After Action Report: Firefox

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has screened Firefox and what we found was a big surprise: a very, very dour and serious movie about a man charged with stealing a mind controlled airplane. Firefox seems to be a conservative reaction to James Bond's late 1970s outing, offering in its first half an alternative version that completely lacks any sort of levity (or women!). It's clearly deliberate and deserves some credit for that but it's quite a slow walk to the Firefox factory. The second half of the movie, which stretches an expertly-constructed airplane chase to forty plus minutes, is better but never quite reaches the promise of the concept. Firefox's plot also reminded us a great deal of Strike Commander, which climaxes with a behind the lines operation to steal a pair of prototype jets which must then battle it out in an epic finale.

Firefox's major inspiration for Wing Commander was, of course, the fact that the original game… borrowed!... the design of the MiG-31 Firefox plane for the Rapier medium fighter. In recognition of that, here's a little gallery of Firefox frames showing the airplane in plenty of detail. They constructed both a full scale prop plane for ground scenes and a stunning model (whose maker would go on to build the Enterprise D for Star Trek The Next Generation!) for the air combat.

Airborne

On the Ground

Closeups

Cockpit

The Wing Commander I Rapier worked the same way: there was a 3D version designed by Glen Johnson and rendered by Mary Bellis for the flight sections and then a more detailed one by Denis Loubet for the 'ground' takeoff and landing scenes.

Vera reminds us that the ever-taciturn Michael "Iceman" Casey was based on Clint Eastwood himself. Iceman is certainly a lot like Firefox's Grant–they're both top ace fighter pilots secretly haunted by their wars–but this probably wasn't the specific inspiration. You probably have to go back to the Man with No Name or Dirty Harry (listed as one of Chris Roberts' favorite movies in a 1991 Point of Origin) to get the full picture.

Another thing we learned is that Firefox had a video game! In 1984 there was a Firefox arcade machine from Atari. It was a light gun-style shooter game that played over actual footage of aircraft and environments… how's that for an interactive movie? It's pretty funny watching Rapiers flying around!