I think Wing Commander is a little too "cool" being that it stars hunks of the moment Freddy Prinze Jr and Matthew Lillard as Maverick and Maniac, in place of the gloriously uncool Luke Skywalker and Biff, and I don't see what about could possibly be interpretted as "Realistic" about it.
The casting is more of a coincidence -- they signed on for Wing Commander when they were affordable, moments before becoming stars-of-the-moment in 1999-2000. I actually really like the casting in the movie in general - I enjoy the idea of the gritty veterans all being very experienced European character actors while the wet-behind-the-ears new pilots are American teen stars.
(That said, I don't think there's any question that casting Mark Hamill in the Luke Skywalker role in Wing Commander III was a stunt, either...)
I mean it's not that it's an awful movie... it's just a typical video game adaptation: low budget, and zero adherance to existing story canon, which in this case is truly unforgivable on account of it having been written and directed by Chris Roberts which was competely unprecedented in the industry, and thanks to this debacle likely something we'll likely never see again.
I'm willing to bet Chris will direct another movie at some point... if nothing else, he is very, *very* good at convincing people to give him support for things. He's made quite a name for himself in Hollywood as a Producer in recent years.
As for the story, I think it's always been something of a misconception that Chris Roberts is a master of the game's continuity. In actuality that's something for us geeks... he wrote the original setting document for the first game (human empire is fighting evil aliens), but the actual story planning and scriptwriting was done by other people on every other Wing Commander.
The case of Wing Commander is unique among video game adaptation in that is the most notable example of a game being littleraly a better movie than the movie adaptation, that is to say both Wing Commanders III and IV, and (to a lesser extent) Prophacy, had stronger casts and better scripts than Wing Commander the movie. Also, I know that Chris Roberts never managed to get the Kilrathi's appearance dialed in exactly how he wanted, but the rubber masks in this movie are just plain terrible.
As a Wing Commander fan I certainly prefer the games... but I don't think this point is actually true. Seeing Mark Hamill and Steven Petraca play 'you' is amazingly fun, but they aren't outstanding actors by any stretch of the imagination. Similarly, I don't think someone can objectively say that the Wing Commander movie's elaborate sets and actual fighters aren't better than the games mid-90s CGI greenscreen mattes and cardboard Hellcat dashboards.
I'd say that none of them have especially coherent scripts... although the movie obviously suffers from having had its entire climax gutted after being shot. In general they do different things, though - in a video game you play for ten hours you can meander through Flint talking about her dad and Vagabond worrying about Doctor Severin... in a movie you need to stick to a story and push your way through it consistently. It's nostalgia clouding our judgement here. Lots of things about Wing Commander III just wouldn't stand up to higher criticism. (...'and also your friend was a traitor for some reason')