The newest Battlestar Galactica off shoot continues to hit the small screen with a new full length movie Blood & Chrome that brings another look at characters from the reimagined series.
Film making 2/5
Video 3/5
Audio 4/5
Bonus Features 1/5
Recommendation 2.5/5 Stars
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome takes a quick look at William Adama when he first starts his military career after his Academy days on his first adventure. Blood & Chrome stars Luke Pasqualino as William Adama, Ben Cotton as Lt. Coker Fasjovik and Lili Bordan as Dr. Beka Kelly.
I reviewed the last half season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series and found the show to be confusing even though I tried to catch up on events due to never having watched the series before. I truly do not recommend you watch the final episodes of a series but the series is a good one even though it does take a very different tack than the original series.
The main difference between the old series and the new was a more emotional series and easier to film show due to the use of less mechanical Cylons, read robots. The new series has substituted humans as cyborg creations that look identical to humans mainly to make the show easier to film but the plot handles this well.
The reimagined series is a mainstay of the new types of shows coming out with easier to film yet emotional plots due to good acting and well written episodes even if some of it is a bit confusing. The film Blood & Chrome takes place well before the series and even the first series with a quick glimpse at what made the Battlestar Galactica’s commander during the final years of the Cylon human war.
The film Blood & Chrome stars a young William Adama as he is forced to deal with a mission that winds up being much different than his young career plans were imagined. Lieutenant Adama is fresh out of the Academy and yearns to fly the best fighters of the fleet, instead he is given a mission where he flies an old transport fighter and escorts a female scientist to an unknown destination.
During the mission Adama uses his talents to complete the mission with a few twists and turns in the mix to keep the story lively but in the end it’s a simple science fiction action film. Blood & Chrome was first shot as a miniseries and only once did I notice a definite break in the episodes which is surprising as I had not known this was a miniseries.
The video for Blood & Chrome is good but not great with some obvious green screen work and a great transfer to Blu-ray with problems mostly due to the source material. Video looks very good but at times you just know it’s a lot of CGI animation that is all from the original filming and not the transfer to Blu-ray.
Grain is sometimes obvious and color is great most of the time but a few times the scenes are very different than the majority of the film. The video looks pretty good but probably could have looked better so the Blu-ray edition does well enough for the video quality.
Audio is much better than video with great sounding output and a real attention to surround for a great entertainment experience. Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome has a sometimes busy and adventurous plot for a great addition to your audio enhancement to the film.
Audio uses a lot of surround while voice is quite clear in all the scenes so the audio sounds great with its well-done DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound track. Bonus content is a disappointment with very little to speak of in extras, only a deleted scenes set and a making of feature centering on the use of CGI animation for the sets is included.
With so much filming done with CGI the main bonus content is about using CGI and the use of computer generated sets instead of traditional filming locations. The one main extra on the Blu-ray edition of Blood & Chrome is about the CGI use and filming behind the scenes which is alright for a very technical look at the filming but it is a bit repetitive.
The deleted scenes are alright but the bonus features are too short to get excited about the extras on the disc so it does get a bad rating for bonus content. The Blu-ray edition of Blood & Chrome is a look at the series before the main events of the Cylons killing off the humans and a look at the main character of Commander Adama before he becomes the leader of the humans.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome is an interesting film but in the end it has its own foibles that the reimagined series did not have to deal with. Blood & Chrome uses more robotic and technical aspects that the reimagined series does not and deals less with emotional issues but with more action.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome is an action film in the end that is based on both series but is not all that great as an action film itself.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome Website
