I am reeealy put off byt the 3.5, but is it worth buying and watching given I would be coming at it knowing nothing about the franchise. I mean David Warner is in it and hell that guy can make a movie tood in an empty room reading his shopping list to camera as far as im concearned.
So, opinions? :)
I guess it depends on what you like. The 3.5 is probably a bit undeserved, but you do need to be aware that the film has issues.
Most of the space CG scenes are pretty good, but the animatronic aliens didn't work out and are... not very good, though you don't see much of the them in the film.
It's kind of a fun forgettable flic if you like World war 2 inspired space combat. Some people love it, some hate it.
I say forgettable because it has story and pacing issues. A bunch of subplots got dropped in editing and as a result the climax falls flat and the first have is a bit slow.
The overall music score is pretty excellent. The acting is mostly pretty good accross the board with the exception of the lead character...
But overall I enjoy it for what it is. If you aren't expecting a masterpiece you just might be surprised by it.
As far as whether you need to be familiar with the games, then no you don't need to be familiar with the games. It's structured in a way that tells you everything you need to know for the story. In fact, fans of the game tend to like it less due to the invariable 'changes' made in the translation to the big screen.
This movie doesn't even deserve 1 star. Both 3 and 4's cut scenes make better movies than this. The Kilrathi look better in the games. Suddenly the main character has superhuman powers. How this was made by Chris Roberts is beyond me, unless there was an extremely large amount of studio tampering.
shareIn this case, you're better off not knowing anything about the franchise. This movie doesn't stick very closely to the franchise at all, or, rather, it takes a few non-emphasized parts of the franchise and uses them as the basis for a movie, rather than sticking to the staples of the series.
Wing Commander is an awesome universe, and, I firmly believe that this movie really killed it.
I won't argue that the movie as is is good. There's a lot of issues with it, and it doesn't represent the movie that the crew set out to make. But it didn't kill the franchise in any way. If anything blame that on MMOs or more specifically Ultima Online and Earth and Beyond...
Still, that's just an oversimplification of the issues. Marketabilty of flight sims was in drastic decline as evidence of the failure of decent space action games like Freespace 2, and this was combined with EAs insistence on turning Origin into their MMO company. Various WC pitches including Privateer 3 turned into Wing Commander Online and Privateer Online attempts which were in development long after the Wing Commander movie came out. WC/Priv Online was cancelled because EA aquired Earth and Beyond from Westwood which was much further along in development and they didn't want competing MMOs on the market so they wagered (wrongly IMO) on E&B. EA also had the belief that they couldn't make a successful WC game without Chris Roberts... and Chris refused to be an "employee" and only wanted to do it on a contract basis.
The failure of the WC movie to make an impresion didn't affect project development at Origin at all. They may have been more apt to finish a single player WC game had it been a success but It didn't sour EAs view of the franchise either. What it did kill was any near term prospects for a movie sequel though there was a WC TV show in the works... around 2001 or so that never panned out once Enterprise's ratings tanked.
Ehh, Wing Commander was in decline because all sequels and offshoots outside of the main series simply weren't very good... I played them all. They were shovelware. Wing Commander 3 was good, very solid, and received positive reviews...
After the Wing Commander movie came out in 1999 and sucked, you mysteriously see no more offerings out of the Wing Commander universe, which is a little bit awkward for a game series with 18 or so titles/expansions spanning the better part of a decade.
I don't think that you can argue that if Wing Commander had been a smash hit, and earned itself a sequel and a new TV show that there wouldn't be several more games in the franchise.
And for the record, I think Mathew Lillard was a good casting selection for maniac, and I'm glad that Chris Roberts was involved in directing the movie, but, all I can do is shake my head when I try to watch it.
What killed the film for me:
1) Pilgrim this, pilgrim that. Magical pilgrim powers, use the force. BS.
2) The Kilrathi weren't nearly as cool as they are in the games.
3) The Kilrathi didn't have a real character like they usually got in the games (cool aces with cool quotes, cool villains, cool ships)
4) Not enough focus on the tactical aspect of the battles, torpedo runs, capital ship types, weapon types, etc... the "techie" parts of Wing Commander are all very good and could have stood some screen-time.
5) Generally lackluster storyline, trying to tie up major, major plot elements in a single movie that should have just been one very important event in a much larger universe.
Have you seen this, Judge:
http://www.wcsaga.com/
Fans of the game & loverly technical experts are on the brink of releasing a fan made sequel built around the frame of that other great 'space opera', "Freespace 2"---
The Pilgrim stuff is my biggest beef. There as just no need for it and it was completely out of line with the rest of the Wing Commander universe. Why they felt they had to randomly throw in magic powers is beyond me. I suppose they didn't have any faith in their writing to make the story interesting and the main character believable without giving him Mary Sue powers.
There are moments of cool space-navy action which frustrates me even more by showing the potential the film could have had. I really don't know how much of the problems of this film were pressure from the studio to make something marketable and how much of the problem was Chris Roberts' own inexperience. Probably a lot of both.
Then there are the problems inherent with the budget, but frankly these are forgivable and good writing would have glossed over them all. Even some of the great actors in this film couldn't do much with the silly dialogue.
And the editing, which removed a major plot arc that tied the entire movie together and helped make it more of a coherent story, didn't help out much either.
At the end of the day some of the spelling and proofreading errors, even getting the name of the damned carrier wrong, shows how little most of the people involved in the production actually cared.
To be fair it's a fun little b-movie that's occasionally exciting and occasionally unintentionally funny and the less you know about Wing Commander the more you'll likely get some enjoyment out of it.
I guess the reason it's compared so unfavourably to the games is because of the standard of the games. The movie on it's own was so-so. So-so story. 2nd rate acting. Only redeeming feature was the special effects and if you've seen the Matrix then you've already been impressed more than you would be by the effects in this movie.
The games had an excellent storyline and first rate acting by a cast of well known and well respected actors. That cast alone would have made the movie many times better than it was. It's just staggering that they were made by the same people when the standards for the film are so much lower than the standards for a computer game that can no longer even be played on most modern computer systems.
i gave it a 6. big fan of the games, they are definitely worth playing, but the movie you can skip without missing anythong special. wc games from 3 onwards have better story and acting than this
and check out wing commander saga and the upcomnig chris roberts game space citizen, which just broke the crowd funding record for games https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com
The games are awesome... This movie is a result of what movies at the end of the 90's went way too overboard with. Hiring pop stars, young people, and trying to relate to a younger audience, which it didn't even do well. This movie could've been a lot better, had they just stayed true to what it was about, instead of trying to flesh out all this other stuff for young people to relate to. Pretty much the entire premise of this movie was the main star getting the girl at the end.
lol I remember hearing about the Star Wars: Episode 1 trailer being attached to the beginning of this movie. People went to see this movie, but left after the trailer for Star Wars was over, and before this movie even started. This movie ended up being a financial failure.
But I have high hopes for Star Citizen. :) I think while Chris Roberts has been out of the game business, he's learned a lot about how to make movies. He produced for The Jacket, Lord of War, The Punisher, and Lucky Number Slevin... all of which were pretty big movies.
If you played the game I would avoid this film like the plague. If you haven't played any of the games, then it will be a cheap cheesy film to watch. However it still wouldn't be a film I would rent or go to the cinema/theatre to watch
I played the games and was bitterly disappointed that the games was significantly better in terms of story and acting in Wing Commander 3 onwards than this movie.
Looking at it objectively, the acting and story simply did not help each other at all. They both were that bad it made the other element even worse than when it was on its own. It might have had a low budget, but that's no excuse. I seen films with much better stories and acting on even lower budgets around the same time this film was released.
I've never had to pay to watch this film and have never played the games. That said I loved the movie (yeah the main actor wasn't all that great) but overall thought it was very entertaining. Just my 2 cents...
shareI've never played the games, but the movie is okay. Maybe 5/10.
http://www.freewebs.com/demonictoys/
If you see it in a $5 bin at Wal-Mart and just want another really bad Sci-Fi DVD to add to your collection, pick it up. If you're a fan of David Suchet, David Warner or Tchéky Karyo and want to pad out your DVD collection of their movies, pick it up.
If you ever enjoyed the video games (which is pretty much EVERYONE who ever played the video games)... you might want to give it a pass since it's no where NEAR as good as any of the games in the franchise.
Yeah. It was a disappointment.
Sad that the Kilrathi looked better in the first 2D, 256 color, cartoony version of the game than they did in the movie which was made 9 years later. I'm pretty sure that there's a special place in hell reserved for the producers of this movie. The video game gods will see to it. :)