First Look

Some guy by the name of Sean posted a review of the WC Movie over at Dan's Wing Commander Movie Site... he didn't seem to like it much, but I've got to say that a lot of the elements he pointed out as being bad are in my opinion what WC fans want (military stuff, cheap romance, etc)... erm, so, DA, if you wanna get a fan's perspective on the movie, I can be in Austin in a day (shameless plug!).

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read any of this if you want to be completly suprised by the movie. This isn't too much of a spoiler, but everyone's different.

I just saw a private screening of the movie today and I figured I'll throw in my 2 cents. I have been a huge fan of the game series since the first one was released, and I've played and beaten all of them, plus the Privateer games, so naturally I was excited about seeing the movie. Unfortunately I have to say that I was greatly dissapointed in it. My first shock was that it was directed by Chris Roberts, and it shows. The film hardly exceeds the quality of the CD-Rom movies. The first half hour is a complete bore with nothing but a bunch of military/techno babble that only fans like us could understand, let alone enjoy. The names and faces of Blaire, Maniac, Taggart, Angel, and Towlyn are introduced, but almost nothing is told of them except thier military ranks in Confed. There is very little character development in Blaire and Angel. The chemistry is weak and thier romantic involvement comes near the end without anything leading up to it. Freddy Prince and the guy from scream are pretty good actors, but this movie shows very little of their talents. The black girl does a great job, as does French actor who plays Paladin (isn't he supposed to be Scottish?). The English actress who plays Angel (they should have changed her name from Deveraux to Davis) is really cute, but she's not the greatest performer. The producers must have assumed that the average American audience can't tell the difference between any Euro accents. Another weird thing is that Tolwyn is nice and Paladin is an asshole (at first). The sets were TERRIBLE. I think they were trying to get that Das Boot feel with the ship interiors because they looked like submarines (and about as technologicly advanced). The computers and switches looked as bad as a 70's sci-fi flick would today (i.e. Alien, Star Wars). They even used the new flat screen computer moniters and I could almost make out Sony on one of them. I think they would have something more advanced looking in the 27th century. The ships were all pretty good, except for that Rapiers (probobly because it was the only non-CG ships shown. They all have these big gatlin guns on the front, and guess what they fire - bullets! No mass drivers, no ion guns, just bullets. How lame. Aside from that, the Tigers Claw and all of the Kilrathi ships looked great, and they looked the same as they do in the game series. The BIGGEST disapointment in the movie is the Kilrathi. There are maybe two or three scenes where they talk, and they're all less than 10 seconds. Not only that, but they look like hairless cat muppets with very little moving feature in the animatronics. Their mouths just open and close, no lip variation. Worse than Yoda or Kermit. What I thought made the story lines of the first 3 games so interesting was the drama that took place within the Kilrathi empire. There is none of that in the movie, no Prince Trakkath or anything like it. The CG was the only thing that impressed me. The ships, explosions, and planets looked pretty good. Another cool thing about the movie was a little backround info about Confed and Blaire that wasn't in the game. I guess before the Kilrathi War, there were the Pilgram Wars (kinnda sounds like Clone Wars - WC Episode 1 in the future?). The Pilgrams were the first humans to chart the galaxy and as time progressed they evolved differently than humans who stayed on Earth. A war between the two races broke out and the pilgrims lost. Blaire is a half breed pilgram and he gets a lot of shit for it in the film. You must all hate me now if you've read this, sorry, but here's my report card:

Screenplay: C-
Cinematography: F
Special FX (CG): B+
Set Design:a whoping F
Acting: B
Direction: D-

I know the movie wasn't intended for an Oscar or anything, but Fox could have taken this seriously instead of making a low budget space movie in order to hype up people for the new Star Wars. Chris Roberts should stick to video games. BTW, there's no cameos by Mark Hamill or anyone else.