Ok I guess they should really rename this forum section now that we got other games out lol well anyone else here remember that craptastic movie years ago? It starred the Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathieu of our generation Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard *snicker* and star in their 100th or so movie together as a young Blair and Maniac. I can see why they would want this as a beginning movie about how the Kilrathi war starts but the casting choice sucks a bit. Neither of them have nearly as much charisma as Mark Hamill and Tom Wilson did. Also its sad to see Malcolm McDowell being unavailable but at least his old buddy David Warner does a decent job. I was surprised that this movie was so boring and lifeless. It was directed by game series creator Chris Roberts who also directed all the FMV installments of the main series. Those were lively and fun even with a low budget. This?? WTF was he thinking? I guess he was unsure how to do this movie and felt out of his depth. I really want a new movie since we may never have another game as the space flight sub genre is pretty much dead now.

casting choices where far from perfect, also i dont like freddy prince jr
that aside, the cast wasnt what broke the back of that movie, the cast could have pulled it all off i think
script and directing where just painfully terrible, its almost as if someone that didnt know wing commander before was responsible and just got a crash course what everything is about

Hello!

The big problem with the movie is that it was cut to pieces in post production. More than a quarter of the scenes that were shot ended up on the cutting room floor for one reason or another.

In the movie as written and filmed, there's a human traitor working with the Kilrathi. You would flash to him and the Kilrathi talking about their plans occasionally (like the games did) and then the climax of the film was Blair boarding the Kilrathi communications ship, finding him and killing him in a hand-to-hand fight (using his Pilgrim cross knife.) Test audiences found the reveal confusing (the traitor was Admiral Wilson, the man on the space station at the start of the movie--he would have been obscured by a space suit until the end) and Chris Roberts cut the whole thing.

Then Blair was supposed to have a little holographic computer named Merlin, who would explain various elements of the film as it went along... for instance, the movie would have started with Blair talking to Merlin about how they're headed for the Tiger Claw. Merlin's scenes were all shot, with a blue Barbie doll that would have an actor CGI'd over it later... but the whole process was deemed too expensive late in the game and Roberts had to awkwardly cut around it. That's why Blair is talking to no one in particular in his fighter at the end of the movie--he was SUPPOSED to be having a conversation with his PPC!

The movie is actually kind of impressive once you know that--there's no reason it should work as well as it does with that amount of surgery done after filming wrapped.

(Interesting fact for the first poster--Wing Commander was actually the first movie to pair Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard... they met on that set for the first time. Their second movie, She's All That, was RELEASED first, but it was made second... I guess it needed less 3D rendering work. :))

those scenes reintigrated could still not save the movie, that pilgrim thing was a very cheap plot device to give the hero a power and an outsider state at once, flight sequences were very poorly done, and the showdown wasnt a showdown at all, in addition to that there were lots of other little factors that added up to a bad movie

maybe the package would have made a better impression with the mentioned scenes reintigrated, but still the story would have been very cheap and flawed

I've seen the rough cut shown to test audiences. It's not a perfect movie, by any means, but it is MUCH better. The big difference is the payoff. You mention the Pilgrim thing, in particular, which is vastly improved with the fight against the traitor... Blair has to choose between betraying Gerald (the Tiger Claw's XO who hates Pilgrims) and the Pilgrim traitor Wilson--so all that background actually exists to build up to that choice (along with reveals like the cross having a blade in it--which just seems pointless in the current version of the film!).

I disagree about the flight, though, I think the effects work was really cool--especially for 1999. I know a lot of fans didn't like the ships being redesigned, but other than that it was some quality effects work.

I haven't seen the movie but i heard the kilrathi looked real bad as compared to the furry puppets in the game

I've seen the movie a few times, and it didn't seem too bad once you think of it like this.

There is no 'prior art' basically. If you watch the movie without thinking about referencing everything to the storylines in the Wing Commander games, you'll be fine.

Just like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Bourne movies, etc.

They 're-imagined/wrote' the story to make it non-interactive, and only have the most relevant details in the story to get the point across.

However, I didn't know about all the extra stuff they cut. I knew they cut some stuff, but a QUARTER of the stuff filmed? Is that normal for a big-budget Hollywood 'Sci-fi' movie?

Anyone know where to get this 'test' version ;)

It isn't usually normal to cut this much of the movie.. especially when so much of it is so key to the context of the whole film. But basically they ran out of money to do the effects work for Blair's holographic sidekick. Without the Merlin character they couldn't get the traitor plot to work right and one of the producers convinced Chris Roberts to try a version of the film without the traitor... and so that's what we got.

If you wan't to see the rough cut of the film, We show it sometimes at special events but have been asked not to put it online. But the quality of the old VHS transfer is pretty awful.
If you are curious here's a rundown of some of the major scenes cut from the film with some screenshots: http://www.wcnews.com/articles/movie_cuts.shtml

Also here's the shooting script with all the deleted material highlighted so you can see the exact extent of the omissions and changes http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Wing_Commander_Movie_Shooting_Script

Another would-be masterpiece that was cut to death in hollywood comes to mind: David Lynch's Dune. I suppose there are many more that producer's ruined. Alien 3 was one of them too i think. One reads about such stories from time to time. Although, we should admit, it is always easy to blame the producer.

No no. The 4-hour Dune movie wasn't something Lynch has much to do with. Plus it was made more horrible with the extra 2 hours of footage.

I didn't mean any of the versions circling in the net, just the fact, that the producers interfered a lot with Lynch's vision. For example the horrible voiceovers were not Lynch's idea. And so on.

I don´t think you can compare the Wing Commander movie to Alien 3. Chris Roberts, the director of Wing Commander - The Movie, created the universe & should have known better. In David Fincher´s case, he was hired to direct Alien 3 while there already were finished set decorations but no screenplay. But in the end, I think both directors were pretty frusrated about the result ;)

I really tried to enjoy the movie, but found it to be difficult. First off, the cast did not fit their roles. Paladin was not even Scottish, and that was part of the character that made him memorable. Many of the characters that made the game's story so fascinating were either left out completely or mentioned in passing. In the later games (3&4) there is a real love/hate relationship between Maverick and Maniac.

You know every time you see Mark Hamill and Tom Wilson have an exchange that they seem to really dislike each other on the surface, but the loss of either would be devastating to the other. Their relationship in the movie seems shallow. The Kilrathi in the game videos seem a little hokey at times, but they seem more like what Kilrathi should be rather than the lizard-cats in the movie.

Also, the game videos had characters like Captain Eisen, Radio Rollins, Rachel Coriolis, Pliers, and so many other characters you really got to like, whereas in the movies many of the characters seem to be there just to populate the movie. I had a hard time actually caring about anyone in the film, whereas in the game they felt like personal friends (yes I know the game was interactive whereas the movie was not, but many movies have characters like that.)

Finally the ships seemed like some type of WWII era fighters in space, and it really bothered me to hear the sounds of space fighters that sound like prop powered planes. I realize they were trying to get a WWII drama in space type of feel, but it just seems out of place here.

Chris Roberts is brilliant, and I miss him in the game world terribly. I would give anything for him to make a comeback and come out with another great space sim. I predict a comeback for the genre, and it would be awesome if Chris Roberts would lead the charge with a new game. But as much as I enjoy his work, the best Wing Commander movies I had the pleasure to watch were III and IV which were not only excellent games but terrific movies.