I chose, after gathering (original), to watch LOTR. The acting was...varied, and I felt embarassed by the gunner's beserker rage. But otherwise it showed promise.
You should read some of KoshN's comments on LOTR sometime
Speak of the Devil.... :devil:
In the following, TRoS = The River of Souls (a B5 movie), and TLaDiS = To Live and Die in Starlight (the B5:LotR pilot). The comments are aimed at viewers who have already seen TLaDiS, and will therefore recognize what I am pointing out.
IMDb user comments for Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight
on Page 2...
On the Whole, Disappointing, But Could Have Been Corrected In A Series., 26 May 2002
2 out of 10 stars
Author: KoshNaranek from PA, United States
I thought the movie should have SHOWN The Hand and their ships, say in flashbacks at the archeological site, maybe via newly discovered data crystals (like discovered hours ago, otherwise they could have viewed them on Minbar), or archeological carvings to be translated by say MAX EILERSON. After all, Max is probably working with IPX in 2265. It wouldn't be any stretch at all to see him on such an important dig. We should have SEEN "something" of The Hand, not just their cronies. We should have SEEN the archeological site. We should have SEEN remains of the probe that returned through the portal. Because we didn't SEE any of this, The Hand lack credibility of threat. Sure the dirty snowflake ship cronies were powerful, but they could be making all this stuff up. They could be doing it to sound like they have these big, bada** allies, but they could be lying. Without SEEING The Hand, it's like a buildup to nothing, a whimper not a BANG.
More Ranger ships should have been involved in the mission. They should have gotten at least a detailed Whitestar CGI model done to use on the mission, to make a stronger firefight and establish a level of enemy ship force that we could measure against the B5 universe ships, and to establish stronger visual ties to the "B5 Universe" with which we're familiar. That would have helped tremendously, lending much needed familiarity, and sense of scale. The three featured ships were all previously unknown, never seen before in the "B5 Universe." We don't know how powerful the enemy ships are, because we don't know how powerful the Valen and Liandra are. There was no known benchmark. Were it not for the Minbari, Narn, and Drazi characters we saw, and the couple Nial fighters (flying backwards) and Whitestars, and B5 that we very briefly saw, it was almost as if the characters were in a different universe, on a different show that had no connection to the B5 universe.
As it was, the movie reminded me of cotton candy, looks big, but there is a lot of air in there. Not much richness/complexity (thread density). Strangely, this is how I felt about Crusade episodes **when I first saw them** (in TNT's order), but Crusade had a lot more visual cues from the B5 universe. "To Live and Die in Starlight," didn't have nearly as many connections to the B5 universe. It was like the council we saw in the movie. A lot of people, myself included, thought it was the Gray Council. In all of B5, we'd only ever seen one Minbari council like that, and it was the Gray Council, so it was a natural assumption, and it was wrong. The question is, why try to fake out and confuse the audience?
The weapons pod sequences were BAD. When the movie gets to the minefield destroying scene, I have to leave the room. The thing is that such vigorous, large movements would seem to be inefficient, tiring and unnecessary, and when used in the scene, seem to be WAY, WAY over the top.
Why not point at a target with a finger, select weapons (assuming that there's more than one type of weapon available) and fire from a holographic console (like the console Dulann used just before he heard from the ghosts)?
And who says the weapons officer even has to be shown doing her thing, anyway? This is not like some strange thing we've never seen before. Ships fire, and things get destroyed. Did we see the weapons officer at work every time we saw the Excalibur firing in Crusade? No, and it's a good thing we didn't. When we did see the weapons officer, it was a weaker, more cumbersome scene. Show of hands: How many thought the Excalibur's targeting system was slow and unwieldy? I did! The problem is that an efficient system of firing (e.g. a joystick/videogame type of system) looks trite, because we're used to seeing it/using it, and associate it with "toys/videogames".
I say, leave targeting systems a mystery. If you try to explain it, you risk fumbling the whole concept, and making it look cumbersome, like they'd never be able to respond fast enough in a real battle. If you are going to show the details of the weapons firing and targeting systems in action, make sure it looks like it would be workable in a real battle.
Anybody remember the two motorized chair people in the Whitestar (in B5)? Whatever happened to them? Instead, we got Lennier and Marcus waving their hands over crystals and pushing a button. The latter worked much better. They left "how it worked" as a mystery.
Regarding the acting, I thought most of it was fine, except that Sarah Cantrell got stuck with some painfully bad lines. Of the new characters, I thought the standouts were Dylan Neal as Capt. David Martel, Alex Zahara as Dulann, Jennie Rebecca Hogan as Na'Feel, and Enid-Raye Adams as Firell. The last three, especially, appeared that they'd be playing these characters for a lot longer than one 90 minute movie.
The movie REALLY SUFFERED from lack of recognizable Babylon 5 universe CGI (the 5 years worth of CGI that "got lost").
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And more recently (from rastb5m)...
It (TLaDiS) had quite a bit of clunky dialogue, the Ranger hierarchy acting
idiotic (We do not retreat from combat for *any* reason. BS!), and
exposition (slowly and deliberately connecting the dots for IQ-impaired
viewers). The only saving graces were Dulann, Nafeel, Firell and David
(when he wasn't shoveling exposition).
G'Kar seemed to be mostly relegated to delivering tease bits of
info, with no follow-up (datacrystal re. the archaeological site without
showing any real detail of the site or the returned probe, advice re. B5
without showing the station interior at all, etc.) or comedic bits
(Malcolm's discomfort over impersonating him, banter with the other
delegates, etc.). Felt weird seeing G'Kar in such a peripheral role.
While, it's probably "possible" to concoct a contorted path from
"Objects at Rest" to "To Live and Die in Starlight," I'm not sure what
would cause the Ranger Council to act like pompous idiots (removing
"retreat" from their list of allowable actions in battle.) Remember
what Sheridan said about not letting the Shadow Battlecrab know that the
Whitestar was jump-capable in "Messages from Earth" ? Same idea.
Removing "retreat" from the list of allowable actions you can take, is
removing one of the weapons from your arsenal, it makes you more
predictable, and puts you at a disadvantage. It's also wasteful of
resources (lives and equipment). That's a bad thing in battle. Makes
no sense to adopt a such a never-to-be-broken rule.
The River of Souls had a very good B5 universe feel to it. Hell, so
did Crusade.
TLaDiS just plain *didn't*. The latter suffered horribly
from the lost CGI, lost B5 sets (less of a connection to the B5
universe), and the TLaDiS music didn't feel right either. Personally, I
have much less of a problem with 99% of the Crusade music. TRoS looked
to me like it had at least twice the budget of TLaDiS.
