Penny-Arcade and WC Movie

Ice Pirates was to punish humanity, Baby Geniuses was meant to kick us while we were down...

Speaking of punishment, as much as I have blasted the WC Movie, I'll be honest and admit that I own it and every few months, I pull it out and watch, lest we forget the sins of the past.

What can I say? I just can't help myself... :)
 
Ahem, may I point to my illustrious rank.
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You got your stupid permanent rank for posting stupid pictures of diseased body parts to threads for no reason. It's a freaking miracle that you aren't banned.

It has absolutely no relationship to how you may feel about the Wing Commander movie (and I have no idea how that is).

BTW: The picture avatars are missing, I can only see a link like "Delance's Avatar". Were they disabled?
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Loads for me. Try switching board layouts in your user control panel.
 
A simple reload seems do deal with the avatar thing.

Maybe in some time game movies will be like superhero movies.
 
solid 5 on its own merits. 3-3.5 when one considers it as part of the established WC Universe (major points off for giving Blair a jedi-esq superpower).
 
That's backwards.. It takes a WC fan to recognize all sorts of interesting things they embedded in the movie.
 
BenoitBrunet2 said:
solid 5 on its own merits. 3-3.5 when one considers it as part of the established WC Universe (major points off for giving Blair a jedi-esq superpower).
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Eh, I've never really seen how Blair's power (the ability to do math fast) is remotely Jedi-esque.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
This is a personal aside to the important work of yelling at eachother about Penny Arcade that we have to do here, but I've long believed that Tomb Raider is just about the most untapped-potential franchise anywhere. The character is an amazingly fun idea that, if developed properly in the supporting material (comics/novels/movies), could be a lot better than it is now.
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Yeah, hence my Indiana Jones reference. However, the way it is right now, Tomb Raider is all about getting as much detail as possible into polygonal breasts... which is something that just doesn't translate too well into movies (unless you're going for the X-rated market).

Edfilho said:
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? ;)
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No, I wasn't - but that's not because they couldn't be done well. My point was that your average Bruce Lee film has no more narrative than Mortal Kombat did - and in fact, Enter the Dragon is a movie all about a fighting tournament.

(of course, it's questionable as to whether Enter the Dragon would be considered such a great movie if it was made today - back then, it was the kung fu movie, while today every movie with a fighting scene seems to include Asiatic martial arts, so...)

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...
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Right. Ultimately TR was a game series, and games rely on other things than a story - but the people that make game movies don't seem to understand, and as a consequence we end up seeing stupidly-long action sequences that look like they've been taken straight out of the game, while the storyline is left as primitive as it was in the game.

To make things worse, the problem kinda builds on itself. Mortal Kombat was written by Kevin Droney (Kevin who? Yep, I never heard of him before Mortal Kombat either). Mortal Kombat sucked... but it made money (it's one of the few game movies that actually did more than break even). So then, Chris Roberts makes Wing Commander, and he ends up having Kevin Droney working on the script. Why? I don't know - but if I was to guess, it was because having the guy that wrote the script for the only successful game movie made it easier to obtain funding. Too bad no amount of extra funding could compensate for Droney's work, however...
 
Correct me if I wrong, but I thought Chris Roberts did the scripts for all the FMV in the games, but he didn't write the script for the movie :confused: ?
 
As the movie headed towards its climax, Blair, alone in his fighter, was given the sole responsibility of saving the Confederation by transmitting the coordinates of the jump point to the Confed fleet. As his ship hurtled towards the jump-point, he turned off his navigational computer (against objections), and felt his way through the calculations, relying upon his own uncanny abilities to fire the torpedo right into the exhaust vent... I mean, to select the correct jump coordinates. The explanation Paladin (surprisingly French) provides for Blair's abilities goes far beyond merely "being able to do math fast." You can see it however you want, so can I. And just because I can recognize scattered reverences to the WC universe, in my mind at least, does not mean they are used correctly or contribute heavily to the overall movie.
 
You bring up an interesting point. Everyone seems to bash the movie because it didn't capture the feel of the movie. Perhaps Chris Roberts should have made the movie less of a cheap Star Wars knock-off and more about what made WC great. It was a story about normal people in extrodinary situations, not about a Jed...I mean Pilgrim superman.
 
That's really my biggest problem with the movie. It seemed like they were trying to make Blair (and Wing Commander) something it wasn't.
 
I don't know if you could ever capture the feel of WC in a movie. The thing that made the WC story cool for me was the fact that you were right there in the middle of it. You determined if certain things would happen, you interacted with and got to know the other charecters after several missions. All this is very hard, if not impossible to do in a 2 hour movie.
 
Correct me if I wrong, but I thought Chris Roberts did the scripts for all the FMV in the games, but he didn't write the script for the movie?
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Other way around. Chris Roberts does not have a writing credit for either of his FMV games -- but he does have one on the Wing Commander movie (he did one of the rewrites -- you can see exactly what his changes were by comparing the various scripts archived at wcnews.com!).

You bring up an interesting point. Everyone seems to bash the movie because it didn't capture the feel of the movie. Perhaps Chris Roberts should have made the movie less of a cheap Star Wars knock-off and more about what made WC great. It was a story about normal people in extrodinary situations, not about a Jed...I mean Pilgrim superman.
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So your argument would be that introducing any sort of "special ability" makes Wing Commander 'stealing' from Star Wars.

I guess I can see that -- the next thing you know, they'll have the guy who played Luke as Blair, and they'll end the story with a climactic trench run to... oh.

If "Wing Commander is stealing from Star Wars" is enough to demonize the movie over something as pointless as Blair's mom's religion slash his ability to do math that in no way would ever effect anything we see in the games, then Wing Commander III must have *really* bothered you. :)
 
BenoitBrunet2 said:
As his ship hurtled towards the jump-point, he turned off his navigational computer (against objections), and felt his way through the calculations, relying upon his own uncanny abilities to fire the torpedo right into the exhaust vent... I mean, to select the correct jump coordinates. The explanation Paladin (surprisingly French) provides for Blair's abilities goes far beyond merely "being able to do math fast."
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People also like to forget that Angel is apparently also able to do all of this since she is also originally sent out with Blair to make the jump. My memory may be a little fuzzy (someone will have to correct me if I'm wrong) but Blair does not turn off Merlin, Merlin keeps advising him on jump coordinate changes as he closes on the quasar.

Maniac himself says that manually jumping Scylla from earlier in the movie had nothing to do with luck/Pilgrim lineage, it was apparently all 'training, skill and desire'.

C-ya
 
No, it wasn't 'stealing' from Star Wars. But I did think it was a cop out. And Blair's abilities in the movie are very much not pointless, but rather, a fairly substantial point of the plot.

This is strictly my personal opinion, I have never argued otherwise so I'm sorry if I step on any toes, but one of the great parts of Wing Commander was the sense that you were a normal man forced into extraordinary circumstances. Especially through the first two games, which were my favorites, you are merely another pilot on a high profile ship which happens to do quite a bit during the course of the war. Putting Blair above everyone else felt contrary to me, like he wasn't good enough as a simple pilot and had to be improved.

Yes, the trench run through the middle of Kilrah to blow up a planet bothered me as well, but not to the same extent because it still fit under the 'extraordinary situation, normal man' model. The Luke to Mark to Blair connection is funny to me, and provides a pretty nifty subpoint for my beliefs, but casting decisions are part of the 'real' world, so I'm not really going to take pot-shots at the game.

And I already pointed out that my objection is not with Blair's religion, but with his special heritage. And as you've ignored now twice, his abilities are described as far more potent than what might translate to an excellent math score on the GRE. Paladin's little speech about the Pilgrims is a bit deeper than "you come from a proud people who developed beyond... beyond the need to use calculators!" He was gifted with an improved feel for the universe, he saw and did things better than the next guy down on the flightline, not on account of his training or his abilities as a pilot, but because he was fundamentally different. Yes, I do have a problem with that.

Also, Angel and Blair's original plan does not anticipate the need for Super Navigational powers. They are supposed to fly together, make a simple jump, and warn the waiting Confed fleet that the Kilrathi are coming to town. She is conveniently removed from the situation before Blair is called into action. Yes Merlin stays on, but Blair ignores its coordinates, he doesn't need them afterall, he has a super calculator stuck in his brain.

And you'll pardon me if I avoid overly crediting the words and wisdom of Todd "Maniac" Marshall.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Far be it from me to bring any sort of fact into this discussion, but a quick shift through the last thirty pages of archived news seems to indicate that exactly what I'm saying is true: the one with the horribly pretentious writing style that I'm complaining about ("Tycho", apparently) always writes the top news update.
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Oh right; fair enough. Apparently I misread your initial comment; sorry about that. Anyway...

1: I'm going to give you some advice that my own mother gave to me: stop being an asshole or you won't get any cake. And cake is a metaphor for me banning you. I'm sorry if I've offended you by daring not to like one element of the website of an online comic strip, but it's no reason for you to explode.
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Ah. I was expecting this. I'm not really angry or offended... It's just that you stated as fact an opinion which I completely disagree with, so I retaliated. Ban away if it makes you feel better (really: whatever. I'd say it's a poor reason but hey, it's your forum).

(...hang on a sec. "Stop being an arsehole or you won't get banned"? *grin* *duck* [SIZE=-2](take it easy, I'm joking)[/SIZE])

2: The link you provided is an excellent example of *exactly* what I'm talking about. Quote your link: "I'd amassed a certain affection for the culinary arts, that is to say, the construction of the edible" instead of 'I enjoy cooking!' There's the thesaurus/pretention crap that I'm talking about -- it's the sort of thing that was probably cute once and got enough of a response that he turned it into his regular style. It seems like fingers on a chalkboard to me.
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The point I was trying to make is that "I'd amassed a certain affection for the culinary arts, that is to say, the construction of the edible" is so much more fun than "I enjoy cooking!". You don't honestly believe he takes himself seriously, writing like that? If you do you've kind of missed the point. I talk like that with my friends sometimes; it's fun trying to be as obscure and inventive as you can. Nobody sincerely believes they're any more intelectual for it. It's a difference of opinion; you think it's pretentious, I think it's hillarious.

Anyway, each to their own.
 
Blair was always better than everyone else, not just in the movie.

In a game where you can score 7 - 8 kills in a single mission when that many kills spread out over an entire career would make one an ace pilot... if you kind of put yourself in the universe you think "Man this guy is something else."

I mean in WC1 you can eventually pass up Iceman and Bossman on the kill board, and they have been in the war far far longer than Blair has and are kind of hailed as the two greatest pilots on the Claw.

This entire chain of movie-related conversation seems to repeat itself every few months.
 
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