Well, I finally found a copy of the magazine... here's my thoughts!Good: The sketches are the best part -- seeing how the movie was first envisioned. Basically, the movie magazine is a good wrapup of all the movie news that's been reported. It has the cast bios, all the old screenshots, the SFX information... but nothing really new. It's a good introduction for people who haven't been following the movie's development.
Bad: If I didn't have anything better to do, I would make it my mission in life to hunt down and kill the man who did the corny subtitles. And what the nutboy does "New adventure beyond the space wars!" mean on the cover?
Extra: There's a nifty contest, and a cool poster.
The below Wing Commander Movie review appeared at Aint It Cool News.
Well I just got home from a sneak preview here in Tulsa. I think it;s the first review so I'm not typing much! It's "original but disappointing." But not soo-bad that you should avoid it, and nobody walked out.. There was no SW trailer. I have played the games and they tied a lot fo stuff in there, but I was surprised how much they tried to fit in. When you hear all the familiar names with an audience who doesn't know any of it (I assume) you realize there is too much. Anyhow the ffects were good, colorful anyway, and it definitely has a war style all of its own, I didn't think it was ripping off anything particular. The story is a bit kiddie-like. I have to go see it again to absorb it all. They did change quite a bit of stuff from the games, but I don';t have a problem with that unlike some of my friends.
It's a tiny SFX shot from TIME... perhaps the last movie picture before the release...
I've always wanted to say 'more better'... anyway, here are some more reviews of the Wing Commander Movie. The first is from Jeff Cope, who's opinion I definatly value... (and dash, I hope they give out stuff at the premiere:)
Is it a total kick ass movie? Nope.Is it good. Yup. It's pretty good. It has a good look to it. The younger folks can't act their way out of a paper bag (Prinze has pretty much one expression). Saffron's mighty cute, so I cut her some slack ;)
VERY cool opening title sequence. Some creativity definitely went into that.
The Pilgrim traitor subplot has been completely excised from the movie. Funny since the traitor is getting an action figure, and is never even hinted at on screen. (read the book)
Love the Kilrathi subtitles, appear first in their text then are overlayed with english.
Disappointed we didn't get more Kilrathi, which I think is the weakest part of the film. Sure, we know the Kilrathi are the enemy, but we don't get to know them at all.
And of course...Went to go see a free sneak preview of WC-It was OK, with two minor screwups. First off, the data from Tolwyn was recorded on a Minidisc??? In 26?? Geez! Second, on his communique to Sansky, Tolwyn spells his name Towlyn! Watch for this in the movie. However, the sneak preview provided lots of cool stuff, like a free Poster, ticket (featuring poster) and a bitchin Long sleeve Wing Commander T-shirt! All this, and the movie for free! Woohoo!
A team is on their way to Austin tomorrow morning! If you're going to be at the premiere, you can look for us... (some of these are fairly old... I'm not that ugly). From left to right it's LOAF, ChrisReid and Bee Czar... (and Dan the movie guy).
When I was a much younger fan, posting messages at Origin’s Wing Commander Chat Zone (may it rest in peace), rumors of a Wing Commander motion picture were common - my old friends and I would shoot them down as being just that, rumor, while at the same time praying that someday they might be more than that. I don’t think anyone who stared in awe at the original Wing Commander ten years ago has ever doubted that if any computer game should ever be made into a film, this was it. That said, it’s finally happened, and regardless of the quality of the movie, getting there may have been the best part of the trip.
Anyone here who’s been a part of the community long enough to remember WCHS from years back may remember the time we posted an internal memo from Sony which contained a review of the first version of the Wing Commander script. We may have had a lot of official confirmations and such on the memo, but I don’t know if there was anybody who actually believed in the thing back then. How little we knew. I think our hopes for a movie were dashed several times - Chris Roberts leaving Origin, Origin not being interested, etc. Still, it happened. I can’t really find adequate words to describe the past year - so I’ll stick to the simple stuff. Reporting news on the movie made me feel good. Really good. Whenever someone on the set sent in photographs, or whenever somebody was kind enough to scan an article we couldn’t get for us, it felt good reporting about it. I’ll never forget Peter Telep asking for a few WC facts for his book. I’ll never forget how it felt to get a copy of the script. I’ll never forget when Origin accidentally put up movie story boards instead of Prophecy story boards. I’ll never forget the moments of joy that followed the hours of waiting for copies of the handbook and the novels to arrive. I’ll never forget taping long sections of FOX to grab the commercial, or running out in the middle of the night to grab the nearest copy of some Wing Commander magazine or book. I’ll probably never forget getting to go to the premiere. Hell, I’ll never forget braving a snowstorm to grab the soundtrack yesterday.
So, in the final analysis, say whatever you want about the movie. I have every reason to believe that it’ll be exactly what everyone says - a cheap, clichéd science fiction war flick. Then, that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Wing Commander. The next 24 hours are going to be one hell of a trip…
Several people have been lucky enough to see the tuesday sneak preview type things of the movie. I don't agree with a bunch of points, but here they are...
How should I say this, this movie SUCKS big time. I have read varies message on the web about how bad this movie maybe but after reading the Novel (been out about 3 weeks) I actually thought that it may be OK. Was I wrong! I don't know how closely the novel follows the actual shooting script but they basically took out all the best moment in the novel leaving a empty shell of a movie. If you saw the 2 minute trailer, don't bother seeing the movie because you have seen the best parts already and the rest will just leaves you disappointed.I will break my review into three parts, the story and the FX and the Cast.
First the story.
The novel was actually interesting with the introduction of the pilgrims. It seems that the Confed have just gotten thru a civil war of sort before encountering the Kirathis. The Pilgrim are early terran explorer that use pulsar as jump points which resulted in a genetic drift that allow them to calculate jump coordinates without a jump computer and the ability to navigate space time itself. They began to feel superior to the rest of the human race and eventually a civil war resulted with most of the Pilgrim being wipeout and the few survivor are now sabutoring the the war effort against the Kilrathis.
This was a good source of suspense for the novel, you keep trying to guess which of the officer/crew might be a pilgrim saboturer. the plot line was totally removed from the movie except a few line questioning Blair's heritage.
If you were expecting to see things from the Kilrathi perspective, forget it. While the novel devoted a few chapter to scenes on the Kilrathi Flagship, which helps bring the Kilrathi to life for the newcomers. They were all but gone in the movie and the Kilrathi ended up the classic cardboard villian.
Without the Pilgrim plotline and the Kilrathi perspective, the rest of the moive was just quite uninteresting and the jagged editing didn't help either. it always seems that the viewer are either dropped right in the middle of a scene or yanked out of a scene prematurely.
Onto the FX.
The Ship design is bad, period. It seems they want a WWII retro look and it sucks. the Tiger Claw looks like a sub in space, the rapiers looks like WWII F-4U cosair with part of their wings chopped off. I would gladly take ships from the game over the ones in the movies anyday.
The WWII mentality also extend to the space battle, Missiles looks like they are launched out of WWII submarines, there are even scenes of cap ship trading broadsides, Destroyers dropping depth charges, Rapiers comes off the runway taking a dip before rising up a la a carrier launch.
The space scenes are also so dark that it's hard to make out any detail, the FX sequence are also very short with a minimum amount of dogfighting scenes. I can truely say that there are more and better space battle in season 3 and 4 of Babylon 5.
Now the Cast.
A lot of people were laughing at the poster boy/girl image of Starship Trooper's actors and actresses but they would win Oscars compare to the WC lot, although the the older cast members handled themselves reasonably well , the junior cast just does not hold together well, the line seems forced and the expression seems faked a lot of the time.
The Bottomline:
If you want to see this movie for the story, go get the novel.
If you want to see this movie for the FX, go see babylon 5 or just load up WCP on a big screen TV.
If you want to see thsi movie for the actting, go load up WC III and IV, you'll get better acting from either one.
And then...The movie (a brief 90 or so min. long) had an impressive first half which degenerated into a mindless blast-fest the second half. The characters could have been better developed; the second half completely lacked any plot whatsoever. Instead of one climactic battle, there were about five small ones which seemed to bore the audience after awhile.The retro-future look was interesting, especially how it imitated a submarine in parts. Hello, Jurgen Prochnow! Can anyone say "Das Boot"? There was a scene which involved being quiet while the Tiger Claw (note the subtle name change from WC1) was being "pinged" by enemy sonar or something. With all the creaking and cracking, it reeked of its underwater predecessor. The script was decent, but had some flaws. The acting passed, but one thing that audibly disturbed the audience was the sudden intense relationship between Blair and Angel. I won't give anything away, but this (one scene in particular) had people groaning in dismay.
The score was amazing, the special effects likewise impressive. The steel armadillo Kilrathi were devoid of personality, though. The scenes where they talk (w/ on-screen subtitles) are cliches. There is definitely room for a sequel, but with the way 20th Century Fox is (not) advertising the film, they'll be lucky to break even. The TV ads (which I have yet to see) are on seldom-seen channels like Sci-Fi channel. None of my friends have even HEARD of this movie. This is sad, because with a $27 million budget, the profit margins could be huge. Fox's only selling point seems to be the Star Wars trailer (which hopefully will be there on Friday). Anyway, I digress. On a scale of four stars, I give this one "2". I was the most lenient of the three people who went with me. I still recommend seeing it, if you're big into WC. Any comments?
And then there was...I just got back from an advance screening of the Wing Commander movie. I was very disappointed with the movie. Here are the reasons why: 1 There is very little character development. 2 The fact that Blair is a pilgrim is over played. 3 Awkward dialouge, the audience laughed at the serious scenes it was so bad. 4 Special Effects were just average. 5 Holes in the plot , like why Blair, a pilot, was assigned to a marine mission. 6 The Kilrathi only had about 3 minutes of screen time, and they looked stupid. 7 Not very good dog-fighting scenes. 8 very little continuity with the established WC universe. Calling this movie "Wing Commander" is like Tristar calling it's Iguanazilla "Godzilla". After seeing this movie I am glad that Chris Roberts is no longer is involved with the making of the Wing Commander games, since it seems he will do anything to make WC appeal to a wider audience. In the long-run I think this movie could do more to hurt the WC franchise than to help it. My advice is to not see the movie and to stay home and play through the games again, which have much more involving, indepth plotlines.
And finally...The movie wasn't all that great. The special effects were awesome. All the Rapiers were were hyped up retro space WWII fighters with chain guns instead of lasers and poorly attached missals. The story was rather corny and most of the audience was laughing at the "dramatic" scenes, that includes myself. Paladin was some French man. Not to mention pilots NEVER participate in grunt work, EI shooting cats with rifles. Blairs character was nothing as it has carried through, he doesn't flaunt his stuff. Skipper missals don't exist in that time frame, neither does the Concordia. Believe me, I give this review in being a true fan of Origin's Wing Commander Series...
Here's an article from TheForce.net, thanks to Calico...
By TYLER McLEOD -- Calgary Sun Like its ghostly name, a new trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace may mysteriously materialize at theatres next week. Various sources are reporting the ad boasting hitherto unseen characters will accompany Wing Commander when it opens on Friday. Both films are from 20th Century Fox. Neither LucasFilm nor Fox in the U.S. and Canada would confirm the rumour. The pairing, however, does seem to make a lot of sense. Wing Commander is a flashy battle flick set in the 27th century and should attract an audience already geared towards Star Wars. Wing Commander is based on a video game of the same name and stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. The popular computer adventure even featured Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill. "I think running the two together is a terrific idea," says Paul Dergarabedian, of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, adding the word-of-mouth among Star Wars devotees is a great marketing tool for Commander. "Why would you want to spend $30 million to market a $30 million movie?"When the first teaser for the Star Wars prequel was released last November, audience figures surged for accompanying films like Meet Joe Black, The Waterboy and The Siege. In fact, many theatres reported fans leaving immediately after the preview.
I've been informed by a very high-up source that FOX definatly intends to show the Star Wars trailer to promote Wing Commander -- apparently Lucasfilm is pissed at the fact that FOX is doing this, so put up that note at their web site. But I can give you a 100% guarantee that Star Wars will be included with Wing Commander - if it isn't, I'll personally bite Dan from Dan's Wing Commander Movie site at the premiere.
JMS, creator of Babylon 5 had this to say on a mailing list...
I'm curious if you have seen the commercials for the movie "Wing Commander". It opens with the narrator saying "Earth's Last Hope", and he sounds so much like the narrator for Babylon 5. I wondered if you would think this a compliment to your opening of Babylon 5.No, I'm fine with it; it ain't like we copyrighted that phrase, and they probably didn't think of us at all in that regard. I'll certainly try to see the film if I can, since I enjoyed the game.
Here's one of my standard issue reviews, for the Wing Commander Movie Soundtrack. To get this I braved the largest snowstorm in recent years here in Maryland, and found it at a Barnes & Noble. It was the last copy available, and the guy there mentioned that he had been shocked by the fact that all of them had disappeared very quickly...
Good: Epic. Frickin epic. This music is absolutely wonderful, and is already stuck in my head. I know nothing technical about music, so I don't know what its based on or such, but I do know that I love this -- I really love this. I'm visualizing scenes from the movie script to the music, and my view of the films quality just jumped up several notches.
Bad: It would have been nice to have the rest of the lesser-quality movie tracks, but it's definatly not essential. I suppose the worst thing about the soundtrack is the fact that the CD isn't itself visually as cool as some of Sonic Images other stuff...
Extra: The booklet included is rather cool, including a letter from Chris Roberts and some CGI images from the movie itself.
TC Maverick sends in the following quote fromthe latest issue of Time, talking about Wing Commander.LEAVE YOUR JOYSTICK AT HOME
Any of the 5 million people who own Wing Commander, the perenially popular space-wars game for the PC, could imagine that its developer, Chris Roberts, had big aspirations. After all, this is the guy who created an elaborate futuristic world where humans battle the evil Kilrathi race across the galaxy. At last Roberts' cyberfantasies get the colossal scale they deserve in the movie version of his game opening Friday. Expect dazzling effects in this, the first PC game adapted for film.
Just saw a 3 Days! commercial for the movie! I can't wait...
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