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| Wing Commander: The Movie | 
| Category: Movie
Buy New: $2.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  191 reviews
Sales Rank: 4771
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 101 minutes
ASIN: B000I9X6FO
Theatrical Release Date: March 11, 1999
Release Date: September 18, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 "Wing Commander is one video game movie that makes a kick ass home theater movie to watch." February 12, 2006
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Now everyone knows about how not so good "Wing Commander" was, but I'm here to talk about why you should check it out on DVD. Now, it has no real features unlike some of the later video game movies do. But the movie is as loud as it wants to be in Dolby Digital 5.1 and it looks very good in Widescreen. Too bad it's not enchance for 16x9, it's just letterboxed. (I might have just given this review 5 stars...maybe). Unlike the later fox movies that were released right after it. But "Wing Commander has to be the best looking and loudest video game movie you could watch and experience on DVD.
 2nd worst movie I've ever seen November 19, 2005
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
The worst was Boys and Girls, another steaming pile of *bleep* starring Freddy Prince Jr. The only reason why I put this one ahead is because some of the space battle scenes are somewhat interesting to look at.
Ok where do I start? The plot is garbage. Utter garbage. I don't even remember what it was about, that's how bad it was. Something about Space Pilgrims, and beating the Kilrathi (who look like rejects from the Broadway show CATS).
The acting was terrible. Why did they not use Mark Hammil and that guy from Back to the Future? They were awsome actors in the videogames, why not use them? They are Hollywood actors for crying out loud! Maybe they wanted nothing to do with this garbage. Makes sense.
One more thing. The fighters looked like something out of WW2. In a sci fi movie? That's never good. Play the game (even though it's old, it's still classic), but leave the movie out of your home.
 Good Action, Lacking Everywhere Else October 24, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
From the start movies based on games seemed to be doomed to failure. Wing Commander, despite probably having a leg up on most other game adaptations because of its much developed storylines, has failed like the others.
The story, while having some interesting plot twists to it, fails to provide much original material. There seem to be a few too many awkard situations created by a subplot about the main characters heritage, which is never resolved and never goes past "we don't like people of that descent."
The actors, in particular Freddie Prinz Jr. (Blair) and Matthew Lillard (Maniac), put on a poor performace in every aspect. Neither makes their character interesting: Prinz makes Blair a whiner, and Lillard's performance suggest's his nickname should be "Idiot" rather than "Maniac."
The costumes were odd, their attempt at a futuristic look fails badly, as the outfits look awkward an ill fitted to their use. Ship designs weren't much better, looking more like cobbled together parts (especially the fighters) rather than a thought-out design.
If you don't know anything about the Kilrathi going into the film, you won't know much more. Little was done to develope the race, and you don't get to see much of them. What times you do see them is in poor lighting, probably to make up for bad animatronics.
The action was the saving grace of this film. The space battles were entertaining, and paired with pretty good effects make for a believable battle. Luckily a fair amount of time is spent on these rather than just the drama between the characters.
If you like space battles, and you can find the movie cheap, I would suggest it, if it's drama and character interaction your into avoid the movie.
You guys knew.. April 9, 2005
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
that since this is a movie based on a pc game it wasn't going to get top billing, right?
Much wasted potential, but can be enjoyed December 19, 2004
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Chris Roberts' big-screen adaptation of his legendary Wing Commander series (the quintissential "space combat simulator" created by Chris and Erin Roberts) is farcry the WC I hoped to see.
Let's get the atrocious and the merely bad out of the way first: The film is not particularly true to its source mythology, which is tragic. Kevin Droney provides the screen story and script, and both are unfortunately sub-par. The Kilrathi have gone from feline to reptilian? and generally far more superficial and bland than they ever were in the game. Even the legendary Tiger's Claw is renamed to just the Tiger Claw, which both practically and grammatically makes no sense. The story itself throws an irrelevant and unnecessary sub-plot about "Pilgrim" space explorers into the mix, and the script itself shamelessly steals from far superior World War II films. To say some of the dialogue is cliche would be too much praise; I can recall two moments in the film worthy of being called good lines.
Next, we have Roberts' flawed vision his own creation. As games, Wing Commander brought classic, WWII intensity to a high-tech future. I'm not sure why, but Roberts' had production designer Peter Lamont (a talented veteran of many Bond films) scrap almost everything futuristic. Despite taking place far into our future, Wing Commander features computers that look like my father's old Macintosh Classic, planes that look like the disgusting marriage of the A-10 Warthog with a WWI bi-plane, and a fighter cockpits and carriers that make those found in Top Gun seem a pipedream in comparison. Overall, this excessive vying for an "authentic" World War II feel is what really hurts WC; moments like the crew quieting down as an enemy destroyer "pings" (a la Das Boot or U-571) its sonar over them IN SPACE just ruin the film. And the film's physics? Well, let's just say they make Star Wars look like a NASA simulation.
The film's script managed to draw a remarkably talented cast, including Freddie Prinze Junior, Saffron Burrows, Tcheky Karyo, Jurgen Prochnow, and goofball Matthew Lillard. Unfortunately, Roberts' talents seem to have atrophied since Wing Commander IV: The Price Of Freedom (which was more a movie than a PC game), as the performances he gets here are of an inferior caliber. Prinze is acceptable and sympathetic as the lead, while Burrows looks like she'd rather be filing her income taxes for most of the film. Karyo stands out among the cast, though is disgustingly miscast; Taggart, a Scotsman through and through in the games, is not renamed for Karyo, and sadly even has a line in French, further destroying any coherent credibility in the script.
So are there any good moments in Wing Commander? Actually, yes. David Arnold provided the film's title theme, and while Kevin Kiner manages to hack up the rest of the film's score, Arnold's theme is majestic, memorable, and far more heroic and impressive than it has any right to be given its subject film. The special effects, despite a few scenes that try too hard to blend techniques, are by and large acceptable, and even impressive here and there. The film's opening title sequence is sheer brilliance, between Arnold's gorgeous theme and the quick "Wing Commander History 101" provided by the background voiceovers. While there are far too few "dogfights" for a film of this sort, the few that do show up are fun, despite Roberts' anemic direction. And if you can overlook all the glaring mistakes made in the conception and production, WC is at heart a fun, old-fashioned adventure.
What funny about Wing Commander is that if it were released as a made-for-TV, Sci-Fi Channel special, it would have worked, and in fact might have been the mother of all TV movies. Unfortunately, it was released as a feature length film, and not surprisingly flopped pathetically. What's saddest about Wing Commander is that the fourth game in the series reached a point of having such an elaborate plot and production team that it was almost a motion picture in itself. Yet whatever talent Roberts showed in The Price Of Freedom is lost in this version of Wing Commander, which between Droney's poor writing and Roberts misguided direction, sets its course straight into a black hole and doesn't pull out in time.
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