Bad movies based on video games are nothing new. Indeed, the cinematic landscape is littered with their crumbling facades and cracked foundations, from the lame Street Fighter to the bizarre, whacked-out Super Mario Brothers, video game movies have not the greatest track record of filmdom. A rare few of these films have been somewhat decent, such as Mortal Kombat, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
Wing Commander, based on the long-running and extremely popular series of games of the same name, falls squarely within the poor category (of course - otherwise, why would it be here?). You get a nagging sensation that the movie s occasionally trying to be good, but something about it - be it the acting, script, or plot - ends up letting it down, time and time again.
This is made doubly depressing for fans of the games when you realize that the games themselves had better cinematic sequences, from acting to plot to (sometimes) even special effects. Fans were thrilled to see their favorite sci-fi action story on the big screen, but ended up finding themselves more fulfilled by the full-motion video sequences of Wing Commander IV on their computers instead.
Not to mention the fact that we take a serious downgrade in actors from the games to the movie.
Consider the follow, taken from the credits of Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV: Mark Hamill of Star Wars as Blair, Thomas F. Wilson (yes, Biff from Back to the Future) as Maniac, Malcolm McDowell (!) as Admiral Tolwyn, John Rhys-Davies (!
) as Paladin, and (oddly) adult film actress Ginger Allen as Angel. Now, consider the cast from the movie: the dull Freddie Prinze, Jr.
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