The spaceship to spaceship torpedo broadside is still one of the most badass scenes in any movie. The awesome power of a 17th century naval broadside brought into the next millennium.
Without the religious shit it would have ben a great movie. Same for "Space: Above and beyond" being a good series. Sadly people where to much "trek best" to ADMIT that others existed AND made stuff better. Also little fun fact : B5 was PRIOR to DS9 thus came first and INVENTED "spacestation series"
Personally, I love this movie; I think being a big fan of the games help too. With Mark Hamil playing the lead in the games, I wish they had made a movie with him though.
Not sure if he confirmed it or not, but if you watch the credits, you'll notice Merlin (the computer Blair talks to) doesn't have a name. Just a "?". But pretty much everyone is convinced Mark Hamill did the voice.
Part of me almost wonders if the enemy grew up on a planet that had oceans enable combat in the same way we did. If not, that's a good use of us using our past against an enemy
Hadn't considered that. Looking up the Kirathi homeworld, on the wiki for the Wing Commander games at least it says, "Kilrah is a massive volcanic and seismic world covered in lava flows and volcanoes. There are no oceans, but huge rift valleys forming its "continents". The planet's water is consisted of long and narrow brackish lakes,...." So, huh, I guess they didn't really have much room for proper navies like we do on this world which has 71% of its surface area as water.
Biggest problem I have with this movie is that the Kilrathi were barely a part of the movie. In the games you almost get to know some of them. They way they would taunt you, or even respect you. That was sorely lacking in the movie. Also, the fighters were kinda ugly. The games had a variety of different star fighters, and usually they were sleek and attractive. The movie fighters looked more like an A-10 Thunderbolt II, aka Warthog, which are very awesome, but also kinda ugly to some eyes. I loved it every time I saw it flying above when I was in the army. Only thing that was close was when AH-64s were flying low and slow above us covering our approaches.
The fighters were designed around surplus flight training simulators for English Electric Lightning interceptors...not the prettiest aircraft ever built but they were fast for their time. Like Mach 1 without afterburners fast...in the 1950s and 60s.
For what little existed it was amazing . Specially effects were not to a level that could do them justice. Neither was the story telling or budget. If done today with equal ratio budget and top tier casting and expanded story and time would be a masterpiece that could rival halo str trek or battle star galactica
This was brought up in an interview with Chris Roberts years ago, I think it's somewhere on the Wing Commander CIC page. But in the original script, you never saw the Kilrathi for the most part. I think the only times they were on screen was either on a screen for a second, or a few in the gunfight on the command ship. They were more of a threat that you only ever saw for a flash. The novel is like that and it's far better way, IMO. But right before release, after the movie was done and about to have copies made someone from the studio IIRC stepped in and said that it HAD to have Kilrathi in it. So they literally wrote the scripts for them, got puppets made, and sets, and filmed in a week or two to make the studio happy. Hence why they look like they were slapped together in a brief time. They also cut about half the plot from the movie.
@@Plaprad I missed the Kilrathi gloating and taunting during the dogfights. The fact that the movie didn't have that really rubbed me the wrong way. Still liked the movie enough to watch it many times.
@@briankriens5645 I can see that, it was pretty fun in the game. It's just not something that happens in real life. Personally, I'd rather it not be in a movie because of that. Though you could probably work something cool into it. Not sure if you ever saw Space: Above and Beyond. But there was a scene where the Marines were on the ground and the aliens were using a computer to yell out "insults" in English to mess with them. It was all stupid stuff that just made everyone groan like one was "Abe Lincoln is dead!" Then they made a fatal error when they yelled "Hey Marines, the Cubs suck!". They almost got an ass whopping for that one.
This movie is so.... Hm even Word stupid is understatement, there is so many flaws and idiotic scenes. But, it does have that, SOMETHING. Yeah I love it too :D
That was the best 2 dimensional fighting in 3 dimensional space in movie history, they thought just make an 18th century ship battle in space, it wil look cool.
I always thought it was funny how a space carrier was also a missile/torpedo boat, but had no point defense (something carriers in real life absolutely have, but almost no offensive weaponry, relying on their planes/helicopters and the rest of their fleet to fight directly, and for BVR defense). Also they were travelling alone, something the enemy knew better than to do. It's a trope for sure. Why was the Tiger Claw completely alone? Carriers never travel without their battle group because they are vulnerable and yet extremely valuable assets.
Maybe it's better to think of it as a light cruiser with a squadron, rather than a full carrier per se. IDK. Yeah, though, point defense systems would've been a good idea. Too many things are designed by committees with members influenced by graft, so perhaps that could play a role in sloppy designs.
Most of the modern ships in Confed were designed for solo combat. They could fight together in a fleet, but they were just as at home individually. And they did a good job of it for years. But then those ships started to be lost faster than new ships could be brought up just due to how protracted the war had become. That's why in Wing Commander 3 the Victory is your ship. They started pulling ships out of mothballs to replace losses and bolster what they had. But the older ships were designed to operate in battlegroups instead of solo. That's why the Victory had escorts. Or, IRL, computers sucked too bad at the time and only one ship could be put on until they got good enough to have multiple ships.
It's a similar approach to Germans in WW2 (Graf Zeppelin) or Soviets in Cold War (Kuznetsov) - ship with cruiser level armament and protection that's also carrying aircraft. Or, in a sci-fi setting, a Colonial Battlestar. Point defence in a world with missiles would be a must, though.
You know I really like this movie but it still doesn't make sense that they lower the shields too early when they could have lowered then immediately fired the broadside
Yeah, it does seem like it's not practical for that purpose. Maybe it could be something like allowing for the dispersal of the plasma, in case any remaining ionized gasses might set off a torpedo too close to the ship or something. Otherwise, it's of course for dramatic effect.
Had they gone with the semi-polygonal design of Wing Commander Armada/III they could have probaly made larger and more convincing fighters for the sound stages. But I guess that was the "late war" look.
Oh, and why didn't they have their torps loaded before the combat started? Just a nitpick as I actually liked this movie enough to watch it in the theater and many times since.
@@krokettenpanzer8030 It would more than likely be an autoloading system, of course. The director probably wanted to capture the look and feel of a WW2 submarine movie.
@@briankriens5645 Earlier in the movie there was a line saying the autoloaders were damaged. It's really just an excuse to have humans doing the work of loading the torpedo tubes.
Well, dramatic effect would be the answer in terms of storytelling; although perhaps for the movie's universe he could have been "eyeballing" it for when the plasma's effects had fully dissipated.
@@Bobby90 well, perhaps everything has their limits, that's my best guess anyways. So many at once would overwhelm the shields. Should've been a "pulse wave" though, as with earlier, though perhaps cruisers would have more armor to handle them than fighters.
Movie had so much potential, but Chris flubbed it. Maybe he should have waited, started a kickstarter, and kept it in development Hell long enough to raise enough money to build a production studio while delivering essentially nothing.
They had enough money. If anything it didn't look low budget. The problem was just a bunch of bad stuff like the story, ship designs, Kilrathi designs, the casting... ^_^
Gotta spend their fireworks budget on something. ;p Or what I said before was maybe it's like the Paladin guy was eyeballing the effect of plasma dissipation or something, being a little extra cautious not to let there be enough of a field remaining to trigger the torpedoes right as they left.
I liked the aesthetics of the movie. Ship design, uniforms, weapons. That was a big plus for me, but thats a matter of taste. The Killrathi were strange looking tho, but im not into feline races, so again, matter of taste. The Plot however... well, it could have been much better to put it mildly. Cut out the religious thing, thats the first thing, second thing, the destruction of pegasus could have been so much more. Imagine the Tiger Claw escaping the destruction of the station, to get in range in order to deliver the info about its destruction. This would create a whole hunter and the hunted thing, a bit of submarine hunting thing (there was this scene in the movie that i liked, when they hid in asteroid craters) and once it ended, and tiger claw managed to escape, serve some kind of cliffhanger at the end, as a prelude to next movie, Wing Commander 2. Actually, now that i think of it, Wing Commander would make a better TV series than a movie.
Wing Commander has unfortunately a bad reputation. But what was really the worst Sci Fi movie of 1999 the same year Wing Commander was released? Yeah right, obviously Star Wars Episode 1! Wing Commander is clearly oscar worthy compared to that piece of sh...
Probably for the same reason Infinite Warfare was as well: it was popular to pretend to dislike something, so they jumped on the bandwagon. I've heard it has inconsistencies with the games, but eh I haven't played the games yet myself so I don't have that anchoring bias myself.
@@PsiCorps85 I never played the games. lol. Just liked the movie. I have finished Freespace 1 & 2 multiple times tho. Those two games were amazing. Great campaigns, excellent progression and scale.
I approve of broadside strikes. It's just they should have called it Submarines in space instead of co opting Wing Commander franchise and changing almost everything about it. Kind of a middle finger to us who loved the original content. @@PsiCorps85
The spaceship to spaceship torpedo broadside is still one of the most badass scenes in any movie. The awesome power of a 17th century naval broadside brought into the next millennium.
And Mr. Gerard was Horatio Hornblower's gunnery officer.
such a campy movie. and i love the irony that the whole thing was filmed like submarine movie and jürgen prochnow isn´t the submarine captain
Loved this movie. Still got the original vhs
Bah, I'm gonna ignore the haters and say that I LOVE this movie. 👍
Same. When i was a kid i recorded it on a VHS tape and would rewatch it constantly. Wore that f*cker out.
Without the religious shit it would have ben a great movie. Same for "Space: Above and beyond" being a good series. Sadly people where to much "trek best" to ADMIT that others existed AND made stuff better.
Also little fun fact : B5 was PRIOR to DS9 thus came first and INVENTED "spacestation series"
Same
Wing Commander. I can't get enough of this movie, people!
I love the movie.
Nothing more grand than two Leviathans duking it out at point-blank range!
Indeed.
Personally, I love this movie; I think being a big fan of the games help too. With Mark Hamil playing the lead in the games, I wish they had made a movie with him though.
Not sure if he confirmed it or not, but if you watch the credits, you'll notice Merlin (the computer Blair talks to) doesn't have a name. Just a "?". But pretty much everyone is convinced Mark Hamill did the voice.
@@PlapradIt is him.
It's like something out of the days of sailing ships. Wish they had made sequels rather than just books and more video games.
Part of me almost wonders if the enemy grew up on a planet that had oceans enable combat in the same way we did. If not, that's a good use of us using our past against an enemy
Hadn't considered that.
Looking up the Kirathi homeworld, on the wiki for the Wing Commander games at least it says, "Kilrah is a massive volcanic and seismic world covered in lava flows and volcanoes. There are no oceans, but huge rift valleys forming its "continents". The planet's water is consisted of long and narrow brackish lakes,...."
So, huh, I guess they didn't really have much room for proper navies like we do on this world which has 71% of its surface area as water.
Long Live Duke Leto!
0:14 The TCS Tiger Claw must lower the force field down and fire the port-side missiles to take out the Fralthi-class cruiser.
Loved this movie
@13 seconds that captain piñata from Star Wars 😮
Best part of the movie was the soundtrack. Epic symphony accompaniment.
They had one track and they used it well. Sounded great on a 5.1 system.
When you build a spaceship like a pirate ship...
It's like a giant turd
Great scene. Thanks for sharing!
Biggest problem I have with this movie is that the Kilrathi were barely a part of the movie. In the games you almost get to know some of them. They way they would taunt you, or even respect you. That was sorely lacking in the movie. Also, the fighters were kinda ugly. The games had a variety of different star fighters, and usually they were sleek and attractive. The movie fighters looked more like an A-10 Thunderbolt II, aka Warthog, which are very awesome, but also kinda ugly to some eyes. I loved it every time I saw it flying above when I was in the army. Only thing that was close was when AH-64s were flying low and slow above us covering our approaches.
The fighters were designed around surplus flight training simulators for English Electric Lightning interceptors...not the prettiest aircraft ever built but they were fast for their time. Like Mach 1 without afterburners fast...in the 1950s and 60s.
For what little existed it was amazing . Specially effects were not to a level that could do them justice. Neither was the story telling or budget.
If done today with equal ratio budget and top tier casting and expanded story and time would be a masterpiece that could rival halo str trek or battle star galactica
This was brought up in an interview with Chris Roberts years ago, I think it's somewhere on the Wing Commander CIC page.
But in the original script, you never saw the Kilrathi for the most part. I think the only times they were on screen was either on a screen for a second, or a few in the gunfight on the command ship. They were more of a threat that you only ever saw for a flash.
The novel is like that and it's far better way, IMO.
But right before release, after the movie was done and about to have copies made someone from the studio IIRC stepped in and said that it HAD to have Kilrathi in it.
So they literally wrote the scripts for them, got puppets made, and sets, and filmed in a week or two to make the studio happy. Hence why they look like they were slapped together in a brief time.
They also cut about half the plot from the movie.
@@Plaprad I missed the Kilrathi gloating and taunting during the dogfights. The fact that the movie didn't have that really rubbed me the wrong way. Still liked the movie enough to watch it many times.
@@briankriens5645 I can see that, it was pretty fun in the game. It's just not something that happens in real life. Personally, I'd rather it not be in a movie because of that.
Though you could probably work something cool into it.
Not sure if you ever saw Space: Above and Beyond. But there was a scene where the Marines were on the ground and the aliens were using a computer to yell out "insults" in English to mess with them. It was all stupid stuff that just made everyone groan like one was "Abe Lincoln is dead!"
Then they made a fatal error when they yelled "Hey Marines, the Cubs suck!".
They almost got an ass whopping for that one.
This movie is so.... Hm even Word stupid is understatement, there is so many flaws and idiotic scenes. But, it does have that, SOMETHING. Yeah I love it too :D
That was the best 2 dimensional fighting in 3 dimensional space in movie history, they thought just make an 18th century ship battle in space, it wil look cool.
Just wait till you get to 40k, and see the Imperium's Macro-cannons....
loved the movie!!
Why not just lower the shields slightly later?
I always thought wondered that too.
We wouldn’t be able to get a list of shots hitting the hull.
Very Cool!
I always thought it was funny how a space carrier was also a missile/torpedo boat, but had no point defense (something carriers in real life absolutely have, but almost no offensive weaponry, relying on their planes/helicopters and the rest of their fleet to fight directly, and for BVR defense). Also they were travelling alone, something the enemy knew better than to do. It's a trope for sure. Why was the Tiger Claw completely alone? Carriers never travel without their battle group because they are vulnerable and yet extremely valuable assets.
Maybe it's better to think of it as a light cruiser with a squadron, rather than a full carrier per se. IDK. Yeah, though, point defense systems would've been a good idea. Too many things are designed by committees with members influenced by graft, so perhaps that could play a role in sloppy designs.
Most of the modern ships in Confed were designed for solo combat. They could fight together in a fleet, but they were just as at home individually. And they did a good job of it for years. But then those ships started to be lost faster than new ships could be brought up just due to how protracted the war had become.
That's why in Wing Commander 3 the Victory is your ship. They started pulling ships out of mothballs to replace losses and bolster what they had. But the older ships were designed to operate in battlegroups instead of solo. That's why the Victory had escorts.
Or, IRL, computers sucked too bad at the time and only one ship could be put on until they got good enough to have multiple ships.
It's a similar approach to Germans in WW2 (Graf Zeppelin) or Soviets in Cold War (Kuznetsov) - ship with cruiser level armament and protection that's also carrying aircraft. Or, in a sci-fi setting, a Colonial Battlestar.
Point defence in a world with missiles would be a must, though.
You know I really like this movie but it still doesn't make sense that they lower the shields too early when they could have lowered then immediately fired the broadside
Yeah, it does seem like it's not practical for that purpose. Maybe it could be something like allowing for the dispersal of the plasma, in case any remaining ionized gasses might set off a torpedo too close to the ship or something. Otherwise, it's of course for dramatic effect.
Wing commander was a vastly underated film that did deserve more to be made along with a much larger story arc . NOT ONLY FILM but GAME
Indeed.
How do the torpedo bay dudes know to celebrate? Is there a window down there for them or something?
Well, the enemy firing stopped at least.
Better than Twilight.
Indeed, though what isn't? ;p
I blame the whole movie failing on the fighters looking like literal shopping carts with cardboard wings and a trashcan propeller in front
I thought they were going for some kind of WW1 style thing IMO, like with the robot in Supernova. But, yeah, they could've looked cooler.
Had they gone with the semi-polygonal design of Wing Commander Armada/III they could have probaly made larger and more convincing fighters for the sound stages.
But I guess that was the "late war" look.
La vi la película cuando se estreno a finales de los 90
Guilty pleasure movie, could have been much better but had 'studio interference' apparently
Oh, and why didn't they have their torps loaded before the combat started? Just a nitpick as I actually liked this movie enough to watch it in the theater and many times since.
Probably would've been best to prepare for either side, though maybe they had only so many left.
@@PsiCorps85 Still one of my favorite space battles in any movie. 😃
The real question is: why they have to load the "torpedos" manualy. It's a f*cking spaceship.
@@krokettenpanzer8030 It would more than likely be an autoloading system, of course. The director probably wanted to capture the look and feel of a WW2 submarine movie.
@@briankriens5645 Earlier in the movie there was a line saying the autoloaders were damaged. It's really just an excuse to have humans doing the work of loading the torpedo tubes.
So why did Paladin lower Shields weight 5 or 10 seconds and then fire instead of lowering the shields a second before he did the broadside
Well, dramatic effect would be the answer in terms of storytelling; although perhaps for the movie's universe he could have been "eyeballing" it for when the plasma's effects had fully dissipated.
Better to ask why didn't the Kilrathi's shields didn't matter.
@@Bobby90 well, perhaps everything has their limits, that's my best guess anyways. So many at once would overwhelm the shields.
Should've been a "pulse wave" though, as with earlier, though perhaps cruisers would have more armor to handle them than fighters.
Movie had so much potential, but Chris flubbed it. Maybe he should have waited, started a kickstarter, and kept it in development Hell long enough to raise enough money to build a production studio while delivering essentially nothing.
Could've been better, I still liked it though.
I see what you did there.
Yup... i dont understand, why he not just turned his games into the movie...
this was wwwwwwaaaaay back in 1999 when there were no "kickstarters" yet. hell, internet still came on cd-rom and made screetchy noises
They had enough money. If anything it didn't look low budget. The problem was just a bunch of bad stuff like the story, ship designs, Kilrathi designs, the casting... ^_^
Well that was dumb. Why not wait until the last second before dropping shields?
Gotta spend their fireworks budget on something. ;p
Or what I said before was maybe it's like the Paladin guy was eyeballing the effect of plasma dissipation or something, being a little extra cautious not to let there be enough of a field remaining to trigger the torpedoes right as they left.
I liked the aesthetics of the movie. Ship design, uniforms, weapons. That was a big plus for me, but thats a matter of taste. The Killrathi were strange looking tho, but im not into feline races, so again, matter of taste. The Plot however... well, it could have been much better to put it mildly. Cut out the religious thing, thats the first thing, second thing, the destruction of pegasus could have been so much more. Imagine the Tiger Claw escaping the destruction of the station, to get in range in order to deliver the info about its destruction. This would create a whole hunter and the hunted thing, a bit of submarine hunting thing (there was this scene in the movie that i liked, when they hid in asteroid craters) and once it ended, and tiger claw managed to escape, serve some kind of cliffhanger at the end, as a prelude to next movie, Wing Commander 2. Actually, now that i think of it, Wing Commander would make a better TV series than a movie.
Underrated movie. Great scene, but this scene always kinda annoyed me too. The Tiger Claw is a carrier, but it can also nuke a destroyer?
I suppose it would indicate the terran ships were designed to be more versatile, to allow for each holding more ground or something along those lines.
Good point! Just seems OP
It's not unprecedented. Look at the Russian Kiev Class 'Heavy Aviation Cruisers'. They had a deck but offensive missile launchers as well.
Wing Commander has unfortunately a bad reputation. But what was really the worst Sci Fi movie of 1999 the same year Wing Commander was released? Yeah right, obviously Star Wars Episode 1! Wing Commander is clearly oscar worthy compared to that piece of sh...
I actually really enjoyed this movie. Dunno why so many bombed it.
Probably for the same reason Infinite Warfare was as well: it was popular to pretend to dislike something, so they jumped on the bandwagon. I've heard it has inconsistencies with the games, but eh I haven't played the games yet myself so I don't have that anchoring bias myself.
@@PsiCorps85
I never played the games. lol. Just liked the movie.
I have finished Freespace 1 & 2 multiple times tho. Those two games were amazing. Great campaigns, excellent progression and scale.
garbage movie. Gave up the beautiful ship designs from the games for a giant turd. The Kilrathi designs are just awful compared to WC3.
Never played the games myself, not yet anyways; so without that anchoring, I still liked it at least. You have your opinion, I have mine.
I approve of broadside strikes. It's just they should have called it Submarines in space instead of co opting Wing Commander franchise and changing almost everything about it. Kind of a middle finger to us who loved the original content. @@PsiCorps85