Subject: Wing Commander
Warning: you should know that I saw this thing with other Prochnow fans, which made it an extra-twisted experience even for me. If I ever get to relive part of my life, I want it to be this trip to the theater.
This is a movie you should see if you are 1) a serious computer-art junkie, 2) a Jürgen Prochnow fan, and/or 3) fond of Das Boot.
Shortly before attending this flick I was introduced to Paul's Law of Sci-Fi Action Movies, which states that if more screen time is devoted to explosions than to dialog, it's a good movie. So I was sitting there just waiting for someone to utter one line so I could whisper "too much dialog" - and then it happened. We got several explosions before one single word was spoken (voice-overs don't count). Nice start! The bad news is that the dialog-to-explosion ratio overall was at least equal; the dialog probably won out. The good news is, that turned out to be okay because the script was so awful it was bad enough to be good.
The story in Wing Commander consists of all the most hackneyed war-movie cliches you can think of strung together. The young warriors who have to prove themselves - and do; the buddy who sacrifices himself for his friend (though he didn't actually get killed in the process this time); the kid who loses his confidence and has to get it back under fire; the jaded veterans who pretend like they don't care about the rookies but really do; the ill-fated wartime romance; the guy who saves the day by disobeying orders/and or acting against all common sense (this one crops up several times).
The saving grace is that the actors were better than the material. Nobody was brilliant, but they were all good enough that the urge to fling popcorn at the screen never arose.
The art direction was wonderful. You'd have to be pretty serious about liking spaceship battles before that alone would make it worth seeing, however. I am past the point where I zone out while all that is going on, though I did enjoy the wild asteroid belt and the shots of hundreds of space fighters arrayed for battle. [Paul complained that the outer-space scenes were too dark to see anything well enough to enjoy it. -ed.]
There were also fun aliens in Wing Commander which we decided looked like Chinese cat weasels. (Well, you just have to see them.) When the aliens speak you get subtitles which first appear in alien script and are then overwritten with English. Cute.
[It is cute...but then some wet blanket asked, "Who's the alien script supposed to be for? WE can't read it - and the aliens don't need subtitles for their own language." Since these are the same aliens who never thought of changing their attack coordinates after they knew the good guys had discovered 'em, they probably ARE dumb enough to need subtitles for their own language. The real question is, who reads the subtitles to them? -ed.]
And Chris Roberts got his wish... kind of. It ain't "Das Boot in space," but he did manage to parody that film so beautifully in one segment that we almost collapsed laughing. Wing Commander would be a bargain at full price just for that, although Roberts could have achieved the same thing for a lot less trouble and expense if he'd just done it as a Saturday Night Live sketch.
The prevailing theory is that he came up with the idea while writing the script and then decided to go whole-hog and snag Prochnow as the finishing touch, because Prochnow, God bless him, will do anything. [This is not an insult. We LIKE our Jürgen doing anything. Well... almost anything. -ed.] You got the good guys' ship playing cat-and-mouse with the bad guys; then they hide at the bottom of a crater and sit there listening while the bad guys seek them out overhead. There are the whispers (why?), the pings (how?), the sweaty faces, the depth charges, the leaks (air in this case) and frantic damage control - all with Prochnow in command.
In fact, we started laughing before it got that bad. I'd seen Roberts' wistful reference to Das Boot before going to Wing Commander, but I'd forgotten about it. I suddenly remembered it during the battle before the hiding sequence. I don't remember whether it was just the situation or whether Prochnow said something that evoked the thought, but immediately afterward the real fighting started with Prochnow ordering "Fire tubes one and two!"... at which point I turned and looked at Rob, whose face was scrunched up because he was trying not to crack, and we all lost it at the same time and pretty much laughed through the rest of the movie. Personally, I might have calmed down eventually except someone used the word "destroyer" toward the end of this sequence and it put me over the edge for some reason.
No, actually we weren't quite that horrible. Nobody else in the audience smacked us for making a racket, but we sure made one on the way out of the theater. We all had tears coming out of our eyes. I hope they put Wing Commander out on video REAL soon, 'cause I'm buying the first copy.
I may buy several just so I can have Wing Commander in every room in the house.
So the judgment is that if an unintentional and brilliantly funny spoof of Das Boot is your idea of a good time, by all means run out and see this immediately. Otherwise, go if you're consumed with curiosity about the art design and special effects because its value in that department requires the big screen. Reduced to tv size on video, it probably won't look like much.
Subject: Re: Wing Commander
> But the experience just won't be the same if they don't have Chunky the Lung Man horking up major pieces of his respiratory system directly behind them.
Yes, I neglected to cover the entire theater experience. I liked Chunky because he didn't bother me, but he bothered Rob, and Rob was funny. Oh, I heard the guy all right - but when it comes to noises in a theater environment - that's "noise" as opposed to "talking" - my entire nerve system was destroyed years ago when I went to the N.Y. Metropolitan Opera to see The Barber of Seville and was treated to numerous moose calls from a member of the audience during Kathleen Battle's first aria - at a performance which they were trying to film for a PBS broadcast, incidentally. My perspective on that sort of thing has been completely different ever since.
What Rob missed, having dashed in at the last moment, was the girl at the candy counter who's in training for a career as a prison warden, if not an inmate. Fortunately Linda is a good and kindly therapist, and I think that nice chat they had may have set the child on the right track.
Subject: Wing Commander is not dead
it is merely on mixed medications.
Subject: Wing Commander
Actually, the primary thing I remember more vividly than any other was that [Chris Roberts] unashamedly ripped off Star Wars, Batman, and Jurassic Park in the first 30 seconds of the movie.
[I confess to seeing Wing Commander a second time the following week - alone - and while I did not laugh out loud during the "Das Boot" sequence that time, some other folks in the theater did. I don't know whether they were familiar with Das Boot or not...but clearly there is something about "Das Spaceship," as Rob calls it, that tickled quite a few moviegoers.
Just so there's no misunderstanding: we weren't laughing at Jürgen. Jürgen was just fine. In fact, I liked this performance because I hadn't seen him play a bigot before and thought it was interesting, and because he had a worried look about him the whole time which worked real well. The character had a personality, and it sure didn't come from the script; Jürgen gave it to him. In fact, he even managed to make this bigot a sympathetic character. (Linda disagrees, but I'M the editor and I say Lt. Gerald was a flawed-but-sympathetic character. Nyah! Besides, Linda's sore at Jürgen right now so her opinion doesn't count for squat.)
What we were laughing at was Chris Roberts' ridiculous attempt to create "Das Boot in space" in the form of a blatant ripoff. Now there's a stillborn idea if there ever was one...but Chris obviously didn't know any better, and we think he should just keep on making movies until he gets one right. Someone will have to keep us posted on that, because we won't be attending any more Roberts flicks - if there ARE any more. We'll make an exception if Jürgen, God forbid, ever does another Roberts film. But we'll go wearing black armbands and bags over our heads.
Weeks after Wing Commander came out I accidentally started a fracas over whose fault this movie really was. Some blamed Jürgen for not turning down the role outright. Some thought he'd been suckered into it. (How? Easy. Roberts wrote and directed the dang thing. Who knows what the differences were between the script Jürgen saw and what Roberts decided he wanted after the contract had been signed and the cameras were rolling? These things happen all the time.) In any case, we all thought Chris Roberts deserved a good, hard wedgie. We still do.
I was in the sucker-theory faction until somebody pointed out that most likely Jürgen didn't care what anybody thought of it, because Chris Roberts probably threw an enormous wad of money at him to do it. Which made me feel much better. I can't blame Jürgen for that. I'd insult one of the greatest movies in the world for an enormous wad of money too. (Come to think of it, I do that for free almost every day. I wish somebody WOULD pay me for it.)
Besides, there's something to be said for laughing all the way to the bank, and I can't help thinking that the early comparison of "Das Boot in space" to a Saturday Night Live sketch may not have been an accident. There's something about Jürgen's appearance in Wing Commander that's suspiciously evocative of Willam Shatner's infamous "Get a life!"
And if that's what this was about, it was brilliant and Jürgen should get a medal for it.
Linda is still calling Jürgen really nasty names because of it, however - or she WAS. She seems to have worked through the anger stage and has graduated to depression, so now I'm getting stuff like this from her: "I loved and admired Jürgen...and it's all crumbling around me... He carries a sign that reads 'Will yell ARM TORPEDOS ONE AND TWO for food.' He may have been a joke to you, but I loved him."
Well, you can see how serious this is. The very idea that Jürgen was ever a joke to me! Why, Jürgen saved my life. I used to do slave labor for beasts who chained me to a desk, flogged me for following orders, and paid others for all the work that I did. Then I started watching Jürgen, and now I'm in a new office where they give me cookies and donuts, paychecks, and sparkly awards to put on my desk. Does Jürgen rule in my house? You bet! He could drink all the Cokes and eat all the Peanut M&M's...rest his feet on the kittens...spill Schnapps on my beloved Tadashi...I wouldn't say a word. But this Wing Commander business has sent Linda right around the bend, and something must be done. Soon.
So will you screenwriters out there PLEASE get busy on a story in which Prochnow marries Sigourney Weaver and runs over Uma Thurman with a car, or else put him in the sequel to The Matrix and let him punch Keanu Reeves for fun (just once, that's all we ask). Either one would soothe our injured souls and allow us to put Wing Commander behind us, where it belongs. Thank you. -ed.]
You saw it twice?! Sheesh, you deserve at least the Purple Heart.
Yeah, I should be making extra money in my spare time, standing on a traffic island at a Rt. 1 intersection with a collection bucket and a sign that says, "I sat through Wing Commander twice. Please help."
It wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be. I would put a chunk of the blame on a bad script. You're talking about someone who made a movie out of a computer game. How sad is that ? I think that Jürgen did a good job with what he was given and probably enjoyed the little nod given to "Das Boot". Wink wink. I think that the "adult actors" did the best job with the material given to them. So, I give a hats off to Jürgen, Tcheky Karyo, David Warner and David Suchet. The special effects were ok, but all through the movie I kept thinking that I should click my mouse somewhere for a better scenario.