Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary

Fantastic documentary, well produced and filmed, I'm guessing the sound mixing was done by the guy who made the music because it's stupidly loud, to the point where it's hard to hear the speech at times and is always distracting at the very least. A real shame because it's great otherwise!

A beautifully crafted, honest and emotionally poignant feature length documentary about the making of the underrated sci-fi comedy "Galaxy Quest". I liked the movie when I saw it when it was being released, but I wasn't a fan persé. Now I am. A must-see!

10/10 for content, 5/10 for audio mixing.

The only thing that spoiled it was the sound mixing ... for about 40% of the interview and commentary scenes the music was about TWO OR THREE TIMES LOUDER than it should have been, and was so bad at times you could hardly hear what the person they were interviewing was saying. An excellent example of this was the interview with the female fan outside the cinema at ~1h20m mark where the music was so loud you almost need to lip read to figure out what she's saying. This is why it's a REALLY BAD IDEA to use the same person who composed the music as your sound editor!

They really need to re-edit this with the MUSIC SCORE reduced to about 40% of its current volume in EVERY scene where people are talking.

To be clear, this is NOT a "The Making Of:" documentary. It is about what the movie meant to the actors and crew. It is about how shows and movies, such as Star Trek, influenced the movie. The reviewer mentioning the audio is spot on. It appears like the documentary was released before anyone watched it; otherwise the audio would have been lowered. I found myself staining to hear the dialog. At one point, the audio suddenly increased to the point where I very literally could not hear the last few words being spoken. Love the movie but this was a waste of time and I didn't even watch it to the end.

Personally, I think Never Surrender is the ideal Making-Of documentary. There are countless movies nowadays that have this kind of material available as soon as the blu-ray is available to own, but that doesn't allow for the passage of time to see how the film will hold up and how it affects culture and fandom. Never Surrender takes a good deep dive into a film that was made 20 years ago, and is able to give perspective not only on how it was made, but more importantly how it has impacted the lives of those who love it. It is a true love-letter to Galaxy Quest, and it instantly made me want to watch the film again. What I think they nailed in this documentary is pinpointing the elements that made it resonate for many people. It includes interviews with all the key players who are still alive, and is overloaded with clips of fans at all different levels of obsession. As a documentary about a film that I love, it certainly was enjoyable to watch, but it's also hard to rate/rank because it is entirely reliant on love of Galaxy Quest to get that enjoyment. Needless to say, I recommend all Questarians watch Never Surrender soon because it is a delight. But if you're not a fan of Galaxy Quest, there's simply no reason to even think about watching this documentary.