Babylon 5: The Road Home

I was a little apprehensive when I heard the big announcement that it was an animated feature, turns out I needent have worried.

So many franchises are barely recognisable to their original fans. Whether thats for better or worse depends which side of the argument you are on.

But with Straczynski keeping the helm steady, B5 managed to make the jump from live action to animation and still feel like authentic B5, along with providing us an entertaining and enjoyable standalone story as well as a secret door option for a reboot/continuation, without undoing or ruining what came before.

Seeing so many beloved characters back in the screen was heart warming. Knowing exactly how many have been recast because the the actors/actresses died young is heart breaking.

But seeing everyone go around one more time was a genuine treat.

A welcome return to B5 for fans, but confusing for newcomers. A bit like an indy band getting back together to do a remix of fan favorites as a teaser for their new album.

The story was classic B5 epic stuff, but found time for some character moments and other stuff fans dig about the franchise. Most of the humor worked, though one Zathras remark felt a bit meta and probably could've been saved for the DVD extras.

The look of the uniforms, environments, etc. Was faithful to that of the original series and its spinoffs. The B5 station, ships, planetary surfaces, etc. Were a solid compromise of the series' CGI and the movie's animated style. Obviously, the animated approach allowed the movie to give the visuals a scale the original TV series couldn't.

It was of course great to hear the voices of Boxleitner et al again, and if I hadn't known better, I'd have thought they used archived audio clips from previous B5 projects for the voices of Franklin, G'Kar, Delenn, Garibaldi, etc.

Like most franchises, B5 has had its ups and downs. The Road Home is a vast improvement over Legend of the Rangers and Lost Tales. Whether the rumored reboot TV series is animated or live action, The Road Home is a fine place to restart.

The history is not bad, and is fun to revisit so many beloved personages.

But the people designing the faces of the personages need to be fired/send to primary school.

I have seen very low budget/amateur films that do way better.

Pity, the rest is not bad - for a not big effort in animation - today you see way, way better, even in medium budget/amateur films.

All in all, the personages get decent-ish dialogues, the story don't broke the lore - you see that so many times these days - and is a pleasure to revisit Babylon 5.

Hope in the future there is more, but please, with more professional animators.

Watching this took me right back to the 1990s when I started Babylon 5. The characters were fairly accurate, with Zathras getting a lot of scene time with Sheridan, which was nice. Some scenes were quite funny as well, with really dark moments to balance it out. I just wish there was more Londo, as he was only in a few scenes. The voice acting was very good, with Delenn being very well done by Rebecca Riedy. The storyline covered many memorable moments from the original show, and added some more information to events only depicted lightly previously. The animation was ok, but could have been more accurate on a few of the characters, and poor Marcus Cole barely got any screen time.

It is absolutely great to see B5 return after so many years; a feat very few franchises are able to pull of after decades ... and with so many of the original cast still able to participate in the project none the less. Unfortunately, quite a number of the original cast have "passed beyond the galactic rim" in real life and leave a bit of a sore wound in their place.

Pacing seems to be all over the place for the movie's 75 minute runtime. Many of the scenes feel rushed and then - occasionally - things get overtly leisure for a while for no obvious reason before again getting all hurry-up-galore. I will need to have a rewatch to figure out if there is a deeper meaning for this, but on my first watch... it just felt misplaced. And talking of misplaced ... I remember the original B5 series having a great sense of humor with gags and jibs that "worked" in context. In "The Road Home", for the most part, stuff felt so out of place.

Now with all that having been said, I still feel like this does deserve a 7/10 rating. I may be rating somewhat high due to the amount of nostalgia, but ... that's just the same gut feeling, which guides most of my ratings.