Director Peter Manoogian
Starring Paul Satterfield, Hamilton Camp & Claudia Christian
Rated M
Score 2.5/6

A human becomes an unlikely rising star in the biggest fighting tournament in the galaxy that’s dominated by alien species.

For those of you who might be interested after some quick research I found out that Arena is considered as a loose remake of Star Trek: The Gamesters of Triskelion (the sixteenth episode of the second season). Arena Science-Fiction cheesiness at its best. Sometimes that’s all you need, especially if you are looking for something that it is nothing more than a bit of guilty fun. Given the questionable nature of some of the effects used in Arena I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t an opening crawl introduction, I enjoyed the opening theme, and I cannot help but compare the holo-singer in the bar to the singer in Jabba’s palace in Return of the Jedi. Arena comes across as being a cross between Rocky (though without the training montage) and the Cantina from Star Wars. How the rules of the fighting league were explained seemed logical. Now is this a movie that I’ll want to watch again in a hurry? I’m not sure if I will be watching again any time soon, though I am certain that Arena has left a ‘oh yes, I have watched this before’ kind of imprint. I found that I enjoyed Armin Shimerman’s performance as Weezil, Hamilton Camp’s performance as Shorty and Jack Carter’s performance as the announcer. It is also interesting to note that Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman would both go on to star in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Claudia Christian would go on to star in Babylon 5 (1994). I suppose the ending is definitely cliched, but I suppose that was only to be expected and I might have chuckled a little bit about the fate of Skull who was portrayed by William Butler.