Babylon 5: The Lost Tales - Page 6

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

I love B5, but I think a feature Film would be about as succesfull as the feature Film version of Firefly. Not taking anything away from Firefly or Serenity. And I know B5 was on alot longer, but really it was for it's four years a Syndicated program that often ran in very bad time slots. 2 AM here for most of it's run. It was'nt in Reruns Long. I can't seeing this as being successful. And I can't see anyone not invested in the program as Caring about a movie concerning the Telepath war.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

If you see Stardust this weekend you will get to see just what keeps her looking young

Neil

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

"And I can't see anyone not invested in [the program, 20 years of the comic book, the series of novels...] as caring about a movie concerning..."

"... a bunch of super-powered mutants"
"... the crew of a starship and the death of one of them"
"... a mafia family"

And how, on a model that predicts the success of a movie based on its source material, does any film based on an original screenplay ever succeed at all?

Look, a movie succeeds or fails based on a couple of things, some of which are beyond the filmmaker's control:

1. Competition - what other films are at there during the crucial initial release weeks when movies live or die.

2. Advertising, venues - how many people know about it, how many screens is it on.

3. Current events - A number of terrorist-themed films were shelved after 9/11. Sometimes a tragedy puts people in the mood for some light escapism and comedies may surge while previously successful dramas stagnate. The China Syndrome was a middling thriller that got generally poor reviews and was probably destined for the bargain VHS bin when an accident of timing (the nuclear reactor problem at Three Mile Island) suddenly turned it into a box-office blockbuster.

But mostly films succeed or fail based on what they are and whether or not the public likes them. Probably 2/3rds of the people who eventually saw Terminator 2 in theaters (including a lot of wives and girlfriends) never saw the original film, which did only a fraction of the box office. The least accessible Trek films scraped by with the support of hardcore fans, the most accessible ones appealed to a broader audience and sold more tickets.

A pre-existing fanbase or a huge advertising campaign can help a movie "open". But only good word of mouth can keep a film going. Similarly a film without a huge opening weekend can become a success in the 2nd and 3rd weeks if the people who first saw it like it and recommend it to their friends. It is simply absurd to say that Firefly's lack of success means that a different film with a different story to tell and a totally different writer and cast won't succeed because both happened to be based on TV series.

People would care about the Telepath War for the same reason people cared about the scientists in The Andromeda Strain or the family in The Incredibles - because the stories involve sympathetic characters placed in jeopardy. That's the essence of all drama. Again, just because we're familiar with all the details of the place of telepaths in the B5 universe doesn't mean that my sister or my cousin or my aunt Camille would need to know all that to understand a two hour movie about a war. How many people who watched The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan were experts on D-Day, never mind WWII in general? How many watched (and enjoyed) The Horse Soldiers or The Beguiled without knowing a damned thing about Civil War?

Again, people are getting caught up in the fact that this is a TV show, which is actually pretty much irrelevant (beyond that opening weekend) to its success as a film. Every film, original or adapted from another medium, is treated pretty much the same by the actual ticket buyers who determine success or failure in the marketplace. Nobody walked into The Unforgiven with a previous investment in the character of Will Munny, for the simple reason that until the film began nobody knew Will Munny. The learned to care about his character and the outcome of this struggle by watching the film. Which is the usual way with these things.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Joseph, you make good points. And Serenity did manage to make a movie that was accessible to non fans and fans alike, it just was'nt a smash at the Box Office. If Firefly could make a accessible film B5 can do it as well. It's a thin tightrope to walk thou, pleasing the fans and non fans as well. I'm mixed in my desire to see more B5, While I enjoy continueing adventures, in many ways B5 is done to me, it concluded it's story so well that maybe it should end there. I enjoyed at least the second half of Lost Tales, but nothing within that DVD really needed to be told, they were stories that really added nothing to universe of B5 . But I'm glad to visit the characters again if only for a short time. I kind of wish Trek would take this approach. I've always felt an anthology series spanning all the series would be a great thing.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

MY review of the first Lost Tales and the DVD can be found here.

I do wish it was better entry for the first ina series. I liked the second story better. I hope they do focus on Valen and Crusade somewhere down the line. Too bad I didn't get the mini-comic at Best Buy. they didn't have them or sold out of them.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

just finished it. joe you mentioned that jms was never really good @cracking jokes and i really noticed that on these 2 "episodes".

1st was OK, but a bit hokey. 2nd one really pulled me back into B5 cause both actors were just phenomenal.

i see they spent most of their FX $ on wide zoom out shots. i'd've loved to see sheridan walk down to the welcome party, etc. those were always my fav. parts of B5, not the fx. has CG progressed so far that the fx now cost LESS than live action sets?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Yeah,They told Me the same thing at My BB about the comic.I don't think some stores got them even though it was in the Ad.Best Buy hasn't impressed Me as of late in regards to customer service.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

I think of the Best Buy stores had a limited supply of the exclusive. It was never intended to go out with every copy sold there - it was just "while supplies last".

Regards,

Joe

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

i'm not familiar with rental these days. are titles available for rent the same exact day as the release to home video?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Finally got around to posting a review:

http://dvdsam.blogspot.com/2007/08/d...ost-tales.html

I liked it, although I agree with everyone's point that Lochley's portion was kinda weak. Still, it was great having B5 back, and the extras make it sound like JMS and Warner plan to continue to keep it going.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Finally got around to watching this last night. Lochley and Galen are my two least favorite characters in the franchise so it had a hurdle to overcome right away. I'm not really into the God debates so the first episode was kind of boring for me. It did feel like a short story set in the B5verse rather than an episode which I guess it what JMS was going for (only Joe DeMartino can scan his mind to know for sure). So going into the second episode I knew more of what to expect. I liked it better than the first episode, but only marginally so. It felt like an irrelevant story to a timeline that I still want to see the major events from (the telepath war, the plague cure, etc). Like a filler episode except there's no plot-heavy episode coming next week.

So overall I wouldn't say I wasted my time, but I'd only recommend this to hardcore fans. Hopefully there will be more to criticize in the future.


As for a movie not working with non-fans. The show gave all the backstory needed in its opening credits every season. Beyond that it could work like any other movie that introduces characters and gets a plot going.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

perhaps there is a reason why these are the "lost" tales.... shouldn't they stay lost?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

So, has anyone heard if the powers that be were happy with the sales of this DVD? Will they make more?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

My problem with the second one was, supposedly JMS has to approve story elements, for this, as well as any of the B5 books. Well this did not gel with things we know from the Centauri trilogy bookd by Peter David.

In this, this Prince mentions that Vir is next in succession to the throne, but in those books, Vir was never next in succesion, (just Londo and a few others knew about Lady Morella's prophecy). Vir worked underground and behind the scenes to expose the Drakh, and only when that came to fruition, did Vir come out as the next probable Emperor. This all much later than the time-frame we see in this short story episode.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

isn't that technically the next in succession no matter how it went? JMS had to have approved those novels to be "canon" in someways. i'd love to know how Lost Tales went as well. i want the NEXT ONE I WANT MORE B5!

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Not really. As that prince was describing it, was like it was common knowledge, almost the way our succession to the presidency is.

For a long portion of that trilogy, Prime Minister Durla would be the most likely successor to Londo. At least among the Royal Court and the heads of the major houses.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

The order quoted above is not the order I'd use.

Babylon 5, Crusade, Rangers and Lost Tales DVD #1

1) The Gathering - Pilot (2257)

2) Season 1 (2258)

3) Season 2 (2259)

4) Season 3 (2260)

5) Season 4 Episodes 1-8 (2261)

6) Thirdspace - Movie (2261)

7) Season 4 Episodes 9-22 (2261)

8) Season 5 Episodes 1-21 (2262)

9) A River of Souls - Movie (2263)

10) Legend of the Rangers - Movie (2265)

11) A Call to Arms - Movie (December 2266 - January 2267)

Crusade (planned for January 2267 - December 2271)
12) Crusade Season 1, the 13 episodes that we got. (January 2267 - ~July or August 2267)

13) The Lost Tales - Voices in the Dark (2271) - or right around the planned end of Crusade.

14) In the Beginning - Movie (The events of 2245-2248 as told by Londo in 2278). The burning ruins of Centauri Prime, that we see in this movie are not the scenes we see in "The Fall of Centauri Prime" (Season 4 Episode 18), but are rather from the Legions of Fire novel trilogy, specifically Book #3.

15) Season 5 Episode 22 "Sleeping in Light" (2281)

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

If the opportunity for a feature film develops, I hope that the Telepath War is NOT the theme. I just don't see that as a possible commercial success.

The only part of the telepath arc that really interests me is the Lyta/Garibaldi transaction and the personal story of each of them after Lyta returns. Would like a Lost Tale to tackle that one.

Now the Valen story, with lots of huge space battles, might have a shot at being popular with every studio's "target audience" ... teenagers.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

I still think the Legions Of Fire Centauri Trilogy would make a great mini-series. Of course, you'd have to have a new G'Kar and Franklin, difficult but doable, like they had to replace Dumbledore in HP.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

I can't imagine JMS ever ever considering recasting either G'Kar or Stephen Franklin.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

JMS has gone on record saying he will never replace Richard Biggs or Andreas Katsulas.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

The Passing of the Technomages would make a great mini-series, and for that you don't need Dr. Franklin or G'Kar.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

I'm actually reading that trilogy right now. And I have a question.

We all know what happened to Kosh on the show. The book goes into a little more details and says that he broke the rules of engagement and joined the battle with the younger races. It seems that's a big no-no. They're just supposed to guide the younger races and not join the fight themselves. We saw essentially the same thing on the show.

So why aren't the shadows restricted from joining in the fight? They were always going after shadow vessels in the series. Why the double standard?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Kosh broke the rules by having Vorlon ships directly attack Shadow ships. In all the cases of Shadow intervention you are thinking of, it was Shadow ships fighting the younger races. There was no direct Shadow-Vorlon fighting. It is something like the Cold War rules of engagement between the Soviets and the Americans. In their various proxy wars there were no open, direct, confrontations between U.S. and Soviet forces. No Russian divisions fought against their American counterparts in Vietnam, where U.S. forces were in the field. Similarly the Americans supplied intelligence and logistical support to the anti-Soviet movements in places like Afghanistan (where Soviet forces were on the ground) but did not take an active combat role in the war.

The Shadows have openly fought alongside their allies more often than the Vorlons have in the many thousands of years of their struggle, in part because they are more numerous, but that, too, was a matter of attacking the allies of the other party, not head-to-head fighting between the First Ones. Even in those cases the First Ones seem to have kept the gloves on to some degree. They didn't unleash weapons that could destroy whole planets on the allies of their rivals, or try to totally exterminate any races who had the nerve to join the other side, much less try to wipe our their rivals themselves. Kosh's action in support of Sheridan changed that and made his war different from all the wars that had gone before it. (And therefore opened up the possibility of its having a different outcome than all the others.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

You didn't have any questions about Book II pages 318-321 ???

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Thanks Joe. I knew I had to be missing something really simple. That makes perfect sense.


Care to refresh my memory? I don't have the book sitting in front of me right now.

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Did anyone know the answer to my original question?

Were the "powers that be" happy enough with the sales of "The Lost Tales" to go forward with the next edition?

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

All of the studios are shy about releasing sales data, and I'm not aware of any hard numbers leaking out. I think JMS said that WB was pleased the initial U.S. sales, but I have a feeling that they would also want to look at the international numbers before making a decision. These productions have to pay for themselves strictly on retail disc sales - there's no domestic or international network licensing fees or future syndication revenue, so WB would want to judge their worldwide appeal.

But even if WB wants more Lost Tales, it will be some time before there can be any. First there is JMS's hellacious schedule (he's got several feature films in progress, not to mention a ton of comicbook work and a new TV series he has in development.) Then there's the looming writers' strike. By the time early sales figures came in JMS was finishing up The Changeling (now shooting with Angelina Jolie) for Clint Eastwood and starting up on the zombie film World War Z, the Vietnam-era They Marched Into Sunlight and the upcoming Silver Surfer solo feature. By the time he's turned in a draft or three on all of those, he'll probably be walking a picket line and unable to discuss further Lost Tales until the strike is over.

I wouldn't expect to hear anything about more installments - yea or nay - until the first part of 2008, at the earliest.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Joe, I'm pretty sure you were speaking in the context of First Ones vs. First Ones, but in case others thought you were speaking in the context of First Ones vs. the Younger Races, the Vorlons did unleash planet killers targeted at those who dared to side with the Shadows.