by Robin Reed
I was glad to see that the new Battlestar Galactica movie, based during the first Cylon war and starring the young and enthusiastic Bill Adama, later to be the older and wearier Admiral Adama of the other SyFy series, was not a jingoistic rah rah war movie. It was more in the tradition of Vietnam War movies in which the reasons for the war are unclear and the motives of the leaders who order young people into battle are murky.
And yet, this movie is a jingoistic rah rah war movie, because as someone said, you can’t make an anti-war movie. War is exciting, and addicting. It is more interesting than getting a job and having a family. For many people, once they have experienced it, they want to go back to it. You can call it meaningless and question why it happens all you want, but just showing it is attractive to many people.
This movie takes place after the Cylons, robots created as warriors, then used as servants, have rebelled against the humans of the Colonies. (Ask colonies from where, and you get into the never-explained backstory of the original 1980’s Battlestar Galactica. They seem to be colonies from Earth, but when did they leave Earth? In the original show, the viper pilots had helmets that looked Egyptian. Did ancient Egypt have space flight? The show never said. Oh, and the Cylons were an alien race in the original show, they weren’t created by the colonies.)
New Buyers in Town
