"Children of the Gods: Final Cut" Grading and Review Thread

[darkwing_duck1]

Can't believe it, but I'm acutally STARTING the thread on this one... The "final cut" of CotG is out, and I must say that I was VASTLY impressed. The producers have gone back and MASSIVELY re-edited it, trimming some scenes, expanding others and utilizing different takes throughout.

The result is a product that has lost it's "pilot feel". Awkward cuts and dodgy dialogue have been eliminated. Between the recutting and the use of different takes, the performances by the cast come through much stronger, though we get a different impression of some characters most notably Hammond and O'Neil, who come across as more military and a bit less "open". Chris Judge's performance was also enhanced by his going back in and completely re-dubbing his dialogue from the location shoot. He had a hard time on the shoot due to a combination of the cold and his freshly shaved head, and his original vocal performance suffered for it.

The introduction of Carter has lost the dialogue about her "reproductive parts" that made so many people cringe. One bit of business I wish HADN'T been recut was the elimination of Carter's line about "McGuiver-ing" a system to control the stargate. I always liked it, but apparently the producers thought it was to "injoke-y" and replaced it with the mundane "jury rig".

The overall pace of the piece has been sped up, especially the fight scenes. The sense of action and danger is a bit larger as a result.

One major cut bit of business that really surprised me (and is the only one I had any real trouble with was

Spoiler

that they completely cut out the parts that show Kowalski being taken over by the goua'uld.

And of course, as anyone who has been following the project knows, they cut the full frontal nude scene with Shar're. They kept the possession sequence, just eliminated the shots that showed breasts and bush. The scene still works, so I can live with it. (It also has the effect of making the ep more family friendly.)

On the FX front, the fears of "Lucas-ization" of the show are unfounded. The new FX are seamlessly blended into the rest of the footage, primarily consisting of replacements of stock footage from the movie, a couple of new "insert" landscapes, and alterations to the "glider assult" from the climax (including the replacement of the troublesome "ring glider" with a tel'tak). None of them scream "NEW FX SHOT" and if you didn't know they were different, you'd probably not notice them.

Joel Goldsmith's original score is restored to this cut. It emphasizes the Goua'uld Theme and removes most of the movie music cues. It's pretty good, but I think he went too far when he completely eliminated the movie/show main theme from the score. At least he could have kept it for the closing credits...

Run time is ~90 minutes.

Final Grade: A

 

[cylkoth]

They also replaced the original wormhole effects with the Atlantis upgrade, which was unessesary, in my opinion. Not something to cry over, but it would've been nice if the movie effect had been retained. And Kowalski's fate at the end was also altered...The score was fantastic, if only as a relief from the over the top music on hand in the original.

I really enjoyed it, which was a surprise. I've gotten so jaded over the Stargate franchise during the last couple of years, so it's great to actually enjoy some old school Stargate for a change.

And to add the Who shrunk the Gateroom thread from a few weeks back, holy cow, the place looks humongous here! What the hell happened? How does it come to look so small and cramped now? It can't be the film, as the show was shot on 16mm for seasons 1-4 before switching to 35mm in S5.

 

[archeryguy1701]

I'm going with a C. I was left fairly unimpressed.

The good: I thought that the new effects were great, and they blended in perfectly. The new music was pretty good too. I enjoyed it. Judge's redubbing was really good as well. The remastering of the old material looked great as well.

The bad: The re-edit. There were some cuts that I could understand. The reproductive organ line and the nudity are understandable. However, the rest of the scene deletions/ moving really hurt the episode, in my opinion. For a lack of a better way to put it, the I feel like the new version lost some of its depth in favor of a more frantic pace. The biggest example I can think of is the cutting out of the room full of potential queens. By having that material in, it makes Apophis more insidious in my mind. He goes out, kidnaps a large pool of beautiful women, and then randomly goes through them until his Queen finds a host she likes, with the fates of the other women being left unknown. Now, it appears like he systematically kidnaps one woman at a time, checks her against his queen, and then moves on if needed. O'Neill's line about Carter being a woman needed removal as well, because it sounds bad without context- Carter's reproductive oragan comment.

Where was Kawalski getting taken over?!? Why in the world would they cut that?

Overall... It had some very nice additions, with the remastering of old footage, addition of new effects, new music, and Judge's redub. However, the good changes were offset by what I feel was a terrible re-edit that came across as somewhat choppy and overly frantic at the expense of some depth.

Final grade: C

 

[TexasNightt]

So does that mean this is NuSG1 where Kawalski isnt a snake head?

 

[bigdaddy]

And Kowalski's fate at the end was also altered...

Really? That seems odd.

My problem with this is it's not needed. It would have been a cool extra if it were free in a blu-ray set of something, but an extra $20 for one episode is just stupid.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

the good changes were offset by what I feel was a terrible re-edit that came across as somewhat choppy and overly frantic at the expense of some depth.

Final grade: C

I thought as a whole, it felt LESS choppy, since many times they used alternate takes and edits to work around the cut parts. The only scene I thought still had some choppiness to it was the briefing scene and intro of Carter. Mostly that was due to them leaving a split second of the old vocal track at the beginning of the new edit.

I can see your point about some of the exposition going by the wayside, but the battle scenes were much improved by the more "frenetic" pace.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

So does that mean this is NuSG1 where Kawalski isnt a snake head?

No, it means that, if you don't watch the original cut before watching ep2, it comes as more of a surprise.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

And Kowalski's fate at the end was also altered...

Really? That seems odd.

My problem with this is it's not needed. It would have been a cool extra if it were free in a blu-ray set of something, but an extra $20 for one episode is just stupid.

I don't know...down the road, the "final cut" would make a great "intro" gift to a friend you were trying to get into Stargate, for example...

Oh, I figured out how to add a poll...

 

[archeryguy1701]

The "room of queens" scen is still there, just truncated a bit.

Where was the "room of queens" scene in all of this? The only two times we saw the female airman was when she was abducted and then when she was inspected, and then the first time we saw Sha'ra after her abduction was her being inspected as well. I may have missed it, but I think the only time we actually saw a large group of prisoners was the dungeon that SG1 was held in.

 

[TexasNightt]

Where was the whole Macgyver a system together thing?

 

[Corran Horn]

Where was the whole Macgyver a system together thing?

When Carter is explaining the computerized dialing system to O'Neil.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

The "room of queens" scen is still there, just truncated a bit.

Where was the "room of queens" scene in all of this? The only two times we saw the female airman was when she was abducted and then when she was inspected, and then the first time we saw Sha'ra after her abduction was her being inspected as well. I may have missed it, but I think the only time we actually saw a large group of prisoners was the dungeon that SG1 was held in.

I was incorrect. The "room of queens" is cut, but Shar're IS in the first prison scene where she is segregated from the other prisoners at 45:20. This would have been before her RoQ scene, and also before her "inspection" scene in the OC.

 

[TexasNightt]

Yes But she said Slapped together or something to that effect. No Mac in sight.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Yes But she said Slapped together or something to that effect. No Mac in sight.

In the OC, instead of "jury rig" she said "McGuiver". Then they cut to a reaction shot from RDA.

 

[TexasNightt]

Yes But WHY... Were they going for "Seriousness". I wish we could know. but how.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Yes But WHY... Were they going for "Seriousness". I wish we could know. but how.

I don't know...ask on Gateworld maybe? Brad didn't explicitly cover that line in the documentary (I haven't listened to the commentary track yet).

 

[TexasNightt]

Ok so he took it out because Richard Dean is NOW Jack O'nell, Not Magyver, Richard was ok with it. Interesting this commentary track... wonder what else ive missed.

 

[gastrof]

I just got my copy in the mail today.

I've seen about two thirds of the whole thing, and watched the "behind the scenes special"....a whole seven minutes. SEVEN MINUTES? Gimmie a break. I think they started to film it and someone in a suit told them to stop, so they pieced together what they could.

I also began to listen to some of the commentary, but not having seen the whole thing yet, stopped. I'll re-watch with the commentary once I've seen the end.

Likes and dislikes-

I couldn't see any real difference between the different wormhole effects they said they needed to standardize. Looked the same to me, or close enough.

They redubbed Teal'C's lines at one point. Okay. I can see why, and that was fine.

They left out the STARGATE themesong at the start. Bad. Very bad. Themesongs identify a movie or show. Even the movie had it. CotG doesn't?

From what I read above, they left out a significant piece at the end involving a character who didn't continue with the series. (You know what I mean.)

I can see why, since as it was it leaves things hanging. Sort of wrecks the movie as a stand-alone project.

Thing is, this isn't supposed to be a stand alone.

It's supposed to be recognized even by latecomers as the pilot film. If anything they should have left it in so newbies will want to watch the next episodes. It also sort of messes things up if new people DO go on to watch the next episodes, only to end up wondering when that character had "it" happen to him. This was a mistake. A bad one.

Carter's intro and her not mentioning the location of some of her organs? Excellent. The scene is less campy and much better the new way. This alone makes me want to find my copy of the original and compare the flow of the scene.

The exclusion of the nudity? Again, excellent. That's how it should be. This is Stargate.

The additional brief scene of Apophis speaking in the gateroom, filmed in recent months? Ummm....WHY? I know what THEY say was the reason, but the addition doesn't really fill in the gap they speak of, and fans always understood what "must have happened" all along. (And again, the added shot doesn't seem to solve that problem anyway.)

They managed to digitally fix a bit where the original negative got damaged, really messing with how they had to originally edit the footage together. Great. If they now have edited it the way they wanted to but couldn't, I count that as a restoration. Again, great.

Changes to the background music? Eh. I'd have to sit and compare to even have a chance at appreciating the differences.

To be honest, while MOST of what I've seen and heard of in the way of changes strikes me as a good thing, the new version is still missing some bits that really need to be there.

I wonder if it'd be possible to take the "final cut", blow it up to 4x3 with the edges cropped, and edit in the missing bits from the original?

Hmmm....

Maybe I can re-record the pilot off digital cable next time SyFy runs it and begin a little project?

 

[cylkoth]

So does that mean this is NuSG1 where Kawalski isnt a snake head?

Having watched the scene over again, what happened to Kowalski in the original could still have hapened here, it's just that they don't show it. IIRC, there was a flashback in the 2nd ep that would allow any newcomers to see the event, so that the episode doesn't come out of left field for them...

 

[SmoothieX]

And of course, as anyone who has been following the project knows, they cut the full frontal nude scene with Shar're. They kept the possession sequence, just eliminated the shots that showed breasts and bush.

Couldn't they have just cut the scene, but just CGI'd it so it didn't look as bushy. That things reminded me of an angry, but toothless grizzly bear.