It's been announced that Kenneth Johnson, the creator of the original V miniseries, is working on a new V movie with the "reborn" Desilu Studios. It's going to be reboot and the first movie in a potential trilogy that according to Johnson will "tell the full epic tale the way I originally envisioned".
My only real experience with V is the reboot starring Elizabeth Mitchell and a few bits and pieces of the original miniseries, but I do think this has the potential to be really good.
Kenneth Johnson himself?!! I'm already hooked and will set aside the money for a blu-ray release should it get to home video. The guy's amazing.
His 1983 original is a MASTERPIECE that needs proper blu-ray release. He also framed it to work in 16:9... The cast was eminently well chosen, playing a script that might be "slow" in today's standards, but the nuances are tight and the Visitors are chilling with an unstoppable appearance. Not until TNG's Borg would one get such a sense of "hopelessness".
V: The Final Battle upended his original vision; he had very little to do with it. It's still a fun miniseries that got its sense of suspense, danger, and thrill right, introduced new characters to show a greater sense of unease and tension between the resistance - never mind Julie being converted (which also led to a couple great scenes between Ham Tyler and Donovan), but also lacked the tighter plot cohesion the first miniseries had. So many plot holes, many of which are in part one that don't begin to withstand any scrutiny... but I can't deny, it was exciting to watch and that cliffhanger to part one was actually
worth all the plot holes. Then comes the magical star child, which is the cliché of all cop-out clichés... oh well!
I recall he wrote a follow-up book or two, which never got made. So, yeah, it will be fantastic to finally get to see it made, if it gets made, and - yeah - those who direct it and act it also remind me of the old adage involving how often lightning strikes. And if kept in the same
spirit as the original, which falls back on direction and actors involved to play it with the amount of needed gravitas - I'll return to that in a moment.
The 1984-5 TV show just felt rushed, lacked any real long-term focus and was made in such a way that the phrase "on the cheap" gets a new, pitiful dimension. Martin being killed off was the first huge mistake, despite its effectiveness. How they brought him back was pitiful and not just because "Hi, I'm the twin brother" cliché when, hello, they're aliens in body suits. (No worries, by the time the season ended and had it been renewed, Juliet Parrish would have been gone as well... in which case season 2 should have had a format change, involving actual peace and Donovan marrying Diana and making the ultimate rip-off of "Dynasty".) Explaining Elizabeth's powers was noble, but not convincing.
As for the 2009 remake? The premiere episode had... problems. It wants to look big but so much of it was nonsense. It's a shame IMDB closed its forums when I spelled it out back in the day. It made "The Final Battle" look like a coherent masterpiece by comparison. Bringing back the original actors to say "hi there" on screen was nothing more than pandering. I liked the use of motion control CGI sets, the 2009 reboot was something of a pioneer in a process that feels like an updated version of "scene-sync" - something many
Doctor Who fans from 1981 already know about, only instead of models it's CGI.
Oh, the 2009 remake did what the 1983 original did not do - it made direct allegations and references to actual people. The 1983 was content to show fascism without being heavyhanded or to any current/topical people or situations as such, it was fairly mature and kept it to the concepts. That and the Nazis, a 3.8 decades-dead power, was a perfect allegory to use given the fate of the processed humans. 2009's remake felt like a paper-thin topical allegory, which wasn't going to convince too many people outside of the writers' room. Or was arguably ironic,
for some, if it had...
And "Desilu" - the studio made by Lucille Ball and her husband. How can it be revived? How many people younger than 35 will recognize the name, much less bow to it? Why not revive "DuMont" and have all these properties show up for a zombie party? Then again, TV shows get rebooted all the time and characters are coming back as CGI and I grew to appreciate 2004's BSG and CGI Tarkin... hmm...
