Babylon 5: The Road Home

Overall, _The Road Home_ isn't a bad movie, per se. But it really is just for the fans, relying more on nostalgia for situations from the series than its own merits.

First, the good:

* The voice performances are excellent. Several of the original actors returned to voice their characters, and all of them fell right back into character as if they'd never left. The replacement voice actors for the (sadly) large number of actors who have passed since the show ended do pretty good at imitating the distinct voices of their characters, especially the actors voicing G'Kar, Zathras, and Delenn; while a fan can tell that they're not the original actors, they still convey the expected tone of the characters, and honor the original actors in the process.

* The effects animation, backgrounds, and ship designs are outstanding. Thanks to the advances in technology over the past 25 years, ships look even better here than they did originally. The additional detail on the Shadow ships is especially nice.

Aaaand...the not so good:

* Character design is ATROCIOUS. Most of the characters look almost nothing like their live-action counterparts. The only characters that are instantly identifiable visually are Lyta, Delenn, and Londo, and that's primarily due to the unique look of their hair and costuming, not any facial resemblance. The humans in particular look horrible, with Lochley and Ivanova being easily confused for one another until they speak, and Sinclair identifiable only by context and/or dialogue. Londo looks positively demonic. The designs for the Narns are horrible, barely even resembling Narns at all. It could be passable if there was a clear attempt at stylized designs, but they don't really look stylized, just bad.

* The Shadow character designs are thoroughly cartoonish. The Shadows of _Babylon Park_ look better than these. Every iota of added detail the Shadow ships got was at the expense of detail in the Shadows themselves.

* As bad as the character designs are, the character animation is worse. Stilted, choppy, not smooth in any way. It's the exact opposite of the quality of the effects and ship animations.

* I was particularly dismayed by seeing in the end credits that JMS is the only credited writer, because the writing in this is way below the quality fans expect from him. The story itself is almost entirely nostalgia, not covering any new ground at all in terms of themes and characters. A lot of dialogue is recycled from the show in different contexts, especially poor Zathras, who is reduced to half of his lines being retreads of catchphrases from the show, despite him turning out to be a central character here. Joe, you could have done so much better than this.

* Finally, a problem that even many fans might not notice, but which irked me to no end. The movie starts in the middle of the penultimate episode "Objects at Rest", when John and Delenn are leaving the station to go to Minbar. Two scenes from the episode are recreated: the POV of John and Delenn getting off the transport tube to face the crowd, and the trade of salutes between Sheridan and Lochley. These scenes are recreated faithfully visually, copying the staging, framing, and camera movement. (I noticed this primarily because I had recently rewatched the episode, so it was fresh in my mind.)

For all the faithfulness of the directorial recreations in these two scenes, the content was inexplicably different. In the transport tube scene, everything that happens immediately after the doors open is completely different from what happened in the episode.

For the salute, while the action is the same (aside from an added lame visual joke at the end that completely ruins the mood), the lineup of characters with Lochley in C&C is different for no apparent reason. In the episode, Lochley is surrounded by the "new generation" of B5 leaders: Ta'Lon, Dr. Hobbes, Number One, Zack, Vir, and Lt. Corwin. In the movie, she's surrounded by...a group of unknown, unidentifiable people who are clearly not meant to represent the same characters who were there in the episode.

The reason this bothers me so much is that it's horribly disrespectful to the characters and their actors, all of whom otherwise would not appear in this movie at all. I find it especially disrespectful to Stephen Furst (Vir) and Jeff Conaway (Zack), both of whom were on the show for a long time (Stephen since the very beginning) and have since passed. The likenesses of those characters are as valid to use legally as those of any of the others, so it's doubtful that there were any legal issues causing this. It's baffling and inexplicable. As with the writing, Joe, you could have done better.

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In the end, I can't recommend this movie to anyone who's not a dedicated fan of the show. Casual fans will not appreciate the constant references back to the series, and newcomers will be completely lost. And hardcore fans will be disappointed by the lack of originality. So who exactly was this movie made for?

I think the primary reason this movie got greenlit was as a test product, determining if there was still enough interest in the franchise to justify the reboot that was floated not long ago. If that's true, then fans of the original should definitely buy this movie, to show that there's still interest. But you may not enjoy it.

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.

I am very grateful that this was made, especially considering it's been so long since we've had anything from the Babylon 5 universe. I am a big fan of the show, and I've seen every episode, movie, and spin-off. This had a little fan service in it, which I don't think it's a terrible thing at all, considering there's a chance it could be the last time we ever get anything from this universe, but there are a few things I'd change. Overall, I'm really glad we got this.

With some changes to the plight, this could've easily been a good two-parter from the original series, a season cliffhanger, or easily one of the Syfy channel movies that were made after the show ended. Without getting into story specifics, in its current form, this seemed to be a "let's give it one last hurrah, just in case they never let us do this again", but also a way to test the waters to see if B5 is still a viable franchise.

I'd love to see WB do a whole series of animated Babylon 5 stories, there is so much left to tell with the fallout of the Shadow War, and the minions the Shadows left behind, and the early days of the Interstellar Alliance. A lot of things were hinted at in the finale of season 4 (when they thought they weren't going to get picked up for season 5), and I'm sure there's a lot of material that Straczynski has left to give us.

My only real criticism is that the humor was very juvenile--I guess you could say--and not as witty as the original show's was (no, there were a few that landed pretty well). I'm not sure if I necessarily blame Straczynski for that, I see it as a very bad trend in animation, in general. The original series always had great jokes at just the right time, whereas the dialogue and humor this movie were more akin to shows like Avatar and the Dragon Prince, where it feels forced, and hits at all the wrong times. I know it's animation, but I don't really think there's a sizable audience under 35 that's watching this movie. I'd say the humor was geared towards preteens, where is most of the audience for this are probably 40+. The physics were off as well, but I have to go back and watch the originals show, as my current understanding of quantum physics is substantially better than when that show aired lol. All sci-fi makes up and/or exaggerates science, and that's perfectly fine, it's just some of their foreshadowing and emphasis on quantum physics and causality was cringe worthy to me, when you consider advance alien species and future humans are explaining them to you. Maybe if they did a series, they could hire a science consultant.

So, if you even like the original show, I think you'll enjoy this. If you LOVED the original show, I think you should go buy this movie right now. I jumped on it as soon as I found out this was happening. The extras are really good, about 17 minutes of talking about her behind the scenes process, and started out by mentioning all the actors who are no longer here to reprise their roles. I watched it immediately after the movie.

I'm very grateful to WB for producing this, Straczynski for still giving us B5, the actors that came back (and brought their love of the characters with them), and everyone who is involved in making this. I would absolutely be in for a series and/or more movies.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go back and watch some of my favorite episodes,

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.