Thoughts on the new animated movie Subject?
I have many!
Some context: outside of the original 5 year run, In the Beginning, and A Call to Arms/Crusade—I don’t think any of the other things JMS has tried to get going have worked (although I will always say that if you compare Crusade to the first 13 episodes of B5, Crusade is actually better [despite the music and studio interference]). Also, I’ve never been a fan of multiverse stories.
I LOVE the idea of the animated film, however. I think I understand the reason for the story which is that JMS has a shot to bring back all the characters but, story wise, it would be impossible to have them all in the same movie—particularly Londo. I also think it was studio mandated that he must have the Babylon 5 station as prominent component of the story (see: intellectual property and brand recognition).
Speculations: I also think JMS is tired of being asked the question “what would have happened if Sinclair stayed on Babylon 5” and will at least deal with that here. I bet over the years he’s had better ideas for the original series and wants to play with them.
Then there’s the reboot. I’m not against the idea since WAY back in the day I wanted Richard Hatch’s Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming pitch over what Ron D. Moore was pitching… so I have egg on my face over that. Reboots can be good.
Here’s what I think is the plan: we’ll get the B5 reboot BUT, if The Road Home does well, we’ll also get the B5AU as well that will exist in the original series continuity. WB’s DCAU has been awesome and has lived alongside the live action stuff for years and years. Why have only one project running when you can have 2 working concurrently?
JMS says that he wants to make more animated films if this does well and there’s big stories he can do. I can see the stories in the canon books being adapted (psi-corp trilogy, Centauri trilogy, technomage trilogy, To Dream in the City of Sorrows), get an ending to Crusade, the telepath war (hell, bring back Talia for this one!), the first Shadow War (which could be a sequel to TDitCoS and reveal the fate of Catherine Sakai), a movie about the origins of the Great Machine, the Drakh War which was mentioned by Delenn (assuming it isn’t part of Crusade), you name it.
Up to this point, JMS has been limited by budget on B5. The animated format allows him to bring back the surviving original cast in any time frame and to tell grand stories where budget isn’t a concern. The first movie is to test the waters with the entire cast and a familiar setting, I just hope JMS decides to use it to fill in the big questions he left dangling.