Richard Hatch - the only man to have survived two cylon genocides - has been talking about what he'd like to see from the proposed Battlestar Galactica movie... as well as what he thinks of this summer's other movies.
Talking to Moviehole, Hatch suggests that whoever ends up making the BSG movie reboot should take a page from JJ Abrams' playbook:
[They s]hould go further back like Star Trek [where it] was still the characters we love, but they went back twenty...thirty... years to when they were just kids. But with Battlestar, they're just going to go back to the same timeframe we saw in the series' and recast those roles. I don't think Star Trek would've been successful if they had recast the Star Trek characters at the same age as they were in the previous films. By going back, it gave that film a window so fans could expect a change of cast... I recently saw the original Battlestar movie on the IMAX screen, as part of the 25th anniversary convention, and let me tell you, it was born for the IMAX! Even with the bad matte paintings on the original, it still looked amazing on the big screen! If they did it today, a full-blown movie of Battlestar, I think it would be amazing... so long as whoever does it understands the characters, the heart & soul, and mythology of it. I just hope they really get it.
But that's not all that Hatch was talking about; as well as suggesting that Ron Moore's version of the franchise may continue past The Plan TV movie ("It's never the end if fans want more. It's a money game. If they realize people want more, believe me, they'll make more of them - they did it with Babylon 5, and a number of other sci-fi shows"), he also offered up his takes on a couple of this summer's sci-fi movies. For example, he didn't really dig Terminator Salvation:
If I was an actor of Christian Bale's calibre, would you not look at that script and say ‘there's something wrong here'? ...I don't understand why Bale wanted to play Connor. What they should've done is make the focus the John Connor character Or make the focus the John Connor character and the Marcus character. Why did Christian Bale do this movie!?
He had similar misgivings about X-Men Origins: Wolverine:The trailer looked great, but the movie just didn't work. When you get someone that gets the story, and the characters, of something it's rare. What's happening with these big franchises is that some very talented actors and writers are being hired but they mightn't be right for this particular story. Films are made for all the wrong reasons sometimes.
If you somehow don't end up with a cameo on the next version of Battlestar Galactica, Richard, you should look into movie criticism... The world could always do with some more bitter, disillusioned critics.
Hatch On Galactica Movie [Moviehole]
