Barbarella TV series in development

[JD]

I saw that when it aired. NBC broadcast it around 11 or 11:30 PM, an insane hour if you are wanting viewers.

I doubt it was that late, since I wouldn't have stayed up that long at my age then (or now, for that matter). My recollection is that it was on in prime time.


Maybe the rights are an issue too, but from what I've been told, apparently the available version is not quite DVD quality (although that hasn't stopped some DVD releases).

I hope they never make another remake--they all suck and never live up to what the original had going for it--whether it be a film or tv remake(V, Knight Rider, Bionic Woman, Star Trek Abrams, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Melrose Place, 90210, Dallas etc). Here is an idea get creative writers to come up with something new and fresh instead of living off the bones of earlier successful properties.

It's a fundamental mistake to think that originality comes only from creating new characters and titles and things. There are only so many basic stories and character types, after all. There are countless "original" stories with new titles and character names that are just tired rehashes of old cliches, but there are also plenty of remakes or reimaginings that are wildly original and innovative. For instance, Bryan Singer's X-Men and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight are both based on pre-existing properties, yet totally reinvented the superhero film; and Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica was a remake that was radically inventive and pioneering in its approach and profoundly different from its source material. And of course there's my standard point that virtually all of Shakespeare's plays were remakes or adaptations of previous works. He reused pre-existing concepts -- as, indeed, most art and literature throughout human history has done -- but he found ways of telling them that had a revolutionary and profound impact on language, theatre, and society. Originality and quality are in the execution, not the concept.

I would tend to agree, part of the success or failure is in the execution.

The remake of BSG is generally considered to be superior to the original. But what about V which is better the original mini-series or the remake? I would go with the original being better, though that being said when they did a series proper instead of mini-series it got worse.

Is it harder to remake a show that was considered one of the more must-see programmes when it first came out. Did the original V get something like 40m viewers in the US when it first aired? Yes I know more stations have appeared since then, but I suspect even then not every show got that level of viewership.

Another example of a good story using preexisting elements would be Once Upon A Time. Which while not a remake of a particular story, is based almost entirely on per-existing characters and concepts. I've really enjoyed it, and based on what I've seen it's been met with a positive reaction, and been fairly popular.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'm just pointing out that the argument seems to be "remakes suck--except when they don't!"

Well, that's certainly my argument. Of course it possible for a remake to be good-- it's just that the odds are very much against it.

 

[Christopher]

Of course it possible for a remake to be good-- it's just that the odds are very much against it.

But you can say the same about original stories too, so that doesn't prove anything about remakes as a class. It's Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is garbage. Which is a "law" Theodore Sturgeon coined specifically to counter the same type of false assumption: a peer of his questioned why he'd write episodes of Star Trek given that 90% of television was garbage, and he countered that you could say the same about everything else -- meaning that it was invalid to dismiss television as a medium on those grounds, because its success rate was no worse than any other medium's.

 

[Greg Cox]

Of course it possible for a remake to be good-- it's just that the odds are very much against it.

But you can say the same about original stories too, so that doesn't prove anything about remakes as a class. It's Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is garbage. Which is a "law" Theodore Sturgeon coined specifically to counter the same type of false assumption: a peer of his questioned why he'd write episodes of Star Trek given that 90% of television was garbage, and he countered that you could say the same about everything else -- meaning that it was invalid to dismiss television as a medium on those grounds, because its success rate was no worse than any other medium's.

Exactly. The world is full of bad to mediocre movies that aren't remakes. But nobody suggests that Hollywood should just give up on, say, cop thrillers altogether.

The only difference, I guess, is that remakes can be compared to the previous version(s), so they can be branded failures if they don't live up to the standards of their predecessor. Whereas an awful original film is simply dismissed as, well, an awful film . . . .

Let us simply note that Plan Nine from Outer Space was not a remake. Didn't help it one bit!

 

[Sindatur]

.

Let us simply note that Plan Nine from Outer Space was not a remake. Didn't help it one bit!

It may have helped it reach "It's so awful it's great" status

 

[Greg Cox]

.

Let us simply note that Plan Nine from Outer Space was not a remake. Didn't help it one bit!

It may have helped it reach "It's so awful it's great" status

But just wait until somebody remakes it:

"It's not as terrible as the original. Fail!"

 

[Lonemagpie]

^ a semi-amateur remake has been in production since last year...

www.plan9movie.com

 

[CorporalCaptain]

^ a semi-amateur remake has been in production since last year...

www.plan9movie.com

See, this is case in point, for ..... something.

 

[MacLeod]

At least Plan 9, is reasonable well known at least in the Sci-Fi community.

 

[Greg Cox]

^ a semi-amateur remake has been in production since last year...

www.plan9movie.com

See, this is case in point, for ..... something.

You know, I really should've seen this coming . . . .

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Hmmm, coincidence? --> http://www.amazon.com/Barbarella-Blu-ray-Jane-Fonda/dp/B006YZOXHQ/

 

[RJDiogenes]

Of course it possible for a remake to be good-- it's just that the odds are very much against it.

But you can say the same about original stories too, so that doesn't prove anything about remakes as a class. It's Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is garbage. Which is a "law" Theodore Sturgeon coined specifically to counter the same type of false assumption: a peer of his questioned why he'd write episodes of Star Trek given that 90% of television was garbage, and he countered that you could say the same about everything else -- meaning that it was invalid to dismiss television as a medium on those grounds, because its success rate was no worse than any other medium's.

Exactly. The world is full of bad to mediocre movies that aren't remakes. But nobody suggests that Hollywood should just give up on, say, cop thrillers altogether.

You guys are neglecting to consider mathematics. If only 1% of cop thrillers are good and only 1% of remakes are good, then only .01% of remade cop thrillers will be good.

The only difference, I guess, is that remakes can be compared to the previous version(s), so they can be branded failures if they don't live up to the standards of their predecessor. Whereas an awful original film is simply dismissed as, well, an awful film . . . .

That's exactly it. If you make a movie about a romantic adventure in Morrocco during WWII, it will be judged on its own merits-- if you remake Casablanca, you've got a lot to live up to.

"It's not as terrible as the original. Fail!"

 

[Christopher]

You guys are neglecting to consider mathematics. If only 1% of cop thrillers are good and only 1% of remakes are good, then only .01% of remade cop thrillers will be good.

That's a misuse of statistics. If you take it the other way, you get "If 99% of cop thrillers are bad and 99% of remakes are bad, then only 98.01% of remade cop thrillers will be bad." And if you add the two results, you only get 98.02%, not 100. So obviously the mathematical assumption there is incorrect. It's not multiplicative in that way. (Not to mention that by Sturgeon's Law, 10% of everything would be good, not 1%.)

What you're forgetting is that "cop thrillers" and "remakes" are both subsets of the larger group defined by Sturgeon's Law, namely "everything." Look at it this way: let's say that 5% of Americans are redheads (Wikipedia says 2-6%, but we'll pick 5% for convenience). That means that 5% of Ohioans are redheads, and it means that 5% of American women are redheads; but it does not mean that only 2.5% of Ohioan women are redheads. The number of redheaded Ohioan women will be half the number of redheaded Ohioans -- but the number of all Ohioan women will be half the number of all Ohioans, so the percentage -- the ratio of the two numbers -- remains the same, since you're reducing both the numerator and the denominator by the same amount.

So if only 10% of cop thrillers are good and 10% of remakes are good, then we still get the result that 10% of remade cop thrillers are good. They're all just different-sized slices of Sturgeon's "everything" pie, and the percentage that's good remains consistent however large the slice, because that's how percentages work. They're ratios, not absolute quantities.

This is what we're saying. Citing statistics in isolation, without considering their relationship to the broader context or how they actually come about, is meaningless. Statistics aren't about single entities in isolation, they're about how different things relate to one another, about how they fit into larger patterns. You can't just spout numbers out of context and make them mean whatever you want them to mean, any more than you can pull a few random words out of a text and ignore their context. ("Look, this soliloquy in Hamlet contains the words 'slings,' 'arrows,' and 'bodkin,' so obviously it's a discussion of handheld weaponry and combat tactics.") You have to understand where those numbers come from and how they fit into the specific pattern being evaluated.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

You guys are neglecting to consider mathematics. If only 1% of cop thrillers are good and only 1% of remakes are good, then only .01% of remade cop thrillers will be good.

That's a misuse of statistics. If you take it the other way, you get "If 99% of cop thrillers are bad and 99% of remakes are bad, then only 98.01% of remade cop thrillers will be bad." And if you add the two results, you only get 98.02%, not 100. So obviously the mathematical assumption there is incorrect. It's not multiplicative in that way. (Not to mention that by Sturgeon's Law, 10% of everything would be good, not 1%.)

[etc.]

Well said. This is perhaps the most efficient way to prove the error.

In summary,

(1-.01)*(1-.01) + .01*.01 < 1.​

 

[Balrog]

I was to understand there would be no math...

 

[RJDiogenes]

And I forgot there was to be no humor.