Favorite Wing Commander Movie Scene

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Originally posted by Phillip Tanaka
If you ask me, I'd agree with you that the movie was FUBAR. The characters looked the way they did in Super Wing Commander, in fact nothing looks the way it did in the games,

So the characters look like they do in SWC (well, they don't... really, but if you think so...) yet nothing looks the way it did in the games... :)

and the story and script is full of continuity errors. They fly Rapiers, don't they? The game takes place after the events of the movie, and Angel ends up test flying Rapiers sometime around the middle of the game. But hey, things like this happen all the time. There are continuity holes in The X Files. There's the same gaping holes in one of the things that ranks right behind God to me as well, Resident Evil. So I don't know about not talking about them at length, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

You didn't even bother to think about that, did you? :) They're completely different versions of the Rapier. The Rapier in the movie is a freakishly old ship on it's way out. The Rapier II in the game, is a shiny nice new ship,
 
Originally posted by TC
So the characters look like they do in SWC (well, they don't... really, but if you think so...) yet nothing looks the way it did in the games... :)



You didn't even bother to think about that, did you? :) They're completely different versions of the Rapier. The Rapier in the movie is a freakishly old ship on it's way out. The Rapier II in the game, is a shiny nice new ship,

Stupid choice of words I guess. Thinking about the sunburn I got. And I didn't know about the new Rapier.
 
Originally posted by TC
Why would you pull them out of the movie? That's rather stupid... Their names are both in the novel and in the Confed Handbook... and quite possibly in the movie itself.

Because of what Wedge said, they don't fit very well, and also the fact that we see Knight go up in a ball of flame, not eject and Hunter is not referenced correctly. Also the whole introduction thing in WC1 would fit a little better.

C-ya
 
We see Knight's Broadsword start to explode, then we shift to an image of Paladin, then we see the explosion dissipate. As we know, when you eject from a fighter, your pod shoots straight upwards. If Knight had ejected (which he obviously did, since we see him in Wing Commander I), his pod would've easily cleared the screen during those few moments that we're watching Paladin's reaction.
 
Hehe, the old movie isn't in continuity with games vs. no there aren't any continuity errors let me explain catfight is rearing again :)

Just watched Knight's broadsword blowing up again, and I had a thought.

In all Wing Commander games, it takes several seconds to eject. There's generally a warning *ejecting* *ejecting* light and then you launch. If the piece of the battle on screen in the movie (thought not the whole movie itself obviously) is played out in real time, and we've every reason to believe it is (watch it again if you disagree), then there's no way 'Mr. Knight' would have time to reach for his ejector ring and eject in time before his ship disintegrated, like a split second later. He's focused on the battle (albeit wimpering) up until his fighter starts exploding. His ships destruction is an instantaneous process, it doesn't start falling to pieces gently giving him the time he needs to eject. All the fighters in the movie go up pretty much like a tinderbox, so there is no reason the broadsword should be any different. The ship starts exploding, the ship explodes, in an instant in the movie. It happens in under a second. Additionally, he's been given an order to 'steady as she goes' and doesn't report that 'actually i'm not going to steady on course, i'm going to eject' which surely he would be compelled to do if he was going to leave his wingleader all alone. He also yells a death cry as his ship disintegrates. The sound cuts out as his ship disintegrates.

The one thing above all this that convinces me, is if the film-makers were not planning to kill the character, then they would not have made such an implication of his death.

re: Hunter, how can they be referring to his callsign? Notice on his uniform breast is 'Hunter'. Everyone else has their surnames, implying that that's his surname.

Now it's been argued countless times whether the movie is intended to fit into continuity with the games. If there was a definite answer then it wouldn't be so recurring an issue. My personal opinion is that when Chris Roberts said he wanted 'a new image' he decided it was to be a movie based on the games in general, and not a tie in to the games and the novels (one thing is certain, he didn't go through the movie with a fine toothed comb looking for continuity flaws), hence:

-They called the carrier the 'Tiger Claw' (why why why? What's wrong with Tiger's Claw? Coul the cgi not handle apostrophes?),

-made Angel english, when she is very very, very french in the games

-implied Bossman's death (there is clearly no hope of his being alive as far as the other pilots are concerned),

-included skipper missiles (which captain eisen describes as 'a new technology' in wing commander 3),

-makes Paladin french/belgian and a commodore (didn't Shotlgass say he flew with him off the claw before?),

-make Angel the Wing Commander on the Claw instead of Colonel Halcyon,

- made Hunter the guy's surname and not his callsign,

- made Blair not a rookie by the time of Wing Commander, and actually the hero of mankind already,

- made torpedoes the required capship-killing weapon, when in Wing Commander you can quite conceivably take a cruiser out with a couple of mass driver guns or even lasers, hence the ships and guns in 'Victory Streak' being around 10x more penetrative than in Claw Marks. Actually this is an issue for me, since action stations has torpedoes etc. and that's ages before 2654. I always figured some sort of technological advancement in the 10 years between WC1&WC2, and all the old ships like the victory got upgraded armour and shielding or something. Any explaination would be cool.

- navcomp a.i. and the implication that Kilrathi ships were somehow incapable of navigating certain jump points, or even jump points at all (it's ambiguous). I don't know where to start about how wrong this is. The Kilrathi in action stations seem pretty 'oh it's easy to get to earth we just go here la la la we'll be there in no time'.

-obsolete ships have on board talking computer merlin. I guess that makes sense because they were always overriding the silly thing. I'd bin it.

-Pegasus station guy reporting 'one million bogies'. What?? Exaggeration maybe but eek.

I really feel that Roberts was using his artistic license and was just focused on making a good film (whoops) that draws from bits of all the games. But this is just my opinion. It's like Christian fundamentalism vs. Christian liberalism, with relation to infallability of holy scripture. A liberal will argue that something's inconsistent, and the fundamentalist will find a way to explain it using a few stretches of the imagination, and decides that that has to be the truth, no matter how unlikely it is because "scripture has to be perfect" (I tear my hair out at these responses. People are slaves to millenia old personal agendas in my opinion. But that's not being discussed). In the end there's no way of being definite either way. But where this differs from scripture is that we're not arguing about ficticious events (cue someone saying 'actually that doesn't differ from biblical arguments mate' yeah whatever), so it's totally prone to interpretation. Believe what you like and all that, deep down it's just fun, and none of us are in authority to decide what is official or not.

The way I see it, the games are the Old Testament, the books are the New Testament (some don't follow/care about them) and the movie and movie tie-ins are like the gnostic gospels or something i.e. stuff that didn't get in the canon for whatever reason but was still followed, and cause lots of divides.

rant over.
cue cries of '**** off lurker!' and 'you've gone off topic'
Ok to stay on topic my favourite seen was um...Paladin blowing up the big battlewagon.

i'll get my coat
 
Originally posted by Aries
The Broadsword was in there, though only for a couple of scenes when they went to destroy the concom and the Tiger's Claw got ambushed.
They looked like the Excaliburs from Wing Commander III, for a moment I did think they were Excaliburs and they were used to retrieve Blair after his power failure.
 
No, they don´t look like Excals., they look more like SL bombers.


Originally posted by Dougie

In all Wing Commander games, it takes several seconds to eject. There's generally a warning *ejecting* *ejecting* light and then you launch.

No, the *eject* is a warning, if you want you eject, when you press Ctrl+E there is a sec. only (not more than 2)
 
In all Wing Commander games, it takes several seconds to eject. There's generally a warning *ejecting* *ejecting* light and then you launch. If the piece of the battle on screen in the movie (thought not the whole movie itself obviously) is played out in real time, and we've every reason to believe it is (watch it again if you disagree), then there's no way 'Mr. Knight' would have time to reach for his ejector ring and eject in time before his ship disintegrated, like a split second later. He's focused on the battle (albeit wimpering) up until his fighter starts exploding. His ships destruction is an instantaneous process, it doesn't start falling to pieces gently giving him the time he needs to eject. All the fighters in the movie go up pretty much like a tinderbox, so there is no reason the broadsword should be any different. The ship starts exploding, the ship explodes, in an instant in the movie. It happens in under a second. Additionally, he's been given an order to 'steady as she goes' and doesn't report that 'actually i'm not going to steady on course, i'm going to eject' which surely he would be compelled to do if he was going to leave his wingleader all alone. He also yells a death cry as his ship disintegrates. The sound cuts out as his ship disintegrates.

We don't see Knight's cockpit when the ship blows up (or ever...), so we don't really know whether or not his eject warning flashes (not that that's any kind of requirement for someone to eject...). We *do* know that he has some time to eject -- he's hit by flak and he reads off his damage before it cuts to Paladin and then to Knight's Broadsword blowing up.

re: Hunter, how can they be referring to his callsign? Notice on his uniform breast is 'Hunter'. Everyone else has their surnames, implying that that's his surname.

Ah -- and "Maniac" in Wing Commander IV's real name is Maniac? After all, that's what it says on his breast pocket. All movie-related material clearly shows that he's Ian "Hunter" St. John.

-They called the carrier the 'Tiger Claw' (why why why? What's wrong with Tiger's Claw? Coul the cgi not handle apostrophes?),

I don't think the name actually appears on the ship. Looking at different editions of the script, the ship is initially the Tiger's Claw... and then there's a version where it appears with *both* names... and then someone 'corrects' it so that it only reads Tiger Claw.

-made Angel english, when she is very very, very french in the games

Angel is neither English nor French: she's from Belgium.

-implied Bossman's death (there is clearly no hope of his being alive as far as the other pilots are concerned),

You can't really base the truth on the opinions of the other pilots, though -- were you to do so, he wouldn't even have ever existed. :)

-included skipper missiles (which captain eisen describes as 'a new technology' in wing commander 3),

What Eisen says is that the Kilrathi are testing "a new cloaked missile". If I buy "a new car", does that mean I've bought the first car ever?

-makes Paladin french/belgian and a commodore (didn't Shotlgass say he flew with him off the claw before?),

Shotglass says he flew with Paladin before the war... which was, of course, before the Tiger's Claw was commisioned. Paladin *did* fly off the 'Claw at Custer's Carnival five years before the movie (as referenced in the movie novel).

-make Angel the Wing Commander on the Claw instead of Colonel Halcyon,

Angel was the commander of Blair's fighter squadron, not the Wing Commander of the 'Claw. She's Blair's Wing Commander in the same sense that Spirit was Wing Commander at the start of WC1 (what would be called an 'element commander' in the modern military).

- made Blair not a rookie by the time of Wing Commander, and actually the hero of mankind already,

The movie takes place several weeks *before* the original Wing Commander starts (2654.08x instead of 2654.11x).

- made torpedoes the required capship-killing weapon, when in Wing Commander you can quite conceivably take a cruiser out with a couple of mass driver guns or even lasers, hence the ships and guns in 'Victory Streak' being around 10x more penetrative than in Claw Marks. Actually this is an issue for me, since action stations has torpedoes etc. and that's ages before 2654. I always figured some sort of technological advancement in the 10 years between WC1&WC2, and all the old ships like the victory got upgraded armour and shielding or something. Any explaination would be cool.

It's a case of things going in cycles...

Action Stations: Only high-powered plasma weapons and shield-ignoring torpedoes can penetrate shields.
Wing Commander: Weapons development has progressed, regular guns can penetrate shields.
Wing Commander 2: Stronger shields developed, only shield-ignoring weapons can penetrate them (AMGs, PTCs, torps).
Wing Commander 3: Stronger weapons developed, capable of easily penetrating WC2 'phase' shields. At the same time, stronger WC2 shields are now present on fighters.
Wing Commander 4: We see that *new* ships (the Vesuvius) are now again invulnerable to current guns and missiles and require torpedoes.
Prophecy: WC4-ish shields prevent guns from penetrating shields... but the newly developed weapons (Plasma Gun) are starting to once again be effective against them.

It's just a continual cycle of development -- shields versus weapons. (Although I'd argue that the WC movie doesn't necessarily take place at a point where capships are entirely invulnerable to guns and missiles... they may simply be as invulnerable as the WC1 dialogue *implies* them to be...)

- navcomp a.i. and the implication that Kilrathi ships were somehow incapable of navigating certain jump points, or even jump points at all (it's ambiguous). I don't know where to start about how wrong this is. The Kilrathi in action stations seem pretty 'oh it's easy to get to earth we just go here la la la we'll be there in no time'.

The implication isn't that they *can't* jump (afterall, they *do* jump without the Navcom...). It's just that they don't (or didn't) know where the jump points to Earth are in Charybdis.

-obsolete ships have on board talking computer merlin. I guess that makes sense because they were always overriding the silly thing. I'd bin it.

Yeah, it's hard to believe that they'll have computers capable of talking in six-hundred years.

-Pegasus station guy reporting 'one million bogies'. What?? Exaggeration maybe but eek.

Turn on your subtitles: he says "one-nine-zero bogies" (as in one-hundred-and-ninety).
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Turn on your subtitles: he says "one-nine-zero bogies" (as in one-hundred-and-ninety).

In all fairness, they label 'Maniac' as 'Morris' in some scenes. I think during the landing sequence with Rosie.

The WCM DVD has the worst subtitles ever.
 
Originally posted by LeHah
In all fairness, they label 'Maniac' as 'Morris' in some scenes. I think during the landing sequence with Rosie.

The WCM DVD has the worst subtitles ever.

Okay, check the script... or the novel... or actually listen to what the guy is saying... any which way you look at it, it's one-nine-zero bogies. :)
 
I wasn't trying to counterpoint your arguement, LOAF. Your mention of the subtitles reminded me of the weird errors on it.
 
Okay, I was re-reading a few posts and found that I missed something. Does the WCM novel (I have no idea what the Confederation Handbook is) refer to the movie Hunter and Knight as Ian St. John and Joseph Khumalo? I never read it. That would clear up the point I was trying to make real quick.

C-ya
 
LOAF you are very, very good at this (but we all knew this already) :)

Just one counterpoint, you say

We don't see Knight's cockpit when the ship blows up (or ever...), so we don't really know whether or not his eject warning flashes (not that that's any kind of requirement for someone to eject...). We *do* know that he has some time to eject -- he's hit by flak and he reads off his damage before it cuts to Paladin and then to Knight's Broadsword blowing up.

but actually what happens is it goes from Knight going 'I'm hit' and switches to Paladin going 'almost there' then it switches back to Knight's cockpit for about a second as it explodes on him and he seems to be hit because he starts slumping forward, then it switches to an exterior shot of the ship blowing up. Could someone who has frame advance on their VCR or a dvd describe in better deal what goes on in Knight's cockpit? I'm using a crappy video recorder/TV and using a taped WC off the TV.
 
Hmm... After All these I saw here (by LOAF) , I might consider to accept the WCMovie in the Timeline.....






Hmmm..:confused: No......
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Prophecy: WC4-ish shields prevent guns from penetrating shields... but the newly developed weapons (Plasma Gun) are starting to once again be effective against them.

A minor point, but I think it might be a little more fitting to phrase that: Only high-powered plasma weapons and shield-ignoring torpedoes can penetrate shields.

It means the exact same thing, but considering the argument (i.e. it goes in cycles)...
 
Originally posted by TCSTigersClaw
Hmm... After All these I saw here (by LOAF) , I might consider to accept the WCMovie in the Timeline.....






Hmmm..:confused: No......


Surely Chris Roberts himself is crying and all of us are concerned and worrried by your declaration



Hmmm.... :Not confused: Nobody cares.
 
Originally posted by Dougie

but actually what happens is it goes from Knight going 'I'm hit' and switches to Paladin going 'almost there' then it switches back to Knight's cockpit for about a second as it explodes on him and he seems to be hit because he starts slumping forward, then it switches to an exterior shot of the ship blowing up. Could someone who has frame advance on their VCR or a dvd describe in better deal what goes on in Knight's cockpit? I'm using a crappy video recorder/TV and using a taped WC off the TV.

If you'll notice what LOAF was replying to, the point was not that he didn't have enough time for the charges to go off, rather that there is usually both an eject warning and then after the eject lever is pulled there is (in some games) a wait before the charges actually blow. LOAF was demonstrating that there was both enough time for Knight to register that the eject warning was there, and then wait out the delay that may or may not be in the eject system. Once the charges actually go off, it only takes an instant to get out of the ship.
 
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