Has the wing commander movie killed the franchise?

Farbourne, the general public watches a movie, and does not go rampaging on websites about how good or bad it was. I would rate the movie among classics like "enemy mine", or "flight of the navigator".

I don't think it's because of the "nerd" factor - A FPS is not so different from a space sim, and we have a ton of first person shooters now. And I think RPG's like Mass Effect are more nerdy than WC ever was.
Well, the difference between an FPS and a space combat sim, is that in an FPS you still have up and down, whereas in space, you are free to move around whereever and however, and at set speeds, cross them over and you get the original descent game, about 90% of all gamers quit because they keep bumping the walls or tend to "fly upsidedown"( besides you cannot "bunnyhop" in a space sim :p ) . The one cross between orbital and underground combat flight I ever liked was "terminal velocity"

Flight and space simulators are always limited to a certain core audience, maybe 5-10% of the potential market, whereas you can sell the sims to over 50%. If you were the financial guy you would probably make thesame decisions EA does. Besides, you litterly drowned in space sims in the review magazines.
 
I don't know about "sci-f enthusiasts", but the movie was not well received by the general public. Just 9% fresh with an average rating of 2.8 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, that's critics, who often take a dim view of science fiction (although not always...Serenity sits at 81% with an average rating of 7.2), but movies that came out a while back often have artificially inflated ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, because they only people that review movies that far back are fans of the movies.

Well, that should prove that the damn thing is invalid, since Serenity is a dreadful, dreadful film. :)

It's not a case of getting an inflated or a deflated score for movies made before the site - you just don't get an accurate one, because they tie into one or two archived reviews for such movies and don't do anything beyond that (and of course that the whole thing is unscientific in the first place -- you buy your placement and the reviewers themselves decide whether they show as rotten or fresh… which is why an awful movie can have an awful review that shows positive, since that site wants the attention.)

IMDB rates it a 3.7 out of 10, and that IS sci-fi enthusiasts, or at least people who were enthusiastic enough to see a low-budget sci-fi movie that didn't have a huge publicity machine behind it. Again, IMDB often inflates movie ratings because the only people that bother to rate it are people that care about it.

I don't think that's entirely true. There's an enormous 'I heard this was a bad movie and now I'm saying it!' phenomena on the internet. Look at the IMDb's "Bottom 100" list -- internet doofuses have spent their time carefully rating down all the movies that they only saw in the first place because they were MST3k episodes. People like being told what to think and then going to a button they can press that lets them think that way.

(As for mainstream reaction to Wing Commander, it just doesn't exist to begin with. The movie's release went by without much attention -- it had a handful of bad reviews and a handful of good ones and everyone forgot about it in time for The Matrix to surprise us all. I'm always interested in normal folks liking it, though, which happens in surprising numbers whenever it airs on TV -- you always have a bunch of Twitter postings and e-mails to us about it. The other thing that surprises me, and this is the sci-fi nerd audience, is that when we attend Dragon*Con in our Prophecy fight suits, the number one comment we get is from people waiting for sequel to the movie.)

Can you show them at a higher resolution for us, then? My first experience with the WC3 Kilrathi was just a few years ago, and they looked pretty nice to me.

I post everything I get my hands on to the CIC.

I am not talking about casting Hamill and Wilson again (though, they would have been better than what we got), but Prinze and Lillard? Especially Freddie felt like an "alien" in a sci-fi movie. It's not like there is a shortage of young actors in hollywood.

I am not talking about casting Hamill and Wilson again (though, they would have been better than what we got), but Prinze and Lillard? Especially Freddie felt like an "alien" in a sci-fi movie. It's not like there is a shortage of young actors in hollywood.

Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard were both up and coming (but still affordable) stars in 1998.

I actually think the casting is very clever -- American teen pop stars for the inexperienced newbies, British character actors for the grizzled veterans.

I think Edward Furlong would have been a better choice at the time.

I don't think this is how casting works -- but even if it were, Edward Furlong was having very visible drug problems at the time.

I recently have seen queeg's WC3 cut - the Kilrathi aren't perfect, but they don't look too bad on this 22" screen.

That's not what this means. Queeg's cut is great, but it's the video from Wing Commander III -- 320x200 pixels compressed into muddy brick shapes through Xanmovie. When you look at the source video (which would still be much, much lower resolution than film) you see awkward, goofy looking muppets. You could not shoot the WC3 Kilrathi on film.

But the complaint doesn't make sense because it wasn't a choice between the two. Everyone knows the Kilrathi in the movie didn't work - including Chris Roberts, who tried to remove or obfuscate them as much as possible in post production. There was never a choice of switching to WC3 puppets.

And just the aesthetics:

There were two goals here, both entirely reasonable -- 1) give the Kilrathi a "Samurai Warrior" look and 2) move them far enough away from the look in the games to avoid a lawsuit in the event the movie was successful (they're just the Kzinti with the numbers rubbed off, remember).

I think it has something to do with the joystick requirement.

That's right to a great degree - without joysticks shipping with every Dell and Gateway computer there was no built in audience for space sims… but I think there was also the idea that there was nothing new under the sun -- games like Prophecy and Descent weren't making any fantastically different changes to the formula to attract new audiences.
 
(...) The special effects seemed to be better in WC4 than in the film (quite a feat).
(...)

Now wait, do you want to say that the WCM effects were good but WC IV's effects were even better or do you say that the movie effects were bad? Because that I cannot understand at all: the space fight scenes in the WC movie, especially between the capships are some of the best I've seen.
 
Why were space sims on their way out? I know it happened, but what was the reason?

I don't think it's because of the "nerd" factor - A FPS is not so different from a space sim, and we have a ton of first person shooters now. And I think RPG's like Mass Effect are more nerdy than WC ever was.

I think it has something to do with the joystick requirement.

They probably did not fit with the generation of gamers back then or just werent as atracting to new players as were FPSs and RTSs back then. Thats probably a topic one can write a marketing and sales master thesis on.

The last games of the big two franchises in the genre, WC:prophecy and X-Wing Alliance both werent successful. Both franchises had their hight years before in the first part of the 90ties. Freespace/Freespace2 couldnt revive it and the big anticipated games like Freelancer werent able to revive the genre either. It just lacked the Baldurs Gate moment that Role playing games had, so the big companies lost interest in them - and in contrast to most other genres you need special hardware to play those games the way they are meant to be played.

So new players flocked to the new "cool" genres that they were exposed to in school and their peers and the percentage of players that owned a stick compared to those who didnt shrinked every month - in the end those who owned a joystick were a niche market that could not sustain high investment titles.

Look at the CIC statistics of the age of the average Wing Commander player. Not even 1/5 of them are below 24, and my guess is that those in the 24-28 group is probably more weighted towards the 28 than the 24. If you look at similar polls in other Space Sim fan forums you will see that their average age seems to be quite the same (somewhere in the late twens/early thirties). We are the generation(s?) that grew up on Space Sims, watching Luke Skywalker blow up the Death Star on the first Star Wars TV reruns (some even saw it at the cinemas when it was releasesd). Simply put we grew up on the coolness factor of flying a Fighter into the midst of streaking laser bolts and blowing the heck out of some weird looking bogey (or WW2 equivalent in the classic 60ties feature films that ran on TV all the time back then).

When was the last time there was a film that centered on Space Fighter combat or at least featured it prominently? Even the Star Wars Prequels denied us that, making the whole thing an arcardey mockery of itself with buzzdroids and replaceable clones in the place of "12 dedicated fellas going in to blow that thing up". Even BSG was a letdown in my opinion when it came to Fighter combat. Long post, terrible conclusion, those that are in the age that we first were exposed to Space Sims, dont share the cultural bond we had to it in the 80ties and early nineties.
 
Now wait, do you want to say that the WCM effects were good but WC IV's effects were even better or do you say that the movie effects were bad? Because that I cannot understand at all: the space fight scenes in the WC movie, especially between the capships are some of the best I've seen.

The movie had three times the budget, an Oscar-winning cinematographer and was shot for theaters instead of computer monitors -- WCIV didn't have better special effects. (As for the 3D, it had *the same artists* working with much more advanced technology.)
 
Now wait, do you want to say that the WCM effects were good but WC IV's effects were even better or do you say that the movie effects were bad? Because that I cannot understand at all: the space fight scenes in the WC movie, especially between the capships are some of the best I've seen.


I just watched some parts of the movie again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=257oqlKpKe8&feature=related

I admit, the battles look better than I remember them (the kilrathi look still bad).
 
The good thing about the game kilrathi was that they weren't fugly and had a memorable look.

Hey, I can post pictures too.

kilrathi_poll_wc4.jpg
animatronicmelek1.jpg


More crazy pictures that have zero bearing on how cool and fun the WC product they appeared in was...

cat4.jpg
cat5.jpg


I'm so glad I don't live in a world missing out on the awesome movie material...
chriskilrathimask1.jpg
chriskilrathimask2.jpg
 
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The WC4 kilrathi were hideous too. I said that too.

My words:

"Speaking of puppets, why do they look in WC4 worse than in WC3 and in the movie a magnitude worse than in WC4? I know Roberts had some issues with the WC3 puppets.. so his solution was to make them worse?! "


Their peak was WC3.

And your picture proves that the movie kilrathi looked like deformed klingon mutants.

chriskilrathimask1.jpg


general_chang.jpg
 
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More like awesome deformed klingon mutants.

The Kilrathi in the picture looks fercious and cat-like. Chang looks like a regular bald dude.
 
I'm always interested in normal folks liking it, though, which happens in surprising numbers whenever it airs on TV

It's not really that surprising considering that every complaint I've ever heard about the movie is stupid, stupid angry nerd crap. Sound/sonar in space, Kilrathi being all wrong, Paladin being French or whatever, that fighter 'falling' off the flight deck or something... Things that really don't matter. Apart from that, it's a fun action packed, gorgeous looking film.

As for most people choosing WC3 as a movie over the WC movie, I think that just plain wrong. I love the WC games, but given the choice between watching a movie about some space hero blowing up planets left and right while faced with some clammy forced romantic choice and a secret hypnotized space-traitor, with the occational scene showing generic girlfriend-eating bad guy telling evil henchman about his evil plans and a World War II in space film about fresh young pilots you can somewhat relate to having to prevent a merciless, mysterious alien warrior race from destroying their homes, I know I'd choose the latter.
 
My biggest complaint about the movie is actually that it is TOO MUCH like the games. There's one wrongly accused dude who almost single-handedly saves humanity, Prochnow was pretty much WC2 Tolwyn. Works well for a game where you expect to be the hero, but not so well in a movie. I think taking Blair as main character was mainly due to us gamers, most of us have just played the games and so he was the obvious choice. I don't know about the intellectual property rights of the novels, but MAN would i love to watch a movie about End Run. Would even have fitted this whole submarine theme.
Other than that: I think the cast was ok, the special effects were awesome, sound effects not so much, OST was ok but more fitting for a Superman movie. And seriously, take a look at the science fiction genre in general: How many movies are there that DON'T suffer from plot holes and scientific inaccuracies?
 
As here's already tons of stuff in this topic, I'll just put my opinions shortly:

- WC is an average game movie = bad; but I don't think it had any effect on the death of game series (give me one game movie that has done any good or bad to the actual game franchise)
- furry cats are way better, except hands look clumsy and stupid
- Super Mario movie was actually pretty funny and good in a camp way
- best possible next WC would be sequel to Prophecy (with Hamill etc.), but I'd also like to see a pre-WC1 story featuring Shotglass, Halcyon and the older WC1 pilots.
 
It's not really that surprising considering that every complaint I've ever heard about the movie is stupid, stupid angry nerd crap.

Yep, people who would be ranting about inconsistencies in the cinema are guys that fit the description of "comic book guy" in the simpsons.

The movie gets airtime around here at least once a year, on the secondary public channels who play mostly older or less popular movies. But lots of people watch it, thesame people who rent and buy cult video's, and even if those people use computers, they rarely go beyond MSN, and most of these guys like it. Star wars was unique as a theatrical release at the time, if "A new hope" would be released now, it would do no better then the wing commander movie.

Also wing commander was a local video rental hit overhere at the time the local VHS version came out. (I rented a region 1 DVD version for 30 HFL from the video store, which translates to about 15 dollars six moths before the european VHS release). They also rented CD-rom games, and ofcourse they had a stack of weird old cult sci-fi movies like Ice-Pirates, Tron, Moontrap, etc. for kids like myself at the time, who would exchange tips or watch movies together, those days are long gone :( .

If anything "killed" wingcommander, it was it's massive budget to produce the game, while not being able to sell as well as the sims, or soccergames.
 
As for most people choosing WC3 as a movie over the WC movie, I think that just plain wrong. I love the WC games, but given the choice between watching a movie about some space hero blowing up planets left and right while faced with some clammy forced romantic choice and a secret hypnotized space-traitor, with the occational scene showing generic girlfriend-eating bad guy telling evil henchman about his evil plans and a World War II in space film about fresh young pilots you can somewhat relate to having to prevent a merciless, mysterious alien warrior race from destroying their homes, I know I'd choose the latter.


Well, WC3 had at least a end-of-the-world feeling to it.

While the movie had the theme supposedly too (cats got coordinates to the earth) you never feel, that the earth is in danger in the movie.


Well, I see there are quite a lot of fans of the movie, but, even you must agree:

The pilgrim drama was stupid. So was this new "you die, you never existed" crap.
 
The pilgrim drama was stupid. So was this new "you die, you never existed" crap.

These are more Trekkie complaints. There are lots of real problems with the Wing Commander movie, but being angry that they gave Blair's mom a religion isn't one of them.

(The 'you die, you never existed' is just another World War II film trope -- it's from Twelve O'Clock High, a classic flying movie.)
 
These are more Trekkie complaints. There are lots of real problems with the Wing Commander movie, but being angry that they gave Blair's mom a religion isn't one of them.

(The 'you die, you never existed' is just another World War II film trope -- it's from Twelve O'Clock High, a classic flying movie.)

It was a religion? I thought they were a human sub-species, who have special abilities that help them navigate in space better than normal humans.


Anyway, it was explained poorly (especially why they are so hated) and took valuable time away. It would have been much better if there would be more cuts to the kilrathi point of view, showing their strategies and motives. But since the puppets were so bad, this wasn't a viable option I guess.
 
It would have been much better if there would be more cuts to the kilrathi point of view, showing their strategies and motives.

I'm suddenly reminded of those blurbs on the ends of movie theater posters - "Read The Harper Entertainment Novelization"
 
Amazing! This thread was just started yesterday and already has 38 replies! :p

Awesome how the same tired argument... which i believe I myself made for probably the millionth time 2 years ago can generate such a controversial and (at times) hostile response.

Personally, I thought it was somewhat a typical Sci Fi movie. It had a wide open ending reminiscent of the endings in most 80s Sci-Fi flicks.

Other then that I think I already beat to death the whole "Submarines in Space" arguments.

Yeah the Kilrathi sucked, did they kill the title all together, no, it was already dying from a 1st party support standpoint.
 
The "you die, you never existed" stuff is odd, but it actually comes across more important to the story than it really is because of all the editing gashes throughout the movie. A lot of little edits - a line of dialogue here, a look there - actually removed some of the context of that dialogue. I'm sure I would have prefered the film without it, but it comes across a lot less goofy in the rough cut. Things like Angel's line about 'sensitivity training' help the tone of her lecture after the mess hall incident. I'm sure it would help if I had actually seen Twelve O'clock high too. In fact, a lot of the scenes feel a lot more natural in the rough cut. A ton of rearanging and snipping makes the whole thing feel more goofy than it should have. I still like it, whether I know its good or not. But, even Matthew Lillard's performance comes across a lot more nuanced. The opposite can be said about Freddie Prinze Jr. though.

While I see the point of getting rid of the traitor stuff, I don't think it was ultimately the right decision. I still maintain that it had less to do with the actual kilrathi effects though and more to do with how much it would have cost to complete the Merlin effects.

The effect this had on the games is negligible though. There's been a constant stream of projects that have got to various stages of development since, and their cancelations didn't have anything to do with the movie.
 
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