Does anybody take the movie seriously?

It'd be an easy pickup at a half-price store and well worth it! The movie was fun!

So it didn't fit "neatly" into the canon, but who cares? I knew what I was buying when I bought that movie ticket and I wasn't disappointed, fair trade.

As for a reimagining, wouldn't that be almost necessary at this point, given the dramatic evolution of the artform since the heady days of "WING COMMANDER" on PC and SNES? Personally, I'd be excited to see what a talented team could come up with for the series using the latest tools and techniques.

We've had some really fun discussions of that before around here... one I recall explored the notion of being able to play from the Kilrathi side. A neat thought...it would let you see the game from the opposite side of the conflict.
 
LOAF's post makes me wish I had the money to buy a copy of the film - I desperately want to watch it again now!

You can probably get a copy for almost literally pennies on ebay. And you shouldn't expect to pay more than six dollars for it new anyway.
 
Also please note that the briefing scenes and universe maps deviate in the cartoon and in the movie, the briefing room does not feature a table-wide screen attached to a wall for looking over starmaps, like the cartoon, the briefing maps are holographic projections.

I think these are supposed to be different sets. In the movie we only ever see bridge table where the Captain and the XO work (and then brief Wing Commanders)... the only briefing scene for ordinary pilots happens on the flight deck. (Remember Wing Commander III - Captain Eisen briefs Colonel Blair with a holographic table... Blair then gives a traditional briefing to his pilots.)

Yeah, the closest thing to the WC1 briefing room map and the way ships and fleet movements are displayed in the movie is on the bridge on the Tiger Claw, only that it's projected on glass and visible from either side. The Holographic Map thing is in a map room adjacent to the Bridge. The projector on the Concordia was off to the side on the bridge in the film.
 
Now that LOAF has joined the conversation, I have two questions that I would like his (and other folks') perspectives on, that the movie raises.

1). Given that the movie is supposed to be the same continuity, what IS the explanation of how Bossman appears to be dead in the movie (although his fighter is apparently in tact and on the Claw), and yet he's alive again in WC1? It's not like he could have gone out on a patrol and never came back, and hence be presumed dead, unless he was in a different ship, since his ship is sitting on the flight deck. But he obviously didn't come back from a patrol injured, get pulled from his ship, and then die, because then he certainly would be dead. The only scenarios I can think of would be either that he'd been temporarily assigned to a different fighter and hadn't come back, or that he'd gone on a covert ops mission of some sort, a la Bluehair in Special Ops, or Angel in WC3, and that there'd been no word and hence he'd been presumed dead. Is there anything anywhere that sheds light on this?

2). I understand that Broadswords had been around for a long time, and indeed, we see them in the movie (I guess we're supposed to assume that they are the same Broadsword we see in WC2, perhaps an earlier version, and not a completely different fighter like the Rapier I was). However, I don't really understand the role that Broadswords would have played in the fleet back then, except possibly as SAR vessels. This was before the invention of torpedoes, as I recall (the WC2 manual states quite clearly that torpedoes were then a recent invention...unless it means "phase-shield penetrating torpedoes"), and the WC1 era fighters, at least, seemed quite capable of handling non-phase-shielded capships up to a Fralthi size at least without needing bomber support. Indeed, we know that in the McAulliffe ambush, the Raptor featured very heavily in capship attack. So why would you ever use a big slow bomber when a Raptor or even a Scimitar (which was also used in capship strike missions...see Claw Marks and the mission that Tooner and Dribbles were lost on) were completely capable and could also handle fighters better?
 
You can probably get a copy for almost literally pennies on ebay. And you shouldn't expect to pay more than six dollars for it new anyway.
Got it the other day for $6.99 CDN. It typically runs around $9.99 CDN around here. Funny thing is it was my first DVD (I sold my initial copy when I needed a tonne of money quickly) and I paid $32.99 CDN for it back then!
 
1). Given that the movie is supposed to be the same continuity, what IS the explanation of how Bossman appears to be dead in the movie (although his fighter is apparently in tact and on the Claw), and yet he's alive again in WC1? It's not like he could have gone out on a patrol and never came back, and hence be presumed dead, unless he was in a different ship, since his ship is sitting on the flight deck. But he obviously didn't come back from a patrol injured, get pulled from his ship, and then die, because then he certainly would be dead. The only scenarios I can think of would be either that he'd been temporarily assigned to a different fighter and hadn't come back, or that he'd gone on a covert ops mission of some sort, a la Bluehair in Special Ops, or Angel in WC3, and that there'd been no word and hence he'd been presumed dead. Is there anything anywhere that sheds light on this?

I should stress first that there is, as of yet, no 'canonical' explanation for Bossman's double (heh, actually, triple - nobody played SWC...) death. There are only fan theories.

First, lets note that what you just said is something not many people pick up on (including, it would seem, several screenwriters). Isn't it really darned odd that Bossman's fighter is sitting there, perfectly fine, on the flight deck? This isn't World War II - a bullet doesn't penetrate your cockpit and mortally wound you but allow you to heroically land your plane first. They clearly aren't wearing pressurized suits and even if they were some kind of flesh wound would render one useless in the first place. I wish I knew what the guy who came up with the Blair-gets-Boss'-fighter scenario was thinking.

What we do know is how Chris McCubbin explained this oddity, in The Confederation Handbook. In the form of a letter from Angel to Boss' wife (the letter she was writing in SM2! The spirit, if not the letter, of the characters...) she explains that he was 'vaporized by radiation' and that his fighter was later recovered. What this discounts, however, is the idea that he was just flying a different fighter or wounded in a missile strike on the carrier or something else.

Everything from here on out is unstated theory and should be recognized as such:

- Bossman's fighter was disabled and he was pulled out and taken prisoner by the Kilrathi.
- The letter written to Bossman's wife is a lie, referencing End Run's statement from Bear about how reassuring letters are sent home about dying quickly and painlessly rather than being taken prisoner.
- ???
- Profit.... I mean, back to the Tiger's Claw through an as-of-yet untold story.

2). I understand that Broadswords had been around for a long time, and indeed, we see them in the movie (I guess we're supposed to assume that they are the same Broadsword we see in WC2, perhaps an earlier version, and not a completely different fighter like the Rapier I was). However, I don't really understand the role that Broadswords would have played in the fleet back then, except possibly as SAR vessels. This was before the invention of torpedoes, as I recall (the WC2 manual states quite clearly that torpedoes were then a recent invention...unless it means "phase-shield penetrating torpedoes"), and the WC1 era fighters, at least, seemed quite capable of handling non-phase-shielded capships up to a Fralthi size at least without needing bomber support. Indeed, we know that in the McAulliffe ambush, the Raptor featured very heavily in capship attack. So why would you ever use a big slow bomber when a Raptor or even a Scimitar (which was also used in capship strike missions...see Claw Marks and the mission that Tooner and Dribbles were lost on) were completely capable and could also handle fighters better?

* The idea that torpedoes were around before Wing Commander II shows up before the movie; in fact, the idea that there were ship-killer torpedoes and impenetrable shields is an important element of the Action Stations prequel novel. I think we had accepted that these things go in cycles well before the movie.

* Enyo Engagement, not McAuliffe Ambush. More to the point, though, the Raptors involved in the battle plan weren't put there to slaughter capital ships - they were put there as a mine-laying decoy force so insignificant as to seemingly guarantee a Kilrathi victory.

* Note that the mission Tooner and Dibbles were on was *part of* a strike against a Ralari; we don't know what else it involved (the rest of the strike force damaged but didn't destroy the Rathtak). Which speaks to the greater point here - it's easy to blow up capital ships in Wing Commander I, but all the fiction (especially that in the game itself) implies that it isn't. When you miss destroying a cruiser, for instance, Halcyon will tell you he's sending a whole squadron of Raptors against it.

Overall, though, the idea is that even when you can damage a ship with guns it's a lot easier to knock it out with a single shield-penetrating torpedo. (Broadswords had alrady shown up on the Tiger's Claw, too - on the Academy cartoon.)
 
It's possible to come up with an explanation to fit almost anything into Wing Commander continuity (Ultima! Sonic the Hedgehog!). Can anyone honestly look at the scenes in the movie relating to Bossman and say they're trying to suggest anything other than that he's dead, though? The ships' name is another example; Arena's manual came up with a clever explanation for this, but why would the people behind the movie make such an obvious break from the games if their efforts were to jive with the games? I haven't read the production crews' minds, of course, it just seems more plausible to me that they weren't trying to fit it into the same canon as the games, rather than that they were trying and were just really bad at it.

I like talking about the WC universe as much as the next guy, but trying to explain Bossman's and Knight's multiple deaths is a little too close to essays on Klingon foreheads.
 
First, lets note that what you just said is something not many people pick up on (including, it would seem, several screenwriters). Isn't it really darned odd that Bossman's fighter is sitting there, perfectly fine, on the flight deck? This isn't World War II - a bullet doesn't penetrate your cockpit and mortally wound you but allow you to heroically land your plane first. They clearly aren't wearing pressurized suits and even if they were some kind of flesh wound would render one useless in the first place. I wish I knew what the guy who came up with the Blair-gets-Boss'-fighter scenario was thinking.

I did find it darned odd. I can think of a couple of scenarios that could explain how someone could die but their fighter could be sitting on the flight deck, but obviously they're pure speculation, and almost none of them leave much room for him to later be alive.

There's the one you mentioned, that some missile hit or somethign killed him on the Claw while he wasn't in his fighter. Of course, in this scenario, there's zero chance of him actually being alive. It's also possible that he could have died from radiation poisoning, like Spock in Star Trek 2. WC1 era fighters at least have some kind of "reactor" as a power source (Iceman mentions it in a bar conversation in WC1 when talking about rushing a Jalthi head on, I believe)...so it's possible damage to the reactor could have caused a radiation leak that could have been fatal to the pilot, but still left him able to fly well enough (temporarily) to land his fighter. Of course, if this is true, then they wouldn't exactly be letting a "hot" (radioactive) fighter sitting there on the flight deck for anyone to crawl into. And again, he would be unequivocably dead.

The most plausible explanations I can think of iare either that he was flying some other person's fighter when he was lost, or that he could have been lost and presumed dead while not on the Claw at all. Maybe he was going on leave to see his wife, and the transport he was supposed to be on was attacked and blown up. (Heck, maybe he was even supposed to have been on one of those ships lost in the Kilrathi attack at the beginning of the movie). The Claw certainly would have been notified if a ship that one of their pilots was thought to be on was lost, and hence the squadron would think he was dead and therefore he "never existed". Of course, then it would be a trivial matter to reveal a week (or even a few days) later that he actually had been on a different transport, or had missed his flight, or had been conscripted at the last minute to fly some mission for some other commander and had his leave cancelled, or something...

Pure speculation, I know. But I guess there are scenarios that could explain things.
 
It's possible to come up with an explanation to fit almost anything into Wing Commander continuity (Ultima! Sonic the Hedgehog!).

This only sounds silly because you're overstating it; Wing Commander has a much more direct relationship with the Wing Commander movie than it does with any of these things.

Can anyone honestly look at the scenes in the movie relating to Bossman and say they're trying to suggest anything other than that he's dead, though? The ships' name is another example; Arena's manual came up with a clever explanation for this, but why would the people behind the movie make such an obvious break from the games if their efforts were to jive with the games? I haven't read the production crews' minds, of course, it just seems more plausible to me that they weren't trying to fit it into the same canon as the games, rather than that they were trying and were just really bad at it.

These are two different things, I think. The Tiger's Claw change wasn't intentional at all; you can track it through different edits of the script. The first version uses both Tiger's Claw and Tiger Claw... and as it travels along some copyeditor clearly decides he likes "Tiger Claw" better (there's one Tiger's Claw left in the finished script, too, IIRC...).

Bossman's death is certainly supposed to be Bossman's death - but I'm equally sure that it wasn't some grand conscious attempt to make sure everyone knows Wing Commander I is being *retold*; rather, it's storytelling from people (Chris Roberts) who don't view the story in the same way we do. There would be no problem at all, in my mind, if some future project wanted to correct the discontinuity.

(I should mention, again, that this isn't the first time Bossman has died twice. He's killed in Secret Missions 2 *and* the extra missions of Super Wing Commander... and then his death in Secret Missions 2 doesn't exactly match how it is seen in Freedom Flight, either. The movie isn't roughing up some otherwise perfect continuity here - it's just a bigger, more noticable platform.)

I like talking about the WC universe as much as the next guy, but trying to explain Bossman's and Knight's multiple deaths is a little too close to essays on Klingon foreheads.

I don't think either of us get to have that opinion; the fact of the matter is that we've all decided to be part of this debate, no matter which side we're on... that makes us all pretty darned big geeks compared to everyone who just doesn't care. Neither one gets to be the 'well, I never' side. :)

(... and correct me if I'm wrong, but after twenty-odd years of bitching about it, the Star Trek folks *did* get the foreheads explained 'in continuity'.)

The most plausible explanations I can think of iare either that he was flying some other person's fighter when he was lost, or that he could have been lost and presumed dead while not on the Claw at all. Maybe he was going on leave to see his wife, and the transport he was supposed to be on was attacked and blown up. (Heck, maybe he was even supposed to have been on one of those ships lost in the Kilrathi attack at the beginning of the movie). The Claw certainly would have been notified if a ship that one of their pilots was thought to be on was lost, and hence the squadron would think he was dead and therefore he "never existed". Of course, then it would be a trivial matter to reveal a week (or even a few days) later that he actually had been on a different transport, or had missed his flight, or had been conscripted at the last minute to fly some mission for some other commander and had his leave cancelled, or something...

Yeah, it's certainly possible as a thought exercise... but in terms of overall continuity, it has to comply with the details seen in the Handbook.
 
Wow, I come back a few days later and I have 48 replies. So much to digest, I would love to continue this debate but I get the impression I've just stirred up the Hornet's nest.

Thanks to everybody who answered, some very intelligent thoughts about the relevance of the Wing Commander movie and the WC universe itself. I had a feeling this had been talked about a few times, so sorry to pull it all back up, but listen, we're all fans, and if it gets us talking about the game/universe we all enjoy, then I guess it's a positive topic.
 
I'm pretty sure that no one here is posting in anger, danr. I'm sure not. It's actually a pretty interesting discussion.

Bossman's death is certainly supposed to be Bossman's death - but I'm equally sure that it wasn't some grand conscious attempt to make sure everyone knows Wing Commander I is being *retold*; rather, it's storytelling from people (Chris Roberts) who don't view the story in the same way we do.

I think they looked through the games and used what made for an interesting story and ignored what didn't, without any efforts towards maintaining some kind of strict "universe" with what went before. That was a good choice; it's much more important to tell a story well than it is to same number of hairs on a Kilrathi.

I don't think either of us get to have that opinion; the fact of the matter is that we've all decided to be part of this debate, no matter which side we're on... that makes us all pretty darned big geeks compared to everyone who just doesn't care. Neither one gets to be the 'well, I never' side. :)

Hardly ever. :D I'm not trying to stick my nose in the air, but I think it's good to look at Wing Commander (or any decent work of fiction) from both in- and out-of-universe perspectives. Something like the morality of blowing up Kilrah is interesting to talk about as insiders, while other things seem to require a step outside. Why do Blair and Maniac morph between four or so radically different appearances? I don't think this requires any explanation other than "different art styles, different actors," but I'm willing to take a stab at it in-continuity if you are. Working theory: repeated combat missions can make pilots spontaneously transform, and sometimes grow black outlines.
 
I think they looked through the games and used what made for an interesting story and ignored what didn't, without any efforts towards maintaining some kind of strict "universe" with what went before. That was a good choice;

But then there are a bunch of instances where the makers of the movie did go and add in awesome continuity references ("Yo Blair, I don't see any of those Hornets we flew in the Academy!"). Obviously they were incredibly versed in Wing Commander history - who else knows what a Skipper Missile is? They just simply don't see it as a problem that Skipper Missiles could exist in 2654.

Fans are so stuck on the "fact" that the first time something is introduced must literally be the very first time it shows up in the universe. I've heard so many people complain over the years that it's a continuity error that Skipper Missiles predate the first introduction of cloaking devices on the Strakha when the Tiger's Claw is destroyed. But the WC movie is not the first thing to go back and show stealth technology prior to K'Tithrak Mang - Academy and Super Wing Commander both backdate the concept earlier into Wing Commander 1. With this in mind, it's actually a cool continuity-bolstering thing that some kind of early version of the Skipper is in the movie.
 
Fans are so stuck on the "fact" that the first time something is introduced

I've noticed that too, and have been guilty of it a few times, but I love it when I'm proven wrong about the age of any given ship because it gives the ships I thought were 'new' a much broader background when you read about them being used elsewhere.
 
There's no problem with ships existing before the player character encounters them in-game. That makes sense, and I liked seeing Broadswords and Grikaths in the cartoon. The problem is that Tolwyn observes that the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible, then tries to cashier Blair for saying the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible.

I don't dispute the movie team's knowledge of Wing Commander, but the references seem more like homages than an attempt to tie into the existing continuity. The Super Mario Bros. movie mentioned stuff that only fans would know, like Yoshi (Super Mario World), Big Bertha (Super Mario Bros. 3), and even Daisy (Super Mario Land), but it sure wasn't trying to be part of the games' world.
 
There's no problem with ships existing before the player character encounters them in-game. That makes sense, and I liked seeing Broadswords and Grikaths in the cartoon. The problem is that Tolwyn observes that the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible, then tries to cashier Blair for saying the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible.

Or how the Kilrathi could cloak missiles, yet fighters were out of the question?
 
Why do Blair and Maniac morph between four or so radically different appearances? I don't think this requires any explanation other than "different art styles, different actors," but I'm willing to take a stab at it in-continuity if you are. Working theory: repeated combat missions can make pilots spontaneously transform, and sometimes grow black outlines.

I've got to admit, I'm not at all interested in an in-continuity explanation about characters' (or ships) appearances. I wasn't when they transitioned for Wing Commander III, I wasn't when they redid the art for Super Wing Commander and I wasn't when they did the movie.

(I believed this for the Klingons mentioned earlier, too; I thought Deep Space Nine's reference to the change was tasteful and elegant and that Enterprise's story was over the top.)

The problem is that Tolwyn observes that the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible, then tries to cashier Blair for saying the Kilrathi can make stuff invisible.

I think that's another oversimplification, though. The ability to double-blind cloak a missile for short periods simply isn't the ability to single-blind cloak a man for long ones... and that technical fact alone doesn't take into account a particularly damning situation (missing recorder, evidence that the Kilrathi attacked from Blair's patrol area, needing a scapegoat for the failure of *his* operation) and Tolwyn's particular psychology (a refusal to accept that the Kilrathi could build a war-changing weapon... including stealth fighters, in both the Shroud-style weapons seen on WCA and the arguments with Halcyon over a full cloak in SWC.)
 
I've got to admit, I'm not at all interested in an in-continuity explanation about characters' (or ships) appearances. I wasn't when they transitioned for Wing Commander III, I wasn't when they redid the art for Super Wing Commander and I wasn't when they did the movie.

Yeah, I just explained it as, its creative license, let it go, same characters, same story. Though there was some effort to explain the Armstrong, Blair, Lafong, Bluehair connection, that never really bothered me either. I just accepted them as the same character as Blair hadn't been named at that point. It was fun to theorize, but thats all.

(I believed this for the Klingons mentioned earlier, too; I thought Deep Space Nine's reference to the change was tasteful and elegant and that Enterprise's story was over the top.)

I have to disagree here. While there was much of STE that I did not appreciate, this was one area I did. The DS9 explanation I found wanting and somewhat lazy on the part of the writers. The STE explanation was a bit more... satisfying as far as I was concerned.

But again, this never really bugged me until the writers actually brought it up.
 
*shrugs* I don't think it even needed an explanation. I liked DS9's little in-joke about the whole thing, not the grand "here we will explain the forehead!" conspiracy from Enterprise. If you wanted an in-universe reason, though, I see why Enterprise's way would be more appealing.

I think that's another oversimplification, though. The ability to double-blind cloak a missile for short periods simply isn't the ability to single-blind cloak a man for long ones... and that technical fact alone doesn't take into account a particularly damning situation (missing recorder, evidence that the Kilrathi attacked from Blair's patrol area, needing a scapegoat for the failure of *his* operation) and Tolwyn's particular psychology (a refusal to accept that the Kilrathi could build a war-changing weapon... including stealth fighters, in both the Shroud-style weapons seen on WCA and the arguments with Halcyon over a full cloak in SWC.)

I don't think there's a huge difference between a fighter and a missile, and in any event the Kilrathi could cloak both with a couple years of each other. The big thing is the "invisibility field," however that's supposed to work. I agree that Tolwyn has a warped perspective on the issue, but no one else seems to think it's even possible, including Angel, who saw it happen.

I've never played SWC, though I've checked out the SM1.5 script on the CIC. Could you tell me about Halycon arguing about cloaking?
 
I don't think there's a huge difference between a fighter and a missile, and in any event the Kilrathi could cloak both with a couple years of each other. The big thing is the "invisibility field," however that's supposed to work. I agree that Tolwyn has a warped perspective on the issue, but no one else seems to think it's even possible, including Angel, who saw it happen.

But the 'big thing' isn't the only thing. Inventing the liquid-fueld rocket engine doesn't mean you've put a man in space, discovering fusion doesn't give you a functional bomb and so forth and so on.

Consider that the Skipper had to decloak to make course corrections; that suggests that it can't "see out" of the cloak. That's something which is essential to fighter operations: the Strakha we see in the Wing Commander II intro need to fly to the Tiger's Claw, lock their torpedoes and then decloak only to fire them. We don't even know that the Skipper *can* maintain its cloak for very long; it may be scarier than an ordinary capital ship missile, but at its core it isn't any sort of unbeatable weapon (remember, the only reason the Tiger's Claw was especially threatened was that she was unable to launch fighters).

That all seems like a big hurdle to me; it feels like the difference between throwing V-2s in the general direction of London and putting a man on the moon. All part of the same development process, all part of the same desired goal... but years and many other necessary developments separate from each other. Inventing a screen that blocks the visible spectrum of light doesn't even seem impossible today -- but one that blocks it in only one direction is a bit further away.

There are plenty of other things that might make a single-blind stealth fighter seemingly impossible in 2654. What if making a Strakha requires a breakthrough in powerplant technology in order to support both the cloak and ships systems? A fighter has a lot more to take care of than a single-shot missile (shields, weapons, environment, thrusters) -- and everything is multiplied by two if you're hoping your fighter will return home. What about radiation, or some similar physical barrier? What if the spectrum-obscuring field used in the Skippers can't sustain organic material? There are all sorts of possibilities...

I've never played SWC, though I've checked out the SM1.5 script on the CIC. Could you tell me about Halycon arguing about cloaking?

One thing Super Wing Commander does is add little prequel bits to the original Wing Commander script; so scattered through the same old conversations are additional bits of story that are supposed to prepare us for Super Wing Commander 2. One of those is ongoing references to an argument between Halcyon and Tolwyn about the existence of stealth fighters; Halcyon thinks its possible, Tolwyn doesn't.
 
I have to admit, maintaining continuity with the designs of ships and fighters has always been important to me. Interestingly, I never cared nearly as much about the characters not looking the same - completely hypocritical, I know. When I watched the opening of WC2 the first time, for example, I felt far more anger and shock over the loss of the 'Claw then, say, at the loss of Angel in WC3.

From my perspective, the ships are the stars of the series. They provide so much flavor to the experience because they serve so many purposes. Sure, they're there to fight a war - but on another level, they are your home, your rec room, your night 'out,' your place of 'business,' etc.

One look at a Bengal, and I think of the leaking cieling or the red glow eminating from the main hangar. I formed attachments and identified with their designs and abilities. One of the keys to the series' success is allowing you the opportunity to emotionally invest in the ship you're serving on, much the same way you do with the characters and their relationships. I think that's why the first time I watched the movie, I was left searching for answers. I couldn't get past the Tiger('s) Claw looking so radically different.

I quickly got over the movie's inconsistency (I really did enjoy it the first time I watched it - I came away thinking there was so much I had to learn,) much the same way many of you have in your own ways as well. WC has a great universe and good characters, but for me, the ships take on a life of their own and are as important as any piece of the story.
 
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