You didn’t play the games. I’m guessing (and I may be wrong here) that you aren’t really aware of the state of video gaming in the FMV era. And you’re likely comparing it to mainstream sci-fi movies of more recent years, most of which have been iffy at best. Running this through my head is why this post isn’t filled with cries of “HEATHEN” and exhortations to “Kill it with fire!”. Perspectives and tastes both differ, but as far as I’m concerned (and I’m not alone in this opinion), the best part of this movie was the fact that had the first theatrical previews forThe Phantom Menace- and I say that as someone who’s seen The Phantom Menace. I sat down in the theater, the preview ran, and as soon as it finished, a good quarter of the audience got up and walked out. I was baffled at the time, but an hour and a half later, I left the theater convinced they’d had the right idea.
First, a little background: when distributing video games on CD became widespread, developers suddenly had boatloads more space to work with, and the idea of full-motion video (cutscenes using actual filmed footage of live actors) became first possible, and then huge. It may look laughably primitive now, but at the time, its incredible impressiveness was matched only by the uniform awfulness of the games it was attached to. By this point in time, the Wing Commander series was already established, and when WC3, the sixth game (if you count the spinoffs) was being made, the jump had been made to FMV. But this wasn’t some little fly-by-night-let’s-use-local-theater-students-to-save-money production; the best estimates put production costs at nearly four million dollars- absolutely unheard of at the time (the sequel would go even farther, costing an estimated ten million). But it had Tom Wilson, John Rhys-Davies, Ginger Lynn Allen, Malcolm McDowell, Jason Bernard, and it starred none other than Mark Hamill- actual, real actors that you’d’ve heard of even if you’d never played a video game. And if you honestly can’t see anything exciting about dogfighting in a starfighter as a character played by Luke Skywalker, then you have clearly never been a ten year old boy. My point is, it’s not a series that had low production values but was fun anyway; it had very high production values and was fun despite the fact that it would’ve been even without them. It had been very good before, and it made the FMV transition that ruined a lot of good series and came out even better.
Now, Wing Commander the film is a video game movie, and the best those can hope for is to be merely mediocre. But the movie was being made by Chris Roberts, lead designer of the games, which should’ve meant that it was being made by someone who had a tremendously deep knowledge and understanding of the world and its appeal. The plots of WC3 and 4, and even WC Prophecy, the last game in the series, could easily be adapted to the big screen, and, this being only three years after WC4 was made, it’s likely the studio still had many of the old props and costumes lying around. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, in practice, Roberts making it meant that this was a movie being made by a guy with no experience in (and evidently insufficient knowledge of) making movies. To appeal to audiences that had never played the games, the story was set at the beginning of Blair’s (the main character) career, which meant that younger actors had to be brought in, and for some reason, apparently opted for the local theater students he’d rejected while making the games. Tchéky Karyo actually isn’t a bad actor, but I suspect that somewhere in Hollywood, the rest of the cast is still trapped in a large wet paper bag. Roberts apparently thought that tossing out the old actors also made room to toss out most of the personality behind the characters (and, on a few occasions, the spelling of their names), but while that may perhaps be forgiven, given the much shorter window you have to establish and demonstrate anything but the most basic character traits, that leaves us with the question of “what’s with this ‘pilgrim’ nonsense?”. A plot element coming from out of nowhere, adding a completely out of place mystical element to a series that had completely avoided it up to this point, and that doesn’t even justify it’s presence by adding anything noteworthy to the series- or even the movie, except a traitor subplot that never actually gets finished.
I can let the… physics… displayed in the movie go, because it’s fiction, and while awful, they weren’t enough of a distraction to be a problem. The ‘we honor our fallen comrades by denying that they ever existed’ cultural norm is a different matter entirely. I get that you’re trying to establish a distinct cultural identity, and at first glance it seems to work, but if you actually stop and think about it for a second, you notice its unspoken undercurrent of ‘and therefore not only cheapen their sacrifices, but undermine our own motivation to risk our lives’, which is kind of a problem during a war.
I have since read that Roberts intended to use CGI effects for the Kilrathi, and wound up not being able to do so for cost reasons. That would explain why they show up so rarely, but not why they look distinctly worse than the puppets from the games. It would also explain why the flight graphics look worse than they did in WC3, made seven years earlier and on thirteen percent of the buget. Nor would it- okay, I lied about the physics. Gameplay-wise, the series was essentially Pacific theater world war 2 in space. Yes, that’s unrealistic. There are more realistic spaceflight combat models in games, but they are 1. much less common, because they’re 2. generally no fun whatsoever. But there’s a difference between ignoring Newton for gameplay purposes and designing what’re supposed to be starships that look like armed-up rejects from Talespin. You also don’t need to be a scientist to realize that a black hole in our solar system would render the whole ‘war with an alien species’ moot, since our planet never would’ve formed in the first place.
In summary, the movie is bearable if you meet all four of the following conditions:
- you’re not familiar with the games
- you’re just looking for mindless escapism
- franchisicide holds a perverse fascination for you
- you are currently feeling the effects of having consumed at least two quarts of high-proof corn liquor
Otherwise, keep well away.