While I personally love the movie and it's not a *bad* movie, it definitely isn't a "good" movie either. But the potential was there, and what pains me more is not that people don't like it but that they chose to disrespect it with crap like "so and so pissing on my childhood" and "they ruined everything..." etc.
As another poster aptly put below, the movie events are 'canon' and the beauty and maybe the flaw is that the movie really goes out of it's way to avoid affecting the rest of the series at all in any discernable fashion. They even wrote a whole novel trilogy (third book unreleased mind you) about why the Pilgrims don't matter in the Wing Commander universe. And face it, no one would care about "mr hunter" if the movie was an awesome success. It would just be a fun footnote that people bring up.
Now the movie is something I've spent a great deal of time with and a great deal of time reseaching to understand. I've been working with the deleted scenes recently and I think I'm begining to understand exactly what the issues with the movie are. I think, as shot, there may even have been a movie there that is more true to the feeling of the WC series as a whole even and that more fans may have embraced.
Here's the thing though. Almost all the crap that people complain about regarding the movie doesn't matter. It's not what's wrong with it. It could have been a better movie perhaps if some of that stuff was different, but even the acting as a whole doesn't sink anything in the film. There are definite cringeworth moments in the dialogue in places, but I'll get to that more in a second.
The main issues with the wing commander movie stem ultimately from the script. That, coupled with one particularly unfortunate editing choice and further editing bashing and a limited effects budget that resulted in simplifying a number of sequences are almost entirely to blame here.
Ultimately the script needed one more pass. That would have cleaned up some of the dialogue and exposition and possibly some of the main complaints like Hunter being a call sign and 'Tiger's Claw'... But the other thing a rewrite would have fixed would be that editing choice I mentioned. Namely, Merlin.
Merlin was supposed to be a holographic PDA of sorts for blair, a personal computer and sidekick. Possibly it might have worked like an interactive version of the holomessage that blair plays in his locker in WC3 except with a bit of an attitude. I don't know why they ultimately decided to drop merlin but it seems most likely that they dropped it fairly early on. Apparently they filmed the movie to allow for it to be added but they decided not to use it early in the game since none of the workprints include any of that. That means that a number of scenes of exposition and a few key plot points had to be moved to other characters in *editing*.
Now was dropping Merlin a good idea? Almost definitely, but only if they had decided to do so before the final draft of the script. As it stands, and anyone that has the movie novelization should know, that Merlin was supposed to mostly lead Blair to search out more info about Pilgrims from Paladin... to find out more about himself... he was supposed to have been wiped clean of Pilgrim info since Merlin actually belonged to Blair's father, but apparently not. Removing Merlin and those bits pretty much does nothing to the film.
Now the other and only other key thing that Merlin does has to to with the Traitor subplot. This is all stuff that could have been resolved easily with a little thought and a rewrite. However they decided to get rid of Merlin *After* shooting. Merlin is the one that detects a weak ULF signal from the claw transmitting to the concom during Blair and Angel's reconaissance mission. He can tell that it's a pilgrim code apparently. It's a scene that pretty much solidifies the idea of a pilgrim traitor being on the Claw. Instead they removed the mention of the signal being a pilgim signal and have Blair's fighter pick it up. No problem, that works fine. The issue - and it's a big one - comes later.
During the concom raid when the Diligent launches an assault on the ship Blair was originally the turret gunner. He even gets a few kills... a little too starwars though. While the marines are boarding the Concom, Merlin picks up the ULF signal again. Except that the signal also has executive level incryption, which implicates only either Gerald or Sansky. Blair leaves his post to go looking for the source without telling anyone and Gerald ends up going and looking for him because he deserted his post. Gerald of course is already predjudiced against Blair and (spoiler???) is not the traitor so thinks Blair must be. The problem of removing Merlin is that Blair now had absolutely no reason to leave his post. It made *no sense* without merlin. So they started to fudge things around. All of the sudden blair has still left his post for no reason but then Paladin secretly knows too and his quietly trying to warn Blair of Gerald, and tell him of the signal... but apparently Angel is on the airwaves too and knows all about executive codes... and her voice is overlayed on scenes of Gerald looking for Blair with his pistol....
They didn't think of the consequences of not including Merlin. It becomes evident in the rough cut that they must have realized it wasn't working and by then it was too late to either go back and reshoot anything and there wasn't the money to go back and complete the Merling effect. Merlin stayed out, and the ConCom raid - while better than what's in the finished film... (it's well shot and whatnot even if you don't like the way the Kilrathi look) got trimmed down. They couldn't make it work quite right. In fact in the version I saw, they must have trimmed stuff out and forgot that they didn't explain how they turned off the autodestruct on the concom after the Kilrathi turn it on. I think it would have been better to leave it in somewhat confusing though rather than trim it like they did. Ultimately they decided to cut out hte whole traitor subplot.
Cutting out the entire subplot because of Merlin was somewhat silly. But it may have been the only way to make the movie work the way it was, even if that didn't particularly make it good. As a result stuff is mashed up, moved around, and edited crudely to hide the fact that there was more there. Some lines are ADRed over to change the context even. That extra context gave the film a whole different layer. Smiles and quick glances in the film are often about totally different things than they ended up being in the theatrical cut. Maniac's performance is actually almost more sane.
There were other editing choices that messed with things too though. there's a few major ones at the start of the film. I understand why it needed done. Otherwise it would have taken too long to get back to the story. The whole sequence where Blair and maniac arive on the claw got switched around . There was supposed to be a quick scene where we see a masked traitor on a kilrathi ship just before the diligent arrives at the Claw. But with that gone, they needed to get the story of the race for earth back in front view. So that meant changing when Blair meets with Sansky and Gerald on the bridge. Originally, the Diligent lands on the Claw, and then Paladin, Blair, and Maniac have an interchange on the flighdeck as they come off the ship, and then blair plays with himself in a Rapier... Meanwhile they're supposedly looking for the 'XO'. After getting embarrased by Angel she directs them to Gerald who is off on the side talking to some people... cut to the bridge with Sansky and Gerald. Blair gives them the disk... and then he's complaining about the 'XO' to Maniac on the way to the mess hall (after obviously having stowed their gearin their cabins.
But now, the film cuts directly to Sansky and Gerald on the bridge after the Diligent lands. Blair gives them the disk and then they go *back* to the flight deck... No Paladin, and no talk of XOs... but we get really really wierd and bad edits to hide the fact. It's so bad that they fudged manaics smile into looking like it was the m sound on the end of the work Maam. Then they're going through the halls to the Mess hall complaining about the "CO"....k
Within the WC universe, some of the inconsistencies could be explained away as taking place on a different carrier (that maybe was later destroyed), as it's now the "Tiger Claw", Ian St. John is now identified as Lt. Hunter (no first name given) and Knight had similar treatment.
I think the problems with the movie were:
1) They tried to fit way too many references in there and it was distracting. "Paladin"'s Covert Ops (WC2), Skipper Missiles (WC3), Mandarin Traitors (WC2), Concordia (WC2), The delaying action mentioned in, I believe, Claw Marks (WC1), WC1 storyline (WC1), Marines (WC4), etc.
I've addressed some of this above but I'll try and get to a few relevant points. Most of the people that would have seen a WC movie in theaters wouldn't have been familiar with the games. Skipper missiles don't matter to them. That said, there are explanations for most of these things, of which Skipper missiles is actually one of the least objectionable. Don't forget that we're only maybe a year or two away from the kilrathi having working strakha fighters in the WC2 intro. They must have been developing the tech *long* before the Claw was destroyed. Don't forget that the claw wasn't destroyed 10 years later. Isn't it more likely that the skippers in WC3 are a new kind of skipper rather than the actually technology or concept being new?
2) Went with the wrong casting
Theres a few oddities... again nothing that would have mattered if people actually thought the movie was good.
3) Didn't spend enough time on the script
I think I addressed this enought above
4) Changed the look too drastically
No more than SWC or the difference between WC2 and 3