It's 2654 and Earth is fighting an interstellar war against the Kilrathi Empire. The Fleet Headquarters at Pegasus Asteroid Base is attacked by the Kilrathi. Its Navcom A.I. computer and the secret hyperspace jump to Earth is taken. This puts the Kilrathi fleet 40 hours from Earth and two hours ahead of the main Earth forces. This leaves the carrier TCS Tiger Claw as Earth's only hope. The crew is joined by Lieutenants Christopher Blair (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), Todd Marshall (Matthew Lillard), and Commodore James Taggart (Tchéky Karyo). Blair is a child of a Pilgrim who fought against the Confederation and supposedly has special hyperspace navigating skills. Blair and Marshall clash with their flight leader Lieutenant Commander Jeanette Deveraux (Saffron Burrows).This has a lot in common with "Starship Troopers" from over a year before. Sadly, the special effects are inferior and it isn't quite as much fun. The lower budget probably had a lot to do with that. Prince and Lillard are playing standard characters. It is very standard sci-fi without any surprises. That is its main drawback. I love space battles like any sci-fi fans but these characters are thin. They have no flesh and blood. There's not enough fun. There's not enough grit. I played a version of this game back in the day but the hometown discount can't bring this up to a pass.

Having been a fan of the "Wing Commander" game franchise back in the day then it was with some anticipation that I sat down to watch "Wing Commander", although I had a gut feeling that I knew that it had a high possibility of being a poor movie experience.And once this 1999 movie ended, I must admit that you are left with a hollow feeling and a somewhat sour taste in your mouth. Director Chris Roberts didn't manage to capture the essence of the games, and the movie turned out to be a shallow experience and poor movie in general.The story in "Wing Commander" was adequate, albeit not super thrilling. But the movie was killed by the lack of convincing effects and the choice of acting talents. It just felt like you were watching a movie made for teenagers, given the actors and actresses they had opted to cast for the movie. And not even with talents such as David Warner and Jürgen Prochnow making appearances were director Chris Roberts able to salvage this movie.The fans of the game franchise will remember the Kilrathi as being menacing feline humanoids, but they are presented as something that resembles an over-sized gerbil in the movie, and do not really look like the feline creatures that were in the games. And that feature was really a hard pill to swallow and it really sent a low blow to the movie.If you were fan of the games, then stay well clear of the movie, because it is nowhere near to having captured the spirit and heart of the game franchise. If you are unfamiliar with the games, then this 1999 movie doesn't really offer anything that you can't find in other Sci-Fi movies."Wing Commander" manages to harvest a more than generous three out of ten stars from me, just because I wanted my love for the game franchise to go to the big screen.

It seems that there are a lot of people out there that never really liked this movie, but as far as I am concerned it wasn't all that bad. Granted it was based on a computer game in which Mark Hamil, among others, played starring roles, those obviously when the film came out minus Mark Hamil people were incredibly disappointed. Personally, which I had played the game and enjoyed it, I did not expect it to be identical to the game, and also noting that the creator of the Wing Commander franchise directed it, I at least knew that it was going to have the original creative juices flowing into it.Since Wing Commander is a space flight simulator where you fly space fighters around and shoot up Kilrathi, that is in effect was I was going to expect from this film as well, namely lots of dog fights between Kilrathi and Humans. Also the main characters from the game (and the only ones that I can remember were Paladin and Christopher Blair, though I suspect that there were a lot of others as well which I recognised from the game).The thing that I really appreciated about the film was that a lot of the craft had a very World War II feeling to them, especially the raptors, that basically looked like World War II fighter planes (without the propeller because propellers, and in fact jet engines, don't work in space). Unfortunately you don't see much of the Kilrathi, and when you do they are only briefly shown before they are gunned down, however what you do see are their ships. I guess this is because we are simply following the main characters, who are all humans, around and only being able to see what that see.As I said I liked this film, not only because it was science-fiction and had a fair share of dog fights, but also because of the way they created the setting. I also remember seeing this movie with a friend of my who was also a big fan of the games (though I only ever played one of them).

I've seen a few movies about some serious conflicts in space, this movie looks the same but a little bit better. I'm not talking Star Wars here, but this movie is definitely not a train wreck as people say, it has a good script, it has some good action and a good love story. Check this out, a rookie pilot fights aliens, becomes a hero and gets a nice girl at the end of the day. My only problem with this flick is editing, I think that there were a lot of pieces left behind and cut, so if the studio puts out a director's cut - I am definitely buying it.You won't waste your evening watching this one, even your girlfriend can come along, after all this movie stars Freddie Prinze Jr.