Babylon 5: In the Beginning

I actually cried, Can you beleive it? This film was so good, it touched me. That part where Londo is talking about loving Centauri Prime, and then it goes back to the war, showing the little shelter full of crying humans, powerful stuff. Mira Furlan and Bruce Boxlietner played their roles to perfection. And I have never seen Peter Jurasik perform better, and I've seen a lot of his stuff. Simply put, this film should have won an Emmy. It was incredible.

Although this movie came a long time after the series premiere, it was actually the first piece of B-5 I saw. It's a great movie on it's own, and a perfect way to start the whole series, because you get all the background info.

The movie revolves around the Earth-Minbari wars, a war erupting when a captain from an earth-warship reacts to a Minbari greeting in a hostile way, resulting in the death of several hundreds of thousands of Earthlings. And that's all you need to know, the rest will show itself when you watch the movie.

The action is great, special effect OK (they were never great, sad to say) and the acting first-class! So go see this movie, and then follow up with probably the second-best Sci-Fi series EVER (after Enterprise of course...:))

This B5 movie was AMAZING. It fit together all the complex plot lines of the series, answered many questions, and still left open some uncertainties. It does have some cute kids which usually kills a movie, but they are not plot devices but instead a way to segue to more important things. If you kept up with the entire series, by the end of the movie you know exactly where the movie is chronologically, and you know the tragedy that is about to unfold. Thankfully the movie doesn't cover it, because as the emperor of Centauri said, "That is another story, for another time". Great acting by everyone.

An interesting tidbit about one of the alternate language tracks is if you turn on the German language dubbing, Reiner Schone, who plays Dukhat does his own dubbing because he's from Germany.

This is a must-have movie for a B5 fan, Its the best of the bunch.

"In the Beginning" is a mark of brilliance...a perfect made for TV movie for the Babylon 5 series. It is the best of the B5 movies with the second being the pilot episode.

ITB chronicles the genesis of the Earth Minbari war which was a holy war started by misunderstanding between Humans and a powerful alien race called the Minbari. In the struggle, a huge chunk of humanity is killed as the Minbari march towards Earth, destroying human colonies on the way.

Since this movie comes near the end of the 3rd season and out of chronological order, it answers many unanswered questions that B5 watchers would expect to be answered from the 1st Season onwards.

On its own, the story is PERFECT. There is plenty of CGI war scenes, plenty of dramatized war scenes and plenty of intrigue. A perfect reason to bother getting into the series itself if you weren't a fan.

I adore BABYLON 5. It's my all-time favorite sci-fi series because unlike any other show, it is almost like one huge movie--where almost all the episodes connect into one large and captivating tapestry. This made for TV movie is meant to fill in the gaps for die-hard fans, as it goes back in time BEFORE the series opener to explain a lot of the back story. People who have seen all the prior episodes will probably not be all that surprised by the events of the film, as you've already heard and seen bits and pieces. More importantly, you already know the outcome of the Earth-Minbari war as well as WHY the whole conflict was just "called off". However, for someone who hasn't seen the show before or isn't a huge sci-fi fan, I could also see that they could find the film pretty dull--especially since the first 20 minutes or so is filled with so much talking and no action. So who is the movie for? Well, die-hard lovers of the show and those who like the show but haven't seen most of the episodes of seasons 1-4. Intesesting, well acted and written, yes, but nothing compelling enough to merit making the film in the first place.