I don't know how unbiased my review of 'Wing Commander' can be considered. The NewsRadio season finale taking place in space was just on, and that was a damn good episode...
I had received a call from Mr. Keegan, who had very good news to tell me. I inquired if it involved Crusade's return from death. No. I asked if it was about Rowan Atkinson as Doctor Who. No. What was it? Mr. Keegan's gracious friend, Jack, had come into tickets to a sneak preview of 'Wing Commander'.
I almost fell down, upon hearing the news. My brain had made the connection. THE NEW STAR WARS TRAILER WOULD MOST LIKELY BE ATTACHED TO THIS ADVANCE SHOWING OF 'WING COMMANDER'.
As for the film itself, I WAS looking forward to it, that is until I downloaded the film's trailer to see what everyone else at DFFQI had been mocking. The trailer alone had me drafting a negative review.
1) What ARE those fighters? They look like ugly versions of present day fighter planes, namely the A-10 Thunderbolt II.
2) The Kilrathi look horrid.
3) This is supposed to take place in the 27th century. We will NOT be wearing uniforms what are only mild variations of present day ones in the 27th century. We will NOT be piloting planes which look like something that was flown during Desert Storm. It is just so wrong.
The days prior to us seeing 'Wing Commander', our anticipation built. This would be the dawn of a new age for DFFQI. Real news. We'd be seeing something before the mass populace. We'd have knowledge. We'd have power.
It was a given among us that the second TPM trailer would be shown in conjunction with this advance 'Wing Commander' showing. It had to be.
So, there we were.
Let me state this here, I'm a fan of the 'Wing Commander' series. I've played the games, and they're good games. They're good, solid games. They're not the best games ever made, but they're good games. So, I'm a fan... not a big fan, but a fan.
So, there we were.
I was the first one to arrive. I spoke with an associate, Greg, while waiting for the rest of DFFQI's Security Council. Nick was the next to come, trying to sneak up on me. Then, in a great show of force, Mr. Pause, Keegan, and Paige arrived together.
John commandeered us, marching toward the theatre. He had his plan all worked out. After a brief scuffle concerning the tickets, we were in.
We didn't get the seats we wanted, but hey.
So, there we were.
A local radio shock jock was there, throwing free T-Shirts at the crowd, hyping up all those who had come to see 'Wing Commander'.
After some conversation involving Star Wars and B5, the lights dimmed.
A Trailer!
A FOX Trailer!
Come on...
Aww, frag!
No Lucas.
So, we didn't see an advance screening of TPM's second trailer. Instead, we were treated to a trailer for 'Never Been Kissed', a film telling about a reporter pretending to be a student. It shows highschool as being nothing but parties, sex, and alcohol. Sure. I'm sure that what it's like for most people. Yet, us here at DFFQI are outsiders. We're the outcast. We're the paranoid group of nerds huddled together in a dark corner joking about flaws in the silent propulsion system used in 'Hunt for Red October', which was a wonderful film.
So, there we were.
The 20th Century FOX fanfare blared. Pause and I still hoped. No 2nd Trailer.
John F. Kennedy was the first voice heard, against the darkness. He was delivering his speech about going to the moon. That was an alternative opening to B5's pilot, 'The Gathering'!
We see star maps come into focus. Blurred sketches of ships sink down the screen. A cross can be seen on the far left.
Kennedy's speech is replaced by faux historical recordings, documenting our first steps out of the Sol system and out across the street.
Jump tech?
Pioneers rapidly pushing forward.
Pioneers hated.
Kilrathi war.
W-I-N-G-C-O-M-M-A-N-D-E-R expanded across the screen.
The opening was so slow and laborious. They were trying to tell a story, but were doing it all wrong. They were also screwing over JMS.
The film opens in an asteroid belt. The camera maneuvers into a military base carved into one of the larger sun rocks. We are greeted by some pretty sorry excuses for 27th century tech. Sure. Nokia. The monitor displays weren't all that detailed either. So grainy. So monochrome.
We were already openly bashing the picture.
Suddenly, Kilrathi fighters appear overhead. These passable excuses for starfighters zoom by, DROPPING bombs on the base.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The base's commander tries frantically to destroy their NAVCOM unit, basically a little number designed to make hyperspace travel more accurate over long distances. The base's self destruct function has been overridden and the divider between the navcom and the rest of those in the command room doesn't seem to break when fired upon by a projectile weapon resembling an M-16 with some extra parts glued on.
As the Kilrathi tear down the door, the commander jettisons the navcom into space and sends out a message to the fleet.
We are then met by a naval officer resembling everyone's favorite resistance leader and presidential candidate from 'Earth: Final Conflict'... Joshua Doors.
In a standard holo display, we see that the Kilrathi fleet will be able to strike Earth in 36 hours. The Earth fleet is out at Taco Bell or Tatooine. It can get home in 48 hours.
Earth, apparently, has no protection.
The admiral then realizes that there is another Earth force, this one closer to home. This fleet is commanded by the Tiger Claw. It would be a stupid name, but it was a Bengal class vessel. That makes it all better. Sure.
There is a problem, though. There is no way to contact this second fleet... except for a sorry looking freighter headed in their direction.
A crude vector model of the freighter appears on screen. Its name? The Diligent. I know. I know.
Also on screen is the Confed's logo. First, since confederation was shortened, it's futuristic. Now, this Confed emblem was nothing more than a blatant ripoff of B5's sword and shield logo. A sword cuts through a large star, with four smaller stars encircling the large one.
The vector Diligent (snicker, snicker) is then replaced by the real ship, which would be at home in the Star Trek universe. We see its captain, a stereotypical Frenchie, and his two crew members. The first crew member plots a course to a hyperspace beacon, but it's busy. The captain estimates another set of coordinates.
The captain and the first crew member then go below deck, where they talk about the Pilgrims, those who first set out and colonized space. The people still on Earth grew angry with the explorers and set out to kill them, hunting them down and massacring them, hundreds at a time. I know. I know. Why'd this happen? Why were the Pilgrims hunted down? For being better than the fools still on Earth? And now, the rest of Earth is spacefaring. So, why were the Pilgrims...
The Diligent then suddenly lurches forward. The captain and first crew member race to the bridge. There, the second crew member had increased the thrust... sending the ship into a blackhole(?) just waiting around for the space bus. The first crew member randomly mashes buttons on a console, as the ship vanishes into the center of the abnormality.
We are then treated with a few, brief seconds of black.
Then, all too triumphant cues blare, as the Diligent reappears... now right next to the Tiger Claw. Don't even ask. The Diligent then lands. Its captain speaks with that of the Tiger Claw. He doesn't trust the Frenchie. So, the Diligent's captain pulls out an old, dusty ring belonging to the military royalty.
Every military officer had the nicest uniform. On the left side they wore a name tag with they name engraved in shiny letters. So special.
One of those stationed on the bridge is a man named 'Ombutu'. There is so much that could be said about him, but it will remain silent.
We then cut to the flight bay. God, the fighters are ugly. Remember the shortly lived KidsWB series 'Brats of the Lost Nebula'? No. Not surprised. Well, the 'Wing Commander' fighters make those seen in 'Brats' look almost good.
Crew member #1 climbs into an empty Rapier class fighter. The AI system chirps on. Its name is Merlin. Crew member #1 then mistakes his wing commander, played by Saffron Burrows, for a mechanic. She then shouts at him for sitting in a fighter belonging to a dead man. So, after a pilot dies, their plane is just left to rust on the flight deck? Of course, if the pilot was killed, why was the fighter there at all?
We then cut to a bar. Rosie, crew member #2's love interest, is introduced. There's a brief scuffle concerning the fact the crew member #1 is one of those hated Pilgrims.
We cut to Saffron's quarters, where Rosie appears with some space alcohol.
Back to the flight deck. Crew member #2 shows off by slamming his assigned fighter into the runway at full throttle. Don't flight privileges get revoked for things like this?
There is then (maybe) twenty to thirty minutes of ugly fighters and mind numbing banter.
The Frenchie captain reveals himself to be a high ranking naval officer, Paladin, as the Kilrathi launch an attack on the Tiger Claw.
So, what do the menacing Kilrathi's capital ships look like? Green versions of the Terran ones. Plus, they splinter and explode from fighter fire.
The last Kilrathi battleship broadsides the Tiger Claw, which returns with a volley from its torpedo tubes. Note, these torpedoes were MANUALLY loaded and fired. 27th century, remember.
As the last fighters are being picked off, crew member #2 hot dogs, causing a Kilrathi fighter to slam into Rosie's. Crew member #2 guides her back to the Tiger Claw, yet her fighter plows straight into the deck.
Crew member #2 returns, broken. Saffron pulls out a gun, ready to pop him in his head, showing a little bit of Ivanova. Then, for some reason, she lowers her arm. Crew member #2 isn't punished for causing the death of a fellow pilot.
Rosie's body and smashed fighter are still out on the Tiger Claw's deck. The wreckage is ordered removed. Then, in the movie's greatest sequence, a little tractor rolls out and pushes the wreckage off the ship. THE WRECKAGE FALLS OFF THE SHIP'S BOW. YES, FALLS OFF THE SHIP. NEVERMIND THAT SPACE IS A VACUUM. YES, IT FALLS OFF THE SHIP.
A larger Kilrathi battle fleet approaches, but the Tiger Claw is damaged and drained. It sinks down into an asteroid and fires a fake heat signature.
A monitor shows that all but one of the Kilrathi vessels, represented by Star Destroyers, turn and head for the decoy. The final cruiser enters the asteroid field and nukes the rocks one by one.
Eventually, the one the Tiger Claw is hiding in is hit. The only damaged suffered is a ruptured door plate on the flight deck, which is soon remedied by throwing a bulkhead at it.
The Tiger Claw emerges, needing energy. A small expeditionary craft is taken, which latches onto a Kilrathi capital vessel, without them even knowing it. They fight their way in for thirty seconds, then all is quite. They steal fuel cells and find the stolen navcom unit. Yet, they leave it there.
The alien power cells fight perfectly into the Tiger Claw. Now reenergized, it heads toward Earth. To get there, they are going to go the route the Diligent took to get here. They're going to run head long into a blackhole.
Crew member #1 and Saffron pilot Rapiers into the abnormality. A Kilrathi missile is spotted, which Saffron tails. The missile closes in on the Tiger Claw. God only knows why the Tiger Claw can't fire any of it's pulse cannons (which never sent out a single shot the entire film).
Saffron uses her gattling gun to destroy the missile, just before it hits. It sends out a ring of fire, which she tries to outrun, rather than pulling back and getting out of its way. Her fighter is hit and she flounders about in space. Crew member #1 returns to help her, but she tells him to let her die.
He concurs and ventures back into the abnormality. The Merlin AI unit constantly tells him to replot his course. Now, if these ships are equipped with high end AI units, why bother with human pilots? Anyway, crew member #1 mashed buttons again. His Rapier vanishes and returns to the Sol system. A Kilrathi ship follows. He plays chicken with it, around the black hole's event horizon. Nevermind the fact that this is a capital ship chasing down a starfighter scale craft. The Kilrathi cruiser is sucked in, only for another one to jump out of hyperspace. Yes. Jumping out of hyperspace.
Oh, we also see two Kilrathi carry on a conversation. Besides the fact that it was bad Huttese, and that they looked like Small Soldiers's Gorgonite leader, Archer, there were so many other things wrong with the scene. I won't even get into the subtitles.
Now, the Tiger Claw enters, into the blackhole, as its AI system screams.
It appears in the Sol system as the second Kilrathi ship explodes. Crew member #1 returns to the Tiger Claw's flight deck, to be embraced by crew member #2, in a scene very reminiscent of the famous "Carrie" scene in Star Wars ANH.
Finally, just before this wonderfully bad film fades away, Paladin reappears, with an injured Saffron at his side.
The End.
I have to say that 'Wing Commander' may have been one of the worst movies I have EVER had the misfortune of seeing.
It was an uninspired clone born from a cup of Babylon 5, a pinch of Star Trek, and just a dash of Star Wars.
It rivals, and maybe even defeats, Lost in Space in horridness. It opened so many avenues and subplots, never to revisit them again. Characters would disappear for half the movie, with no explanation. The camera angles were all off.
Despite all my efforts, I couldn't become involved.
I was going to say that here was a fleet that even B5's Earth Alliance fleet could win against, yet it seems to wrong to use them both in the same sentence.
So, 'Wing Commander' will go on to win countless awards and praise from those not knowing the first thing about Science Fiction, while die hard fans of the genre will only remotely tolerate it when in numbers, so that it can be thoroughly and mercilessly torn asunder.
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Peter Tatara
3.10.1999