I make no apologies for my love of the original V miniseries. Sure, looking back as an adult the Nazi metaphors that I thought were so mind-blowing as a kid seem to be so ham-handed that nobody who keeps kosher should go near them, but the rest of the show still works (as long as you’re willing to forgive all of the 80s on display). The miniseries was really ahead of its time, and a similar show done now, even on the SciFi Channel, would blow us all away.
But forget the SciFi Channel. How about as a movie? Original V creator Kenneth Johnson has been working to get V into theaters, and El Mayimbe has gotten his hands not only on the script for the film but also its intended sequel, V: The 2nd Generation. And it sounds like the first film is… exactly like the miniseries. Reading over El Mayimbe’s review I couldn’t actually figure out what might be different, except that maybe Julie is younger and there seem to be fewer characters (which would help make the four hour miniseries fit into the 145 page script El Mayimbe has) – and that we see the alien species that is the natural enemy of The Visitors at the end. I’m not complaining here, as I think that the original needs only a slight update to be great in the modern day, and this wouldn’t be the first remake to hew closely to the original.
What it really seems like is that Johnson intends the first film to be a set up for his sequel, which is not the same as the V: The Final Battle miniseries. Johnson’s original sequel idea has been published as V: The Second Generation, and El Mayimbe’s review has reminded me to order that from Amazon.