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The Road Home review thread (contains spoilers)

Commentary also mentions changing the (?) center seat of the White Star, and adding more detail to the Shadow Vessels.
I'd be intrigued if they go into anymore detail on this (I don't have access to the commentary). I thought the Shadow vessels looked kinda crappy, and wasn't too into the weird tentacle monster / Lovecraftian mothership. Would have loved to have seen a classic battle crab rendered with more detail.

Still disappointed we didn't get an alternate reality where 'the hand' or 'the foot' are the big bad.
 
I'd be intrigued if they go into anymore detail on this (I don't have access to the commentary). I thought the Shadow vessels looked kinda crappy, and wasn't too into the weird tentacle monster / Lovecraftian mothership. Would have loved to have seen a classic battle crab rendered with more detail.

I really disliked the Shadow vessels in TRH. Why did it have writhing tentacles? JMS has said he mostly let the animation designers use their own creativity, and I'm all for not stifling creativity, but you don't mess with a classic design like the Shadow vessels. Same with the White Star.

From memory they don't talk about the designs too much in the commentary. JMS mentions letting them have creative agency on some things and they also talk about making sure they get the Starfury thruster firings right.

It also looked like they were using the wrong model/had changed the model for the Starfuries. I might be wrong, but the cockpit looks too large to me.

For balance I should say the station looked absolutely fantastic, honouring Ron Thornton's original design but adding more textures and small details.

Still disappointed we didn't get an alternate reality where 'the hand' or 'the foot' are the big bad.

Ironically, I think the weapons system on the Liandra might work in animation, it just looked ridiculous in live action.
 
For balance I should say the station looked absolutely fantastic, honouring Ron Thornton's original design but adding more textures and small details.

I thought the forward cargo stabilizers (the bit shot of by the centauri in "The fall of night") were too short, and the spine seemed to lack in details. But as a whole I really liked what they did with B5.

The white star as well. In fact, it think it looked better in TRH then in the series.

The shadows where a bad imitation. Not scary but goofy, cartoony if you'll excuse the pun. Not just the battle crab, but also the shadows themselves. Also, the shadows having shields did not work for me.

I have to wonder though, was everything done by one studio or were several studios involved? The scenes where earth got destroyed looked a lot different in style from the rest of TRH. Less detailed, less colour. And Earth did not look like Earth at all. If they'd said this was any other planet targeted by the Vorlons I would have believed it.

Despite my nagging, I did like the movie a lot though!
 
The shadows where a bad imitation. Not scary but goofy, cartoony if you'll excuse the pun. Not just the battle crab, but also the shadows themselves. Also, the shadows having shields did not work for me.
I was thinking about this. The cool thing about the Shadows in the show was that we only ever got fleeting glimpses at them. They controlled things from behind the scenes, playing off the major powers against each other. Having rampaging hordes of shadows with shields and lasers felt a bit too Starship Troopers for me. It takes away from their ominous nature.
 
What this highlights - to me at least - is the importance of the entire team behind a production. It's clear that those producing the visuals and sound had very little or no knowledge of the original show. . . . and as this was just another gig for them they didn't put the time in to research the material.

The same sort of thing happened in LoTR. Those producing the CGI received some 3D files from Netter Digital, so they could at least produce a recognisable Nial fighter (for example). But they didn’t know how big they were or what was the front end, as they'd never watched the original show, so you see them flying backwards overheard, and when parked on the ground they were around 30 times the size they should have been. This wasn’t the only example of that sort of thing.

In The Lost Tales the exact opposite happened. The guy in charge of the CGI WAS a fan of the show, so off his own back he brought in other fans who now worked in the business and between them they updated many of the ships like the Vorchan and added a Warlock to the dream sequence just because he always wanted to see one in action . . . . jms never asked for any of that stuff. Like the original teams of creatives (in the art department, make-up, special effects, etc) they went the extra mile.

So now in the Road Home you basically have many many things not sounding, looking or acting right (in an in-universe context), as the folks involved probably got some basic notes like the Shadows are based on insects and their ships are organic, and they took some guesses at how that should/could be shown. Aggressive insects tend to swarm so that made sense to them. The ships were organic so the tentacles would move.

Some experimenting and updating wouldn’t be unusual but there's just waaaayyyyy too many things different in this - and that's most likely down to the sound and visual folks not being given enough info to work with as jms isn't really interested in that side of things and tends to rely on those departments to come up with the goods themselves. . .

The big things are there Sheridan and Delenn and the Station, but a great deal of everything else is just off. Which - I'm guessing - is part of the reason why so many folks aren't connecting with it. That's just my opinion, obviously.
 
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What this highlights - to me at least - is the importance of the entire team behind a production. It's clear that those producing the visuals and sound had very little or no knowledge of the original show. . . . and as this was just another gig for them they didn't put the time in to research the material.

I guess that's always the danger when so much time has passed between when the original show ended and now, and not having many of the original people who developed the look of the show still around and involved (and by the way, in hindsight that In Memory, Still Bright list could and should have included more than just actors, but also Ron Thornton, John Iacovelli, Doug Netter, and others who were instrumental in creating the show). It reminds me of NASA having trouble building a new Moon rocket because the expertise that built the Saturn V just isn't around anymore.

I have a feeling that if there is to be more animation, it might be in the form of a series rather than movies, in which case I hope they get an art director who at least keeps things consistent and who has time to research this stuff.
In The Lost Tales the exact opposite happened. The guy in charge of the CGI WAS a fan of the show, so off his own back he brought in other fans who now worked in the business and between them they updated many of the ships like the Vorchan and added a Warlock to the dream sequence just because he always wanted to see one in action . . . . jms never asked for any of that stuff. Like the original teams of creatives (in the art department, make-up, special effects, etc) they went the extra mile.

Though brief, I still love that scene, just for showing what the special fx for B5 could have looked like with some 21st century polish over them.

The big things are there Sheridan and Delenn and the Station, but a great deal of everything else is just off. Which - I'm guessing - is part of the reason why so many folks aren't connecting with it. That's just my opinion, obviously.

I disagree with the statement "many folks aren't connecting with it". Regardless of whether we liked it or not, us hardcore fans will by nature nitpick it to death, but looking on social media it seems to me that, in general, the more casual fans who far outnumber the hardcore absolutely love it. I suspect that's the audience JMS and WB were really hoping to win over if they are to create an audience for a new continuation in animated form.

For what it's worth, it is still number 1 on Amazon UK for science fiction, though that is with the price for the blu-ray now down to £11.99.
 
I've finally watched it. I liked it, but I didn't love it. The shift in medium from live action to animation might have some part to do with it, but I do love animation as a medium, so it's not that I don't think it was a wrong approach or method. It left me wanting to see more of the inside of Babylon 5 itself than what we got. It was ultimately still an alternate realties story, and I'm still just not fond of them. The whole need to get Sheridan back to his normal reality and time or else all of existence will be destroyed is too comic bookish: it's a scale, a scope that has no weight; it doesn't feel like a genuine threat at all. I'm not against the love-will-save-the-day ending, but it was perhaps a bit syrupy, or at least felt told in a way felt like the moral-of-the-episode way cartoons I watched as a kid would conclude an episode. It kind of made me want to draw the conclusion myself rather than be told.

My favorite scene probably was the rim of existence between Sheridan and the Universe-as-G'Kar, though there was a moment where a line of dialog from Sheridan felt like he was responding to something unsaid, and it left me wondering if there was some kind of edit made late in the process; it was just a bit abrupt. I think that might be the one scene I most want to revisit in a rewatch.

The Shadows didn't feel threatening like they did in the show. They didn't have a vibe of elder beings of the galaxy, and instead just felt like any other generic sci-fi bug-analog alien. The animation of space battles felt like they lacked weight, which is kind of funny to say since they're in space, but I guess I mean that ships didn't feel under the influence of physics and inertia. I thought the animation of the character models were good though, especially for the specific animation style used.

As others have mentioned, there were some moments of "humor" that just did not work, like the self-destruct system or whatever talking back to Sheridan. The moment should have been the height of tension, and that "humor" severely undermined it. Some character encounters were too easily accepted or unquestioned. It makes no sense to me for G'Kar and Lyta to be in the self-destruct room, for example. Younger Sheridan getting Lyta to scan regular Sheridan works, but Sinclair accepting Sheridan while fighting Shadows does not--it's just sort of hand-waved acceptance rather than gained acceptance. So it makes me wonder if the scope of the story was to big for the limits of a single animated movie. Zathras became too much for me, especially the giant horde of him on the planet, but maybe that just gets chalked up to being more awkward humor.

I think the waiting for Earth's destruction scene felt unfinished or something. I know it's an alternate reality, but Londo and especially Ivanova in that scene just did not seem, didn't speak or behave like I would expect their characters to do in such a situation. I can't quite buy the two of them in the scene together in the first place. And I think a bit part of that is the nature of alternate reality stories in which you spend so little time in any one of the alternate realties. It leaves me unmoored and thus uncertain about how I should feel or what I should think about any of the alternate versions of characters. And I agree that Sheridan's experience in the story was mostly just him as observer, which the story heavily philosophically leans on, rather than as an active role in events. He's mostly just kind of there, not quite so much doing anything.

I enjoyed myself watching the film, but it doesn't feel like the second coming of Babylon 5 by any means. It did make me want to see more of Babylon 5 though, but think I'd need to have a much more strongly delineated break from the original than the let's-have-everyone-including-all-three-commanders-together alternate reality at the end would be.
 
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In the commentary JMS mentions Lyta and G'Kar being there, and he decides that "they were hiding" in the area and thus were nearby to help.
When I first saw the two of them in that scene and saw how friendly they were toward each other, how aware of one another's abilities they were, I thought they were a version of the characters post-original show from when they had gone off together to travel the galaxy, and that somehow they were now travelling through time too.
 
When I first saw the two of them in that scene and saw how friendly they were toward each other, how aware of one another's abilities they were, I thought they were a version of the characters post-original show from when they had gone off together to travel the galaxy, and that somehow they were now travelling through time too.
Maybe in that ficton they'd explored each other's...Pleasure Thresholds? ?
 
Maybe in that ficton they'd explored each other's...Pleasure Thresholds? ?
:unsure: If I heard the commentary correctly, as well as Lyta saying "Full P5" to Lennier, JMS said she was never augmented by the Vorlons, and is "still not with Psi Corps" (if I heard the commentary correctly).
Perhaps she is G'Kar's aide rather than Kosh's? No comment on PT. ?
 
:unsure: If I heard the commentary correctly, as well as Lyta saying "Full P5" to Lennier, JMS said she was never augmented by the Vorlons, and is "still not with Psi Corps" (if I heard the commentary correctly).
Perhaps she is G'Kar's aide rather than Kosh's? No comment on PT. ?
I think there is one of the alternate realities where Lyta is definitely still a P5; if I'm remembering correctly, in the scene where Lyta is trying to get Lennier to guess the cards, she says something about being P5 in her complaining. I don't get why she was doing that with Lennier and the cards though; I guess it was supposed to be a slight nod toward the main-universe cannon of Lennier having helped Lyta in the Telepath War? Anyway, that was the all-three-commanders-at-B5 reality. If Lyta in the Shadows-attack-B5 reality was a P5, then I cannot buy her being able to psychically explode a Shadow's head. The fact that she could telepathically do anything with the Shadows feels like another way the Shadows are weaker in the film than in the original show. In the series, telepaths could mess with Shadow ships because of the Shadows using living people in the ships' systems, not because the telepaths were doing anything to an actual Shadow.

Also, it's kind of odd that Kosh is not in any of this film.
 
HI EVERYBODY!!!!! Sooooooooooooooooooo many voices and soooooooo many opinions and I just love it. SOooooooooooooooo great to have something new to discuss. I wish we ALL loved it, but at least we're all talking about it. I personally LOVE that I can argue every single point of contention with two words "Alternate Universe." It is so fantastic because it can infuriate anyone. I mean the fact that the Salute Scene was not able to have re-created digital likenesses of characters that were in a scene taken directly from the show gives me the excuse to say that none of TRH took place in the original Universe...... at least in my mind. ?

But all kidding aside isn't it great to have something to discuss?! And won't it be great if we get more?! So many possibities have opened up. And I will admit that I think everyone has valid points and opinions. Yeah there is a lot of stuff I could see going differently AND I hope some things change if we get future installments, but I still really enjoyed it for what it is and I'm glad we have a good spark. ;)
 
I'm still coming to terms with how disappointing this was, but still kinda glad there is something new in the B5 universe. I hope it can lead to better things. I think one thing this has established is that JMS is less good at a one shot, and is better playing with a long form series.

I still feel like the ideal solution would be an animated series, based on where we leave off with The Road Home. But, sadly, that doesn't really fulfill the 'reboot' premise of a fresh start with major changes, but does allow JMS to play with the old toys again in a slightly augmented setting. Still not sure this if this is good or not.
 
I'm still coming to terms with how disappointing this was, but still kinda glad there is something new in the B5 universe. I hope it can lead to better things. I think one thing this has established is that JMS is less good at a one shot, and is better playing with a long form series.

I still feel like the ideal solution would be an animated series, based on where we leave off with The Road Home. But, sadly, that doesn't really fulfill the 'reboot' premise of a fresh start with major changes, but does allow JMS to play with the old toys again in a slightly augmented setting. Still not sure this if this is good or not.
I thought The Changeling was very well written. I know he didn't write the original, but adapted the story for the screen. But it was a one-off that really packed a punch, emotionally.

The Road Home was more of a story about the highlights along the way, and what the story could have looked like in various different scenarios. It just seems to scream out "reboot" to me. I have no idea how to get objective information on the sales, but what little I have heard sounds like respectable numbers.

I just wonder if anyone will put the money down to make it a reality.
 
I think one thing this has established is that JMS is less good at a one shot, and is better playing with a long form series.
I think that's a subjective opinion – I don't think it has established anything objectively.
 
I think that's a subjective opinion – I don't think it has established anything objectively.
All opinions are subjective. But there is a trend of 'movie' B5 being significantly less good than 'serialized B5'. Apart from In the Beginning, most of the TV movies are either passable or not very good. All IMHO, you mileage may vary, etc.
 
I think B5 should be left alone after seeing this. Nothing since the original series has been any good. This was just War Without End reboot with silly simplistic cop out ending. If ANYTHING they should tell stories left untold in the original such as the Telepath War. And of course no new Babylon 5 is complete without Bester! What were they thinking!
 
Random TRH Trivia (Re: Amazon Prime Video): Looks like they have added a few extra trivia entries since it became available. Originally only had one entry - "cannot mention Crusade stuff for legal reasons".
 
No Shadow War is certainly in interesting alternate for a reboot, but boy does it open a can o Big Worms. What happened to B4? Valen?? The Grey Council?? The Rangers? The Battle of the Line obviously didn’t happen. Did Sheridan get famous for killing the Dark Star or something else, he was nobody special otherwise – or was he? Is Delenn Satai? Did the Earth-Mimbari War happen? No IPX implies Earth didn’t wasn’t desperate for advanced technology after facing near extinction. Is Dukhat alive. Is Kosh around? Is he advising Dukhat? If B4 didn’t time loop did the Shadows win an overwhelming victory in the last Shadow War? Did the Old Ones leave after the war? Did the Vorlons? Did the Shadows? How did Garibaldi get his B5 job without Sinclair’s help? Is Santiago president? Alive? Who is the Centauri Emperor? They’re fighting back so Turhan is dead or out of power. Is Lord Refa the power behind the throne? If so, how without Lando/Shadow help?



Big, Big Worms.



Is G’Kar wondering “Whatever happened to Mrs Sheridan?” :)
 
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