I know this guy who works at a multiplex and is a movie maniac. He insists that "Wing Commander" is the worst movie ever made, so when I saw that SciFi Channel was going to air it this week, I thought, "Oh, good! I will get to see it for free and see if it's everything my friend promises it is, because I've got a perverse obsession with bad movies!"
I will tell you how much I... well, I suppose the word is "enjoyed"... "Wing Commander" by describing my favorite part of the movie for you.
The setting is a big war in outer space between Earthlings and some aliens called the Kilrathi (more about them later), and most of the action we are chiefly concerned with takes place on a big spaceship that is something like an aircraft carrier. The hero's annoying best friend and his sort-of-girlfriend have disobeyed the leader of their team and, thanks to Cosmic Revenge, the sort-of-girlfriend dies when she crashes her little spaceship into the landing pad thing on the big ship. Now, this is supposed to be the big, dramatic sad part. We cut from a scene where the hero's annoying best friend is crying and begging to save his sort-of-girlfriend, to a scene where the sort-of-girlfriend's ship is being pushed by a little snowplow off the runway thing of the big ship.
In the middle of Outer Space.
In Zero Gravity.
I suppose there's some B.S. about there being big magnets or something lining the runway so that the ships can't just float away. But, you know, that's something that's supposed to be the screenplay writers' responsibility to tell us.
My second favorite part is when we finally see the Kilrathi for the first time. At about the forty-five minute mark, it occurred to me that we don't even know who or what the Kilrathi are. We only know that they're at war with Earth and that they hate humans. But for the first full hour and a half or so, we don't even know what a Kilrathi looks like.
Well, the Kilrathi end up being something like an anthropomorphic Mr. Bigglesworth.
And they really like fog machines. When the hero and his buddies invade the Kilrathi ship, the whole place is choked with green fog.
Oh, and for all this, we never find out why they hate humans.
I came up with a theory. The Kilrathi are the descendants of a bunch of hairless cats who were sent in a probe many years ago to a strange planet. This planet was highly irradiated, and the cats were sent there to see if Earthlings could survive on it. Well, the radiation made the cats evolve very quickly, and eventually their descendants began to look more and more humanoid. They built some spaceships and went to war against humanity, to avenge the fact that the humans never remembered to clean out their grandparents' litter boxes. As for the green fog, that's to remind all the Kilrathi of the awful stench their ancestors had to suffer when their litter was left unchanged.
But, again, this is the screenwriter's job.
And I'm not even going to start on the whole "Pilgrim" thing.
"Wing Commander" gets a three, because of it's parody value and because it isn't as bad as my friend promised but it's close. VERY close. Essentially, this is the kind of movie that "Starship Troopers", as a *very* small part of it's agenda, set out to parody. Go watch that movie instead. It's a great date movie.
I will tell you how much I... well, I suppose the word is "enjoyed"... "Wing Commander" by describing my favorite part of the movie for you.
The setting is a big war in outer space between Earthlings and some aliens called the Kilrathi (more about them later), and most of the action we are chiefly concerned with takes place on a big spaceship that is something like an aircraft carrier. The hero's annoying best friend and his sort-of-girlfriend have disobeyed the leader of their team and, thanks to Cosmic Revenge, the sort-of-girlfriend dies when she crashes her little spaceship into the landing pad thing on the big ship. Now, this is supposed to be the big, dramatic sad part. We cut from a scene where the hero's annoying best friend is crying and begging to save his sort-of-girlfriend, to a scene where the sort-of-girlfriend's ship is being pushed by a little snowplow off the runway thing of the big ship.
In the middle of Outer Space.
In Zero Gravity.
I suppose there's some B.S. about there being big magnets or something lining the runway so that the ships can't just float away. But, you know, that's something that's supposed to be the screenplay writers' responsibility to tell us.
My second favorite part is when we finally see the Kilrathi for the first time. At about the forty-five minute mark, it occurred to me that we don't even know who or what the Kilrathi are. We only know that they're at war with Earth and that they hate humans. But for the first full hour and a half or so, we don't even know what a Kilrathi looks like.
Well, the Kilrathi end up being something like an anthropomorphic Mr. Bigglesworth.
And they really like fog machines. When the hero and his buddies invade the Kilrathi ship, the whole place is choked with green fog.
Oh, and for all this, we never find out why they hate humans.
I came up with a theory. The Kilrathi are the descendants of a bunch of hairless cats who were sent in a probe many years ago to a strange planet. This planet was highly irradiated, and the cats were sent there to see if Earthlings could survive on it. Well, the radiation made the cats evolve very quickly, and eventually their descendants began to look more and more humanoid. They built some spaceships and went to war against humanity, to avenge the fact that the humans never remembered to clean out their grandparents' litter boxes. As for the green fog, that's to remind all the Kilrathi of the awful stench their ancestors had to suffer when their litter was left unchanged.
But, again, this is the screenwriter's job.
And I'm not even going to start on the whole "Pilgrim" thing.
"Wing Commander" gets a three, because of it's parody value and because it isn't as bad as my friend promised but it's close. VERY close. Essentially, this is the kind of movie that "Starship Troopers", as a *very* small part of it's agenda, set out to parody. Go watch that movie instead. It's a great date movie.