I had completely forgotten about that 'working on something' post.... I stand corrected.
Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
- Start date
I had completely forgotten about that 'working on something' post.... I stand corrected.
I hope not… I really don’t see the appeal of a Telepath War movie/series. Not at all. Why? Because as a huge B5 fan I always found telepaths and the telepath storylines the most boring, a most well trodden path in SciFi. Not what made B5 unique or interesting.
This is like Game of Thrones fans begging for a “Roberts Rebellion” show. Wanted really badly by a hardcore few, but would be profoundly uninteresting for most fans since “we know what happened”.
I just hope it isn’t A) Telepath War or B) just a retelling of B5. I want a new spin on something. But that is of course my personal opinion. Everyone’s mileage will vary. :-)
JMS says he recorded a commentary track with Bruce Boxleitner:
https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1653970088889032705
"Bruce had not yet seen the movie, only snippets a few seconds long during the final voice session to do little fixes."
So I'm that seems to confirm Sheridan is in the movie. There goes my first Shadow war theory. But at least it means more of the original characters.
https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1653970088889032705
"Bruce had not yet seen the movie, only snippets a few seconds long during the final voice session to do little fixes."
So I'm that seems to confirm Sheridan is in the movie. There goes my first Shadow war theory. But at least it means more of the original characters.
In the interests of being needlessly pedantic; it's the three trilogies and one and a half of the solos. He only ever said the Anna half of 'The Shadow Within' was canon. The John half wasn't mentioned, but since it's not very good and only seems to serve to pad out the book, it's easily ignored.
We've been over this already. He's already said ALL of the remaining main cast are back, so of course that includes Boxleitner and therefore Sheridan. Also Londo, Lennier, Lochley, Lyta (all of the House of El!) oh and Ivanova.
I wouldn't be shocked if the likes of Peter Woodward and/or Daniel Dae Kim show up too, but I'm not betting on it.
More to the point though; it won't be including Delenn, Vir, G'Kar, Franklin, Garibaldi, Zack, or Sinclair. At least not in speaking roles . . . and now I'm sad again.
Last edited:
Ah, thank you for the correction, however pedantic. I'm not sure if I knew that detail but if I did, I forgotten it. Easy considering I still haven't read it or the other solo. Only the Centauri and Techno-Mage trilogies.
That was the original plan but it seems that at least the announcement was moved up recently. I'm kind of hoping we might see some images or footage when he appears at Phoenix Fan Fusion June 2-4. It would be kind of fitting since that was where the 20th anniversary reunion was ten years ago.
Loose paraphrase from memory:
JMS circa thirty years ago: B5 is the most scientifically accurate space opera ever. If it doesn't make scientific sense, it's not in B5.
Question: but why telepaths, then? There's not even a vague hint of scientific credibility to psychic powers.
JMS: Psychic powers are part of a lot of classic science fiction stories.
Question: yeah, but "science" and "classic science fiction" aren't the same thing.
JMS: Shut up.
That was why I didn't see the point to the In the Beginning movie, and why I wonder why people keep saying we need a Star Trek TV series about the Romulan War. The shows already told us what we needed to know.
with AI now, you can basically create a whole new voice now, and they have litterally hundred hours of dialog to chose from. I wouldn't put them front and center, but i wouldn't mind them using an AI construct of the cast members that have passed away. Or just put a whole new voice actor in there place. Story must go on.
Yeah, anyone that says they want and movie/show about the <insert name here> War, really don't understand what they're asking for or how storytelling works. Wars make for fertile, exciting, and evocative backdrops, but they're lousy as main characters. Wars are big, complex, ungainly things that need centuries worth of expositional set-up, happen in a hundred places at once, involve an unbearably dull amount of resource logistics, and the denouncement usually takes another century (and several more wars) to unpack the repercussions and implications. It never ends! There's a reason why the only place wars get to be the star of the show is in documentaries.
'In The Beginning' wasn't about the Earth/Minbari War so much as it was about what this specific groups of characters were doing during these events, as told through the recollections of someone looking back who was sat at the side-lines for the whole thing. Similarly; 'Band of Brothers' wasn't about WWII. It was about how one specific group of people lived (or didn't) through those events. Which is true of any war movie really.
As for the 'Telepath War'; even the novels skipped right over it after having covered the century leading up to it in the first two books, only to have the third one be about Bester on the run as a wanted war criminal. Good thing too, because the war itself is probably the least interesting part. Indeed, it's only even called a "war" depending on who you're talking to. Base on the scraps we know about, it was more of an attempted coup that degenerated into a relatively brief armed conflict, mostly between the various Psi-Corp factions.
'In The Beginning' wasn't about the Earth/Minbari War so much as it was about what this specific groups of characters were doing during these events, as told through the recollections of someone looking back who was sat at the side-lines for the whole thing. Similarly; 'Band of Brothers' wasn't about WWII. It was about how one specific group of people lived (or didn't) through those events. Which is true of any war movie really.
As for the 'Telepath War'; even the novels skipped right over it after having covered the century leading up to it in the first two books, only to have the third one be about Bester on the run as a wanted war criminal. Good thing too, because the war itself is probably the least interesting part. Indeed, it's only even called a "war" depending on who you're talking to. Base on the scraps we know about, it was more of an attempted coup that degenerated into a relatively brief armed conflict, mostly between the various Psi-Corp factions.
Everything you just said is wrong, in every sense of the word.
With regard to JMS’s “all means all” remark about the cast, I guess he was referring to surviving characters as well as actors. Jason Carter’s Facebook page confirms he’s not in the movie.
Also worth mentioning, the version of the announcement on JMS’s Facebook page specifies that, depending on sales/audience, this is not necessarily a one-off reunion special.
Also worth mentioning, the version of the announcement on JMS’s Facebook page specifies that, depending on sales/audience, this is not necessarily a one-off reunion special.
I was criticizing Warner Bros, not JMS. I'm familiar with his work in comics and animation. But he had initially pushed for a series for the "Babylon 5" reboot. And the only thing he can produced is an animated movie?
It might be in the can, but that won't stop WB from using it as a Tax Write off, like they did with at least two Scooby-Doo animated films. The WGA strike might actually help this film get released, WB will need more stuff to release if the strike goes awhile, but even if the movie is finished I won't believe we'll ever see it until it actually comes out.
If it does actually come out then I'll definitely be interested in seeing it, even though I don't think that B5 has any more stories left to tell as a franchise, outside of a reboot.
So? He wanted one thing. Couldn't get it done. He compromised to get atleast something from Babylon5 to the fans. WHy not?
The animated movie was already well into production before the remake was proposed. It’s not a consolation prize, it came first.
Rats. Does this mean that...eh, peculiar short story about Marcus' revival is still canon?
Come to think of it, JMS in 2021 was asking after original CGI models to be used as references. I wonder if there's a connection to this animated project.
People do know it takes a good two years to turnaround an animated movie, right? This is not the kind of thing that gets made at the 11th hour without planning. To paraphrase The Simpsons; to attempt otherwise would be a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.
Last edited:
Since he's commented about what he is and isn't allowed to say, I'm thinking that it's likely that WB is involved with the roll-out of information/promotion. I'd think that's a good sign, since promotion costs money.
They offer fertile ground for new stories in a unique setting where things have gone to hell compared to the usual norm of the show. Look at everything we got and are still getting out of Clone Wars.
Mmm, yeah. Heard that before though.
Maybe that's a good example. I don't really know because I personally haven't managed to get much of anything out of Clone Wars. It just didn't click with me, after a season or so, and I haven't watched any of the other animated shows. Star Wars is a galaxy-wide setting with millennia of history, but almost all of the filmed stuff takes place on a couple of planets in the space of a few years. I know the EU stuff expanded on that considerably, with the Old Republic and other things, but the filmed SW has been too darned conservative for me, just filling in gaps or, in the case of the third trilogy, doing new stories that are retreads of old stories. Even Andor, my favourite Star Wars in a long time, would be a footnote in a history of the Rebellion.
Similar threads
