The science-fiction series Babylon 5 is not for everyone, and if you ask those of us who love the show exactly what we love about it, you’ll probably get a slew of different answers. If I had to pin down a single element that makes the franchise great, though, I would point to the sense of completeness running through the whole thing.

Though it’s been more than 15 years since the last new Babylon 5 stories hit screens, that same sense of being in good hands persists in Babylon 5: The Road Home. The franchise’s first animated feature, directed by Matt Peters (a veteran of various direct-to-video DC Comics-inspired animated projects) from a script by Straczynski, serves as not just a new story, but a reminder of the breadth and depth of the old stories, a trip down memory lane that might not break new ground, but will certainly remind you why you loved this saga in the first place.

Animation is a particularly helpful tool when it comes to staging these reunions, and Peters and Straczynski are well aware that rendering the characters through this medium offers plenty of other worthy opportunities. For all its narrative scope, Babylon 5 never had the biggest budget while it was airing, so The Road Home jumps at the chance to convey a grandness that the original series could never quite afford. Peters’ shots zip in and out of the action, swoop around characters as they talk, and push the story into places the original series never got to go. The alien nemeses known as the Shadows are more numerous and more terrifying, the battle sequences unfold with a kinetic force not seen on the original show, and the character animation seems to render things just a little more dynamic as friends old and new drift in and out of this adventure. It’s a format that works exceedingly well for Babylon 5, and leaves us with opportunities for even more animated stories down the road.

Link : https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/science-fiction/babylon-5-the-road-home-review