Back That Achilles Up (December 19, 2022)

[Bandit LOAF]

One for the never noticed/can't unsee file: the destroyer that flies towards the screen in the Wing Commander Academy intro is traveling BACKWARDS!





Every other appearance has the conning tower in the back and the round... pod... in the front.





Another good backwards ship is the Vaktoth used on the Wing Commander card game packaging!




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Original update published on December 19, 2022

 

[Malcolm Reynolds]

Nothing strange here. Clearly, they're just firing a braking burn. Animated Wing Commander was harder sci-fi than we thought!

 

[ODVS]

Similarly, Blair/Maniac's shuttle is shown flying backwards out of the station where they visit Tolwyn in the original Wing IV TV spot trailer (10 seconds in):

I noticed it because it's the trailer I used as the basis for our demo trailer for WCIV: Remastered. I fixed it in our version 😝:

 

[Wedge009]

I imagine that was a case of accidentally - or deliberately - cutting the footage in reverse for whatever reason. But well-spotted!

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The Wing Commander IV one is likely deliberate, the Wing Commander Academy one is probably just another one of a bunch of issues that came up because the capital ship model sheets were significantly delayed.

There's another intentionally reversed shot that's pretty obvious once you know to look for it in the Wing Commander movie: look at the numbers on the Rapiers during the big scramble scene and the backwards one will jump right out at you!

 

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The Wing Commander IV one is likely deliberate, the Wing Commander Academy one is probably just another one of a bunch of issues that came up because the capital ship model sheets were significantly delayed.

There's another intentionally reversed shot that's pretty obvious once you know to look for it in the Wing Commander movie: look at the numbers on the Rapiers during the big scramble scene and the backwards one will jump right out at you!

There's a couple spots in the WC movie where they used editing to try and make things seem bigger than they are... There's obviously the Rapiers during the scramble that you've already mentioned. The flight deck was filmed 'Titanic' style where they built half of it and then mirrored it using computers after the fact. Anything taking place on the left side in any deck shot would need to have markings backwards. So I'm curious if they just missed that one or whether they just never got around to making mirrored decals for the prop ships in the first place.

They also tooled around with the Pegasus attack footage to make it look like the security camera footage was from the different levels they say there's breaches on when originally it's all just the same hallway attack. In earlier edit's it isn't even security camera footage. It's intercut throughout the attack as if the gun battle is not far outside the command center. But they just cut two parts that are even close to eachother and then reversed the order (they don't play backwards) to make it seem like multiple gun battles.