A Few Fan Reviews

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.

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?

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.

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...