Of course the movie has contradictions:
It *has* contradictions, but they aren't any more egregious than going from one game to another. People pay it special attention because they don't like it--Wing Commander III, for instance, reboots the Wing Commander setting to the same degree if not more.
Well, Blair's from earth in the games. (at least that's what one cut scene in WC II told me)
The scene you're thinking of is in Special Operations 1, where he tells Stingray he's going home (to Earth) to visit. Here's the exact line (per Wedge): "Just back to Earth for a few weeks. It’s been a long time since I’ve been home. I need some time to relax, after everything that’s happened here."
I would first make several (increasingly pedantic!) arguments:
- Maybe he lives there in 2667--ie, Blair's town house is on Earth and it's been a long time since he has gone to catch up on his holotiVo. I imagine a sailor on an aircraft carrier today who 'goes home' to visit is heading to wherever their house is (or their family lives now)--not the specific place they were born decades earlier.
- Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all, since we already know it's just his cover story to use while he's off saving Ghorah Khar from a Kilrathi invasion (which was a secret for some reason).
- We don't know what 'home' means to humans in a 27th century society that has spread over more than a thousand worlds. I can imagine a scenario where you 'go home' to Earth in the broadest sense because that's the cradle of humanity--all of our ancestral homes (in the same way that if I'm in Europe and going to Chicago I might say I'm going home because I'm headed back to the US even though I'm from an entirely different city).
Then I would point out...
- The movie doesn't say he's not from Earth! In fact, at the beginning of the movie he's on his way from Earth to his first assignment on the Tiger's Claw! You're thinking of Wing Commander Prophecy's official guide, which created the backstory that he was from Nephele (which derived that from his farm being there in Wing Commander IV). The movie material (the novel, the handbook) do repeat that, but it isn't in the film--the movie just says he's the son of a (loyal) human and a 'Pilgrim'.
(I will note that earlier drafts of the movie do give him a home--in the earliest version he's a "Border Worlder" instead of half-Pilgrim and in another his parents are still alive and living on a particular named planet. That's all gone in the shooting script.)
(And finally I will say that we do know from the broad Wing Commander continuity that Blair spent /some/ of his childhood on Earth in the care of his aunt before returning to Nephele--and that in Wing Commander III he listed it as his home in the Victory Streak interview.)
Blair's first assignment to the Tiger's Claw was in WC1, that's where and when he met Maniac.
I can't pin that on the movie--if they didn't have that backstory in mind when the first game came out (and I really think they did!) it was in place by 1991, when it's the spine of the Wing Commander I and II Ultimate Strategy Guide's narrative. Blair and Maniac being together at the ACademy is referenced throughout the tie-ins and is the basis for the 1996 TV show. Not something the movie decided.
The Kilrathi must have mutated from giant naked moles to hairy space tigers in just a few years.
Can't argue with that. I think if we get everyone in the world who likes the look of the Kilrathi to raise their hand we will get... no hands.
... but compare *one particular Kilrathi*, Melek, between Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV. kilrathi--even individuals--suddenly looking awful isn't anything the movie invented.
Not to forget all the different designs of the space crafts. It works only as a stand alone entry.
Good old flying pancake, of course that's a Dralthi!
Well, it's circular and it has a weird bar and extra guns and it needs a tan, but I guess it's a Dralthi...
Well, okay, somebody saw Stargate, but it's still a Dralthi, y'know? The soul is still there, big round wings, that brown...
Okay, now it's completely different but of course that's a Dralthi! Wide and angular with weird spikes under it! Just like in Batman! Certainly a Dralthi!
AHH! NO! THIS IS TERRIBLE! HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO THE DRALTHI? IT'S ALL... hmm.