411mania.com has posted an article that includes a history of video game-based movies. Naturally, Wing Commander is skewered:
Wing Commander. Yeah, this one bombed too. It was a good idea in theory because everyone likes intergalactic wars. But casting Freddie Prinze Jr and Matthew Lillard to star was perhaps not the brightest of moves. I vaguely remember seeing it and it looked like a cheap knock-off of an assortment of sci-fi movies. That was pretty much the problem for any video game adaptation; trying to create that alternative to the mainstream that the video games, with their imagery, had created already. But doing so on a budget was difficult and video game movies didn't make any money. Largely because everyone knew they sucked.
This is actually interesting, since it runs counter to something most fans believe - which is that the Wing Commander movie failed because it made a conscious effort not to look like the games.
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