It’s clear something is wrong when the opening credits of WING COMMANDER come up. The video games have an impressive cast: Mark Hamill as pilot Colonel Blair, Malcolm McDowell as Admiral Tolwyn, John Rhys-Davies as General Taggart, and Thomas F. Wilson as Major ‘Maniac’ Marshall. In the film, those parts are played respectively by Freddie Prinze Jr., David Warner, Tcheky Karyo, and Matthew Lillard. The video game has a better cast than its film adaptation! I mean, who would YOU rather watch as your lead character: Mark Hamill or Freddie Prinze Jr.? Hell, I’d rather watch a department store mannequin in that role than Freddie Prinze Jr.

I gather WING COMMANDER serves as a prequel to the games since Prinze and Lillard are far younger than Hamill and Wilson, and the film chronicles the first missions of these pilots, back when they were fresh out of the academy and still novice pilots and bad actors. They fly a few missions against the evil Kilrathi, perhaps the funniest name for an alien race in all of bad science fiction, and generally act like they are making a landmark film when, in fact, they are making WING COMMANDER.

The DVD box declares WING COMMANDER “An Action-Packed Thrill Ride!” though the quotation is not attributed to any person, because the movie is terrible and no one in their right mind would call it an action packed thrill ride. Rather, the line should be understood as wishful thinking on the part of distributor 20th Century Fox, who gave writer/director Chris Roberts $30 million dollars and got back this piece of space debris. Perhaps if you were familiar with the characters from the games the action would appear more intelligible. To my eye, it looked like a series of battle sequences strung together with scenes of romantic tension between the male and female pilots. Roberts is so busy blowing stuff up he forgets to add important details like establishing shots so we know the basic dimensions of rooms and spaceships. And have you ever seen a science fiction movie with so many costume changes? Prinze alone must wear five different uniforms throughout the picture. Isn’t it thriftier to wear one uniform in the army and wash it from time to time?

I must admit, however, that there is one genuinely great line of dialogue in WING COMMANDER, one that will stand the test of time and be remembered along with lines like “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and “I don’t drink... wine.” Years from now, people will still remember and quote in their every day conversations WING COMMANDER’s ingenious line, “Mr. Obutu, stealth mode if you please.” It doesn’t get any better than that.

Ironically, this piece of dreck came out in 1999, a year commonly praised as one of the finest in recent Hollywood history. WING COMMANDER is a reminder that even in the best of times, we must remain ever-vigilant against the onslaught of crap. The search for a good video game movie continues.