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How do!

So we’ve threads about sequels you’d like to see. And many threads about remakes/reboots.

This thread kind of falls between the two. Think Star Wars, when George Lucas went back and applied some spit and polish using more modern tech.

Sure, that didn’t meet universal appeal. Some bits are really cool (CGI windows on Cloud City are amazing) some bits? Polar opposite. But as a technique, it has potential to polish older series.

My shout? 100% Babylon 5. Now, this was always a story driven show. I’m not suggesting any CGI jiggery-pokery for the main scenes. But man, the CGI has not aged well, at all. Even for its era the CGI stood out, not being a blend of model work and composite and that.

Here, I basically want a re-skinning and re-rendering. The actual physics and manoeuvres on screen should be left the heck alone. Just.....spruce it up a bit. Think mode Resident Evil’s GameCube remaster, rather than reshooting it all from the top.

But ‘just a spit and polish’ is only used as an example here. You may have an example in mind where it’s now known a scene or movie just didn’t turn out as the director/writer intended, and have a fix in mind.

There is but one rule. No Star Wars. At all. Don’t care what you think of any given film or what have you. Multiple other threads to sound off on about those!

Jaws. the film is top notch, the acting amazing, the shark however.... looks horriable. go back and replace the shark with a CGI one.

I came in here to say Babylon 5. I was a fan of the effects back in the day, and don’t really need photorealism, but when they converted the show, WB used a crappy format that blurred the effects scenes, and then chopped about a third of the screen off of every space battle to match the ridiculous widescreen fad. Wouldn’t you like to have 50% more space battle, as jms intended?


PS: CGI shark in Jaws? Shame on you. That shark needs to look fake for the sake of the audience. Can you imagine how upset animal rights people would be if they thought the studio was forcing Robert Shaw into a real shark?

Some of my favorite 90s shows could do with a facelift. Buffy and DS9 in particular would be my top two choices. Modern FX would do the Dominion War a good deal of justice. I think that show has aged better than Babylon 5, but still looks pretty dated.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I came in here to say Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 could be pretty spiffy if we took all of its poorly aged CGI and updated it.

I think I'd like to see a special edition of a lot of video games. Imagine Ocarina of Time (which has been remade multiple times tbf) with the graphics of Breath of the Wild. That would be sick. I'd also love to see full overhauls (FF VII style) of lots of old RPGs that still have great stories today. A remastered version of KotOR I and II would be pretty spiffy. The only big weakness of either game was the gakky D20 engine they used.

I suspected B5 might be a popular choice.

When it comes to space battles, it was and still is The Mammaries.

But the CGI was, well, a bit pants to start with. Yes they did amazing things with it. And I suspect had they gone with slightly more expensive graphics at the time, such sheer kick assery may not have been affordable.

Hence it needs and I’d argue outright deserves a revisit. Simply take the original scenes, and tart up the ships and firepower. If needs be, recreate them, but strictly shot for shot.

Don’t add more ships. Don’t add more dakka. Just.....make the visuals better. No more, no less. Much as I love my Star Wars fighters, B5’s fighter scenes are just better. Teeny tiny bursts of gas. Weapons aimed ahead of the foe, so they fly into them. Just....perfect. Apart from the visuals.

As for Jaws? I’m down for a similar spit and polish. No need to re-shoot scenes. CGI is now at the point where it can be seamlessly blended into existing footage. Even if it’s just the smallest of tidy ups, I’m game for it.

There are good reasons for going the extra mile with an old work, but usually its best to just leave it be and recognise it for the time it was made.

Babylon 5 and Jaws are landmarks in vfx and should be left alone.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released unfinished and deserved a second chance. The 70's BSG over-used stock footage from the pilot is a good candidate for replacement footage for the sake of the story.

It came from beneath the Sea, Earth vs The Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth were shot with colour cameras but released in B&W, so colourization was a good move.

The SW Special Editions were the cuts George wanted, but by denying the original cuts he was denying two films preserved for historical and cultural significance.

I’m not sure B5 was a landmark in CGI, other than the medium being not quite right for a long run series with a limited budget?

In all other senses? Things staying done, consequences thereof, and a well planned story (up to the end of season 4, not for bad reason) absolutely yes.

The DVD’s of Babylon 5 do not have the original effects in their entirety. That is what I would like to see restored. The spacebattles not only look better on my old VHS tales, but include a ton of action that never made it to the DVD . That warrants a special, restored edition.

How about a The Last Airbender Special Edition. One that doesn't suck ass?

BrianDavion wrote:
Jaws. the film is top notch, the acting amazing, the shark however.... looks horriable. go back and replace the shark with a CGI one.

I'd actually argue against that, simply because you don't see the shark enough in the film really. The terror is more about it being lurking out in the darkness of the sea, etc. Also with the gak job they did on The Meg, etc...I don't imagine you'd end up with a much better shark.

Early observation - other than Jaws (which I get as a ‘spit and polish’ job), we’re yet to have a nomination for something famed for its practical effects?

Seriously, just an observation and not a conclusion. The thread is but young!

They should make a special Edition of the Thing, but replace the grizzled horrors with CGI. The special effects can stay practical.

Okay, I just want to see Timothy Chalomet (sp?) get his arms munched by Robert Pattinson’s torso-mouth.

A good show whose effects have aged poorly and could do with a facelift for them? Easy.

Kolchack: The Night Stalker.

Nope. Uh Uh. No thanks.

I'm totally ok with 'Director's Cuts' using original, previously cut footage. I'm ok with remastering and touching things up so that they look better on HD screens.

But adding new effects in? If both Lucas (Star Wars special editions) and Spielberg (ET) failed to do it in a way that didn't look rubbish, I see little hope of anyone else being able to actually pull it off. I would much rather stick with dated-looking practical effects than have them replaced with cartoony-cgi.


I'd make a possible exception for Babylon 5, where the effects were are least CGI to begin with, and looked dated even when the show was released. Going back and re-rendering it with updated CGI would go a long way towards making the space-based parts of the show less cringy.

For that matter, if Lucasfilm wanted to go back into the Special Editions and fix those additions of George's that didn't work right, I'd be happy to revise my opinion of the concept overall.

Yeah, same, don't want or need this. With Star Wars, it was a gimmick that detracted from the films. Films especially are a creation of their limitations- one of the reasons the original is good- it took real effort, whereas the prequels and sequels were comfy chair creations- no risks, no effort, the bulk of work done on computer.

Especially unwilling to have it done by other people, who don't necessarily grasp, understand or even like the original vision.

Hollywood and assorted industries really need to focus on making new things, not just redoing the same old things. They especially don't need to start routinely mutilating old work that already stands on its own.

This may be heresy, but I'll throw in The Last Starfighter. Yes, yes, it was groundbreaking to have CGI in a movie at all back then, and it has a special place in movie history for that fact, but I wonder just how amazing you could make it look with today's technology. I've been thinking about that for years actually.

I'll go one further and suggest that The Last Starfighter would actually be a good candidate for a remake. While it's a bit of a classic, the idea of using a computer game to find someone capable of piloting a spaceship is a little more believable with modern computer games than it was in the '80s...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m not sure B5 was a landmark in CGI, other than the medium being not quite right for a long run series with a limited budget?

It was the first television show to extensively use CGI on that scale, as the vfx was done inhouse rather than externally.

This was possible at the time due to the Amiga home computer and the Lightwave 3D animation software, which dramatically bought costs down and changed the way vfx was used for television shows to come - most notably the later BSG series, Andromeda and even its rival at the time, Deep Space Nine, which eventually switched from physical models to CGI in later seasons.

Put it this way; as The Abyss, T2 and Jurassic Park had changed the way vfx was made for the big screen, Sea Quest DSV, Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine had done the same for the small screen. Babylon 5 is pretty much comparable to T2 in that they look basic now but at the time they were the first projects to implement a solid cgi pipeline that was sustainable and provide the model for the rest to follow.

Tron. With a retroactively-inserted Daft Punk soundtrack while you're at it.

The neolithic cgi in Alien3.

On that note, make liquid Robert Patrick move just a leetle bit more organically in T2.

Dub over Sofia Coppola's dialogue in The Godfather part 3.

Every film shot for 3D where the director takes time to make sure things slowly 'fly out of the screen', for your delectation.

Tremors, but only that split second where Bert Gummer is superimposed against a hand puppet.

 Elbows wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Jaws. the film is top notch, the acting amazing, the shark however.... looks horriable. go back and replace the shark with a CGI one.

I'd actually argue against that, simply because you don't see the shark enough in the film really. The terror is more about it being lurking out in the darkness of the sea, etc. Also with the gak job they did on The Meg, etc...I don't imagine you'd end up with a much better shark.

ohh for sure, in fact we seldom saw the shark because the animatronic shark was problematic. keep in mind I'm not saying "totally add in the shark" just replace the animatronic shark we do see.For the record I'd actually oppose a rebooted Jaws in part because we'd see too much CGI shark.

Also because while I enjoy the movie the story advances a discredited scientific theory of the "rogue shark" and enchouraged fear of white sharks that saw their population numbers hammered, even peter benchly has said he'd not have written jaws if he knew then what he did now.

BrianDavion wrote:

ohh for sure, in fact we seldom saw the shark because the animatronic shark was problematic.

That was part of it. Although it was also from a time when the guys making this sort of movie understood that not seeing the monster was often more frightening than seeing it.

Alien - the split second jump cut between rubber puppet Ash's head and Ian Holm poking his head through a table ash's head. Doesn't even need CGI. Just cut away to something else for a fraction of a second. The cut just doesn't quite work.

Everything else in the movie is just fine as-is.

We got a Jaws reboot though. It was called The Meg.

I'll see myself out...

ST:TOS made great use of ch spit polish, and I'd love to see it used on TNG. Mainly to make the D less hideous.


Oh, and a Krull special edition that simply has the addition of Colwyn's hand picking the Glaive up from that field they were all laying in at the end.

I know star wars is off limits, but I actually think a little spruce up of the prequel trilogy would be nice around now, a slight retexture of the battle droids to make them look a little less plastic would be great, the same for the clone troopers in episode 2.

LoTR's as well would benefit hugely from a tidy up in parts, specifically the CGI which is still for the most part lovely but just slight moments have not aged well, the cave troll in fellowship is one prime example for me.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I know star wars is off limits, but I actually think a little spruce up of the prequel trilogy would be nice around now, a slight retexture of the battle droids to make them look a little less plastic would be great, the same for the clone troopers in episode 2.

Given they reused footage from Ep2 in Rebels... yeah, the CGI could probably use some polish. Alternatively, I'd be okay with seeing the films animated in the Clone Wars style...

I'd be curious to see an extended Ep9 and the fabled Snyder cut as well. I'm not convinced I'd like either film necessarily, but I'd like to see them.

As cool as he was, I think they need to replace every appearence of Swiftwind, from She Ra, with Doctor Lollipop. Sadly, I cannot see this happening within our lifetime...

The original version of Rogue One would be awesome - but no Disney owned franchise will get that kind of thing.

 Elbows wrote:
The original version of Rogue One would be awesome - but no Disney owned franchise will get that kind of thing.

I have not gotten the impression Rogue One really lost any bite in its reworking. What do you think was missing?