Babylon 5: The Road Home

For fans of B5 it's fun to see all of the interesting alternate realities and see old characters again, but the story doesn't make all that much sense and the dialogue is kind of forced a lot of the time. They just jump around a few hypothetical realities with no real rhyme or reason (for most of them, anyways) and eventually the movie decides it's time to stop. The movie has more flashbacks than are necessary, maybe just to pad out the runtime a little bit, since this is a pretty short movie at around 75 minutes.

The updated, higher-fidelity models for shadows, their ships, etc are very cool to see, although the animation falls flat sometimes.

At the end of the day it doesn't add a whole lot to the B5 mythos apart from exploring some alternate realities which were alluded to in the series and potentially setting up a reboot, but it's fun enough to rent for fans of the series.

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.

I felt B5 2023 did not miss a beat - meaning I went to stream an episode from the original series I had not seen before. Was it the best, no, but I did thoroughly enjoy it and hope the opportunity surfaces to do a mini-series or a series with new story lines. If I remember correctly, the hope was to reboot the series with the same characters (different actors) and create a new storyline (hope I have that right). If CW or WB will produce it and let J. Michael Straczynski write a storyline beginning to end (five seasons) like the original Babylon 5, I can only image a whole new generation would be treated to great story telling like my generation was. I agree with some of the comments about the faces on some of the characters were off and hard to figure out at first - but again - I enjoyed it - it made my day.

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.

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.