Battlestar Galactica: Razor (movie): Too difficult for beginners

I make it no secret that I am a big fan of science fiction but at the same time and completely understanding of why others would tend to stray away from this sort of thing. It is, suffice to say, a very niche part of the overall market and most sci-fi specials outside of very big and heavily bankrolled features such as Star Wars and Star Trek normally are a massive gamble for the people involved in producing it.

This one was likely even more of a gamble because BG simply doesn't have the prestige associated with it that the other two do, and no matter how much money they throw at it, it is very unlikely to.

So before you read on through my entire synopsis of what is going on with this film I will go ahead and tell anyone out there that is not already quite familiar with the series that went on for 7 seasons or so, this one, which jumps all over the place in space and time, is going to be wildly confusing and probably unintelligible for people who don't recall much of the series, or even worse, for people that have never even seen any of it.

For people that were / are fans of the series and lore, so to speak, this is a great little piece of history that fills in the blanks of what happened to result in the near destruction of humanity in the first place, which is where the series that most are familiar with began.

For normal people, and even sci-fi nerds like me, the series that went from 2003 to 2009 was really engaging and managed to fill in the blanks in almost all places, but Razor was managed to fill in a lot of information that the series failed to do so with. I enjoyed the fact that it was released in cinemas (a very limited release, mind you) before the series was even wrapped up. It was released as a standalone film in November of 2007, perhaps as a way of keeping fans of the series interested since viewership numbers were starting to dwindle at that point anyway.

There are a lot of familiar faces in this episode and that will be welcome to people that are fans of the show and there are also a lot of other characters that were at times, referenced in the main series but we never had a face to go with the name. Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes) is focused on a great deal as she was in charge of the Pegasus fleet, which if you watched the main series you are aware is one of the only other surviving fleets after the Cylon strike on the human colonies. She is a bit of a ruthless commander doing whatever it takes to keep her crew in line including executing them if they disobey her orders. This, obviously, is kind of frowned upon by others in the commanding ranks but this is also where a lot of the tension in the movie originates. I do find it a bit hokey that she is constantly messing around with a pocket-knife in a sort of literal reference to the title of the film.

The movie delivers on a lot of fronts but this doesn't change the fact that the only people that are going to get very much out of this are people that aren't just "ok" with the Battlestar Galactica universe, but are intimately familiar with it. Also, even though I am a big fan of everything this franchise has done including the original bits from 1978, I found it very confusing the way that this movie goes back and forth in time, often not being terribly evident when this happens. No, they are not using a time machine as part of the plot, thank gods, but they are just attempting to explain the relevance of what happens in the past as it related to "current day" events. For me it was entertaining but I will say that I don't really like how there were the beginning stages of DEI that happens in the casting with the women being girl-bosses and the men, for the most part, being useless boobs who do everything wrong. It was subtle, but as someone that really dislikes how this has been somewhat omnipresent in the past 4 years or so, I am kind of sensitive to seeing this in anything and would prefer it not be there. Whatever! it is subtle enough that it isn't all up in your face all the time.

I didn't live in any of the big cities that this was featured in at the time of release, but according to people who were there, there were lines going around the block to get into a screening. They never even attempted to make a widespread release of this, and given the intricate nature of the subject matter, it is easy to understand why.

Should I watch it?

If you are a fan of the series and lore then absolutely yes, you should. If you haven't yet seen some or most or all of the series, this should be an easy hard pass. It will simply be far too confusing for anyone that has no idea what a Cylon even is and this film makes no attempt to educate anyone about this information either. It is assumed that the audience has a pretty great grasp on the overall story up to this point and if that person is not you, then you should absolutely skip this and perhaps instead give the series a shot.

Also, it should be pointed out that the CGI as far as Cylon robotic enemies are concerned, are embarrassingly cheap looking which was a surprise because at this point the series had already been wildly successful. That was a strange surprise to me.