#Adama

[frakyeahbattlestargalactica]

[jessoterica]

commission

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Battlestar Galactica movie poster art by John Solie (1978)

[missmysme]

Everyone's obsessing over Moo Deng, but where's the love for Adama?

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

For my fellow BSGeeks!

[nightandflesh]

Can we talk about the tragedy of Gaius Baltar?

[kikimaymay]

I'm sorry, I forgot about Adama's mustache phase???

[bonusdragons]

November 11, 2024:

Purple Primary, Tundra, Alloy.

Adama of Turian's clan!

[lasaraconor]

[beccadowski]

i know its been 20 years but what if i cosplay adama at sdcc?

i wanna be a cunty little genderbent adama making men mad that a fat little lesbian is adama. maybe even wear fishnets

[thedawner]

Waist-up comm from a while back!

[sunshinekryze]

[freddies-tasche]

Min Shuei: the stars are beautiful aren't they?

Adama: You know what's really beautiful?

Min Shuei: *blushes*

Adama: MY NEWLY SHARPENED SWORD. LOOK AT IT IT'S SO COOL I LOVE IT SO MUCH, I COULD CARVE A MONARCH IN HALF WITH THIS EDGE....(etc)

[silveragelovechild]

Battlestar Galactica magazine cover art

[frakyeahbattlestargalactica]

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

The Battlestar Galactica (2003) Movie is the Perfect Reboot

Rebooting a property is extremely difficult. It's a balancing act between bringing back old iconography and creating new ideas and characters, and in no two instances is it the same.

Battlestar Galactica is the perfect reboot for a number of reasons. First, the characters.

There is not a single weak performance on the cast (in the movie). From legacy characters like Adama, Apollo, Starbuck and Tigh to new characters like the President and her aid and the flight deck crew to the fucking background characters, everyone is on their A-game for the entire three-hour movie, and their A-game is amazing. Relationships form and develop in believable ways between believable characters (we'll get to that). But no one outshines Gaius Baltar.

Of the changes to the series, Baltar is the most drastic. The original version of the character was cartoonishly evil - he sold out the Twelve Colonies of Kobol to the Cylons because he was told he'd rule his homeworld, Caprica (I think). The new version is a guy who was in an emotionally manipulative relationship with a Cylon (he didn't know it at the time) and got played. He feels awful for what he did, and the knowledge that all of this is his fault weighs on him heavily, not helped by the fact that is abuser has implanted herself in her brain and spends the back half of the movie tormenting him.

Second, the character dynamics.

There are a bunch of really interesting dynamics that form between characters, both pre-existing (i.e., they exist before the world starts ending) and that form as a result of the plot. Apollo and Adama's strained relationship over the death of Apollo's brother (Adama's son), Zak, which is on the mend by the end of the movie, Tigh and Starbuck fucking despising each other, the romance between Tyrol and Boomer - these do a great job of implying history between characters, while relationships like Apollo and the President becoming friends Billy and Dualla's spark (which is paid off brilliantly) act as story threads to follow.

Third, the story.

The Cylon attacks on the Twelve Colonies is played as the end of the human race, and there's a tension over the three-hour runtime around this fact (which is the next point on this review). It's the worst-case scenario, and it keeps devolving as characters react to the Cylon's genocide of the human race. The characters are all attempting to react as best they can to the unthinkable, and every time they've managed to adapt, it gets worse and they have to adapt again - first, the Cylons attack, then they find out that the Colonies have been obliterated and humanity all but destroyed, then the government is gone, then Galactica is the only Battlestar left, and it becomes clear that central focus of the story isn't how badass the Colonial Military is, but the indomitable nature of the human soul, as characters like Adama and the President refuse to stop doing what they can to save what's left of mankind.

Finally, the tension.

From the moment the ambassador is killed by Cylons at the end of the movie to the final conversation between Adama and the President, the movie is cloaked in tension. At first, it's the dramatic irony of the destruction of the colonies, then the situation deteriorating, then a number of heart-rending decisions made by characters where they have to make the survival of the human race a numbers game, then the human forces being trapped inside an ion storm which is surrounded by a Cylon fleet, then the final battle between the Galactica and the Cylon forces to buy time for the rest of mankind to escape, then the aforementioned confrontation between Adama and the President, where she reveals that, in this universe, Earth is a myth and Adama has given everyone false hope.

Sure, there are moments of relief from that tension, most notably when the remaining humans have regrouped in the ion storm, the movie's one joke (Adama looking over Billy and Dualla and echoing a sentiment expressed by the President that the priority of the human race is repopulation, causing an incredulous Apollo to ask if "that's an order", which got a real laugh out of me) and Adama's "So say we all" speech.

So yeah, it was a combination of the characters and the relationships between them and the plot and sense of tension that made Battlestar Galactica (2003) the Perfect Reboot.

So say we all.