darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
Thanks for the link.
Overall, they were much more impressed with the commentary than I was.
The film itself, however, remains great, so I stand by my "A" rating.
"Children of the Gods: Final Cut" Grading and Review Thread
- Thread starter darkwing_duck1
- Start date
Thanks for the link.
Overall, they were much more impressed with the commentary than I was.
The film itself, however, remains great, so I stand by my "A" rating.
I went for a B-.
While it had lost it's clunky pilot feel, in my eyes, the modifications that had been made do not really justify revisiting it. The new effects are nice, edits are better... But there is not enough "freshness" for me. Perhaps there was simply too little original material to work with. And the Goa'uld still looked completely fake to me.
So while entertaining, I won't be buying the Final Cut; they simply changed too little.
While it had lost it's clunky pilot feel, in my eyes, the modifications that had been made do not really justify revisiting it. The new effects are nice, edits are better... But there is not enough "freshness" for me. Perhaps there was simply too little original material to work with. And the Goa'uld still looked completely fake to me.
So while entertaining, I won't be buying the Final Cut; they simply changed too little.
What I've read on GateWorld suggests that Goldsmith wrote an original score for CotG at the time, but the higher-ups told them to drop most of it and track in music from the movie instead. This version reinstates Goldsmith's score as originally intended. Perhaps when he originally wrote it, the makers of the show didn't know if they'd have the rights to the Arnold music.
Hmm...quite possible. I didn't realize he wrote the score then. I was under the impression the score was new as of 2009-ish.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
My only hesitation in accepting that explanation is that there are several "quotes" from the Arnold score even in the "Goldsmith Original" score.
^Noted. I hope Netflix comes through with this for me soon (the local video store doesn't seem to have it). It says "Very Long Wait," but the last time I had a "Very Long Wait" DVD at the top of my queue, it arrived very promptly.
It wasn't so much that higher-ups told them to drop it, as that the higher-ups (specifically, Jonathan Symes) took Glassner's side when mediating between him and Wright.
The score had to be updated because it was originally written to accompany the original cut; with the changes in timing in scenes, the score had to be updated to match.
I walked into this without much in the way of expectations, so it is difficult to say I was disappointed in any way. That being said, I wasn't really overly impressed.
I found some of the things cut were done rather sloppily. Most notably, Carter's feminism. Particularly, they cut out her infamous "just because my reproductive organs are on the inside" line, while still keeping O'Neill's response to it ("This has nothing to do with you being a woman. I like women.") O'Neill's line just feels out of place with Carter's line gone. And really I don't see why a lot of the scenes were cut, some of which were actually pretty good, like the banter between O'Neill and Hammond near the beginning. Seems to me like someone making a new version of the episode by cutting the stuff they usually fast-forward through.
And then there's the re-done scene near the end, which I was expecting anyway. In the original, Apophis leaves his compound in a weird Death Glider variant which is larger than usual and has a set of transport rings. The glider drops him off at the gate and then flies off to attack SG-1. It has now been changed to a cargo ship with glider escort. Here's my problem with this scene, it no longer makes sense. A cargo ship is capable of hyperdrive. So then, why didn't Apophis simply fly the ship to whereever he was going, instead of ringing down to the gate when he knew there were hostile forces around?
I found some of the things cut were done rather sloppily. Most notably, Carter's feminism. Particularly, they cut out her infamous "just because my reproductive organs are on the inside" line, while still keeping O'Neill's response to it ("This has nothing to do with you being a woman. I like women.") O'Neill's line just feels out of place with Carter's line gone. And really I don't see why a lot of the scenes were cut, some of which were actually pretty good, like the banter between O'Neill and Hammond near the beginning. Seems to me like someone making a new version of the episode by cutting the stuff they usually fast-forward through.
And then there's the re-done scene near the end, which I was expecting anyway. In the original, Apophis leaves his compound in a weird Death Glider variant which is larger than usual and has a set of transport rings. The glider drops him off at the gate and then flies off to attack SG-1. It has now been changed to a cargo ship with glider escort. Here's my problem with this scene, it no longer makes sense. A cargo ship is capable of hyperdrive. So then, why didn't Apophis simply fly the ship to whereever he was going, instead of ringing down to the gate when he knew there were hostile forces around?
Well remeber it wasn't untill some point between Children of the Gods and Within the Serpent's Grasp that the Goa'uld got hyperdrives that could go to other planets in a reasonable amount of time, so the stargate was actually faster then spending months on a cargoship to get between planets.
And even once we got to season 10 and every schmuck had a ship with a hyperdrive that could cross the galaxy in a few weeks, the stargate will always be faster and safer. It'd be downright embarrassing for Apophis to go from planet to planet in a cargo ship, only to be intercepted and killed by some upstart like Ba'al, especially considering that he could literally just walk.
And it did this time too. I've now seen the Final Cut, watched the all-too-brief featurette, and listened to about a half-hour of the commentary.
It's been a long time since I've seen "Children of the Gods," so I couldn't keep track of what had been changed for the most part, but I found it a more satisfying experience than I found the original version to be. There were some changes I did note with satisfaction. I'm glad Carter's stupid and out-of-character "reproductive organs on the inside" line is gone, and more generally the whole "I'm a woman who has to prove myself to the boys" thing is toned down, though the scene is a bit awkward without it. But the main change I'm grateful for is that they redubbed Carter's explanation of why the Stargate couldn't access other planets in the network. Originally, the motion of the planets in the Stargate network away from their original coordinates was attributed to the expansion of the universe, which is stupid, since that applies to the separation of galaxies over billions of years, not the relative positions of stars within a single galaxy over thousands of years. They've now redubbed it with a line that actually makes astrophysical sense, attributing it to the proper motion of stars within the galaxy. Hooray!
As for the restored Goldsmith score, it's much better than the overblown Arnold stuff, which was okay in the context of the movie but just too bombastic here. And a lot of this "new" score sounds very familiar. Even if it was cut from the original pilot, I think most of this was tracked into later episodes.
However, there are still some outstanding flaws in the basic story that couldn't be fixed by a re-edit. It's still ludicrously contrived that, of the entire population of Abydos, the two people taken as Goa'uld hosts just happen to be Daniel's wife and Jack's surrogate son. Teal'c's character and his decision to switch sides is too underdeveloped, and Jack's request at the end to have him on SG-1 is too abrupt given that he barely knows the guy. Hammond's casual willingness to use nuclear warheads on offworld populations is monstrous and unjustifiable, considering that they could protect Earth just as easily by burying the Gate. Okay, that's pretty much a continuation of one of the many stupid things about the original movie, but still, it could've been handled differently here. Another unfortunate relic of the movie's shallowness is the fact that Sha're has absolutely no personality and is essentially an object rather than a character. Daniel's speech in Jack's home about how Sha're kept him grounded helped compensate for that a bit, but we still don't actually see any of it.
So far, I'm not enjoying the commentary much. RDA comes off as slow-witted and forgetful. I gather that he and Wright are both commentary novices (I think this was the third for Wright, the first for RDA), and it shows.
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Not all of the Goldsmith stuff was cut from the pilot; I think that only a few key scenes received Arnold's music. (Sha're's joining, the prison fight, and the battle at the gate are the ones that come to mind.)
Hammond threatens it. I'm still not convinced he would have gone through with it, here or in the original cut.
The numbers are indeed correct. Though at least both of them were involved; some of the Peter DeLuise/Gary Jones commentaries on Atlantis were... interesting but irrelevant.
The one I always found most grating was the over-the-top silly music (which I believe was from a mastage comic relief scene in the movie) when O'Neill shoves Carter through the 'gate after she spends too much time admiring it. The moment is actually a bit more amusing when they don't call attention to it.
The only cut I noticed was the small running joke with Carter insisting O'Neill call her "Captain" and Jackson call her "Doctor," and that's mostly because I thought it was neat when, in a later season-one episode, Daniel addressed her as "Captain/Doctor" again. CGI Junior was pretty cool, too. It would've been nice if they could've had a CGI Amonet go into Sha're's neck, but there's only so much you can do with the original footage.
Oh, and I noticed a little logic problem with the new dinner banter. The rock barricade they set up in front of the Abydos stargate meant it should've either not opened at all, vaporized the barricade with the kawoosh, or, if they'd managed to build it iris-close, reduced the MALP to atoms. Any way you slice it, there shouldn't have been any probe-pieces large enough to eat off of.
Or d) the barricade is far enough away that the kawoosh didn't eat it, but close enough that the MALP flew into it like a brick wall.
Picked this up at Walmart today and just finished watching. I'm finding it a little tough to grade as they did a great job with it but I also like the original even with all it's flaws and clunkiness. I did like it and the overall feeling was positive but I'm thinking around a B. I'll probably watch it again before deciding.
I'm aware of that. My point is that even the hitherto-unheard stuff sounds familiar. After all, if the show was going to save money by tracking music from previous episodes into later ones (which they did routinely in the early seasons), why not use the music that was composed but not used for the pilot? If anything, it would have the advantage of sounding fresh.
Poor choice of words. Hammond, the broader military establishment, the President -- however you slice it, it's disturbing to portray the United States as being willing to use nuclear weapons as a first resort.
That occurred to me, though I forgot about the kawoosh vaporization. I guess it comes down to the concepts not being fully worked out at the time.
Agreed.
I just re-listened to my soundtrack CD of the original version of "Children of the Gods," and you're basically right. There's a lot more Goldsmith in it than I thought. As for the parts that do use Arnold's movie score, either it was a pretty repetitive score or they tracked the same cue in more than once.
And the Joel Goldsmith score has more Jerry Goldsmith homages than I would've expected. The motif he uses for O'Neill in his first scene and one or two other times reminds me of a moment from Jerry G's Rambo score, and there are a couple of moments where there are subtle hints of some bell-like background instruments that sound like ones from the Star Trek: TMP score.
Thinking about the story some more, it's not entirely implausible that Sha're and Skarra were the ones abducted from Abydos; Sha're was in the Gate chamber because Daniel had been there, and was pretty much the only woman there, I think; and Skarra attracted Teal'c's attention because he was using an Earth firearm. Still, it's rather a huge coincidence that both of them got chosen to be hosts to Apophis's family members, when there were so many other candidates in Apophis's prison.
Unless... Abydos was Ra's world for thousands of years. Maybe he'd spent that time breeding the Abydonians to fit Goa'uld standards of perfection. So maybe that's why these two Abydonians were deemed more ideal than the other abductees from across the galaxy.
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