>>23309500
Movie 1 is fine, but that's mostly a function of that first portion of the show having a very tight narrative. That first third from White Base fleeing Side 7 > reaching Earth > escaping Garma Movie has a fairly narrow focus and the events flow from one to the next very closely which I think it translates from episodic storytelling to long-form very well (with 'Coming Home', and the first Ramba Ral attack, working as a nice coda to lead into the next movie)
'Soldiers of Sorrow' suffers a lot from the middle third of the series covering such a wide range of stuff which isn't nearly as linearly connected; Ramba Ral's pursuit, Odessa, Dublin, then finally Jaburo are all fairly discrete storylines, while the overarching narratives haven't been properly introduced by that point in the TV series to properly knit them together (Dublin in particular stands out there, since the other 3 can at least use Matilda as a loose through-line). It has a good go at covering up the joins, but it really does feel the most like a *compilation* movie, rather than just a movie
I fucking love 'Encounters in Space' though. Similar thing to the first movie of it covering a much more linear portion of the series, but with the added bonus of all the overarching narrative threads like Newtypes and Char/Sayla being properly established by that point in the story so it can really just get its teeth into it. All the awkwardness of the previous two movies really does pay off in the third