Some of the things JMS was so proud of beforehand (e.g. the kickboxing weapons console) were some of the worst things about the show.
In what parallel universe was he "so proud" of this last-minute compromise with the budget gods? He may have tried to put the best face on things by calling it "different" or "original" before the movie aired, but that isn't the same as boasting about it.
Before the film was
shot he probably said a few very positive things about the weapons control system
that appeared in his script, which did not involve "kick-boxing", which was
never part of the original plan. But when it came time to build the thing it became clear that it would bust the budget, and neither Warner Bros. nor Sci-Fi would pony up the extra dough to make it happen. What ended up in the film was what JMS came up with looking around the soundstage, seeing a wire "flying rig" and asking, "Could we do it this way?" only days before the start of shooting.
Rangers suffered a lot more from a studio and network that were not on the same page and Sci-Fi's own indecision about what kind of show it wanted, not to mention a too-small budget and too-rushed schedule (especially the writing schedule) than is generally realized, in part because JMS never talks about it directly. (Before their final break he did much the same with TNT, putting the best possible "spin" on their notes and decisions, because he planned to work with those people in the future and wanted to be able to get along.)
Sci-Fi, unlike TNT, remains a logical contender for future
B5 TV projects, and Warner Bros. is obviously the studio that owns the show, so he has good reason to minimize any problems he may have had with either or both - but that doesn't mean there haven't
been any, or that
Rangers took the shape it did solely because that was his intention. I'm more inclined to cut him some slack on
Rangers which, despite its flaws, was a decent pilot (no worse than the first cut of
The Gathering from what I've heard, and better than the interminable
Voyager pilot which cost 10 times as much, was in development for over a year and had a longer shooting and post production schedule.) The show had some intriguing elements, and I was curious to see what he was going to do with the giant red-herring of "The Hand". I can't believe how many so-called JMS fans fell for this obvious bit of misdirection. (
"Another 'ancient race'? How boring!", "More powerful than the Shadows? That doesn't make any sense; this is going to
suck") You'd think the people who dismissed
Crusade as a live-action version of
Starblazers or who said that the plague story was a dead end because it couldn't be carried for five years and we already knew that life on Earth wasn't wiped out would have
remembered by the time
Rangers rolled around that JMS
also knew about
Starblazers and that
Crusade therefore wasn't
about curing the plague and was never intended to be from the beginning. Instead the plague story would lead to the
real story, just as Sinclair's missing 24 hours and the Minbari War led into the Shadow War and its aftermath, and "The Hand" would have led into whatever JMS
really had planned for a
Rangers series. (And the backstory of his own universe. Either we'd find out that the Hand were lying or we'd learn that Lorien, the Vorlons and the Shadows either lied or didn't know as much as everyone assumed they did.)
So frankly, my only worry is the director. Directors tend to be egomaniacs and control-freaks (back me up on this CE
) and in contemporary Hollywood culture they rule the film set and the editing process to an absurd degree. In TV the producer is king, in movies the director is. JMS is either going to have to direct the film himself (if Warner is willing to risk that kind of money on a first-time film director with exactly
one TV credit) or find someone who will make the film he wants to make, and sees the script as he does. This either means finding an established film director who shares his vision or selling WB on giving one of
B5's old TV director's a shot at the feature. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on the latter. A Mike Vejar would very much know and accept that
B5 is JMS's baby and he'd work to serve the script. Any "name" director would want to make
his (or
her) movie and would insist on total control and (if possible) final cut. After his
TG experience, I'd imagine that JMS either already has or is trying to lock up final cut for himself - and that's going to eliminate a lot of potential directors right there.
Regards,
Joe
