I would apply this to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer remake movie, because first of all, the original movie (while better than its reputation) doesn’t have the same intense following that the original Battlestar Galactica does, and second of all, because the Buffy TV series is not a clean, complete break with the movie – it tried to do better than the movie, and succeeded, but it was written by the same person, followed the events of the movie, and tried to go for a similar tonal mix (comedy and horror and teen angst) just more competently. The Buffy series was by people who found the movie disappointing, but could and did appeal even to the people who discovered the movie on video and made it a minor cult hit. The Galactica remake certainly had some admirers among fans of the original series, but was basically a different kind of show taking off from the same premise.