Penny-Arcade and WC Movie

The problem is not that it was stealing from SW. If anything, it was doing it wrong.

At least the WC games "stole" cool space action from Star Wars. If Pilgrim powers are the WC equivalent to the Jedi, they are not very interesting. As LOAF put so correctly, it's about doing math really fast.

The equivalent of a lightsaber - the pilgrim cross - was virtually unnused as a weapon on the movie.
 
Well, probably everyone on these forums would prefer an exact detail oriented rendering of the Wing Commander games... and we could even deal with the cat costumes from the game being used... unfortunately they knew ALL OF US WOULD SEE THE MOVIE ANYWAY regardless of the accuracy... Where they were coming from is understandable: 1) Make better, more realistic costumes than the game (lets face it non WC people wouldn't like the cat costumes from the game) 2) hire A list actors that will appeal to a young target audience that may in effect recruit the next generation of Chris Roberts game fans (called the echo boomers 'cause they're a HUGE $ target as the baby boomers kids.. i.e. there's alot of them) Unfortunately I think they failed in most accounts, but you can't blame them for trying... Anyway I still love the movie bc it's space combat which automatically earns a 10/10 with me by default regardless of plot/actors/etc. Plus the capship on capship action was pretty impressive (ironically the one thing they nailed is something that's lacking in the games) btw. Maniac from the games (aka Biff from Back to the Future) Rocked!!!! I liked him better than Mark Hammil Malcolm Mcdowell John Rhys-Davies... etc.. I was wishing they used him in the movie... also "Angel" Devereaux from the DVD is HHOOOOTTTT!!!!! She also helps my 10/10 rating and blows away the game's "Angel".. reference "deep blue" where for no valid reason she has to take some clothing off....

A second post: Quarto wrote: "Yeah, hence my Indiana Jones reference. However, the way it is right now, Tomb Raider is all about getting as much detail as possible into polygonal breasts." I think that would be a great movie!! Indiana Jones Part (Whatever).. he teams up with Laura Croft.. competes against her.. whatever... and has some kind of love interest between them... unfortunately Harrison Ford is getting old... but we expect Angelina Jolie to like old guys anyway... Box office smash.. guaranteed... AND guaranteed to tick off I.J. fans even more than we were by WC movie!!! BUT THEY'LL SEE IT ANYWAY!!!! And Tomb Raider fans would LLLOOOOVVVEEE it..
 
Bandit LOAF wrote: "So your argument would be that introducing any sort of "special ability" makes Wing Commander 'stealing' from Star Wars.

I guess I can see that -- the next thing you know, they'll have the guy who played Luke as Blair, and they'll end the story with a climactic trench run to... oh."

LMFiggin'AO!!!!!!! That's hilarious!!!!!!
Yeah, and then right before that scene they'll have one where they're hiding in an asteroid crater while being bombarded from above!!!
 
Hi ChrisRead! Why did you write: "Whoa?" btw. I guess you're online now, you're welcome to IM and talk about WC...
 
Because your post made me out of breath. I hate IMs, but you're welcome to come to #Wingnut and talk about WC.
 
The point I was trying to make is that "I'd amassed a certain affection for the culinary arts, that is to say, the construction of the edible" is so much more fun than "I enjoy cooking!". You don't honestly believe he takes himself seriously, writing like that? If you do you've kind of missed the point. I talk like that with my friends sometimes; it's fun trying to be as obscure and inventive as you can. Nobody sincerely believes they're any more intelectual for it. It's a difference of opinion; you think it's pretentious, I think it's hillarious.

I'm sure it was cute once. In large blocks four times a week, it's awful.

Anyway, each to their own.

Until someone feels the need to "retaliate". :)

(Seriously, kid -- of course anything I say is my opinion. Who elses opinion would it be? OH MY GOD! YOU DIDN'T EXPLICITLY STATE THAT SOME PEOPLE MIGHT NOT AGREE WITH YOU! holds water like a raft full of sea urchins.)

No, it wasn't 'stealing' from Star Wars. But I did think it was a cop out. And Blair's abilities in the movie are very much not pointless, but rather, a fairly substantial point of the plot.

I don't know -- as you point out in this same post, the "powers" weren't really necessary for the final jump.

And I already pointed out that my objection is not with Blair's religion, but with his special heritage. And as you've ignored now twice, his abilities are described as far more potent than what might translate to an excellent math score on the GRE. Paladin's little speech about the Pilgrims is a bit deeper than "you come from a proud people who developed beyond... beyond the need to use calculators!" He was gifted with an improved feel for the universe, he saw and did things better than the next guy down on the flightline, not on account of his training or his abilities as a pilot, but because he was fundamentally different. Yes, I do have a problem with that.

I guess I just don't see what you're getting at at all. You're talking about something historical rather than something that affects Blair's actual situation. Pilgrims were, initially, the only ones who could chart jump points -- computers to do the same function hadn't been invented yet. The fact that they were the majority of the people leaving the solar system lead them to create a religion and eventually splinter off into their own political group -- which lead to the whole backstory about the war.

The conflict about Blair's character comes from the prejudice against him assosciated with his relationship to these groups, not from some sort of amazing Jedi mind power. Computers can now (in 2654) do what Blair can, except under especially weird circumstances (like *charting* a pulsar).

I don't *love* the idea that Blair has a unique ability, however practically useless (though the connections created in the movie do help explain Tolwyn's interest in Blair -- because of having served with his father and because of Blair's unique genes... remember that Blair was one of the 'templates' used in the GE program.) I do, however, love the wealth of backstory the Pilgrim stuff added to the Wing Commander universe -- all sorts of conflict and background to hundreds of years of previously unexplored Wing Commander history. It's neat stuff.

I also understand why it was added to Blair's background -- because he didn't *have* a character beforehand. Blair was 'you' -- he didn't even have a name for five years... he doesn't even speak ten lines in the original game. That's fine for the games, but it doesn't hold up in a non-interactive story.

(Look at how the novel adaptations struggle with Blair's lack of personality -- both writers ended up having to focus on the fact that he was *old* as his flaw.)

Hi ChrisRead!

Well played.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
So your argument would be that introducing any sort of "special ability" makes Wing Commander 'stealing' from Star Wars.

I guess I can see that -- the next thing you know, they'll have the guy who played Luke as Blair, and they'll end the story with a climactic trench run to... oh.

If "Wing Commander is stealing from Star Wars" is enough to demonize the movie over something as pointless as Blair's mom's religion slash his ability to do math that in no way would ever effect anything we see in the games, then Wing Commander III must have *really* bothered you. :)
No, I can draw the line at some point. Things like the trench run in WCIII are just dramatic, nothing more. You could say most race scenes from movies are copied from the chariot race in Ben Hur, but the whole Pilgrim thing was a little much for my taste.
 
How is giving the character the ability to do something (an ability wholly unrelated to anything in Star Wars) *A LITTLE TOO MUCH* compared to actually having Luke Skywalker fly his space fighter down a trench to fire a torpedo into the one tiny opening that will blow up the entire planet?

The fact that the movie wasn't good is clouding your judgement -- you're seeing things when they aren't (or at least have always been) there in order to find a way to criticize it.
 
the pilgrim thing was an attempt to add a prejudice to bring out the drama ofr the Blair character in the movie. personally i think the movie was blasphemy that was its purpose IMO
 
Nomad Terror said:
Blair was always better than everyone else, not just in the movie.

In a game where you can score 7 - 8 kills in a single mission when that many kills spread out over an entire career would make one an ace pilot... if you kind of put yourself in the universe you think "Man this guy is something else."

I mean in WC1 you can eventually pass up Iceman and Bossman on the kill board, and they have been in the war far far longer than Blair has and are kind of hailed as the two greatest pilots on the Claw.
Just because he's talented doesn't make him superhuman. I'm just 14 and I fly airplanes by myself without any difficulty. Also, the 7-8 kills a mission isn't a stretch. Look at Germal WW2 ace "Bubba" Heartmen. The man scored 350+ confirmed kills, that's only those confirmed, so the real total is probably much higher. Now, Bubba got this kill record fighting inferior Russian craft on the eastern front. Much like Confed Pilots fighting inferior Kilrathi ships.

The bottom line is that Blair, although talented, was never super human. The movie made him into something he was not. That destroyed the story for me. I always loved how the charecters in WC were ordinary people, not supermen, in extrodinary situations.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The fact that the movie wasn't good is clouding your judgement -- you're seeing things when they aren't (or at least have always been) there in order to find a way to criticize it.
To back up my other post, Blair is not a superman!
 
Just because he's talented doesn't make him superhuman. I'm just 14 and I fly airplanes by myself without any difficulty. Also, the 7-8 kills a mission isn't a stretch. Look at Germal WW2 ace "Bubba" Heartmen. The man scored 350+ confirmed kills, that's only those confirmed, so the real total is probably much higher. Now, Bubba got this kill record fighting inferior Russian craft on the eastern front. Much like Confed Pilots fighting inferior Kilrathi ships.

I believe it's "Bubi", which means something like "Little Boy". (Also, Hartmann.)

(But yeah, the German records against the Russians are wildly out of synch with anything else in history -- for a bunch of reasons. (Among them the fact that the Russians were throwing untrained pilots in inferior aircraft into service en-masse... and the fact that Luftwaffe pilots flew straight through the war instead of on rotations like those of other countries.)

Blair, on the other hand, managed outscore *all* his peers by a significant margin... despite serving on the front lines for less than eight years. There were Confed top aces who served from Custer's Carnival to the end of the war (twenty five years) without achieving a tiny fraction of Blair's kills. Heck, the *second* highest contemporary ace scored significantly less kills despite a fifteen year career serving with front line squadrons.

The bottom line is that Blair, although talented, was never super human. The movie made him into something he was not. That destroyed the story for me. I always loved how the charecters in WC were ordinary people, not supermen, in extrodinary situations.

Single handedly destroyed the Kilrathi Vega Sector HQ, destroyed the KIS Sivar, wiped out five carrier groups at Firekka, tracked down the Kilrathi traitor and destroyed K'Tithrak Mang, saved Ghorah Khar from invasion multiple times, destroyed Ayer's Rock and the Society of MAndarins, survived the Battle of Earth, destroyed Kilrah itself... :)

The only difference between Blair and superman is that kryptonite doesn't hurt him.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Blair, on the other hand, managed outscore *all* his peers by a significant margin... despite serving on the front lines for less than eight years. There were Confed top aces who served from Custer's Carnival to the end of the war (twenty five years) without achieving a tiny fraction of Blair's kills. Heck, the *second* highest contemporary ace scored significantly less kills despite a fifteen year career serving with front line squadrons.

I remember reading somewhere (Victory Streak, probably) that while Blair had the highest number of victories against Kilrathi aces, some other pilots of the war did score more kills overall. So was that not accurate?

It makes more sense to have Blair as the top ace, considering all he did.

Bandit LOAF said:
Single handedly destroyed the Kilrathi Vega Sector HQc

Hunter was there. :)

Bandit LOAF said:
destroyed the KIS Sivar

Knight!

Bandit LOAF said:
wiped out five carrier groups at Firekka, tracked down the Kilrathi traitor and destroyed K'Tithrak Mang

The only Kilrathi traitor Blair tracked down was Hobbes. If you mean Jazz, he's a human traitor with one of the freakest movitavtions of the game.

Bandit LOAF said:
saved Ghorah Khar from invasion multiple times

Did he really, or was it a part of Thrakkath's secret Hobbes project?

Bandit LOAF said:
destroyed Ayer's Rock and the Society of MAndarins, survived the Battle of Earth, destroyed Kilrah itself... :)

Yet Paladin would say about the later: "That still only counts as one".

Bandit LOAF said:
The only difference between Blair and superman is that kryptonite doesn't hurt him.

You don't really know that. And Blair doesn't wear tight clothing.

Blair also, without any previous experience as a ship captain, commanded the BWS Intrepid at least on the situations described by the game. The interception of the Vesivius and subsequent debate on the senate proved Blair could not only blow stuff up, but defend a case rationally on a political arena, and use his rethoric to prove his point.

Later on he designed a megacarrier and single-handedly turned the tide on a massive marine battle against strong alien warlords.
 
Blair was the best choice. Who else to send on a suidical mission inside an alein base rigged with alien forces, to allow confed to blow it up?

Why, the highest ranking officer onboard, who also is the top ace and most decorated pilot of the history of the confederation.

Probably for the reason Sheridan and Kirk always ended up punching enemies instead of their grunts. And people complain about sound in space.
 
The only Kilrathi traitor Blair tracked down was Hobbes. If you mean Jazz, he's a human traitor with one of the freakest movitavtions of the game.

Oh, yes, thank you, Delance, for pointing this out. Because I had never realized that Jazz wasn't a giant cat. I'm so glad you finally brought this to my attention, because *clearly* it had been causing me problems.

(Nor is this a valid complaint about how the English language works. Origin's own Wing Commander IV timeline calls Jazz a 'Kilrathi traitor'... because he's a traitor who helped the Kilrathi. Like how a "Russian agent" would usually be an American who was paid by the Russians.)

Did he really, or was it a part of Thrakkath's secret Hobbes project?

I'm talking about the invasion attempts in 2665 and 2667 - Blair had absolutely nothing to do with the initial rebellion (which may or may not have been allowed to continue on purpose by Thrakhath - though I doubt it).

(And no, Thrakhath didn't throw away half a dozen carrier groups ten years after Hobbes' defected to... something? I don't even know where you're going with this.)

You don't really know that. And Blair doesn't wear tight clothing.

Clothing doesn't come much tighter than a pressure suit.
 
The German-Russian analogy is not a good one in this case.

In WW2, Germany had a much stronger war machine than Russia did... why their territory was spreading in all four directions, and they were fighting the allies in the west as well as the Russians in the east, and still winning on the eastern front.

In the Kilrathi War we see the impossibly huge Kilrathi war machine slowly taking the upper hand in this desperate war but out of nowhere comes Blair the superpilot, who made enough of a name for himself by the end of WC1 that even the Kilrathi emperor himself knew of him (see WC2 intro). Then Blair was out of combat for 10 years and by the end of the war still had his impression kill lead on almost all of the Confederate space force. I dare say that he spent more of his career on Caernarvon chasing sensor echoes than he did fighting Kilrathi.
 
SuperMathPower

I think the Super Jedi Math Powers were yet another addition for the young crowd.. Kind of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Harry Potter/Charmed/Superman magic thing. Not really necessary for the story, but kids like it. We can just be thankful they didn't turn it into an after school stay in school special about "Math is Power" ;)
 
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