I consider Brigitte Nielsen to be one of the sexiest women to ever grace the big screen in the eighties. She’s a bomb shell and in her heyday was a pure sexual force that I worshiped in films like “Red Sonja.” I won’t argue that her skills as an actress, but at her prime she was insanely sexy. So with that said, I can’t stress how boring a film has to be for me to doze off during a movie starring Nielsen. “Galaxis” is a bland and soulless science fiction epic that garners all of the tropes of the genre that were tired by the early nineties and are even more worn by 1995. I’m frankly shocked there wasn’t an opening scroll setting the stage for the film like “Star Wars,” but writer Nick Davis thankfully dodges that stale gimmick and jumps right in to a massive conflict we can’t enjoy because it’s not the central focus of the movie.
There’s a race called the Sintaria that are at war with an evil warlord named Kyla. He is in search of an ancient gem/crystal that can keep someone from being injured or immortal—or something to that effect, I wasn’t too clear on that explanation. After managing to infiltrate his enemy’s base with a very cool stop motion robot soldier, Kyla massacres the army and escapes with the gem in tow. Leaving behind warrior Laderia to avenge her brother and his comrades (one of whom is Sam Raimi for some reason), she ventures to Earth to seek out the sister stone of the gem to stop Kyla from obtaining ultimate power. Pretty much it’s Richard Moll in long hair running around growling all of his lines and trying his best to build an imposing villain out of throwaway one-liners and goofy super powers.
Laderia goes to Earth to seek out the maguffin, and has a ton of run ins with the scourge of the city she lands in, taking on violent gang members and criminals, and eventually coming across Jed who duped the local mafia out of their money. Forming a friendship and very under developed romance, Laderia and Jed traverse the city landscape trying to outrun Kyla and looking for the gem before the mafia gets it and sells it to the highest bidder. A lot of “Galaxis” is a fairly lifeless and absolutely tedious task to sit through with nothing exciting ever happening. In fact the whole idea of Laderia being on modern day Earth seems injected for the sake of convenience since director William Mesa seems to have used all of the film’s budget on the opening fifteen minutes featuring laser combat, teleportation, a ton of extras, and futuristic war uniforms.
Even Nielsen looks bored through this role, seeming incapable of delivering most of her lines including a dramatic “No!” at the body of one of her comrades in the prologue of the movie. Setting up this massive war, and then just dropping us down to Earth feels like a huge missed opportunity, almost like “Masters of the Universe.” It’s also disappointing we never get to see the shape shifting robot again in the film, as that would have been a fun villain for Laderia to confront time and time again throughout the narrative. It feels like “Galaxis” could have at least pulled us in to a third hand science fiction adventure, but instead it’s just another fish out of water action film with zero humor, and no self-awareness. “Galaxis” is the definition of a stock direct to video genre film from the nineties, offering no novelty and zero originality. Everything seems to be going through the motions, including star Nielsen who at least looks damn good in tight black leather.