Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

lothos-370-690020 While Babylon 5 suffered from a few over the top performances, in general its main cast and regulars were all accomplished actors.Crusade on the other hand is jam packed full of terrible performances. From regulars like Galen who never met a syllable he didn't over emphasise, to a whole catalogue of terrible overly expressive bit parts, this show really has more than its fair share of over the top actors.Whether it was a decision by the director or just poor acting, every episode contained at least one cringe inducing scene.While the overall story was interesting and had huge potential some of the plots were very samey and one in particular was so bad, it approached Plan 9 levels of awful.The special effects remind me of games of the same era, which is reasonable given they were all using the same technology, but it has dated very poorly.There are a number of shows that were cancelled long before their time, Crusade was not one of them.

jtwcosmos "I want them out of my sky."This is the story of a star ship on a mission of discovery, and not just any discovery. What the crew of this ship is looking for, could very well be described as the Holly Grail. And both the name of the series - Crusade - and the name of the ship itself - Excalibur - clearly indicate that.If you take the time to read some of the reviews, you will quickly learn the difficult and complicated story of this series: how it was sabotaged by Network Executives, how it had to deal with their absurd demands and how it was killed off, eventually, when the creator refused to comply with their less then inspired requests.You will also learn about it's strong points - good story, mostly - and not so strong points - the music, for example. But is there anything more to it? Maybe there is.Crusade is a spin off of the highly successful series Babylon 5. The story begins several years after the end of the Great War, and the premise for it is explained in the TV movie "A Call to Arms", so make sure to watch the movie, first. As the successor of Babylon 5, Crusade inherits a very complex universe, where black and white are never easily identified and where morality and politics don't always go hand in hand. But what does this series do with it's inheritance? Does it develop it as fully as it deserves? I guess we will never learn the answer to that question, really, but from the 13 episodes it is clear that it could have. And if it hadn't been sabotaged by some really, really awful choices, it probably would have.But first, the good parts.The design of the ship is fantastic. It is big, powerful yet limited and it has a fighter wing, which makes for a lot of very animated space battles. It also has a very complex transportation system, and everybody seems to have their conferences in it.The main cast is likable, the characters are complex, and they clearly have things to do and places to go. Whatever they are, they are not the usual types one sees in a space show and they are quite unique, actually.One of the most powerful features of the show is it's mythology. JMS does a great job of developing a whole universe, ensuring an intriguing and fascinating background for the story. Most of the episodes build on that, are highly entertaining and provide a good blend of action, drama, inner conflict, ambition, frustration and humor. So much so that one is likely to ignore many of the shortcomings of the show.Which leads us to the... not so good parts.First things first: the show's opening credits are arguably the worst ever made. They are simply hideous and there is no question about that. They could easily be used as the template for how not to do things (and I've never seen credits like that again so... they probably were). The questions "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" written in shaky fonts all over the screen... not very promising. Especially if they are answered.Then there is the music. Bad, bad, bad.And the writing? Unfortunately it seems the writers never cared enough for it, and never gave the script a second thought. It seems rushed, it seems incomplete and it seems shaky. Come to think of it, maybe that's the meaning of the opening credits, who knows? Maybe it is a warning: "Beware! There be bad writing." Or maybe it is just the way it is rendered by the actors, but I seriously doubt that; the occasional moments of witty and insightful dialog that made Babylon 5 so great are delivered perfectly.Or maybe it is the direction that is at fault. A closer examination of some (if not all) of the episodes reveals a whole lot of close-ups, strange and goofy poses the actors seem to strike, and some scenes are positively begging for one more take. Alas, the amount of tape they have at their disposal seems to be very limited and that's a shame, really.And on top of it all, there is the Network's interference. Their less than inspired "notes" resulted in some episodes being quite pointless, and one can simply ignore them (like War Zone, for example).Crusade. A series that could have been so great, but didn't quite make it. 9/10.

electrictroy I'm not going to review the show but in brief: I consider Crusade equal to the original Star Trek's first thirteen episodes. Because it was an exploration ship and had that unusual otherworldy music, for me watching Crusade evokes the same sense of "wonder" and "mystery" and "danger" as the original Trek did. What happened to Crusade is approximately equivalent to if Babylon 5 ended after "Signs and Portents" where the Shadow Ambassador Mr. Morden first unveiled himself. Crusade was a 5-year-story about Earth and the Shadows, but was unfortunately cut short. Also the recommended airing order is episode 103 (Racing the Night), 101, 102, 104, 105, and so on. IMHO it makes more sense story-wise to follow this production order, rather than following the TNT/DVD order. (The same is true for Star Trek TOS.)So anyway quoting J.Michael Straczynski (jms): It was after episode five. We'd gotten minimal notes from TNT, pretty much along the lines of the Warner Bros notes we had in our first season of Babylon 5, so things were going pretty swimmingly. Then, out of nowhere, they gave us the shutdown so they could look at the show. That wasn't a small sign, it was more like an explosion going off on the set. .....It was only after I had left that I ran into TNT executives who had been working there at the time, who said, 'We're sorry about what happened.' I asked them under promise of confidentiality, and what it came down to was they had done a multi-year audience survey, and finally got the results in right around the time we were shooting episode 5, and it said that the TNT audience does not like or want or respond to SF. What I was told is that when they saw those figures come in, they decided that they wanted to get out of the contract and use that money to buy repeats of Law & Order, which their survey indicated would be a good buy for them. It you look at the trades for that time, they were kind of surprised when TNT came in on this bidding war and nailed it. Everyone thought their budget for the year had been allocated, so where was this money coming from? By sheer coincidence, the money they paid is equal to what they were going to pay for a full season of Crusade. Plus they didn't want to have to pay for the first 13. By trying to say it wasn't the show they ordered, they were trying to get out of paying anything and stick Warners with the bill. That was the purpose of the notes that came through. They could say, 'We gave them notes, and they wouldn't do them.' No, because they were egregious and wrong and I couldn't do them, but at the time, I knew none of this. And as one TV person told me after the fact, "Had you done every single note that they asked you for, they would have found some other reason to get out of that contract." They were trying to paper their way out of the deal, which makes me even gladder that I stood up when I did. - jms In my opinion:TNT sounds like a bunch of shysters: (1)Sign a contract (2) Change your mind (3) And manufacture excuses not to pay for the 13 episodes produced.

Polaris01313-1 I just recently finished watching all 13 episodes of Crusade, and I must say, it had potential. I liked the design of the Excalibur(which reminded me of the rockets used in The Martian Chronicles mini-series). Most of all, I liked the main characters and some of the guest stars that were on the show.It's a shame that TNT had to be pig-headed about the show. Sometimes major networks don't know artistic freedom, integrity, quality, or originality, period. I can understand J. Michael Straczynski's frustration over the entire incident.It may not be Babylon 5, but it was a decent sequel to that show, and it had potential.Here is to hoping that, like Futurama, we'll see the return of Crusade and the crew of the starship Excalibur.