10 Things We Want To See In Simon Kinberg's Battlestar Galactica Film

One film that this project could take inspiration from is Star Trek: First Contact. In that film, director Jonathan Frakes opted to have the large-scale Federation v Borg battle in the opening minutes. That allowed the audience to straight away get sucked into the action, while also allowing one of the major setpieces to appear up front, further allowing much of the rest of the film to be devoted to character development.

As this is Battlestar Galactica, we know that the colonies are going to be attacked. We know that most of humanity is going to be wiped out. It needs to be shown on the screen, not only for the narrative, but also to deliver that action packed punch to the gut.

However, the remainder of the film does not then need to be dedicated to building up toward an attack the audience knows is coming, with the outcome all but pre-decided. Get it done in the first act, then let the rest of the film deal with the aftermath.