Wing Commander (1999)

You never have the feeling when watching a much maligned movie that the vile hatred it received is overdone, bloated and doesn't really make much sense?

If not, you can stop reading.

If the answer is yes, then you'll understand my feelings whilst watching 'Wing Commander'. This film gets an enormous amount of flack and quite frankly: I don't get it.

I'm not going to say this is a great film, because it's not, but you could do a lot worse concerning some mindless entertainment in science fiction. If you ever need a list, I'd be happy to oblige.

But I digress.

'Wing Commander' is based on the videogame series with the same title. I have never played the games, so I can assume that much of the rage directed against this film has to do with a lack of continuity concerning the original material. If so, I can understand it a little. But let's also be honest: how many videogame films stick close to the source material? Have you forgotten 'Super Mario Bros'? And again: besides 'Mortal Kombat', which was pretty bloody good in its own right, even that one didn't do the original material justice thanks to a PG-13 rating.

So there. Let's judge this on its merits as a film, shall we?

And as a no-brainer flick this is fun. Yes, that's right. I said it. The flaws? We'll get into those in a short while. Bear with me.

The storyline is nothing special, as with most films if you're honest. There's a war between the human race and and alien race of spacekitties called the Kilrathi. Blair is a descendant from spacefarers called Pilgrims and he is assigned to the carrier Tiger Claw, that has to stop the Kilrathi from attacking Earth. That's it, in a nutshell.

The cast is actually fairly impressive. You get Tcheky Karyo, David Suchet, Jurgen Prochnow and Saffron Burrows in one go. Maybe not the biggest of names, but still. Fun thing is that this film is basically 'Das Boot' in space, mixed with some other ideas. ('Battlestar Galactica' very much springs to mind) Why? Because Jurgen Prochnow was the captain in the masterpiece 'Das Boot'.

The film is far from perfect, believe you me. The spaceships and battles are very much like submarines in space (even the design of the carriers mimics this) and whoever wrote this had no idea how space works. There's sound in space, but there was also sound in space in 'Star Wars' and no one gets all pissy about that. Weightlessness and gravity also take a backseat to logic, but okay then. The fact that the pilots pretend their fallen comrades never existed is dubious, to say the least, but this gets 'rectified' by the character of Blair along the way, so there's that. And Jurgen Prochnow plays the racist prick of a second in command, just to bust Blair's balls, but once again: that doesn't make much sense in the overall story. Also, the Kilrathi aren't really that much of a threat, seeing as most of their tactical decisions give away they have the average intelligence of a really, really stupid cat. Fitting, seeing as they resemble kitties. But really, they are such a massive threat that their entire fleet of five ships is destroyed in the silliest way possible.

Sure, cats managed to conquer space, but show them the astral equivalent of a ball of string and they're lost. Lost, I tell you!

But all inconsistencies, plot holes, crimes against physics and some hokey acting aside, this can still be entertaining. You have to turn your brain to a lower setting, but this is in no way as bad a film as many reviews or average score would want you to believe.

Again: I'm judging this one as a film, not as related to the games, which I have never played. Maybe if I had, I would look upon this less favourably, but as is, I strongly feel this one doesn't deserve the hatred.

Perhaps a little loathing, seeing as it's not even near the better science fiction films. But still, I was entertained and if you want a fairly fast-paced, silly spaceromp, you could do a lot worse.