That's exactly my point about Starsky and Hutch — the movie was not written as a S/H film, it was written as a cop/buddy film for Wilson and Stiller, and then the whole S/H thing was just laid on top.

I agree that success seems to be tied to connecting appropriately with the prior material.

Andrew, those were all great examples. I was a fan of the Battlestar remake at one point, but the over-the-top cynicism and nihilistic attitude made me spite the characters to the point I quit watching. Plus the shock-and-awe storytelling is so hammy at times. To keep dumping your chracters into the emotional blender is more corny to me than to actually straight up remake the original, which at least made the case that humans deserved to survive. The opposite of that theme permeates the remake, which tries to beat into your head how awful a race we all are.

Starsky and Hutch suffered from Stiller and Wilson as much as it does from modern Hollywood sensibilities. Starsky was Stiller-ized and Hutch was Wilson-ized. They used the original series as a platform to do their usual Frat Pack star turns, the past be damned (at least it had Vince Vaughan and Jason Bateman). The movie did pretty poorly at the box office considered.

Still, Dukes of Hazard and Starsky and Hutch are near perfection compared to the abortion that is McG's Charlie's Angels.

I am not thrilled about the Friday the 13th reboot. Jason has been a parody for some time; this movie changes nothing or move the character forward. He's a mindless killing machine.

I also had problems with the inconsistent characters. Starbuck is a horrid, hated drunk, but then she's an inspiration when needed. Baby Adama is a total wuss, no wait he's a great warrior pilot, no wait he's a great commander (talk about nepotism), no wait he's a peacenik, no wait he's a top commando.

One of the moments that troubled me the most was when they decided they couldn't kill all the cylons because that would be genocide. They're machines, morons. That, to me, demonstrated a real disingenuousness in the show's philosophy.

Then I started having problems with the lack of payoffs as well. They were good at introducing neat ideas, they just never took them beyond the intro. For example, the cylons are made out as good guys and they have religion. The humans are basically evil, and atheist. Was this headed for some interesting statement on religion? Nope, they just moved on. Baltar goes from narcissistic j*rk to messiah setting up a clash between his cult and the government. That's just dropped too. Five main characters discover they're cylons, will this affect their behavior? Don't know, we moved on.