here there are oppressors, there will be those with the courage to resist. That simple truth is the underlying premise of V: The Miniseries, Kenneth Johnson's allegory to World War II and fascism. The inevitable sequel to V—of which Johnson was only peripherally a part in the early stages—aired just a year after the initial four-hour miniseries, and ran two hours longer. And while it lacks the same degree of depth and emotion that the first installment invoked, V: The Final Battle is a worthy popcorn-entertainment follow-on.
Former med student Julie Parrish (Grant) and former newscaster Mike Donovan (Singer) now lead a motley crew of resistance members in Los Angeles. At every opportunity, the resistance strives to disrupt the activity of the Visitors—those aliens who inhabit the imposing motherships hovering over the capitals of the Earth. The Visitors have insinuated themselves into our society and government, running a fascist state and manipulating humanity with sugar-coated promises and lies even as they are covertly plotting to steal the planet's water supply, and to stockpile humans for their food reserves.
Realizing they need to get more attention for their cause, the Resistance plots to crash an event thrown by the Visitors, and to expose them on national television for what they really are: red-eyed reptilian beings who wear skins to mimic humans. While the event is successful, Donovan and the group must cope with the loss of Julie, who's captured by the deliciously diabolical Diana (Badler). Teenage Robin (Blair Tefkin) takes Julie's loss hard; she's pregnant—the result of an enthusiastic mating with a Visitor male—and she's terrified of what her unborn child may be, let alone what it's doing to her.
Major bonus to the DVD release of The Final Battle: All of this can be viewed in the glory of widescreen, even though this was originally aired on television.
Campy, but not void of substance
With a running time of 267 minutes (it originally ran as a three-part miniseries), the story has ample time to amble—and amble it does, intersecting many various storylines with the movie's large ensemble of characters. Johnson declined to return for The Final Battle because of various creative differences, and the dialogue in this installment suffers from his absence (to wit: five people are credited with writing the story and teleplay). The ending is cliched, ripped in part straight out of Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope; but, it does leave the door open for the TV series that followed six months later and lasted a mere 19 episodes.
Also suffering is the cogency of the script as a whole. The script has three peaks of action as our heroes battle against evil, one for each part of the miniseries. Unfortunately, at times, dialogue exists to fill the time between the action sequences: Indeed, there are parts where the dialogue is corny enough that you may need to fight the impulse to mentally rewrite the line as an on-the-fly remedy. There are more action, shoot-'em-up scenes than in the first movie, and more effects, too—some of which play fine by today's standards, and others, particularly some model and matte painting sequences, which seem downright retro and primitive.
While no one was going to win an Emmy for acting, Grant and Singer are competent leaders of the pack, which has great continuity with the first miniseries thanks to the return of many of the same faces in supporting roles. Englund (seen here before Freddy Krueger) is humorous as the well-meaning yet bumbling alien, Willie. Scene-stealer credit goes to Michael Ironside's Ham Tyler, a mercenary with sharp tongue and the mettle to do what needs to be done.
Ironically, none of these aforementioned flaws detracts from the pure entertainment just waiting to be derived from watching this film. From the small touches like an American flag in Resistance headquarters to the ultimate and inevitable ending, the fact that humanity prevails is comfortingly reassuring.
But there are several things that are keeping us from fully enjoying this two-disc DVD edition. First and foremost, there are absolutely no extras: none; nada; zilch. Considering there had to be, at the least, electronic press kit info at one time, the lack of behind-the-scenes info is disconcerting—especially considering one side of these dual-layered discs is completely unused (each part takes one side of a disc). And although it's still better than any videotape could hope to be, the movie's negative was obviously not restored, and the picture's quality reflects the pops and scratches of degradation over time.
