He's the weakest actor in the movie and that's made more apparent by the fact that much of the rest of the cast is surprisingly good... but I really like the concept behind Freddie Prinze Jr. (and Matthew Lillard)--baby faced American actors to play the new kids who don't understand what war is about contrasting a cast of experienced international character actors for the grizzled veterans.
It's not sutble or anything, but it's *slightly* more clever than what you would expect.
Clever? Sorry, but I have to disagree. And Wing Commander Academy had the "fresh cadets" theme already. And even with the "young"-route - the actors in Space: Above and Beyond were young too, but they did a vastly better job as combat pilots than Freddie and Lillard.
What would be really clever is to re-use Mark Hamil and Tom Wilson and place the movie as a prequel to Wing 3. In the same time period as "Fleet Action". (why not use the last part of the book as the basis of the film?) That way the movie could fit right into the established games. And the actors were not too old to play their parts. Hell - the main guy could be still some young pilot, working alongside with our established heroes, how cool would that be?!
The audience will understand the scenario, because the briefing in the opening did a good job (one of the few points good points of the movie).
Can you imagine the scene where the Kilrathi break through and bombard Earth? The last ditch effort to blow up their ships? man, imagine it on a big screen!
And make it a nitty gritty war DRAMA, veterans fighting a bleak war. No damn American Pie-She's-The-One-Last-Summer teenager crap. The romances in Wing 2 and 3 were better handled than the one in the movie.
Even teenagers identify more with adults than with teenagers or kids in sci-fi movies.
We all love Wing Commander, but people need to admit that the movie was a failure. It could have been so much better. And although this point has been beaten to death: The fact the Chris Roberts, the creator of the characters, overlooked even obvious spelling errors (Towlyn), shows that the guy was not with all his heart on this project.