I recently rewatched it on Crackle, where you can watch it for free. It's also on Amazon Prime. I'm not sure if it's on Netflix but it's not on Hulu.
Anyway, almost the first third is actually a redo of the final battle at Reflex Point from the third series. Other than Scott Bernard and Ariel/Marlene it cuts out all of the other characters from that series. It also changes the ending where the REF fleet was destroyed when the Invid Regess left the planet in a massive phoenix of light. (Or the REF fleet was absorbed into her, depending how you look at it.)
In this version much of the fleet survives but they're running low on Protoculture. Meanwhile Vince Grant, brother of Claudia Grant from the first series, takes a ship with Dr. Louie Nichols from the second series to answer a distress call from Rick Hunter and the SDF-3. Grant and Nichols find that the SDF-3 is gone and rescue the android Janice Em from another ship. She says there's a big problem with the Neutron-S missiles they were testing--and that were destroyed over Earth by the Regess.
Meanwhile Scott and Marlene go to the moon with the REF. Eventually there's an attack on the deep space station Liberty by mysterious attackers. But as Scott, Marlene, Grant, and Nichols show up they realize that the attackers are the Haydonites who helped create most of the REF technology. They've embedded "Trojan horses" in most of this so that they can blow up the REF ships and fighters almost instantly.
The only way to fight back is to get ships not using the Haydonite "Shadow" technology. So our heroes get some fighters that haven't had this installed an an old "colony ship" and manage to drive the Haydonites off.
It was supposed to be the first salvo in the war. But there was never a sequel despite that sales were supposedly not that bad.
That's probably for the best because it wasn't really that good. As a fan it kind of sucked that they basically rewrote the end of the third series. Imagine if the first half hour of The Force Awakens had been a reshoot of the battle over Endor only this time they change it so Vader lives? It'd be pretty fucking ridiculous because for almost 30 years you've thought one thing and all the sudden they want you to believe something else.
Which in a way they still kind of did because for almost 30 years there were all those books about what happened after the Empire's defeat at Endor. Then Disney told us those were no longer canon to make room for their new movies. Though to be honest most of those books were crap anyway so no big loss.
But in this case they wanted us to disbelieve what we saw on the TV screen. I mean you can see in the last episode that the REF fleet is destroyed. The commander of the fleet, General Reinhardt, is dead. Scott flies away into space, not to a ship in orbit. (Since the Japanese show had them coming from Mars I presume he was going back there.) Reinhardt is suddenly alive? Basically you're saying that the actual canon material (the TV series) is no longer canon. It's pretty outrageous.
For fans of the books like me, and I guess maybe some comics and stuff, there were also a lot of changes. There was already a whole novel, The End of the Circle, that dealt with what happened after the Invid left. And the Sentinels series that already introduced the Haydonites as not evil; a couple of them were allies of Rick Hunter and the Sentinels.
But like with Star Wars I can understand saying stuff that only happened in books or comics was no longer canon. It's just another thing when it's the actual show you're rewriting.
In some ways though it was an improvement over the novel. There's a lot more space battle action in the movie than The End of the Circle, which was more like an episode of Star Trek with the SDF-3 and Ark Angel crews exploring a new dimensional realm. I can see where that wouldn't make for a really exciting movie.
But it wasn't really necessary to change so much. They could have still left the REF fleet destroyed and just had the Ark Angel (or Icarus) show up afterwards and then they could have gone back to Tirol where the rest of the REF is. The rest could have pretty much been the same.
They also didn't have to make the Haydonites suddenly hiding an evil agenda. Again imagine if in The Force Awakens it were revealed that all the sudden Admiral Ackbar and the Mon Calamaris were secretly bad guys?
Again it would seem like a slap in the face after so long. In The End of the Circle the Haydonites do sort of turn but not really on their own. With the Invid "transcending" the creator of the Haydonites wakes up and basically the synthetic Haydonites and their planet are hijacked to do his will. They could have done something like that in the movie where with the Invid gone some big bad activates a Trojan horse in the Haydonites sort of like the REF weapons. It wouldn't have been so off-putting.
It might also have not been off-putting if they hadn't shown Rick Hunter with white hair like he was supposed to be 80 or something. I mean if it's 2044 and the original series started in 2009 that's only 35 years and he's like 18 when that starts so he'd only be 53. They invented some bullshit reason for it but come on it was really because some dumbass didn't know the source material. That's the kind of shit that pisses fans off. Someone couldn't have gone in and just recolored those couple of minutes showing him so he wouldn't look so old instead of making up some BS reason?
I'm not sure even those tweaks could have saved the project since it sounds like with typical Harmony Gold management they ran into problems with their animators and they were still hoping to make a live action version. Like they're ever going to get their shit together enough for that.
I haven't even bothered to make one of my fake movies for that because it seems like it'd be pretty simple. I'd want a trilogy based on the first series because trying to do all of that in one movie would be pretty hard. It could be done if you cut a bunch of stuff out. Just have the SDF-1 go to Pluto and highlight a few battles (Saturn's rings, Mars, Rick/Lisa/Max/Ben Dixon being taken aboard Breetai's ship) and then go back to Earth for a final battle. And cut out all the Reconstruction stuff. But 3 movies would be a lot better. I mean if they can do it for The Hobbit, why not Robotech? Then later do the other series. Though I'd prefer to just skip the second one altogether.
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