MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* I'd never heard of the popular nineties video game "Wing Commander" before hearing about this feature-film adaptation in 1999. I never caught the movie in any venue before streaming, and only completism justified seeing this box-office bomb at all.
Headliner Freddie Prinz Jr, playing COMMANDER's main hero Chris Blair, went on record as stating that when he signed on to the project, he really liked the script he was given-- but that the actual shooting script was "shit." There's surely more truth than poetry in that assertion. Even if I had not had Wikipedia at my disposal, I feel sure I would have noticed how the script for the theatrical release tosses out plot-threads and then summarily drops them like hot coals. One of the most obvious occurs in the first half hour. New pilots Blair and Marshall (Matthew Lillard), fresh from their training-school, show up at their space-station barracks to introduce themselves to their new crewmates. Immediately before this scene, Blair makes the mistake of sitting in a plane designated for another pilot, thus getting on the bad side of one of his superior officers, Commander Devereaux (Saffron Burrows). Then. when Blair and Marshall mention the incident to the other pilots, one of them, Forbes (Ginny Holder), claims that the designated pilot no longer exists and should not be spoken of. It's a nice scene of its kind-- and the existing script never follows up on the subject.
The main plotline is no better. We see nothing of this era's futuristic Earth-culture except the spacefaring military, and the entire film concerns the space-militia's attempt to beat back the hostile forces of the Kilrathi (catlike aliens only seen a couple of times in the movie). However, we hear a little bit about a group of early Earth explorers called "Pilgrims," but only because Blair is half-Pilgrim on his mother's side. The current human culture has some sort of bias against Pilgrims, for what reasons the viewer never knows, but a lot of people in Blair's new crew are prejudiced against him for his heritage-- though the script handles even this basic melodrama clumsily. The main purpose for the script to mention the heritage at all is because being half-Pilgrim has imbued Blair with mad piloting skills, enabling him to navigate through black holes and stuff like that.
There was also apparently a subplot about someone in the Earth-forces being a secret ally to the Kilrathi, but all of it was edited out. A lot of this crappy plotting might be bearable if at least the space-combat scenes were exciting, but director/co-writer may hold the record for Worst Space-Fights Ever. The only slight recompense for watching this turd was that the four principal actors did pretty well polishing it. Prinze, Burrows and Holder are as good as is possible, but Lillard makes the most of his second-banana character. Since he's probably going to forever known for playing and/or voicing Shaggy Rogers in the SCOOBY DOO franchise, it's refreshing to see him playing a largely straight role for once.
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