Babylon 5 - The Legend of the Rangers

Buy This Item Babylon 5 - The Legend of the Rangers by Warner Home Video  Available from Amazon  $14.99  on 8-27-2008     Platform:  DVD MOVIE Publisher:  WARNER BROTHERS Packaging:  DVD STYLE BOX Rating:  NOT RATED Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers is a two-hour television movie created by J. Michael Straczynski (original creator of the Babylon 5 series) for the Sci-Fi Channel. The telefilm takes place in 2264 after the wars are over and a new age of space exploration has begun. The Interstellar Alliance has been organized to establish and maintain peace among its member worlds including Earth. The Rangers are an elite military force made up of hand-picked young smart dedicated human and alien members who combine the high-tech elements of space travel with the idealism and honor of the knights of old. They encounter a previously unknown alien race whose lethal power is far greater than any force previously known to Earth or any other world in the Interstellar Alliance.DVD Details:Running Time: 90 min.Actors: Dylan Neal Andreas Katsulas Alex Zahara Myriam Sirois Dean Marshall See moreDirectors: Michael VejarFormat: Closed-captioned Color Dolby Subtitled Widescreen NTSCLanguage: EnglishRegion: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1Number of discs: 1Rating: Not RatedStudio: Warner Home VideoDVD Release Date: March 14 2006Available Subtitles: English Spanish FrenchAvailable Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround) Reader Reviews The mantra in Henrik Ibsen's play THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is "The minority is always right." Well, maybe in some things, but I believe the majority is right about THE LEGEND OF THE RANGERS. In fact, nearly all of the made for TV movies bearing the B5 label have been pretty bad. I think there are at least three reasons for that. First, while B5 as a TV series was also heavily centered on talk, the movies ratchet this up to an even higher degree. In fact, the movies -- and THE LEGEND OF THE RANGERS is actually not the worst offender here, being topped by THE LOST TALES -- degenerate to almost nothing but talk. This would be OK if it were like THE GILMORE GIRLS or PUSHING DAISIES, where the talk is so brilliant that it becomes an end in itself, but on B5 it isn't even interesting talk. At least not in the movies. Second, the way that B5 managed its success overall reminds me of something that Robert E. Lee said about Longstreet, on of his generals. Lee said that unlike Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet's corps was very slow to get into battle, but that when it finally did, it hit very, very hard. Likewise, B5 as a series was very, very slow to get going (it required nearly two seasons of preparatory episodes to really get into gear), but once it did it paid off in a big way. Two rather dull seasons set up two very exciting seasons (with a largely slow Season 5 that possessed an exciting ending). B5's strength was never the stand-alone episode, but the long, slow developing arc. There was simply no way the show was going to succeed in stand-alone movies without some significant changes in format. Third, like most of the TV movies, RANGERS is a poorly budgeted affair. For instance, although the special effects were infinitely better than when the series first started off, there were relatively few such shots, simply because they couldn't afford them. It was also felt in the cast budget. Most of the other B5 movies either had more characters from the B5 series or a couple of major guest stars. RANGERS has next to no one from the series and no guest star of note. I could add a fourth reason that accounts for the particular failure of RANGERS: bizarre lapses in judgment. One of the featured reviews mentions the manner in which the weapons' systems are activated. It truly is so strange that I can't even stand to think about it. While the B5 movies are never very good, at least in the others you can enjoy seeing old characters you know and miss. It is like watching old friends. But apart from G'Kar the familiar faces in this film are very minor characters indeed. Seeing B5 without any of the well-known characters is like seeing, say, a Creedance Clearwater Revival reunion concert without John Fogerty as a member of the band.

Babylon 5 - The Legend of the Rangers Available from Amazon Price: $14.99 Updated on 8-27-2008.

SPONSORED LINKS