The Age of Commercialism

Load of rubbish!!

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Babylon 5 was a pretty good serial, and the first flick was good as well.As science fiction series goes it did get some things spot on over a decade before it was a reality, but this film is just a joke.Bad lines, bad acting, laughable cast... and worst part is, they try to cover it with a lot of CGI hoping you will forgive the rest.If you thought "3rd space" was bad, you got to see this beauty,you will want to nominate the other one for an Oscar!I really pity the women who acted in this more than anyone, because if this is their best acting, their husbands/boyfriends are not going to be fooled either...if you know what I mean ;)To summarize it, not even worth a free pirate download.

I love Babylon 5. I have seen every episode of the series and the movies as well--so it's obvious that I really care about this show. Heck, I even saw the spin-off series, CRUSADE--that's how much I love the show!! And, in light of this love, it really hurt to watch such a seriously flawed and inferior product as THE LEGEND OF THE RANGERS. I guess that after having written so much that the series creator, writer and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski finally was due for a fall as this is easily the worst of the Babylon pantheon.So why was it so bad? Well, the fundamental idea of a new spin-off series wasn't the problem--this movie could have led to a decent series. However, the characters and writing just weren't up to snuff. Particular problems were a very, very predictable plot through at least the first half in which time and again I found myself guessing exactly what would happen next. In fact, my wife and I were both very accurately telling what would happen next because it all seemed so unoriginal and clichéd. Fortunately, it did improve later and I did like the escape pod sequences. In addition, the weapons officer and her gimmicky way of fighting was just embarrassingly bad and silly. She was completely one-dimensional and the fighting sequences made me cringe--they were THAT bad.So what you have left wasn't without some merit and I guess it is a passable 90 minutes of entertainment--but just barely. My advice is that if you are a Babylon 5 geek (like me), then by all means watch it. Otherwise--skip it and watch the series.By the way--take a look at all the ratings for this film. Like many popular sci-fi TV shows or movies (such as Star Trek or Star Wars), there are a small number of mindless zombies who declare that EVERY episode and EVERY movie is an artistic masterpiece--giving ALL OF THEM 10s!!! Now if you liked this movie, I have no argument with you. But, to take an obviously flawed movie that is clearly inferior to the previous series and films and STILL give it a 10 is just ludicrous. These zombies, I assume, are like cult members who CANNOT objectively rate anything from the series and think by giving EVERYTHING a 10 that they are somehow "helping" the show or being loyal. I am sure my harsh words will draw many "not helpful" ratings, but I don't care--the casual viewer needs to know that some reviews can't be trusted.

I have noticed some criticisms of this film which I don't agree with like...The Hand' don't come off at all either. We are told they are billions of years old, and only their servants show themselves in this movie. Despite their superiority though, their technologically superior ships (which tear the Valen to pieces in seconds) have a really hard time taking out a damaged patrol vessel and its escape pod slinging captain. Their leader, glimpsed in transmissions is hardly menacing: he simply wears a horned hood and speaks in a vaguely legalistic sense. The Hand are a carrot dangled before us we should want to watch the rest of the series to see them. The Minions of the hand are not supposed to be menacing they are races of aliens who are far more primitive than humans yet have been given 'Toys' by the hand to do their bidding, as explained in the film.I believe the idea was to make the minions appear to be defeatable and believe that there was some hope until we saw their masters. If so it would have been more relevant to what we saw here. Sometimes the bigger picture reveals the hidden brilliance.

I just recently bought the DVD to BABYLON FIVE: LEGEND OF THE RANGERS and just as when it first premiered way back in early 2002, I am still impressed by the continuity and tamed, yet thrilling action.I have always been a fan of any series that tells a story of hope, without being obvious or dull about it. STAR TREK and the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA were like that and have a particular place in my heart. Only one other series continued that format of "thoughtful science fiction", that series was BABYLON FIVE. Almost all of it's five seasons showed that the future isn't perfect, but it never hurts to keep trying to make it so. The movies were somewhat close, but some of them didn't have the same feel as the series that spawned them. LotR(LEGEND OF THE RANGERS) was the only one of those movies that kept that vision of a working future alive and in an exciting and sometimes funny way( there were some really funny scenes, especially with Ambassador G'kar(RIP Andreas).Though I do like this movie(one of the reasons why I bought the DVD), I do have some grievances about it..mostly about the DVD itself. There are no features what-so-ever nor are there any pamphlets for information about the disc or the chapters on it. Though there are some funny scenes, some of those scenes seemed a bit forced, but one can overlook them with the nice work from the rest of the movie.All in all, this IS a good movie and I hope that there may be a series developing from it. One can only hope.