The movie for this week
I picked, not because I think it is good, but because I care deeply about the
videogame franchise that it’s a part of. As far back as I remember I have
played PC videogames, and, as I was born in the 90’s, they were DOS games (look
it up all you less than 20 somethings); the earliest I can remember are mostly
edutainment games, and are generally not very interesting. The earliest DOS
games that I remember, that weren’t trying to teach me how to read, think or do
math are: Lemmings, and Wing Commander.
The one I played more
was probably Lemmings (nothing beats Adlib folk tunes), but I remember finding Wing Commander FAR more interesting. Wing Commander was a space flight combat
simulator that came out in 1990 for my tiny 5-10 year old mind in the late 90’s
it was a mind-bogglingly complex experience that I never had the patience to
master, or even be competent at, but at the same time it made me feel like I
was Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: flying through space and shooting bad guys. As
I got older my interests drifted from videogames to film just in time for me to
discover Wing Commander’s 4 sequels,
and their cinematic style of story-telling. Soon after, I also discovered my
favorite digital distribution service for videogames: gog.com. After purchasing
the entire series (including the spinoffs such as Privateer, and Armada) I
quickly picked my favorite among the series: Wing Commander III. I have already discussed the movie-like
qualities of Wing commander III in
another post on this blog, so when I heard there was a Wing Commander Movie, and quickly thereafter heard that it sucked I
was really disappointed. It was even directed by the creator of the franchise:
Chris Roberts (he also directed the live action cutscenes for Wing Commanders III and the also
excellent IV), it got me really curious as to how this movie could possibly be that bad. After discovering with Super Mario Bros. The Movie that popular
opinions on video game movies are untrustworthy at best I resolved to watch Wing Commander, confidant in my ability
to enjoy the movie on its own merits and not bring my knowledge of the series
greatness taint my opinion…
I couldn’t have been
more wrong if I tried. The Wing Commander
movie did more than just poorly represent the franchise; it took what should
have been the easiest video game to movie adaptation and completely fumbled it.
The issues of the movie are technically few, but major; the first major problem
is the visual design, and then comes the characters, and finally some major
aspects of the plot. As for the visual design Chris Roberts, the creator of Wing Commander, and director of this
movie, has been quoted numerous times saying that Wing Commander was an attempt to recreate WWII dogfights in a
sci-fi setting. In the games this was mainly re-created in gameplay through
elements like reliance on rapid firing guns, and communication through radio
chatter. For the movie, however, Chris Roberts went a little too far with the
WWII style by changing the fighter designs to feature unrefined metal riveted
together. The construction of these spaceships looks far from air tight, and
subsequently not space worthy (also the spaceships drop off the runway as they
take off…cause that makes sense). But the space ships aren’t the only thing
visually changed from the games: the species of space cats, the Kilrathi, also
received a new look for the movie. In the games the Kilrathi were a proud
bipedal lion like race; with fur and rather extravagant manes that fit with
their culture which was a collection of clans governed by an emperor. In the
movie on the other hand the Kilrathi are nearly completely hairless…except for
their goatees…cause you know having a goatee in a movie instantly makes you
evil. They look more like discount Klingons then a proud, honor focused,
military force…ok so the Kilrathi petty much were discount Klingons, but the
movie removed the visual differences between the two species and made the lack
of distinction really apparent. However as much as I hate these two visual
changes I must comment that the visual effects on display here are nothing
short of miraculous. The cgi effects were done by Chris Roberts’ own video game
studio: Digital Anvil, and the work they did on the Wing Commander movie is downright beautiful despite the low budget.
Most movies set in space have rather boring samey star fields; even Star Wars, probably the most imaginative
sci-fi universe to date had simple white dots on a black background, but Wing Commander’s star fields have color,
they are more than simple dots on a black background. There are nebulae,
asteroids, stars of more colors then just white, and even in cases where it is
primarily white dots on black the effects team made an effort to vary the
density of the stars. Also the 3D hologram displays still look nice and hi-tech
today.
Enough gushing about
the effects, and onto the botched characters: the lead character of the
franchise, Colonel Christopher Blair, is played in the videogames by the most
obvious choice for a pilot of a space fighter: Mark Hamill. A cliché choice
perhaps, but very serviceable in the context of a player character, plus it’s
not like he was doing anything else in the 90’s. The other most primary
character, Todd “Maniac” Marshall was played by the excellent Tom Wilson. The
movie decided to completely buck the trend in casting A-list actors (probably
due to budgetary concerns) and cast Freddie Prinze Jr. as Blair, and Matthew
Lillard as Maniac. Neither of these actors are really good fits for their
roles. Matthew Lillard comes off less as the tactless lovable jerk he is in the
video games, and more a complete idiot who is a danger to himself and his
wingman. In the video games Maniac did more than his fair share of self and
wingman endangerment, but it was always because his pride and need to show off
occasionally got the best of him, and not because he wanted to do something
stupid like do a full afterburn aileron rolling landing. Blair on the other
hand was much less of a loss: because the movie takes place early in Blair’s
military career then any of the games they did need a younger actor, but
Freddie Prinze Jr. gives bland a whole new meaning with his role as Christopher
Blair. Blair may not have been the most well defined character in the video
game franchise (the character served only to be an audience surrogate), but
that’s no excuse for the movie. This was Chris Roberts’ chance to actually give
Blair a well-defined and interesting character, but instead he elected not to
develop him any more development then the games did; which is scant to say the
least. However not all of this casting was painfully bad, there are two
characters that fulfill their roles perfectly and had flawless casting: David
Warner as Admiral Tolwin, and Tcheky Kario as James “Paladin” Taggert. I may be
a bit biased in favor of David Warner, because I have liked just about
everything he has ever done, but I really do agree with the casting here. In
the videogames Tolwyn was played by the (much better choice) Malcom McDowell,
but David Warner is a good replacement. He has the sinister touch to his voice
that makes him sound stern, but not quite outright evil; the perfect balance
for the officious and stern Tolwin. But the real casting and character
highlight of the film was Tcheky Kario as Paladin. They messed up his ethnicity
(in the videogames he was Scottish, whereas in the movie he was French…I
think?), which was a problem with a few other characters as well, but Tcheky
did a fantastic job in creating easily the most interesting, and likable
character in the film.
Now on to the absolute
worst bit of the movie. The plot of the Wing
Commander videogames is overall very simple, the humans are fighting a war
against the Kilrathi and eventually they triumph, but the games really succeed
in the details. The progression of missions in the video game follows logically
from your previous mission’s actions to create a war narrative that seems
believable and tactically sound. The game is structured so that all related
missions take place in one star system, which make up the major subdivisions of
the game. The movie takes the best part of that idea: focusing not on the war
as a whole, but instead a subset of related missions. The basic plot is the
Kilrathi stole a human nav com and now know how to get to Earth, and begin
launching a full scale assault. It is up to The Tiger’s Claw (the carrier that
both Blair, and Marshall serve on) to get back to Earth to warn them of the
impending assault. This plot works really well, and does a good job keeping up the
tension; so what’s the problem then? One word: Pilgrims. The movie suggests the
earliest human space explorers (called Pilgrims) evolved genetic space travel
instincts. Not only is this a disregard for how evolution really works, but
apparently the Pilgrims got really big heads and saw themselves as gods. This
of course is completely ridiculous; it’s like having instinctual genetic
understanding of the highway system…hardly god like abilities. As a result of
this the normal humans, and Pilgrims have a war. The Pilgrims lost and are
nearly extinct. What does this have to do with the Kilrathi war? Absolutely
nothing, but the movie doesn’t seem to be aware. It spends the majority of its
runtime and character development discussing Pilgrims, because Christopher
Blair is a Pilgrim. This bothers me immensely. While playing Wing Commander I enjoyed the feeling
that I worked for my mission victories, and became a good pilot by honing my
skills through increasingly difficult missions. By making Blair “the chosen one”
Wing Commander completely ignores one
of major appeals of the video games.
Wing
Commander represents the biggest missed opportunity in video
game based film. It seems to have understood that things needed to change to
make a movie adaptation work, but made some absolutely bafflingly insane
changes. Perhaps if I was able to completely ignore the Wing Commander brand and see this movie as a movie I would consider
it the best space action film of 1999 (not that there was much strong
competition, even from Star Wars),
but as a Wing Commander fan this film
can barely pass for mediocre. All is not doom and gloom for Wing Commander adaptations however: there was also a Wing Commander animated show called Wing Commander: Academy and that was pretty awesome. It used all the lead actors from the games and stayed really close to the game's universe and characters. Check it out on DVD if you can. Thank you for reading my increasingly long posts
here, and come back next week for Mary Sue: The Movie Franchise.
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