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What bums me out is that they changed the names of characters from Commando Cody.

Well, one thing that struck me as interesting is when he sticks on the jet pack, he instantly becomes...

Captain Proton! Wait, what?

Which instantly makes me remember several episodes of Star Trek Voyager, where Tom Paris puts on the Jetpack and flies around in the same way!

And they even had a robot antagonist, Satan's robot.

There are some pretty good fist fights in this and oh yes, this is maybe one of the first movies that Mr. Spock was in. Except that he is a green skinned G'Barf! Or a Martian.

They had three or four episodes of Voyager, where they revisited Captain Protons Universe, and that robot was always there. But it was basically a trashcan upended with long arms.

And they also had the twin mistresses of evil, a.k.a., the Delaney sisters. But Ensign Kim still can't get lucky because he's in love with the wrong twin. The wrong twin, the wrong Borg, the wrong dead crewmember that became an alien, chick, and the wrong alien chick.

So much of these old Commando Cody films were mined. I wish they had made Some strictly Captain Proton episodes of Voyager. They actually had one episode, the Bride of Chaotica which was as close to a full Captain Proton episode as possible. Because they got stuck in a subspace sandbar because aliens from the eighth dimension had detected Voyagers holodeck and thought that it was a real planet, but they were photonic lifeforms.

The most recent full on homage to these kinds of "cereals" was the 1980 film Flash Gordon, but I thought that was just silly. I wanted to see more of the flying dummy.

Because when you watch these old cereals, and they were made in the early 50s, some of the photographic effects are good, I loved the rocket ships, the flying dummy, I already said that, and the fist fights were top notch.

I started watching this on Temu, er, I mean Tubi. So far I haven't seen any 10 minute commercials...

This film is rated 8.5 and I think that is highly underrated for what this film is.

This film deserved all of the five Oscars that it won and it should have won more, particularly best director for Ridley Scott.

The first two masterpieces that he made were Alien and Blade Runner... Blade Runner was an unexpected cult hit.

But this film flipped all the right switches and it was an instant hit. Also, maybe the last film where Russell Crowe has a great physique. Maybe master and Commander was the same, but he was also great as the slovenly detective in American Gangster, and that film was true told very truthfully, it was an honest story that depicted the events the way that they actually happened.

And that was the way this film was made although it was historical and Ridley got some of the historical events mixed up a little bit. The general story was truthful.

This film is basically "The fall of the Roman empire", which was another massive Hollywood movie made earlier.

Connie Nielsen is just magnificent in this, just as she has been in every movie I have seen her in. From "Soldier" to "Gladiator two".

One thing that you might notice is that the music that is being played during the beginning battle sequence, and then later when the gladiators are wiping the Colosseum with the Roman soldiers, it's the same music that was used in pirates of the Caribbean. And you heard it in this movie first.

The music of this film is beyond fantastic. This is Hans Zimmer's greatest work.

And this is probably Ridley Scott's finest film as well.

The one thing you can say about Ridley is that he is not afraid of trying completely different things and he just keeps going even if his films are not successful.

He tries very hard and the movie companies trust him with large amounts of money so he can create these huge productions, but sometimes like Prometheus they don't work. But this time, it worked.

There are things I like about this, things that remind me of the original.

The locations and sets are just as good as the original. But I don't like CGI monkeys... that don't act like real baboons.

I saw the original in the theatre- it was a massive experience. Especially the beginning battle scene.

Of course they tried to do homage to that in the beginning of this film, this time it is an Armada of ships.

But it just wasn't as big as the Romans fighting the Germans in the forest.

They showed that thing in the Colosseum where two opposing ships attack each other, that was awesome. I had been hearing about that ever since I was in elementary school. One of my history teachers taught us about that... to actually see it happening was pretty good, whether it was CGI or not. But I don't see anything even remotely related to Sharknado.

And then they had CGI baboons.

Of course, it would have been impossible to use real baboons or real rhinoceri, the rhino was believable at least.

I had not watched the original for several years before I popped this in. And so of course, it dawns on me who is this man is, they were not trying to obscure the identity that much, but they just were not saying who he was.

It's just too bad that they could not include more of the actors from the first one like Djimon, whose first role was as an Owl-Guard in Stargate. But they had the Senator Derek Jakobi. I'm surprised he was still around.

This film pretty much mirrors events in the first film, big battle, man gets sold to a gladiator company run by Denzel Washington, and then the twin dictators take notice. Rumors of a coup are being whispered, spies are everywhere, dictators find out everything. And I haven't even seen the second half yet!

Of course, this movie has to reflect our current political climate and so this is the story still in the making. And the one thing that we don't have much of is hope.

And we also know that there is going to be treachery just like in the first film, and there is going to be treachery in our lives too, there already is.

So maybe I should wait until mid 2026 to watch the rest of this film...