Classic Rapiers Spotted In Initial Movie Sketch (April 20, 2016)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
If anyone in the world were to get Wing Commander presents on their birthday in 2016, it'd be LOAF. He's celebrating his 35th this week, and he got a super cool snippet of WC art as a present. We know from the beautiful Dean McCall concept renders that a more familiar looking F-44 Rapier II was used in some of the very early work. Here we can see it in the storyboards too! A handful of British Electric Lightnings were ultimately modified to portray the CF-117B Rapier Is in the film. And Happy Birthday!








Truly wonderful gift from Sandi Gardiner: very early Wing Commander storyboards! Check out those Rapiers!

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Original update published on April 20, 2016
 
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Thoughtful present. Seeing that Rapier render still reminds me of a Micro Machines ship I had as a kid - the resemblance is beyond co-incidental, IMHO. I think the designer was a Wing Commander fan. :)

galoob-z-99-supersleuth-x-3-raider-micro-machines-galaxy-voyagers-2-lot-2-4089-19cf9dda36e6d5980be7757c52014951.jpg
 
Or perhaps they were fans of the movie Firefox ;)

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/hom...s/2013/02/firefox-starring-clint-eastwood.jpg

It was a really kind gift, though! Sandi is a really good person, and she seems to really enjoy seeing me geek out over Chris' Wing Commander stuff :)

For anyone interested, the Micro Machines quasi-Rapier is from their 'Galaxy Voyagers' line, Set #8. It looks like the set itself is getting expensive, but there is someone selling this ship by itself on eBay (I grabbed one because I have no self control): http://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-Machines-Galaxy-Voyagers-Sycorax-X-3-Raider-1-/360621198222 (Additionally, the ship itself is called the Sycorax, predating modern Doctor Who's adoption of the name!)
 
The aircraft is just the Lightning; it was made by a (now defunct) company called English Electric, who built a whole string of renowned military and civil equipment; a list can be found here.
 
Anyone know why they went with the alternate design? Was it a function of what was available (or cheap) from a set-building standpoint? To make cinematography easier? (All those wings and vertical fins might have made filming around it challenging)... Or was it a more pragmatic reason...like the fact that the movie was supposedly set prior to the games, and the games pretty firmly established that the F-44 was brand new and therefore wouldn't have fit the movie's story of a fighter that had been around a bit and was getting long in the tooth?

(As an aside, I always wondered why Roberts/the movie writers didn't make the fighters in the movie be Raptors or Scimitars, to fit with the game canon better. And it would have been better than a fighter nicknamed the "rape").
 
Anyone know why they went with the alternate design? Was it a function of what was available (or cheap) from a set-building standpoint? To make cinematography easier? (All those wings and vertical fins might have made filming around it challenging)... Or was it a more pragmatic reason...like the fact that the movie was supposedly set prior to the games, and the games pretty firmly established that the F-44 was brand new and therefore wouldn't have fit the movie's story of a fighter that had been around a bit and was getting long in the tooth?

(As an aside, I always wondered why Roberts/the movie writers didn't make the fighters in the movie be Raptors or Scimitars, to fit with the game canon better. And it would have been better than a fighter nicknamed the "rape").


There's a number of reasons for doing it. To a degree, the production wanted to move away from the look of the games. You will not in everything from the capship designs to naval officer costumes to the way ships move off the flight deck and the way shots themselves are composed that there's a deliberate attempt to reference visually older WW2 movies.

Cost was also a factor. refurbishing existing cockpits IIRC was cheaper than building from scratch. You also (at least on the cockpit interiors) got an instant boost in that they immediately look functional worn in without the art team needing to do a bunch of research or design. The time frame and setting of the movie likely didn't play into the consideration at all.

Also, I don't know how much of a factor it was, but it's also possible that hte production team was worried about IP infringement with regards to another movie:

fic21.jpg


There's a couple of considerations that I think could have sold the 'ugly but functional' design aesthetic of the Rapier a bit better, but not every space ship needs to be pretty. There's some existing real world aircraft that I feel are pretty darned ugly too, but they also give life the variety that makes things interesting.
 
It's funny how they make a movie based on a successful game series and think "we need this to not look like those successful games wenare basing this movie off of". Reminds of DC love action movies. It's "lets do my own interpretation" instead of "let's base this off of more than 60 years of Batman or superman comics". I nevermind understood this thinking. If it's something original and different you wanna do then make it original and change the name completely.
 
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