I'm not sure if that's partly to do with the choice to recycle old aeroplane frames. When you're on a budget, you make do with what's available, I suppose.
I'm not really sure this was a budget issue. I laugh to myself a little bit whenever someone goes off about how they 'just' cut up some old jets--of course, fighter jets, everyone knows those the cheapest thing in the world! Contrary to popular assumption, buying retired Electric Lightnings, shipping them to Luxembourg and then slicing them up into Rapiers isn't the obvious discount alternative to making a cockpit out of plywood and scrap metal.
It also made the CGI much more difficult, as the effects group had to perfectly match the real sets instead of creating something that would be used for all the external shots (this was actually much more labor-intensive than expected--but was pulled off very well).
So why do it? Verisimilitude--I think that the thought was that the production would benefit from having 'actual' space fighters that could truly be used throughout the film. Remember this was when even the most expensive CGI was somewhat clumsy and very limited when sharing a shot with live action elements. The decision was to trade Rapiers that looked like the ones in the game for ones that could appear with the live action characters throughout the movie and still seem 'real'.
Here's a great youtube clip of a different movie. Since people wanted to know where the "never existed" stuff comes from, have a gander:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9qoTO_gJq8.
That's very interesting--was there a war movie that does the same thing? Twelve O'Clock High or Dawn Patrol, something in that vein.
I guess I do wonder if Chris Roberts goes overboard with these sorts of references. This one is an odd case, since it's apparently something that has fallen out of the public consciousness and is attributed to him by viewers... but there's the same intent with the opposite effect in the case with all the Das Boot material. I like the idea of Wing Commander being a pastiche of classic war movie parts, but it goes too far in some places and not far enough elsewhere.
Pilgrim stuff is just stupid in my eyes and not because we didn't hear about it before but the concept itself.
I think the concept is necessary--you need some reason for Blair to stand out and for the characters to have any sort of conflict with him. You go into the movie alerady knowing he's the hero--he's going to save the day and prove himself... so what are the stakes? You need some bigger idea--that he's proving that his history or his religion or his genetics don't matter.
In my mind the big problem with the Pilgrims is that it comes out of left field... not for confused Wing Commander fans, but for everyone. We never get a reason to *care* that this minority is being oppressed--we don't really understand what they are (still don't!) or what they are an allegory for.
The WCM Rapier is one of the ugliest fighter designs I ever saw and I am not too fond of the Tiger's Claw or the Broadsword either.
Well, here's my question--is it ugly or is it bad? Because those should be two very different things. If anything, my biggest problem with the Rapier is that the pilots don't really talk about it looking like it does (they ADR a line in that helps a little, but it's weak--"these Rapiers are beat to hell").
I think they should have introduced the idea that it was like one of those great World War II attack planes (or a Thunderbolt or somesuch)--ugly as hell, but beloved by the pilots because it gets the job done. I didn't leave the movie wondering why they didn't give me an especially pretty killing machine, I wondered why they didn't make more a point of what a great job they did of making it look like a real space fighter. (Think about the Falcon from Star Wars--it's ugly but beloved because of how the movie is written around it. She may not look like much...)