Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Battlestar Galactica: Razor - Minor Spoilers Ahead.

If you don't want to know anything about this movie, don't read this. I don't give away much, but there's some stuff in here.

Sci-Fi Network premiered their TV movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor in a few movie theaters in major cities across the country last night. It covers the events on board the Battlestar Pegasus from the initial Cylon attack that kicked off the new series.

It was pretty good, the story wasn't bad and it had some fun, geekalicious moments; using the old Cylon ship and creature designs from the original show, and some clever(?) little Aliens and Star Wars references thrown in for good measure.

Some issues though:
  • When escaping from the initial Cylon attack, Admiral Kane doesn't do anything particularly original or inspired to save her ship, she's just basically like, "Let's go," and they get away due to their computer network being serendipitously down. I found this a bit disappointing, as Admiral Kane is supposed to be this legendary commander, yet she doesn't really demonstrate that here at all.

  • Why were the old school Cylons CGI'd? That makes no sense - just have guys in the damn suits.

  • Not enough old school Cylons.

  • They introduce an element of humor between the Adamas towards the beginning, then this whimsy is lost amidst the typical BSG emo brooding. A real shame, the movie (and the series) could use some more levity.

  • The main new character introduced, Major Kendra Shaw, while lovely and actually a fine actress, can't weigh more than 100 lbs. She was absolutely waifish, and just swam in her uniform, despite the costume designers best attempts to tailor it to her petite dimensions. This isn't QUITE a complaint, as, again, her acting was fine - it was just a little distracting watching her struggle with her duffle bag at times.

The most ridiculous part of the screening had nothing to do with the movie itself, but that there was a COMMERCIAL BREAK in the middle. Not sure what they were thinking, but halfway through we got commercials for the Mass Effect X-Box game and the Microsoft Zune. And after the movie, before the "sneak peak" at Season 4, we got more commercials for the BSG video game and Season 1 Box Set, as well a trailer for the movie we just watched.


Further silliness is that I actually missed the first minute or so of the film because they were checking everyone into the theater one by one, with only ONE person working the admission table. They had two people there, but the second person's job was simply to hand you the ticket and say, "Theater 14, 5th floor." Really? You really couldn't do that AND check people off a list? Amazingly badly handled.

On a separate, somewhat related emo note, my recent ex really loved this show and I felt slight pangs of sadness that I was attending this screening alone. Such is life.

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