I have a lot of feelings, and most of them are pretty negative, so here goes. 

Poor marketing decision

Anyone with half a brain and a television can tell you that capitalising on an existing fanbase is a great way to ensure a successful product. To create a product with an almost-guaranteed initial return rate is any businessman’s wet dream; like a falling star landing in your lap. It informs budget, cast, size of production, ability to go global, and the possibility for syndication/on-sale through peripheral merchandising. 

Let’s look at the Marvel Phenomenon (give it three more years, this will be it’s official name). A well-known and enduring comic series with a global fanbase. Headline cast. A great director in Jon Favreau, kicking off Iron Man. A 17-point plan. Simple stories told extremely well. - I’ll let you go jerk off to the Disney stock price stability and rise in the wake of this franchise.

By ignoring everything (characterisation, story arcs, established mythology) that has changed and shifted in the 20 years since the original film is not only bad story-telling, it’s irresponsible marketing. It’s a poor business decision. It goes against your mandate to your stock holders. Here we have a huge, global, invested, active, participatory fandom at the ready - begging and pleading to get their promised movie - and what happens? Let’s ignore everything they love and have stuck around for - everything that has created this fandom for the last 20 years. Yep. Sounds exactly like what Marvel did.

NOT. 

And speaking of the story…

Lazy story-telling 
I get it. It’s hard to think of your own thing. And when you do, it’s hard to know where to go next. So you let your little birdy fly, watch it stretch it’s wings, and then come back to ride it’s coattails 20 years later. 

Stargate (1994) was a fairly okay film. It wasn’t brilliant. It didn’t blow minds. It’s production was passable for it’s day. But what it did offer was an amazing premise. And when Emmerich was unwilling or unable to expand that vision, Wright and Glassner came on board three years later and spent the next 14 years and 3 series capitalising on a premise that gave incredible scope and possibility to what was otherwise a B-grade 90s film. To ignore the work they did is not only a bad marketing decision, it’s terrible story-telling. 

Simplifying the franchise - going back to a point in the story when only one Stargate was found and Jack O’Neill was an emotionally constipated depressive with suicidal tenancies - belittles and disrespects the amazing stories that have been told since. The huge amounts of primary and secondary characters are people we have come to know and love, and the vast amount of background and mythology has informed a science fiction generation. 

A quick search on ff.net will show you the following:

That’s how many stories explore these characters, my own included, of which I have written 40 for SG1. That’s how many variations this fandom has come up with, and that’s just one site! That’s not including AO3, livejournal, individual blogs, tumblr, etc etc etc. And further, that’s just people who have chosen writing as their medium, let alone artwork, poetry, cosplay, merchandise collection. 

Do you know how many stories on the same ff.net site focus on the original film?

Stargate (23)

I think that speaks for itself. Which leads me to my next important point…

Fandom alienation 
I’m not sure of the decisions that go on behind closed MGM doors. I can’t speak as to the hand-shakes and back-pats that get thrown around. And I don’t know how the financial situation really is. All I can do is analyse from the fan side of things, and this is what I see:

The fandom has been begging and pleading for a third franchise film (not including the original) since the announcement of Atlantis’ cancellation. Immediately the idea was thrown around that, given the way the show ended, that was a perfect way to make a film about both Atlantis and SG1 teaming up together - about ‘what next’. And then the GFC hit, and understandably MGM didn’t have two pennies to throw towards this franchise. We understood that. So instead we got a new incarnation in Universe - a show which divided the fandom as much as it expanded the franchise possibilities. (Full disclosure: I didn’t like it. But others did, and that’s fine) Universe also didn’t stand the test of time, was not finished properly, and by 2011 we had nothing. Again, this was the perfect time, we thought, for a movie! Combine all three! Wouldn’t that be great! Showrunners at the time thought much the same, but alas, that went nowhere too, and we were left bitterly disappointed. 

3 years later you, MGM, notice us. We’re still here, we’re still excited by this show, this premise, this universe. Conventions overflow with us fans - merchandise still sells and the stars still get Stargate related questions despite their extensive work since. You want to capitalise on our continued support, but you don’t want the job of continuing on the path you’ve created. You bring in “world-class creators of the original Stargate,” to “bring their reinvigorated vision of this wildly popular property to audiences of multiple generations.” (x) - you know what that sounds like to me? "Yeah, it’s great that you like our ideas, but we’re looking to draw in a new and different audience, because, well, we don’t really like the audience we’ve got" That’s what I hear when I read this. 

So we’re getting our movie. Only, it’s not our movie at all, is it? It’s the movie for the chum who never even saw the original, who probably wasn’t born when it came out, who saw an Independence Day rerun on television last month and is looking for something similar. The kid who prefers big explosions over allegories for racism, metaphors for ableism, similes for the debate between religion and science. A dumb audience will pay, you figure. A dumb audience won’t expect as much as the fanbase we created.

I’ll give you a minute to re-read the “Poor marketing decision” section now. 

So, to conclude, I’d like to congratulate MGM for making the single most ridiculous decision in the history of television and film production since the cancellation of Firefly. Yes, you heard me, you just beat FOX. Well done. 

And as for me, no, I will not go and see your film. I probably won’t even download it illegally. I will not write about it, I will not retweet news about it, I will not read reviews or like the facebook page. I will turn my head and talk to my friend while the ad plays at the beginning of a movie I will pay to see - I won’t watch the screen. I won’t take your consolation prize; you can wallow in your tears of failure for all I care.

^ This

“I see emptiness.” (Born to the Purple)
“I saw nothing.” (The Fall of Night)

OOOH INTERESTING

Londo’s ~inner emptiness~ is a theme that runs through his arc and is brought up again and again, but I’m not sure I ever directly related it to him “seeing nothing” during Kosh’s big reveal (I guess I just thought of that as another downside to the whole allying-yourself-with-evil-incarnate thing). But of course it makes total sense, because the image Kosh projects is about more than just appearing as a mythic/religious figure from whatever culture a person happens to be from. The point is to appear as something they personally trust and have faith in. This gets into G’Kar’s “what we percieve as god is the byproduct of our search for god” speech. What people see in Kosh is a reflection of what’s inside of them - the best part of themselves, the things they’re searching and hoping for. At this point in his life Londo doesn’t have faith or hope in anything, certainly not in himself, and he’s buried his own better angels so deep that it will take the next three years to excavate them. So maybe the Vorlon illusion doesn’t project properly to him because it just doesn’t have anything to work with. 

Which is pretty fucking depressing.

#BLAH BLAH BLAH LONDO LONDO LONDO #ilu you stupid bag of dicks #babylon 5

Remember the penis monster in “Doublemeat Palace”?  Remember the Flying Vulva Demon in “Last Gleaming”?  

This season on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy loses control of her ~pregnant~ body.

You guys, Buffy has a literal WANDERING WOMB.  This is what the Ancient Greeks warned us about.  Buffy’s gone HYSTERICAL.  

HER UTERUS IS IN FREEFALL.