Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

classicsoncall For a movie that wound up on IMDb's Top 250 List all the way back in 1996, this movie only had nineteen user reviews posted when I came to this page. That seems rather odd and I don't know what to chalk that up to. Although I've never watched an episode of the TV series, it seems to me this series pilot ought to have had more of an impact on viewers to warrant a broader host of reactions.Arriving a couple of decades after the Star Trek TV series, one can appreciate the improvement in special effects compared to some of the almost cardboard looking sets of The Enterprise. However much of it looked like video game quality compared to the incredible visuals of today. One can definitely measure the progress over time of how television adopted technology to achieve some of the stunning illusions and visual tricks we can witness today.The story itself here is pretty much by the numbers for a sci-fi outer space saga. Much of the acting is a bit sketchy, and the Minbari and Narn prosthetics leave a bit to be desired. My understanding is that some of the pilot actors used here didn't make it into the series, and in the case of Tamlyn Tomita's character, Lieutenant Commander Laurel Takashima, one can see why. Some of her dialog and screen presence was downright cheesy. Even Commander Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) left something to be desired in the way of a forceful presence aboard Babylon 5. With Captain Kirk, you always knew who was top gun on the Enterprise crew. The handful of reviewers for this pilot seem rather mixed in their appreciation of the show. Again, with no basis for comparison against the actual series that followed, I'd have to say it was generally okay with an intriguing story line that got muddled a bit along the way. It wasn't enough to get me interested in the program that it introduced, although I can't say I'll never get to it at some point. Maybe one day.

no-skyline Babylon 5 was a hugely ambitious sci-fi show to get off the ground with complex characters and story arcs that went on over the entire 5 series run. This was the first pilot movie and it paves the way to what would follow.It's an intriguing piece of sci-fi with some strong performances in particular Peter Jurasic as Lando Mollari and Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar. The special effects are a bit limited in places but thats to be expected from a show just finding it's feet.Some of the actors in this initial show would leave to pursue other projects but the core remained in. There are some story lines (which I wont spoil) that could have been further explored had Takishima and Lyta stayed on the show. The acting quality is mixed and this was ironed out as the series went on.All in all it's a good TV movie that does stand on it's own well but it will leave you with a few questions and a good reason to pick up on the series which just get's better as it goes along.Good TV movie that will get you ready for the full series 7/10

bnevs18 You can give JMS and the boys a pass on this one because they were at the beginning of their series and on a small budget, but the movie is still sub-par. Dont get me wrong, B5 the series is by far the best TV series ever, but if i was an exec seeing this movie, i wouldnt have ordered the series. I dont like O'Hare as an actor, the costumes are silly, and there are tons of cliches. The same can be said for most of the first season (with the exception of Babylon Squared and Survivors); Bruce immediately put a fire into the series and it went on to be an amazing spectacle. If you are a B5 fan and havent seen this movie, see it. If you arent a B5 fan, dont...you wont want to watch the series.

Klaatu-18 Back in 1993 one of my co-workers, who knows I'm a science fiction fan, asked if I was going to watch the pilot for that new SF TV seriies. At first I didn't think I had heard of this before. Then I realized that this must be the show that J Michael Stracynski (JMS), the screenwriting columnist for <i>Writer's Digest</i>, quit that job to work on.I watched the movie and was instantly intrigued. Unlike many SF TV shows, the science was well done (with none of the technobabble seen in other shows). A valiant attempt was made to present a few totally non-humanoid aliens. (This resulted in the funny puppet aliens in a section that was edited out when the special edition was created)But what drew my interest was the fact that this movie had laid down plot threads for the proposed series. Unanswered questions about what really happened to the first four Babylon stations. And why had the Minbari suddenly surrendered at the end of the Earth-Minbari war when victory was in their grasp? What was the story behind Commander Sinclair's missing time at the Battle of the Line?Before the series itself aired I read an article in Cinefantastique which explained that JMS had a plan for an ambitious story arc that would take five years to complete. I was ready.