Penny-Arcade and WC Movie

Delance

Victory, you say?
The Wing Commander movie was an act of shocking violence. But at least it was set in space, and there were space cats. That's all I wanted. Don't go watch it, and whatever you do don't let the DVD touch your bare skin. I'm just saying you can't expect even the most rudimentary commonalities anymore. If the movie were made today, it would be set in New Jersey.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-12-09

---

Well, there it is.
 
Well, the movie was a bit of a let down in my opinion. The ships were nothing like the game. The actors sucked. The Kilrathi looked bad. However, I don't think I'd slame it that hard. For me, it seemed a bit more like a good made for TV movie, but not something I'd pay eight bucks to go see, even with the attached Star Wars Trailer.
 
The guy who writes the Penny Arcade news is one of those people who thinks he's a much better writer than he is. He writes in this sort of painfully awful look-I-have-a-thesaurus! tone that just grates on you.

I also question, based on his reference to cats, whether or not he's ever seen the Wing Commander movie.
 
First off, and for the record, I liked the movie. It was nice to see something I spent that much time on as a child brought to life. However, it was a fairly pale representation of the WC universe. It wasn't so much that I thought the ship models were bad (with a severly limited budget they were quite nice) but they were ships from Starlancer, or so it seemed. The whole Pilgrim angle also bothered me, I didn't get why Blair had to have special powers. The best part about the player-character was that he was normal, just a dude who happened to be an extraordinary pilot.
 
but they were ships from Starlancer, or so it seemed

Eh, I've seen this before -- but it doesn't really make sense, since time doesn't flow backwards. :) The Wing Commander movie came before StarLancer -- and StarLancer reused elements developed for Wing Commander, not vice versa.
 
yes, this I am aware of. But the elements it reused were not from the WC games. They were standalone movie content. Nothing had the proper feel. Rather, the insides of the ships I thought did a marvelous job, even the Kilrathi ships were good, my problems are limited strictly to the Confed models. I do understand that they were working under an extremely limited budget, and I am not dogging the quality, just the connection to what I feel 'real' WC Confederation ships were like.
 
Gliderboy said:
The Kilrathi looked bad. However, I don't think I'd slame it that hard.

He's saying it's a lot better than the Doom movie premise. It sounded harsher when I just read the quoted part, but that's missing the Doom context from the preceding paragraph. I don't think he's really slamming it, there's just practically no game->movie conversions that don't make easy targets in a situation like that.

BenoitBrunet2 said:
yes, this I am aware of. But the elements it reused were not from the WC games. They were standalone movie content. Nothing had the proper feel. Rather, the insides of the ships I thought did a marvelous job, even the Kilrathi ships were good, my problems are limited strictly to the Confed models. I do understand that they were working under an extremely limited budget, and I am not dogging the quality, just the connection to what I feel 'real' WC Confederation ships were like.

Well, I thought the Broadswords were done quite well. They convey a similar sense I think. The Rapiers on the other hand are completely different. They mocked up real vintage fighters and made them into the Rapier II's predecessor.
 
Let's face it, there hasn't been a good representation of any video game on film. Ever. Tomb Raider, Mario Brothers, (yes, even Wing Commander) are prime examples. Star Wars had better acting. The NEW Star Wars films had better acting. (translation: the acting sucked. On all counts.)
edit- Slight correction: Tomb Raider was dead-on, it's just the only thing the games had going for it was a big-breasted woman firing large caliber pistols. which is always cool. :D
 
The problem I have with video game movies in general, and the Wing Commander Movie in specific, is that video games are already a visual storytelling medium. There's just no need to take a highly successful video game and make a really watered down, 2 hour representation of it.

I'm sorry but how are you going to take a budget higher than all of the Wing Commander games COMBINED, and make a film that can't hold a candle to them?! Wing Commander wouldn't actually be that bad of a film if it weren't called WING COMMANDER!!!
 
I tend to agree. If they'd only called Chris and the others something else, hadn't botched the "Tiger's-Tiger Claw" name(There's no evidence I've seen to support the "two ships theory"), and turned it into visually submarine-like craft, I think that's where the rift in WCM-resisters(Myself included), and WCM-integrators.

Ship design, difference in Kilrathi appearance"Where's the damn hair?", and name/accent conflicts all kinda grabbed me as well, WRONG. Did Roberts even look at his old WC Bible before writing this thing? And you can tell from the sound effects in Pegasus' radar room that Erin had a hand in it(another malfunction of the WC universe, Privateer 2- though this may be just a brotherly tip of the hat) :(

Case in point, Angel was the boss in WCM, but for some reason she gets demoted to just another pilot before WC1? And behaves as though he and Blair had never met(WC1), after sucking face with him just months prior(WCM)?

If using the games as reference, the universe canon got frickin' mauled by Chris Roberts in the movie.
 
Kenshi said:
I'm sorry but how are you going to take a budget higher than all of the Wing Commander games COMBINED, and make a film that can't hold a candle to them?! Wing Commander wouldn't actually be that bad of a film if it weren't called WING COMMANDER!!!


It would still be that bad of a film, but at least it would not be an insult to the greatest video game series ever. It sucks when I mention Wing Commander to someone and they say something like "Yeah, I saw that movie, it blows" and I have to explain how the movie they saw really has nothing at all to do with the Wing Commander I'm talking about.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The guy who writes the Penny Arcade news is one of those people who thinks he's a much better writer than he is. He writes in this sort of painfully awful look-I-have-a-thesaurus! tone that just grates on you.

I also question, based on his reference to cats, whether or not he's ever seen the Wing Commander movie.
Ouch! I think he struck a nerve here!

I also question, based on your reference to only one person, whether or not you ever read PA :p
 
I'm sorry but how are you going to take a budget higher than all of the Wing Commander games COMBINED, and make a film that can't hold a candle to them?! Wing Commander wouldn't actually be that bad of a film if it weren't called WING COMMANDER!!!

Ehhh, that's not a great point -- we're talking about games using d-list actors whose production values disappear as soon as they're viewed as anything higher than super-compressed low resolution xanmovies. The Wing Commander movie, for all its faults, ended up looking very stylistic and had a very slick cinematography... even if you disagreed with the look, it was unquestionably going a specific way rather than throwing an empty room full of old tools and calling it a set. :)

There's no evidence I've seen to support the "two ships theory"

There's no such theory - no one in the universe has ever been able to reasonably claim that this could be remotely true.

Case in point, Angel was the boss in WCM, but for some reason she gets demoted to just another pilot before WC1?

Angel's position in the movie is the same as it is in the games -- Squadron Commander.

I also question, based on your reference to only one person, whether or not you ever read PA :p

My understanding is that the content in question (the first news post) is always written by the same guy - who has a really, really terrible style. The comic itself is often very funny, but the news each day is not.
 
I think that the interesting thing is that fighter game movies couldn't be better than they were, because fighter games have no real story (not that they need one to begin with, it's not the point). Mario (not nowadays mario with RPGs, but when the movie was made there were only the plataform games) and Tomb raider have a bit more plot, but are also very limited in narrative scope.

On the other hand, Wing Commander was a game famous for focusing on the blend between narrative and gameplay, and doom is renowned for having a great atmosphere. If you take Mars and the Demons away from Doom, it really detracts from the whole experience. Hunting and being hunted by DEMONS FROM HELL in another celestial body is a lot more scary than shooting generic goons on earth.
 
Edfilho said:
I think that the interesting thing is that fighter game movies couldn't be better than they were, because fighter games have no real story (not that they need one to begin with, it's not the point).
I beg to differ. Enter the Dragon was a fighter game movie (of course, it was made before anybody was even thinking of making home computers, let alone fighter games... but why quibble about details? :p), and it's generally considered a stand-out classic.

Tomb raider have a bit more plot, but are also very limited in narrative scope.
Yep, because everyone knows it's impossible to make a good movie about an archaeologist adventurer on a quest to find some kind of artifact and save the world :).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Ehhh, that's not a great point -- we're talking about games using d-list actors whose production values disappear as soon as they're viewed as anything higher than super-compressed low resolution xanmovies. The Wing Commander movie, for all its faults, ended up looking very stylistic and had a very slick cinematography... even if you disagreed with the look, it was unquestionably going a specific way rather than throwing an empty room full of old tools and calling it a set. :)

I'll agree that the movie has it's high points. I LIKED the throwback designs of the ships. The cinematography was fantastic. Hell, the story was a good, war-movie story. Unfortunately, the movie lacks something the games had; HEART. Everybody involved with the games seemed to be putting everything they had into it. Everybody involved with the film just seemed to be "phoning it in", collecting another check before moving on the the next film. Prinze Jr. and Lillard put forth more effort in the Scooby Doo films!

I'll put it to the challenge. Count how many threads in this forum say something like:"What was your favorite scene/death/character/part of WC I/II/III/IV/P?"

Then count how many threads say something like: "What was you favorite scene/death/character/part of WCM?"
 
There are many problems with reguards to movie adaptations of video games.

lets use half life one as an example... great story told in a unqiue way that often captivated the gamer. It is still just a vechicle to justify the shooting of things. which is what 99% of half life is.

How do you approach this as a would be movie? Film it entirely in first person perhaps? never have gordon speak? Would be very faithful to the game, however as a cinema experience a pretty poor one.

As for Doom. The best one could hope for is something that had the feel, the setting and the action of the game. Doesn't look like from what i've read that thats going to happen with this one. Then Again, First person shooters often do not make good film premises. Its a balancing act... a difficult one. Many weak film premises have been made into films so far. Mortal combat, street fighter, house of the dead...
 
Quarto said:
I beg to differ. Enter the Dragon was a fighter game movie (of course, it was made before anybody was even thinking of making home computers, let alone fighter games... but why quibble about details? :p), and it's generally considered a stand-out classic.
I don't really know what are you talking about, but did you really expcet a great movie out of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter? Were you actually surprised when they turned out to be absolut crap? ;)

Quarto said:
Yep, because everyone knows it's impossible to make a good movie about an archaeologist adventurer on a quest to find some kind of artifact and save the world :).
Well... I meant that the TR games aren't really focused on narrative, are they? It is possible to make a good movie out of ANY vague generic premise, I was refering to the games as source material. Sure, Indiana Jones rocks a lot, but the stories in TR aren't as good...

I see you points, I was refering to the more specific instances of game movies, not the genders in themselves, there are good fight movies and archeology movies.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
My understanding is that the content in question (the first news post) is always written by the same guy - who has a really, really terrible style. The comic itself is often very funny, but the news each day is not.
Nope. There are two; Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins. Anyways:

1: Both Gabe's and Tycho's styles of writing are refreshing, witty, and humorous. See? I can phrase my opinions as fact too!
2: The commentary isn't designed to be funny, although sometimes is.
3: They're usually right, and they certainly are this time. Wing Commander was a terrible, terrible movie. If a movie is made of Doom which is not set on Mars\Hell\ruined Earth, and lacking zombies and demons, it too would be terrible; and whether or not certain people enjoy watching movies that are terrible does not make those movies suck any less.
 
Back
Top