May I ask why you think it was not executed well?
WING COMMANDER isn't unlike ID:4, where you have mankind facing an alien threat that similarly has no characters, no leader and no voiced agenda. But where ID:4's aliens present an immediate threat, the Kilrathi are off on the horizon. That's fine, as a looming threat builds tension and sets up a climactic confrontation. There's two problems with WING COMMANDER'S execution though IMO:
1.) There isn't enough build up. They do a pretty good job with developing the relationships between the human characters, but all the focus on that melodrama leaves little time to build that looming Kilrathi threat. We needed to feel the Kilrathi even if we couldn't see them, and that sense of mounting tension is absent here. 2.) When we finally do encounter the Kilrathi... the execution is bad. Not only the make-up, but just the entire confrontation in general is lacking.
The fact that the movie works as well as it does despite this is a testament what it gets right. It's far from a great movie--heck good might be pushing it--but it's a mildly entertaining flick that I found to be better than its reputation.
That's just my two cents obviously.
'Cause there's thunder in your heart... every move is like lightning!
reply
share
atavus79
12 years ago
I would probably agree with most of what you have said, it does feel as if we are coming into a fight at what is almost the Kilrathi final attack to end the war.
Perhaps it was inspired by the 1st star wars movie were the empire has come out with the death star and will use it to end conflict and keep all the planets under their thumb.
Effectively and end game situation that we are dropped into at what could be the end of the fight and I think this is what Wing Commander attempted but as you say not as well done.
It is flawed for many reasons but it seems we both got enough out of it to have this in-depth discussion about it.
I honestly never thought I would ever find someone who wanted to talk about it so thank you.
This film holds a special place for me as it is the only movie I ever played hooky to see.
My cinema was only showing it once on a weds at 11am and I thought I would hate to miss it on the big screen so off I went.
"That was not only incredibly painful, but also remarkably unpleasant!"
reply
share
Fluke_Skywalker
12 years ago
It is flawed for many reasons but it seems we both got enough out of it to have this in-depth discussion about it.
That's an excellent point!
I honestly never thought I would ever find someone who wanted to talk about it so thank you.
It was my pleasure .
'Cause there's thunder in your heart... every move is like lightning!
reply
share
awesomead
12 years ago
Yeah, the film was really done a disservice in the editing room... The production ran into budget issues, technical issues and whatnot. The Kilrathi didn't work right, and they didn't have enough money to redo the alien effect. Not only that, because of budgetary reasons they cut out Blair's holographic sidekick character that was essential to the traitor subplot.. so when they tested the film, audiences were confused. To make a long story short, they ended up editing out the traitor subplot which also let them cut out more of the bad Kilrathi effects.
Now, I'm one of the few that have actually seen a rough workprint that has most (though not all) of the extra scenes still in it. It had some rough effects work and such and temp music in places. I can say that while an extended version wouldn't be better, it would be a heck of a lot better.
There were more scenes throughout with the Admiral of the kilrathi fleet. There were also establishing shots of both the kilrathi and confed fleets that should have been completed but weren't that would have given some sense of scale to the threat of the kilrathi invasion.
Then there were the pilgrims... there were a couple different pilgrim traitors. There was supposed to be a bit of a showdown with them on the Kilrathi concom... A huge portion of that sequence is missing in the theatrical cut... but the short of it is that because of the traitors the Tiger's Claw can't send a message back to the Confed fleet forcing blair to take it in his Rapier. The emphasis in the original edit is appropriately on if Blair makes it on time to warn the fleet. Instead, in the theatrical cut we are led into feeling like there's going to be a big huge climactic Return of the Jedi Style battle and got shortchanged for an underwhelming shooting fish in a barrel scene.
In a year or two, the rights on the film go back to the director from Fox. He's said he's interested in recuting the film more to the vision he set out to make (so the missing subplots etc) and that he'd like to redo the kilrathi effects - likely with CG. That's definitely something I'd like to see. SO much of the film was edited to death. Subtle performance nuances are gone in favor of pacing. Scenes are moved around. Lines are dubbed over. It's really a mess. If you are interested, the shooting script can be found here: http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Wing_Commander_Movie_Shooting_Script
I've color coded it so you can see exactly what was cut and what was moved etc. Also you can see some pictures from the rough cut here: http://www.wcnews.com/articles/movie_cuts.shtml . There's also some stuff that doesn't show up in the finished film in these images: http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Category:Wing_Commander_Movie_Images_-_T raitor_%26_Deleted_Scenes
reply
share
Fluke_Skywalker
12 years ago
Above and beyond, awesomead! Thanks for bringing the knowledge .
I figured this thing was butchered by the studio, I just didn't know it was this bad. I'll give that shooting script a read some time, and I have a friend who I know will want to check it out.
Great job.
'Cause there's thunder in your heart... every move is like lightning!
reply
share
dcobbimdb
12 years ago
OP, I agree with you that I liked the film and I also agree with the no face / identity of the "bad guy" though it didn't seem to bug me that much for this movie.
However and interestingly enough this is my biggest gripe about the whole Final Destination movies. I mean there is no "bad guy" to possibly defeat there and quite honestly I'm astonished that films like that go on and on while films like this which could actually build off something get left in the dust
reply
share