Wolff rating: MOSTLY HARMLESS
Plot summary: These two guys go out to deep space to help a carrier defend a, um, jump point from, um, some green alien dudes.
Biased, pithy comments: I can still remember laboriously pirating Chris Roberts' masterwork games, ``Wing Commander'' and ``Wing Commander 2'', which each came on 10-25 floppy disks. The game was unimaginably huge, and it was cinematic and epic. Roberts himself said that the scale and resource requirements of WC was a direct response to the underwhelming reception of his compact, low-budget ``Times of Lore.'' The WC disks held a game that felt like a movie---you had character-rich thrills as you cruised around the galaxy aboard Rapiers, Katanas, Broadswords, and other neat-looking space fighters. In between, you'd have some fun cutscenes, and you could build relationships with each of your wingmen, and you mourned them when they were killed. Maniac, in particular, was one of my favorite wingmen---he went in and mixed it up with or without orders, and he had the most distinctive style. So why, with all that story and character, did Roberts manage to make such an incoherent, cliched, and positively goofy low-budget movie? You could blame the actors, and certainly a young Prinze and Lilliard don't have the chops to sell some of their worst lines. You could blame Roberts' choice to tell the story of the universe in drips and drabs around the edges of the action, rather than boring us up front with exposition. You could even blame the budget, but actually I didn't spend much time thinking about how cheap it was, except to complain that all the good stuff didn't seem to happen in space despite it being a movie about space travel. No, you have to lay the blame squarely on Roberts himself. Although his games had competent cutscenes, the movie, moment to moment, is a mess. Lilliard and Prinze have a strong sexual chemistry together, as do Holder and Burroughs, despite the fact that they're same-sex pairs in an ostensibly straight movie---gotta blame the director for not spotting it. The story (written by Roberts), is a train wreck locally (see notes) and globally (who are all these bridge guys, and why do we care about them? Outside of the odd bombing, what are the Kilrathi?). Despite a boatload of naval terms, military discipline is completely lacking; there is such constant order-disobeying that nearly everyone in the movie would be up on court-martial immediately. Oy---what a mess. It's not clear you could have made a fantastic movie based on a game that's based largely on Star Wars, but you could have done better. I hope Roberts learned a lot, and comes back at us with either a better movie or a new, killer game.
Other Notes: So, my favorite moment of total incoherence was when Karyo is returning with Angel, he is reported to ask for a ``medical team to be standing by.'' When they land, however, Prinze stays with her as she sits, slumped, while Karyo says ``I'll go fetch a medic.'' So, besides having the worst discipline on board a military ship since, oh, ``Hot Shots!'', they can't even get the medicos right? Apparently the movie was much longer and actually characterized the Kilrathi, but the puppets looked lousy, so they cut them entirely from the film. That also explains the wacky knife-cross thing that isn't used. Does anyone besides me think it's funny to have Prochnow, the captain from ``Das Boot'', listening to space-sonar in his sub-like ship?
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard, Tzheky Karyo, Juergen Prochnow.
Directed by: Chris Roberts