Wing Commander
Tags: action

Plot synopsis:
It is the year 2454 and an interstellar war is raging between the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi Empire, whose people, the cat-like Kilrathi, seek the complete eradication of the human race. Lieutenants Christopher Blair (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) and Todd Marshall (Matthew Lillard) are pilots fresh out of training and traveling aboard the small supply ship Diligent, commanded by Captain James Taggart (Tchéky Karyo), to their new posting aboard the carrier TCS Tiger Claw in the Vega Sector. En route, the ship gets pulled into a gravity well and loses their navigation computer. While Taggart repairs it, Blair is able to space-jump them to safety, calculating the jump in under ten seconds, a notable feat as Taggart notes the computer couldn't have done it that fast.
A massive Kilrathi armada attacks Pegasus Station, a remote but vital Confederation base and captures a navigation computer, through which it will be able to locate Earth. Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn (David Warner) directs Blair, whose father he knew from a previous conflict known as the Pilgrim Wars, to carry orders to the Tiger Claw, under the command of Captain Jason Sansky (David Suchet), to fight a suicidal delaying action to let the rest of the Terran fleet reach Earth since it is two hours behind the Kilrathi. Along with the awkwardness of joining a new unit, and continual pranks that require discipline from his wing commander Lieutenant Commander Jeanette Deveraux (Saffron Burrows), Blair fights the distrust of Commander Paul Gerald (Jürgen Prochnow) and his crewmate Lt. Hunter (Richard Dillane) because of the drastic orders he brings from the Admiral, and because his mother was a "Pilgrim", a strain of humans who had fought against the Confederation. Pilgrims were the first human explorers and colonists and had developed the innate ability to navigate space by feel despite obstacles such as black holes. Marshall finds a kindred spirit in Lieutenant Rosie Forbes (Ginny Holder) and falls in love with her, but she dies when her fighter is damaged after a battle with an advance group of Kilrathi vessels and crashes on the flight deck during landing. The incident enrages Deveraux and shakes Marshall's confidence.
Despite several setbacks, the Tiger Claw's personnel successfully attack and board the Kilrathi command ship using the Diligent. In the attack, they also find the stolen navigation computer and learn the coordinates the Kilrathi fleet will use to approach Earth. The Tiger Claw, however, is heavily damaged and can do nothing more to prevent the assault, except to send Deveraux and Blair in fighters to find their way back to Earth. While it would normally be impossible for fighters to make such a jump without a navigation computer, Blair's Pilgrim heritage will afford him the ability to calculate such a jump himself. If alerted to the Kilrathi's plans, Earth forces can destroy each Kilrathi ship before it can get its bearings after the space-jump; if not, Earth's defenses will surely be overwhelmed. Before Blair leaves, Taggart, who is in reality a Naval Intelligence officer rather than a civilian, reveals himself to be a Pilgrim as well, shocking Blair.
Deveraux's fighter is disabled in combat after destroying a missile, but she convinces Blair to continue his mission despite his objections. Blair uses his Pilgrim ability to make the jump to the vicinity of Earth. He is followed by a Kilrathi ship, but he locates the gravity well he encountered at the start of the movie and baits the Kilrathi to venture too close and when he pulls away at the last minute, their ship is pulled in due to its larger mass. As his fighter runs out of fuel, he transmits the information Earth needs to defeat the Kilrathi assault. Unprepared, the Kilrathi fleet is destroyed by the Earth fleet without being able to put up a fight. A search and rescue team from the Earth fleet rescues Blair while Taggart rescues Devearux in the Diligent. Blair and Deveraux are reunited on the Tiger Claw and share a kiss as Deveraux is taken to get medical attention.

Review: liking it.It is NOT great cinema or great science fiction -- everyone likes to climb all over this movie for scientific errors and not being close enough to the Wing Commander games.
So far, I haven't heard anyone say complain that Val Kilmer or George Clooney didn't LOOK like Michael Keaton; the portrayal of their character is a different story...I'll admit, the movie had a cookie-cutter plot.
Not anything like the Paladin of the games (it took a while to get used to a non-scottish Paladin), but a very good, dark, but fatherly figure.The effects were incredible, especially when you consider the (relatively) meager budget the film was done on.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the original intent was to NOT show the Kilrathi at all; someone decided this would be too artistic of a move, and created some cheesy looking aliens at the last minute.My favorite aspect of the movie, though, was how it abandons the standard "Everything is bright and pretty and technological in Sci-Fi".
It's a shame John Rhys-Davis and Mark Hamill don't reprise their roles, but their replacements do well enough.You get caught up in the story, and the visual effects are fantastic, aided by good acting with the actors working well together.So overall I would recommend this film.
A bit lacking in certain areas, but certainly enjoyable.I say "objective" simply because I have never been exposed to the hugely popular game series, so I was seeing this as a film, not as a spin off (in which case I'm sure it would come across worse, simply because when you're used to one set of actors portraying your favourite characters a new team will never fit the bill).Overall not a bad way to spend my Wednesday evening..
I never played the game so I had no idea what to expect.I should know better...I saw this movie for the first time on DVD, sat down with a low expectation, and cranked up my Dolby Digital 5.1 sound system.
I never been so many times (5) in a cinema watching the same movie but with the same feeling when you discover a treasure, one of this films or shows (like galactica) with great characters, maybe not so good special effects.
The dialogue is awful, the acting worse, and the supposedly futuristic spacecraft looked like they were bought from a studio auctioning off props from old World War II movies.
The Wing Commander games gave us characters who were normal people forced into an extraordinary situation, something direly lacking in the genre of science fiction.
The cast's collective heart was in it, and the crew did the best job they could, but the direction is so weak that the film winds up looking like it was intended to form the cutscenes of a video game.
Not to mention the stealth technology, which is introduced some years into the war, and yet the most prominent fighters of the Terran confederation look like rejected designs for World War II aircraft with shower nozzles stuck to their fronts.The spacecraft design leads me to believe that members of the crew might be at least half right when they say that the problem with this film is the budget.
All this turns out to be is a very stupid attempt at a creative plot arc that, like the Pilgrim element, has no bearing upon the story whatsoever.Unlike most of the rotten films I have commented about lately, I gave Wing Commander a one out of ten.
Science fiction movies (that are not Star Trek or Star Wars movies) usually do not have plots of good quality, but Wing Commander seems to be an exception to this rule.
real nice graphics for the day -still stands up well today-Star wars and the An*l Anti-SF BS Galactica bend over Wing Commander is hereMY all time favorites boys own SF rompNic. Predictable plot but still entertaining.
(The Kilrathi look like plastic action figures, but otherwise..) If you can sit and watch Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, or Hitchhiker's Guide and enjoy it despite the terrible effects, you are the type of person who can enjoy Wing Commander.
I have played Wing Commander video games and the story lines were a great treat, when I found out that they were making a live action video I was ecstatic.
The story is good and the visuals are nice, I only wish that who ever was in charge of the ships spent some more time on creativity, because to me they look like high powered F-1 fighters (where's the imagination).
Even though I haven't played the Wing Commander PC games, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Rarely has any sci-fi action movie been done so right, with not only apt actor choices and truly eye-pleasing visuals, even six years after release, but also a clever script, fleshed out characters and a sci-fi setting which is put to perfect use.Two of the main cast, lesser known Freddie Prinze Jr.
It is also enjoyable to see that Wing Commander's space battles are actually an adaptation of a World War II movie.
While there are additional twists brought about by the sci-fi space setting, the battle scenes play out as naval battles in WW2, with fighters, command carriers and even submarine-like maneuvers and situations in space.It all comes together thanks to a script which does include some give-ins to standard movie formula, but goes against it on at least as many points.
It might be thanks to the storyline established in the game, which I can't say about, but it seems like the world of Wing Commander has a lot more history than the short introduction in the beginning of the movie.
Only the 'guy gets the girl' twist at the end of the movie felt tacked on and unfitting, the rest of the character history is obviously thoroughly planned.In closing, Wing Commander delivers a superb space epic in the scope of one movie, which brings the new Star Wars trilogy to shame.
I had since Freddie Prinze Jr try to act before, and wouldn't exactly call myself a big fan of his, so I was slightly weary as to whether or not this film would be any good.The plot isn't all that original, and the script doesn't break any new grounds either.
However Wing Commander is a movie that brings you back to your youth and for the first time a computer game was well put on the big screen..
This Is a very good movie i liked it it when i saw it on TV the acting is a bit weak but i lived with it through the movie but found it was better getting closer to the end of the movie it would've been better if people from the video games did a cameo the best bits are the space battles the effects are amazing when you see for the first time but lack amaze when seen for the second i suggest you play the games once or twice to get the most enjoyment out of the wing commander franchise or rent the game from a friend before seeing this movie on TV or DVD or any other format stars ********(9/10.
Just like Star Wars did 20 something years ago, I do believe that Wing Commander has set a new standard for the special effects in movies today.
The 'Tigerclaw' also appears more like reality as a naval ship with the submarine 'look' of today's standards too.Another good thing would the constant action and lack of dead time this movie provides.
amusingly, wc 3 and wc 4 (the games) had better casts than the movie (Freddie Pinze Jr vs Mark Hammil, Mathew Lillard vs Thomas "Biff Tannon" Wilson, Tchéky Karyo vs John Rhys-Davies, and David Warner vs Malcolm McDowell).the plot had some holes, the most dramatic moments came off as cheesy, and there were a few continuity issues with the games that will probably bother the more avid fans (skipper missles being used before the first game, even though they weren't introduced until wc2, bossman being dead before blair sets foot on the tiger's claw, etc).on the upside, the special effects were pretty good.
he was having trouble articulating himself, but finally settled on something like "that was the coolest humans vs futuristic aliens movie i've ever seen!"basically, if you're looking for a fun mindless (and that is a very important word) space combat movie, this is a good choice.
Of course, Christ Roberts has to go and mess up a good thing, so he went out and found a younger cast (I would imagine to be more accessible to the "young people" who weren't really old enough to remember much about the games), completely redesigned the ships (not a good thing, for the games' designs were truly inspired for the most part, especially when compared to the WWII-inspired heaps in this film) and basically threw in a pseudo-religious subplot to muck things up a bit.In case you weren't able to gather it from above, I really wasn't expecting much of this film, and frankly, after having watched it, I'm rather pleasantly surprised.
The CGI, while not up to par with what you'll see today, is quite respectable, particularly wide space combat and HUD shots (this is probably what Wing Commander would look like on the X-Box), and the acting is actually quite competent, with the possible exception of Prinze, who while not terrible, just doesn't seem cast all that well here.
It's fortunate that they're only seen a couple of times, because while they're onscreen you can't help but think that it could have been done far better.All in all, while a classic by no means, Wing Commander actually surprised me, and as far as modern sci-fi movies go (though it must be said that this is actually more of an old-fashioned war movie set in a sci-fi setting), this managed to please much more than I had expected.
I can honestly say that I don't understand why so many people gave this movie such horrible reviews.I thought the action was cool, the effects were great, the characters were pretty good, and the only thing that looked fake was the Kilrathi.I think everybody's over-analyzing this movie [and many other movies, too], when they should just ask themselves, "Was this a cool movie?
Earth turns to Starship Tiger Claw and it's small crew of fighters to stop the assault and ensure that the Kilrathi cannot attack Earth unannounced.I haven't played the game, seen the game or even know anything about the game  so I'm relatively open and had no images of what the film `should' look like.
Yes, these were poor things but they are not the only reason why this wasn't very good.The `plot' seemed to require a history with the game  it was full of nonsense about pilgrims, wars etc, little of which was explained and made me feel like it was my fault for not knowing!
There was an excellent cast; but there was also a good storyline.I played the game when I was a kid, it was a very well designed game and I found that the movie did adhere to what the game quite well.Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, David Suchet, David Warner, Matthew Lillard, an all star cast executed very well.
especially considering a budget of ONLY 30 m$ and a director who's done nothing but video games before, we got decent special effects, good acting all over, and the first sf-movie ever that showed why a fighter exits into space, but the  boys in the bay won't get sucked out after him.
Maybe a bit more fine tuning in the pilgrims plot, and 100k$ more for the kilrathi dolls (yeah, they looked like dolls, but You wouldn't see them longer then half a second), but overall i really enjoyed that thing quite a lot !There are more experienced directors with a much higher budget, scripts and protagonists that cost more then all of wing commander together, but all they produce is crap, waist of time, name it as you want.
It is not often that one rents any straight-to-video Sci-Fi movies for the simple reason that 99.998% of them are terrible, but WING COMMANDER just proves the rule that all rules are there to be broken occasionally.From the well done, and expensive looking, title sequence to the only slightly predictable end the film actually surprises with how good it is.While it is, at root, your basic unlikely-underdogs-tasked-with-saving-the-world-at-the-last-minute-from-dead ly-force/thing/alien flick, WING COMMADER manages to transcend the usual terrible plot, terrible direction, worse acting and even worse still action sequences dilemma that so many of its genre relations fall prey to.In fact, 15 minutes into it and you have been deftly introduced to the deadly situation facing earth, given an insight into all the main characters and told about the more interesting than usual backstory, without, amazingly for this genre, the rest of the plot being given away in clunky "this is the secret thing you will use at the end to save us all" scenes.Living in the remote foothills of Everest as I do, I was totally unaware WING COMMANDER was derived from a computer game - something which makes its watchability even more shocking (and I suppose explains the French bloke called Taggart.)It is helped by a good cast - with that bloke from Dead Man's Curve (Matthew Lillard) easily overshadowing Freddie Prinze Jnr, and that English girl from Deep Blue Sea (Saffron Burrows)being unshakably sexy as she strutts her "I'm the boss" lines.Director Chris Roberts probably didn't have as large a budget as he'd hoped, but the design of the film is nevertheless intriguing.
Also how Chris Roberts approved it let alone be part of it I don't know but I imagine he was probably embarrassed by how the movie based on the classic franchise he created turned out and I doubt he would have been happy with Prophecy either.Maybe Chris Roberts may well revive the franchise perhaps even manage to redeem himself in the respect of the Wing Commander franchise with either a movie or TV series or even a game reboot or he might give his blessings for someone else to do it, perhaps with him acting as some consultant or whatever or partner.Only time will tell.
This film assembles one of the strangest casts of the late 1990s to play out a plot loosely based on the Wing Commander PC Game series.
"The spacecraft look like WWII propeller planes instead of the wonderful crafted fighters and there wasn't enough dog fighting either." This was NOT a SCI/FI movie of star wars proportions and corners were cut.
Wing Commander III Total RPG in the form of a movie, the plot and characters where good - not to mention the funny parts too.
Wing Commander IV & V - Better plots, only heard about them.Saw the movie and I thought it okay...
The plot was interesting, the production was much better than I thought (dark sci-fi, like Space: Above and Beyond)it would be and some of the actors did very well (the two ship commanders, the female lead).But Prinze is over the top as the newbie who seems to be amazed by everything.
I heard a lot of bad things about Wing Commander; a lot of people told me it was terrible.I don't know why.It's not a spectacularly good film, but it is a well executed, exciting, stylish sci-fi war film, not nearly as cliche-ridden as I expected.
Having occasionally played the games - though hardly having followed the storyline - I like what they've done.There was a mission, people died, ships blew up, the good guys saved the day and I cared that the characters made it through to the end.
Tcheky Karyo played very well, and Saffron Burrows was very cute, shame that they made no sequel, because games about space still come out, like for example Microsoft's Freelancer, and Wing Commander prophecy, and Secret Ops were very good and difficult games.
This movie is an expression of everything geeky that the world was in 1999, what with the dot com boom and the rapid infiltration and adoption of previously geeky domains, such as PC gaming, into mainstream culture.It was natural for Chris Roberts, who had lead the "Wing Commander" franchise through each successful sequel, to write and direct the movie, after all the games themselves had in a way pioneered the use of filmed cut scenes, and featured many very well known actors such as John Rhys-Davies and Malcolm Mcdowell.Due to Robert's influence, this movie feels almost more like fan-fiction at times.
Most disappointing.If you've played the games, this movie is worth a view even if just for the nostalgia trip and because many of the scenes actually feel like they are right out of the games (whether this is a good or bad thing I'm not sure ;).
This movie might have done well as an anonymous, direct-to-video B science fiction action flick if he had.I can't criticize the plot as there wasn't much of one other than the Earth is at war with the Kilrathi and the hero has to do something or other just in the nick of time to save everyone.Characters: nothing much there either.
It has an ok if not exactly inventive plot, good acting most of the time and I like the characters.
(Mark Hammill was even cast as the main character when they began incorporating live-action cut-scenes into the game, forever cementing the connection.)So one can understand that when Chris Roberts decided to bring it to the big screen, he felt the need to make changes to the Wing Commander franchise to differentiate it more from the Star Wars franchise -- thus the clunky WW2 fighter designs and naval-style battles.
For those unfamiliar with the "Wing Commander" series of video games, the original Kilrathi aliens looked like big cats.
Brilliantly scripted and marvelously acted Sci-Fi movie based on the all-time favorite PC-game.