Penny-Arcade and WC Movie

Exarch said:
Let's put it this way: People bought tickets, watched the trailer for Star Wars: Episode 1, and then walked out.

This was a fun cute rant for reviewers, but it didn't actually happen -- no one went to see the movie at all.

(Which is why, in my mind, the entire issue doesn't involve anyone but us true fans... it's not a classic "bad movie", it's just a movie no one saw.)
 
It's also worth adding that had people at least done that, it would have been a good thing for the movie - when you're calculating box office revenues, you don't care if people stayed for the whole thing, you care that they bought the ticket in the first place.
 
Thought about going to see it...
I decided it was better not to take my girlfriend to it. I don't regret that choice. I DO, however, regret that girlfriend... :p
Anyway, there are a great many improbable changes... WCM is like watching "Enterprise." When you have an established universe, you don't take the main concept and then rewrite every damn thing about it (bad-French-accent Paladin, Angel's move from French girl to English, her seeming amnesia about shagging Blair, Maniac seemingly being a complete stranger in the period between WCM and WC1, Lt. Commander "Bossman" Chen dying months before you meet him in WC1, ALL the kitties getting a shave...)

The movie was average-at-best generic Sci-Fi... but this is like giving every Klingon gigantic breasts and mohawks for "Star Trek 12- the search for more money" You simply don't take an established universe and completely destroy it to make a few bucks.

If I had never played the games, I might have been able to watch it without saying "WTF!" every five minutes. (In the first five minutes, I exclaimed said phrase at least fifteen times) I would have simply been bored. As I had, I watched the whole thing, from start to finish, in a state of complete outrage. Origin, Chris, whoever was to blame... they screwed up. BIG. They put a teen-fuggin'-idol in the lead role, and not even that saved it in the box office. This movie was outright bland. It was commercialism at it's worst- they went entirely on a (generally uninformed) public's opinion, and it failed, miserably, because of just that. THEN, they took the already-bastardized universe, sat some paid audience down to watch it, and raped-and-reran the damned thing until the audience said, "Eh. Not as confusing as it was before..." shame there was no PLOT left...

Some of the greatest movies made confused us. Memento. Fight Club. 25th Hour.
It wasn't until the end we truly understood them.
They frickin' rocked.

However, Wing Commander was chipped away until it read like a poorly-written mongrelization of the concept. "Use the (force)Calculator, (luke)Chris. You don't need the (targeting)Navigational Computer." Adding in the Pilgrim/opressed guy because he can do math fast bit... well, in my opinion, that just sucked. Wow, I can do math faster(and, somehow, add the feel my body got from the gravity into it, like some kind of fu... frickin space-goose), so I'm going to go to war with the rest of humanity.

BAH.
 
I really wanted to go see the movie in theatres... but I was sick that day.

Rim-shot? Anyone? Oh well, I own it. $9.99 gives me the right to good naturedly complain.
 
There's been some increadibly hilarious stuff said on these posts, there could prob. be a whole section on this site dedicated to humor from posts. I feel like repeating this one, I already requoted a different one earlier:

"Use the (force)Calculator, (luke)Chris. You don't need the (targeting)Navigational Computer." :D

If there is a humor section already please direct me to it... but this is one of many funny jokes on this one...
 
The funny thing is that every single complaint any person can make about the movie has already been explained... a lot of the time in the same thread that the complaints were made.
 
Manic said:
The movie was average-at-best generic Sci-Fi... but this is like giving every Klingon gigantic breasts and mohawks for "Star Trek 12- the search for more money" You simply don't take an established universe and completely destroy it to make a few bucks.
Correct me if I'm wrong (except that I'm right :p), but didn't the Klingons change a great deal since the original series? So, in a way, your example isn't exactly anything that hasn't already been done...
 
When I went to go see it opening night the theater was packed.

After the previews there were maybe 5 people left.

I should have left, looking back on it. What an abortion of a movie.
 
NuclearPenguins said:
What an abortion of a movie.

No, it was still a movie alright.



I think I will say that there are plenty of people in this community who liked the movie and so one mustn't jump on the anti-movie bandwagon in order to make friends.
 
As far as generic sci-fi movies go, the WC movie isn't horrible, though it's pretty much in the 'lousy movie' category. I'll be caught dead before I say anything good about its horrid script, but the visuals (Kilrathi scenes excluded) make up for that to some degree. And the music was great, too - I was very, very happy when I won the soundtrack at this year's CIC birthday party, and happier still when the CD arrived.

Ultimately, however, the fact that it is a WC movie improves it tenfold. I mean, come on, a movie with Blair, Maniac and everything. Once you get over all the changes and new stuff they introduced (and to be fair, it took me something like two years to get over all that :p), it's great. It gives us more WC material, and very interesting stuff at that. I mean, really, I haven't heard any of the movie haters complaining about Standoff using the Errant-class from the movie.
 
Nomad Terror said:
The funny thing is that every single complaint any person can make about the movie has already been explained... a lot of the time in the same thread that the complaints were made.

Just because someone has provided a counterargument doesn't mean the complaint addressed isn't still valid. There have been interesting points raised, some moreso than others, but I have yet to see anything that addresses my complaints with the movie to anything resembling a resolution. It's a matter of opinion and I haven't read anything that's changing mine.

I echo wholeheartedly the sentiments of Deadeye's post, the movie wasn't completely terrible, as it was connected to something I am as interested in as WC, but the fact that it could have been so much better, and that I did not enjoy many of the additions, makes it much more difficult to accept.
 
Everything that has ever been made could have been better. Once you learn to accept things as they are instead of how you expect them to be then you get to be less cynical about things like that.
 
At least the WC movie was better than:
poster104.JPG
 
Nomad Terror said:
Everything that has ever been made could have been better. Once you learn to accept things as they are instead of how you expect them to be then you get to be less cynical about things like that.
I'm not disappointed because the movie wasn't perfect, I'm disappointed because I thought, in several key places, it wasn't even close. It's not about the movie being wrong, but the degree to which it fell short. Acknowledging imperfections is not cynicism. And the presence of the WC logo doesn't demand that I ignore the movie's obvious shortcomings.
 
WC movie should have a target audience, take the script from wing commander up to wing commander SO2(the script taking the most likeble part, not winning each mission, but beating the game in the end, like most of us did. and just be released on dvd, not wasting any budget on advertising, unless there was a big enough following.

i actually was in a video store this saturday, made an offer to buy his mint-condition dutch-subtitled VHS release of the movie( i rarely encounter it here), he refused, appearantly it is to be one of his often-rented cult products, like "silent running", or "krull". people were going to rent it and he would make more money hiring it then selling it to me.

every fiction has it fan craze, take star trek off the air, stop making star wars movies and the fan gathering would be little to no bigger than you find at CIC in a few years...
 
Anyway, there are a great many improbable changes... WCM is like watching "Enterprise."

I agree. Enterprise treats Star Trek pretty much the same way the Wing Commander movie treated WC -- it throws out a lot of useless fanon.

When you have an established universe, you don't take the main concept and then rewrite every damn thing about it (bad-French-accent Paladin,

I'll bet Tchéky Karyo would take issue with your criticism of his accent -- since he is, afterall, *French*. Perhaps you're just not fluent?

Angel's move from French girl to English,

I'm pretty sure the movie never claims that Angel is British (and on the same coin, that the game never claims she's French).

her seeming amnesia about shagging Blair,

Again, two sides: 1) the game never contradicts this and 2) it never happens in the movie.

Maniac seemingly being a complete stranger in the period between WCM and WC1,

This had nothing to do with the movie -- Maniac and Blair went to the academy together. It's been a standard part of Wing Commander lore since the WC1/2 Guide at the earliest (Claw Marks implies it, too). A whole TV series was made about the concept.


Lt. Commander "Bossman" Chen dying months before you meet him in WC1,

I tend to give this one to people -- it's a continuity error. It can be explained, but it takes more steps than I like to claim are obvious. I wrote a nice fanfic outline for it for that comic book project: https://www.wcnews.com/loaf/comicoutline.txt

ALL the kitties getting a shave...)

You mean both of the ones you see in the movie?

The movie was average-at-best generic Sci-Fi... but this is like giving every Klingon gigantic breasts and mohawks for "Star Trek 12- the search for more money" You simply don't take an established universe and completely destroy it to make a few bucks.

Didn't Star Trek redesign the Klingons several times? (Including both Klingons with mohawks and Klingons with gigantic breasts.)

If I had never played the games, I might have been able to watch it without saying "WTF!" every five minutes. (In the first five minutes, I exclaimed said phrase at least fifteen times)

Quoth Maniac, "You must be a lot of fun on a date."

Seriously, though, I wonder what fifteen things you managed to find objectionable during the credits montage, the attack on Pegasus and the start of a conversation between Admiral Tolwyn and Commodore Bellegarde.

I mean, I know I was pretty happy when I was watching the movie... but I've been arguing with intelligent people and idiots alike about the thing for five years, so I generally have a good understanding of what people complain about. The *only* thing I could possibly see someone complaining about in the first five minutes of the movie is that Admiral Tolwyn is played by David Warner instead of Malcolm McDowell (and if recasting was public exclamation-worthy, we'd still be shouting about Wing Commander III).

They put a teen-fuggin'-idol in the lead role, and not even that saved it in the box office.

This has never been much of a complaint. The vast majority of Prinze's "teen" roles came *after* Wing Commander. When they shot Wing Commander he was just another b-list actor. Since the character requirement was a wet behind the ears twenty something, you'd be able to apply the same claim to *any* actor they chose to play Blair. (Heck, consider this -- in one of the few movies Prinze headlined before Wing Commander he shared top billing with *Steven Petraca*. Somehow we don't have legions of generic commentators ranting about how horrible it was that Origin cast a twenty-something male actor to play a twenty-something male character.)

All of that aside, even if it were a case of stunt casting (and I'm reasonably sure it wasn't - it was the low budget combined with the character requirement) you as a Wing Commander fan don't have any room to complain. Do you think they cast Mark Hamill in Wing Commander III based on his acting ability and then realized, happy coincidence, he had been in some sort of space movie in his formidable years? I hate to be the one to break this to you, but no one has cast Mark Hamill in a live role based on acting ability since the late seventies.

Your complaint is simply that it's casting you didn't agree with, not that it's some sort of broad, incorrect choice that was made based on greed or idiocy or pandering. And claiming the latter is just wrong.

Incidentally, I think the casting was one of the few elements of the Wing Commander movie that was genuinely inspired. The 'fresh' (I know, how dare they cast people who later became famous among a demograph you don't like) American actors as the rookies with a very international cast as the veterans made for a really nice dichotomy.

It was commercialism at it's worst- they went entirely on a (generally uninformed) public's opinion, and it failed, miserably, because of just that. THEN, they took the already-bastardized universe, sat some paid audience down to watch it, and raped-and-reran the damned thing until the audience said, "Eh. Not as confusing as it was before..." shame there was no PLOT left...

While I will agree that yes, these words do form sentences of sorts, I don't really follow them beyond that. Lets hear some details instead of vauge, inane, populist claims that are designed to offend people without actually having to say anything. "Commercialism"? How? I, for one, would be fascinated to learn how the Wing Commander movie fits that bill. The *public*? What's the issue with the public? What's the implication here? That everyone but you is stupid -- that movies shouldn't be mare for people? What? And as always, I'd love to hear the internet jerk redefinition of the word plot. I've been enjoying that one for years.

Some of the greatest movies made confused us. Memento. Fight Club. 25th Hour.
It wasn't until the end we truly understood them.
They frickin' rocked.

So you have a problem with "teen idols", but you're a fan of all these inane pseud-intelligent pop teen movies?

However, Wing Commander was chipped away until it read like a poorly-written mongrelization of the concept. "Use the (force)Calculator, (luke)Chris. You don't need the (targeting)Navigational Computer." Adding in the Pilgrim/opressed guy because he can do math fast bit... well, in my opinion, that just sucked. Wow, I can do math faster(and, somehow, add the feel my body got from the gravity into it, like some kind of fu... frickin space-goose), so I'm going to go to war with the rest of humanity.

The Pilgrims used their abilities to colonize space, while 'non Pilgrims' were stuck on Earth -- the two cultures divided and it resulted in a war. It's kind of like how everywhere in the world isn't a British colony anymore.

I think I will say that there are plenty of people in this community who liked the movie and so one mustn't jump on the anti-movie bandwagon in order to make friends.

I'd agree with that assessment -- it's something that's very easy and 'hip' to do. Many of the people who did the same thing with Prophecy are the ones who are clamoring for new mods today...
 
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I can see your reasoning, and I really do respect your opinions regarding the movie, Loaf, but you have to note that you take a couple of pretty sizable leaps to keep things in their proper order. I'm not arguing that those leaps shouldn't be taken, and I'm not trying to suggest there isn't a reason to like and appreciate the movie. I certainly do, though to a much lesser degree than you. All I'm saying is that if you're allowed to take those leaps to justify your position, I'm allowed not to in order to justify mine.
 
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