Battlestar Galactica

The Twelve Colonies are about to sign a peace treaty with the Cylons. It is a trap, and the colonies are destroyed in a single attack. The survivors gather around a warship called Galactica and set out under Adama's command to find the legendary thirteenth colony, Earth. Alan J. Levi and Richard A. Colla direct. Lorne Greene plays Adama, Richard Hatch plays Apollo, Dirk Benedict plays Starbuck. The film is really a television product. The three part opening of the 1978 series was recut for cinema and released theatrically outside the United States; in several countries audiences met the show through this film. There is a lawsuit behind it. Twentieth Century Fox, which produced Star Wars, sued Universal claiming Galactica copied it. Universal countersued, arguing that Star Wars had borrowed from its own Silent Running. The case ran for years. The effects came from John Dykstra's team. Dykstra had done the visual effects on Star Wars, which accounts for some of the resemblance. Who it is for: viewers curious about seventies science fiction and films assembled from television. Who it is not for: because it is cut from episodes the flow is broken, and anyone who knows the 2004 remake will find the tone and the depth entirely different.