Review: Babylon 5: The Road Home

Babylon 5: The Road Home is an animated slice of a story that centers the relationship of two of its main characters as being the lynchpin of all

"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind..."

Those arc words defined the 1990s series Babylon 5. A five-season epic SF show that wasn't named Star Trek, Babylon 5 told the story "of the last of the Babylon stations." A story of epic war and conflict, a story of a gathering place, a place made for the meetings of cultures, societies, and peoples, as they faced a conflict threatening to tear the galaxy apart. Rights and issues with trying to reboot or revisit the world have ended in failure or stillbirth or both.

Finally, however, a new chapter in Babylon 5 has arrived. Babylon 5: The Road Home takes an animated approach, and, fittingly for this moment, a multiverse story of John Sheridan.

The actual logline of the story is relatively simple. The Shadow War is over, and John Sheridan is about to lead to Minbar, retiring from his job of running Babylon 5 and instead being President of the Interstellar Alliance. Things start to go strange for him, slowly at first, but it is when a new power station on Minbar goes wonky that the problem emerges, and John Sheridan, becomes, like Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time.

Or, more to the point, like himself. Relying on prior series events, the movie posits that the events of a couple of time-travelling episodes in the series have come back to haunt him, and the tachyon power station has caused him to not only become unstuck in time, but also in space. Sheridan is catapulted through a variety of timelines and points in that timeline. His efforts are directed at trying to get back home, to his wife, Delenn. Babylon 5: The Road Home tells of that journey.

Having an animated movie does and did solve one of the major problems in any contemplation of new stories set in the Babylon 5 universe. It is sad, but true: a number of the fine actors who played key roles in the series have since passed on, some of them rather young. This movie uses the original actors where it can, and adequate replacements for when it couldn't.

Sheridan's journey through a multiverse of possibilities allows him to interact, ultimately, with every major character in the series (Zathras, for those who have seen the series, is not surprisingly a key character in trying to get Sheridan back home). We also get some animated versions of some key shots in the series: the launching of Starfuries and their classic maneuverability (even the spin around and fire on a trailing ship). The animated format allows for station and planetary destruction on a budget. Animation of the characters is good, the characters are to a fan of the series immediately recognizable, although the stylings are not always the same. (This is particularly true of the Narn ambassador G'kar, who has a much leaner and taller look here).

The movie itself mostly works for nostalgia, although it is clear that the movie attempts to be introducing a rebooted and re-envisioned Babylon 5 'verse. Sheridan does get home; in the end, we see that his love for Delenn is his compass, ultimately allowing him to reunite with her. But his "last world" he visits before managing to get home is the interesting one. We get to see a Babylon 5 that has not yet had the Shadow War, a Babylon 5 still at relative peace. And when "our Sheridan" makes his reunion and leave, the action does not return to us on Minbar.

Instead we linger in this alternate Babylon 5 'verse, and we see all of the characters, one more time, in tiny little vignettes with each other. Sheridan and Delenn. Lyta and Lennier. Commander Ivanova on the bridge, as usual. And of course, Londo and G'kar.  These last moments are almost an invitation: look, this is how the show could be rebooted. Here. Here is the template. Take THIS alternate world, and run with it.

It's a tempting thought. Could it, will it ever happen, in animated or in live action form? I don't know. Maybe Babylon 5 has had its place, its time, and rebooting it isn't going to happen. Frankly, with everything else being rebooted, one would think risk-averse Hollywood would jump at the chance to tell the Babylon 5 story again. Will it, though? Time will tell.

I am going to leave further, detailed observations that really are of interest only to a Babylon 5 fan in a footnote below (1). In the end, I think the movie itself really works only best as a nostalgia piece, although I would love the thoughts of someone who has never seen the series and get their reactions and opinions on it.

Highlights:

• Classic characters come alive again in animation
• A multiverse story with heart and love at the center
• Lord, it felt good to be in the B5 universe again

Babylon 5, The Road Home, Warner Brothers 2023

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

(1) So here we are. This may confuse people who are not steeped in Babylon 5, but if you know your Swedish Meatballs from your Narn Breen, this is for you. Okay, so we get to see nearly every major character in the series.  A few noteworthy absences:

Vir. We get a background shot of Vir and that's it. As a big fan of Vir, this was more than a little disappointing.

Talia: Fans of the show will remember that the *first* telepath on the station was Talia Winters (Andrea Thompson). There is no sign of her at all, and that final alternate universe seems to retcon her out of the timeline entirely in favor of Lyta being there for the entire time. (Mind, she was in the Pilot, left, and then came back again. So... is the retcon that she never left?)

Zack Allan, who became Head of Security and also provided a good view of the temptations of fascism (and ultimately rejecting it) is nowhere to be seen.

The Minbari Draal who ultimately came to run The Great Machine as an essential piece of it on Epsilon 3 (and which is essential to the plot of Sheridan getting home) appears to have been retconned out.

This is not a major character in the series, but this is definitely a retcon. Given how this movie so focuses on John and Delenn as a OTP (to the point of Love Saving the Multiverse), I suppose it is understandable, but very odd and weird. Early in his Billy Pilgrim's Progress through time, space and the multiverse, Sheridan arrives on Z'ha'dum when the Icarus arrived and ultimately woke up the Shadows. And he knows where he is, and tries to warn them. The thing is, the movie seems to have forgotten that one of the archeologists on that ship was Anna Sheridan, John's first wife. Is it a retcon that he doesn't even *think* of her, or try and introduce himself as her husband? I found it very weird. I was *waiting* to see and hear Melissa Gilbert.

A rebooted Babylon 5 along the lines and timeline of the "final world" would be very interesting, given how little they do know by the time Our Sheridan leaves and what people like Delenn *clearly* know and knew from the series. If Star Trek can do it...why can't Babylon 5?

Microreview [Movie]: Captain Marvel

It might be years overdue, but Captain Marvel finally provides a great first outing for its unapologetically powerful main character.

I'm relatively late and slow on the Marvel cinematic universe, and the fact that they've spent ten years and twenty movies without having a female-fronted superhero film is, let's be honest, quite a big part of that scepticism. When you're a woman interested in the stories of women (or, let's be honest, anyone who isn't the same muscly white man seventeen different times), it's hard to get enthusiastic about a franchise with high barriers to both entry and continuation which doesn't want to speak to you. As a space opera fan, I've seen (and liked) both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and I tried the original Avengers, but it wasn't until Black Panther came on the scene that I started looking into what I've been missing. I'm still very much behind on the main arc, ignorant of everything that happens in Infinity War and a lot of the previous instalments too (who's this Bucky guy anyway?*) and currently weighing up whether to catch up on that main story in time to see the next Avengers in cinema or just to let that milestone pass me by.

Luckily, with the exception of a post-credits scene I probably shouldn't have stayed for anyway, none of this matters with Captain Marvel, which has a couple of returning faces but mostly blazes its own trail in a mid-90s setting that both capitalises on elder-millennial nostalgia for that decade and conveniently avoids any tricky "so why hasn't this woman been around in the 20 previous films" questions in-universe. This lack of baggage does more than make the film accessible: it allows it to build its own themes and turn this into a convincing, enjoyable and kickass origin story for the Captain to take centre stage.

Not that you'd realise it from the movie's beginning: Captain Marvel starts in the middle of a story that it feels like we should already be clued up on, though it does bring us up to speed and justify the decision pretty quickly. Vers, soldier on an alien planet, has been having nightmares that seem to be about a past she can't remember. She's been enlisted into Starforce as the Kree - an advanced civilisation run by an AI - fight a galaxy-spanning war against the Skrull, green-skinned shapeshifters who can mimic the form and voice of anyone they see. Vers' old life was apparently wiped out by a Skrull invasion, and Starforce are now moulding her and her interesting magic-fist powers into a level-headed fighting force via the mentoring of Jude Law's Yonn-Rogg, and is ready to do her bit to protect the rest of her people. After being captured and forced to relive some odd memories, including those of a "Wendy Lawson" on Earth, Vers decides to take matters into her own hands and go looking for Lawson against Yonn-Rogg's orders, with a sense that she might be tracking down something from her own past in the process.

If you've seen the posters, you won't have trouble figuring out "hey, this Vers lady is the one on the posters", and it's not going to come as a surprise to any but the most precious of filmgoers that Vers' memories are from her pre-Kree life on Earth: one in which she was Carol Danvers, ace pilot for Project Pegasus. The extent to which Captain Marvel's plot surprises is going to depend very much on how well-versed you are with the character's comic history and her wider place in the Marvel universe. Having picked up, like, 3 issues of Kelly Sue DeConnick's original Captain Marvel run - which entrenched the character's promotion from her previous iteration as Ms Marvel and made space for the rise of Kamala Khan in the process, I had very little background for the Kree-Skrull war and the history of characters like Yonn-Rogg and Lawson. Since watching the movie and doing a bit more research, it looks like the roles of these characters pay service to, but don't exactly follow, their comic book iterations. It also looks like we missed something great by not having the Kree wandering around in rainbow-coloured Captain Planet uniforms, as was apparently a Thing in the comics for a long time?

Hello. (Image: Marvel)

Whether it's wandering confidently around mid-90s Earth in a "laser tag" uniform, or reflecting her character's emotional journey as she tries to unpick what has been done in her past and understand how to move forward, Larson does well with the material she's given, although the emotional journey stuff isn't quite as exciting to watch as her lighter scenes, and I hope that comedic potential is played up more in future outings. What's refreshing is that Captain Marvel is explicitly shown as an ass-kicking sensation from the moment the movie begins, winning brief friendly victories over Yonn-Rogg by power-fisting him across a room, fighting her way out of an entire ship of Skrull with her arms encased in metal, and then getting a finale action sequence that felt like an absolute dream of well-realised power. Carol Danvers is an unapologetically, uncomplicatedly strong character and while that makes me a little worried for how she's going to be used in future, for this story it's just a joy to watch. The emotional journey is also extremely well backed up by the supporting cast, especially young Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Danvers' best friend and platonic life partner Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) as well as Maria's daughter Monica, who needs to get her superhero upgrade in the MCU sooner rather than later.

Because it does many things well, the blind spots in this movie do become more obvious. One huge one is the role of Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, the only other woman on Vers' Starforce team and haver of many close-ups and few lines. None of the characters on the team get much development but having Chan's character apparently exist only to be kind of bitchy and indifferent to Vers is deeply frustrating, especially because the rest of the Kree are so dude-heavy. It's also frustrating, in a movie that gives such interesting roles to black characters like Fury and the Rambeaus, that the only rep for Asian women is painted blue and consigned to a flat role in the sidelines. I felt Annette Benning's role as Wendy Lawson also didn't live up to its potential, which would have been to really build up between the older Lawson and her pilot protegee. As it is, it's made competely obvious that Danvers feels that way about Lawson without actually giving the two the screen time to play it out for an audience. And while I do think Brie Larson knocks it out of the park in the role, especially in her 90s grunge girl aesthetic, I would just love to live in a world where the first movie-carrying woman could be something other than white and conventionally attractive. There's still so much to unpack here about who does and doesn't get the opportunity to shine, and while I welcome this as a good baby step, it still is one and it's hard to get too excited about the glacial progress of representation on film.

Captain Marvel is a great film, and as every woman led film outside of "chick flick" genres needs to be a great film in order to justify its own existence, that's something that we can all breathe a sigh of relief about as well as celebrating. Its smart message about self-belief, regardless of the limitations people feel entitled to stick on you, is one that works particularly well for a female superhero, and is overt about sexism without it overtaking the narrative or overshadowing her unique journey or the fact that she's probably the strongest and best thing I've seen happen to this franchise. I came out of Captain Marvel immensely pleased that I'd made the time for it, and up to 7.6% more likely to watch Avengers: Endgame next month: a victory all round.

*Note: this line is just for effect. Please do not write to me explaining who Bucky is.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Floats elegantly on the sea of male tears; +1 The 90s are back!

Penalties: -1 There is still so much to be done to ensure diverse representation beyond a white woman and some black supporting characters.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

Microreview [film]: Bright

Way better than I expected--thanks, critics!

Ayer, David, dir. Bright. Netflix: Dec. 2017.

It could simply be because I watched it on New Year’s Eve after one three eggnog martinis (liberally spiked with the delightful pumpkin spice flavor of Kahlua!), and because of lowered expectations due to all the hate floating around about it, but Bright was actually fun! Were all the critics who despised it really watching the same film as me? And if so, I’ve got the perfect remedy: eggnog martinis!

First of all, it’s great to see urban fantasy—any urban fantasy—get such a huge-profile debut. The vitriol over the film can be usefully subdivided into two categories: diehard urban fantasy snowflake-fans up in arms over this or that inauthentic aspect of the film’s depiction (or appropriation) of the genre, or clueless lamestream media hack reviewers who have no idea what urban fantasy is or should be, pretentious fops who use terms like “pictures” or “films” and shun hoi polloi vernacular like “movies” religiously.

As a self-proclaimed middle of the roader, I fail to see why we have to listen to either of these categories of ‘experts’ and can instead sit down to appreciate Bright’s many good points (and trust me, they only get better with some eggnogtinis!). For instance, this is a movie which actually addresses racial tensions! Is its attempt to tackle racism (by replacing socially disadvantaged groups with entirely different species) heavy-handed? You bet it is! But at this point, at a time when most people in the developed world receive pre-selected news/‘information’ based upon various algorithms’ predictions of what we already believe, just having such a high-profile film project address such a sensitive issue at all is a win of sorts.

But also—have you actually seen the movie, or are you just spewing hate a priori? You might be surprised by how empirically entertaining the finished film turned out to be. Sure, parts of it are hokey, like the (to me) gratuitous scene of Will Smith’s character beating a mischievous fairy or sprite or whatever to death in his front lawn, to the jeering cheers of his cop-hating neighbors. And yeah, it would have been a better film if it had been made more tongue-in-cheek instead of being billed as a straight-up urban buddy cop action extravaganza. Yet even so, when Bright is good, it's downright watchable! 

The special effects are generally thrilling, and the human performances are pretty good too (though I confess to being a bit disappointed in Naomi Rapace’s turn as villain, as she couldn’t quite sell the necessary menace, that indefinable yet palpable air of lethality). Smith delivers here in a manner fans haven’t seen much in this period of his career--you know, just a few years after he thought it would be a good idea to appear in After Earth. So here’s the final word: what exactly is supposed to be so bad about the movie? Am I missing something? Did I have eggnogtini googles on when I saw this? I’m sure you’ll let me know in the comments below J

Smith rediscovers his acting chops, aided by the massive drop in expectations following the turd-fest After Earth!

The Math:

Objective Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for sizzling special effects in an urban fantasy movie, +1 for addressing racism, even in this rather goofy way

Penalties: -1 for the heartless scene showing the murder of a fairy and the taking-themselves-way-too-seriously-vibe

Nerd coefficient: 7/10 “An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws”
 

[Incidentally, 7/10 is a totally respectable score here at Nerds of a Feather—see here for details.]

This message is brought to you by Zhaoyun, purveyor of urban fantasy in all its forms and reviewer for Nerds of a Feather since 2013.