I didn't catch the (new) TV series, although I remember enjoying the old chapter serials as a lad.
The 80s film had it all - dramatic OTT music, campy sets and costumes, cheesy one-liners and Brian Blessed.
Going to be hard to beat that! 
You really don't want to. It's awful from what I have seen of it.
The
Buster Crabb serial in black ansd white is the best by far.
It would be hard to imagine another
Flash Gordn film done unlike the eighties version with the song
Queen wrote for it and it's memorable use of colour.
Ah....... those water tank effects, for want of a better term.
Just add some food colouring to a fish tank filled with water ( Removee the fish first.) to geta idea of what I mean. Actaulley add different colours, like reds, blues, purples, greens and film it to reproduce that ose fluid gas cloud effects.
Very hard to go past
Sam -Whats his name?- for
Flash himself,
Max Synder for
Ming and that well known english actor for the leader of the
Hawk-men and that one time
James Bond "No Queen [music]. It is not camp in any way. We're going back to the original Alex Raymond [comic strip] scripts and imagining if he were living today, what would those strips be like?"
without prejudging this, that is the most stupid statement ive read in a long time - if Alx Raymond was creating the strip now it wouldnt be even 1% of the Flash Gordon he created then -The things that make Flash Gordon unique (and cool) are not things you'd contemplate puting in a "modern" story - the derring do, the damsels, the animal men, the naive science and the cruel dictatorship of Ming are all firmly products of their times. I'm happy to be corrected on this, but updating Flash Gordon seems to me would require excising just about the entire thing and replacing it with something you may as well call your own.
I think I know what you mean.....
As for remaking it, I definitly think it can be imrpoved, but if only they they stick to retro scifi appeal of the original comic. As long as they don't sugar coat it as well.
The planets and moons that weren't really planets but oddly shaped landscapes comprising the different kingdoms and territories.
I imagine that they did this perfectly in films like
Neverending Story and
Avatar.
Something had to be done about the lizarrd man costumes from the eigties version. Were they mean to look that bad? Because, they were just awful. Get rid of those, replace them.
