Cool News
Wing Commander rockets from your PC to the big screen
Father Geek reporting in with a story of cool coolness from downtown Austin, Texas. About 3pm last Thursday, August 6th, the phone here at Geek Headquarters conveyed us an interesting message from none other than Chris Roberts of Digital Anvil. "Would we like a peek at some out takes and the trailer for their new wide screen feature film, "Wing Commander"?" We leaped into the "Tick" (that's our big, blood-sucking blue van), and headed downtown. Now the appointment was for 5pm and it takes us only about 15 minutes to reach the State Capitol that rests in the shadow of the historic old building that is Digital Anvil so we hit a local salad & potato bar to fortify our bodies for what lay ahead.
We enter the lobby of antique brick and raw metal (copper, zinc, & tin) at exactly the appointed time, and the babe behind the counter informs us that Chris is out, somewhere along 5th street. We're near 4th and Congress, so we hang out, checking out the framed stills from the film hanging on these great aged brick walls. Outstanding one of a Kilrathi, and there's Maniac, cooool, and Paladin all rigged up for some sort of weightlessness shoot, and that must be Blair & Deveraux....."Hey, guys!" brings us back to Earth. We turn and there's Chris (shorts, black t-shirt and black ball cap on backwards), looks like he been biking. We ask about the Paladin shot on the wall behind us and he explains that an airlock has been blasted open and he's about to be sucked into space, buuuut......
The tour begins. We trek by a mountain of mountain bikes at the base of the stairway. AAAAAAAAhhhh, I love these new age businesses and businessmen. Chris shows us an eight foot crate of newly arrived computer hardware, mumbles something about gigawatts, and introduces us to dozens of techs, execs, and artists. It's after 5 and he's still got these guys chained to their keyboards, why? The Wing Commander feature is do out this fall, and digital artists are busy twiking the mucho mucho effects shots this galactic war epic requires. We see techs adding lights to the windows of one warship, and another artist is busy removing headlights from another ship. A group of 3 are huddled around another monitor attempting to arrive at just the right lighting for an interior, previous shot live action scene. Everywhere are models of the great warships & fighters used in the film. These are fantastic toys ranging a few inches in length to a few feet, and are they detailed, too cool. We see a wall of production art, ink and watercolors of super cool costumes and makeup. Chris informs us that the're using the same designer who created those great spacesuits for "Armageddon", outstanding. Then we turn a corner and notice that the "Dust til Dawn" and "Desperado" framed pieces have been removed from their niches in the long hallway and in their places dozens and dozens of "Wing Commander" storyboards have been erected, dogfights in space, sneak attacks, and cosmic explosions greet our geek's eyes. Our brains are in sensory overload and we haven't even seen what we came he to see yet.
Finially we arrive at the bare metal of the steel entry door to the screening & conference room, we've been here before, months ago, too see some of the early, raw effects footage from this computer game to the big screen pathfinding effort. Now we would be privy to the finished, yet to be released, trailer and a reel of nearly complete effects footage. The lights dim around the conference table electronic desk (reminds me of David Warner's in "Tron") Harry and I have chosen to sit at for this presentation of state-of-the-art digital artistry. A couple of techs sneak into the shadows. Someone in their group shouts, "turn it up loud!"
The ultra wide screen is bathed in incredible star field light, astounding nebulae spin with color, and the drums are ripped from our ears as rockets blast from behind us to tear onto the peaceful beauty of the scene before us. What "Saving Private Ryan" does for World War II imagery this does for the visuals of war in 2654 AD. Ships twist & turn, racing across a screen filled with depth and color, rockets track & seekout their prey vaporizing them above planets that mere words cannot describe. A huge asteroid slowly cruises into frame. As we drift closer we can see that this "rock" is covered with a lattice work of towers, gun emplacements, antennae and docks...huge battleships sit idle in their berths. Two monstrously large ion engines are imbedded in the "rear" of this mobile naval base. This is Vega sector fleet headquarters - Terran Confederation - Asteroid world Pegasus. From above, we see what must be the shadows of a hundred Kilrathi bombers pass over the surface of this rock, followed by the scream of strange, alien engines.The talon shaped craft dive into frame and begin their bombing run. This is what will be the opening 60 seconds of the film whose goal is to redefine space warfare in the motion pictures. The footage shown to Harry and I is nothing short of fantastic, and Chris Roberts says these scenes aren't finished, they're still fine tuning them. Whoa, I can't wait. Chris says,"reel it up again!" Yeah, thats more like it, let's make a loop and watch it all night. Fellow Geeks, I can't speak of the drama or acting in this film, we haven't seen any of it, but one thing is for sure, this ain't just a computer game any more. It's a big spralling motion picture of worlds, creatures, and war at the edge of the universe that will blast you in your seat. Like I said earlier, this is one old sci-fi geek that can't wait for November to get here.
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What i want to see: Battles between big ships! somthing like death star assualt in ROTJ. Should be cool.
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...stop by your local library!
Heh, no, actually, you can stop by my Wing Commander: The Movie website, which has pictures, info, rumors, and trailers (soon, hopefully).
Dan's WC Page
http://users.nac.net/splat/wc/
http://users.nac.net/splat/wc/ -
If you think that stuff is cool go over to Dan's WC page with all kinds of freakin cool stuff:
http://www.users.nac.net/splat/wc
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I know this sounds rude, but seriously, you should write more often for this site. You can spell and have a way of communicating things lucidly that I appreciate.
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Who should take it over?
Father Geek? -
There's something wrong with the above review. I can't personally understand how such a small budget movie could possibly have such lush visual effects! I mean, I know that money isn't everything - but it is required to purchase those fabulous computers that Father Geek wrote about. How is it that the often predicted bomb within the game industry is actually looking impressive?
Somebody explain.. -
... Digital Anvil is a new effects house and also one of the production companies for the movie so they can do the effects for the at about half the normal cost. They also have some experience on board since most of the staff at the late Boss Films went to DA.
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Do you think that we will have already seen a SW episode 1 trailer by this movie?
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Consider that Each episode of Babylon 5 was budgeted at under a Mil(and they have never gone over budget) and the B5 movies are about 2.5 Mil and the fact that they are using a mostly unknown (chea) cast. It certainly doable.
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I've known about the coming of this movie for quite some time, now. But everytime I think about it.. I can't believe it!
I sincerely believe this movie will be GREAT. It won't win any Oscars, but neither will any of the coming Star Wars movies. But the movies will be FUN, exciting, great to watch. Something that should get into your imagination..
Note that I don't really have a thing for Star Wars' "force" and all. For me.. that was all just background story that, yes, helped out the air/space warfare parts along.. it gave those pilots a reason to be there..
According to something i read.. WC will be a TOPGUN + BATTLE OF MIDWAY
or a Das Boot in space. all three of these movies are great (i don't like Das as much as the first two though)
oh yea may i remind everyone that Top Gun was an immense hit and all it had was a weak romance story paired with a few, but what a few, minutes of great looking air combat (and alot of confusing radio chatter to the your average movie-goer.. it just sounded cool to them :))
has anyone seen the Battle of Midway? great film! action packed and pretty decent special effects.
ah i dunno what i'm tryin to say..
:) bye. -
Making digital effects for TV series is much cheaper than on film. On TV, you are limited to a very small resolution of 320x240 (if my memory serves me correctly) pixels, which is very easy for software to render. On film, you have no real resolution because it's an actual chemical based print, and you have to render the images at an incredibly high resolution so that pixellation is not obvious. So it's not really fair to compare Babylon 5 with it.
After seeing less than spectacular effects for $100 million dollar movies, I'd be very surprised to see if Digital Anvil can compete with that with their measley $27 Million (which is almost nothing these days in the film industry)..
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Ok. I admit, I haven't played the games very much, but from what little I've seen, I'm impressed, and think it would make at least a good impression in the box office. But the thing that would make me out of my seat to see it in a minute would be Mark Hammil, just like in the game. I don't think I've seen him, literally seen him, in a movie since Return of the Jedi...he would probably still kick ass behind the helm of a starship. Anyone else care to agree?
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To all you wing commander pansies that don't even have the balls to post a real email address and think we respect your bashing just cause ya like starwars more is pathetic. Sure, we all love Star Wars, WHO DOESN'T, but don't be bashing out another movie that you have no idea on or even know anything about. A real movie fan and or starwars fan wouldn't need to bash another movie to try and get a point across.
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How can anyone really expect the Star Wars sequels to do well? The reason why the originals did SO good at the box office was because they had good special effects, but also were underestimated. The sci-fi genre in the late 70's was dead or atleast dying after all the crap made during that time with bad stories. People will go into the theatre to see the Star Wars prequels and will be disappointed because their hopes will be for some huge smartly written space drama. Even if it were the greatest special effects film ever (which is not really possible with the amount of changes in the detail & quality of the effects in movies now, rather than no extreme special effects as was the case with the 70's), there is no way that the movie will live up to the expectations of the people who see it. Wing Commander has the better chance of grossing money than a series of movies that will never live up to the hype from its predecessors.
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Now, what I don't get, is why the hell flamers (you know who you are) would start bashing the movie, knowing nothing about it. Most of you have probably never played the games, read the books, or checked the newsgroups. All you see is that the movie is based on the game, and the budget is 27 million.
For your information, btw, you can do a kick-ass movie on 27 million easy. Army of Darkness (one of my personal favorite movies) was made on a budget of about 1/20th of what was standard for the time, but is still regarded by most people as one of the best movies made. The average movie made now cost $120 million, which makes WC about 1/7th the production cost. -
I cannot believe you had the audacity to say such a thing. You obviously have no spiritual beliefs and I cannot believe you--
The prequels opening date!!
I am a big movie fan but to think that you said that a date of a movies release is more important than the coming of Christ is a complete picture of what society is like today.
When Christ does come you will dearly regret this and wish you believed in him. -
Yeah, Christ is great, especially with a little lettuce and mayo on a toasted bun... Mmm.
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Who cares if it has a tiny budget, remember that Star Wars: ANH was made on a tiny 10million dollar budget, and that movie was ahead of its time. Give em a chance!
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Guys, don't lump us star wars fans in with n9tmktvs. He's just an ignorant little shit-stirrer who STILL can't spell 'prequel'.
By the way, yes, it's much easier to get a lot more bang for your buck (heh) when you own your own effects facility. No margins or overheads cuts costs a lot, not to mention a streamlined production process nand lack of double-handling & protracted approval nightmares.I'm sure DA is getting twice as much done than if they were subcontracting out. With Episode 1 it's even more pronounced, because Lucasfilm also own THX and various other production and post-production facilities and personnel.
Film res. isn't as simple as multiplications of tv res., either. Remember that tv's aspect ratio is 4:3 (currently) and film aspect ratios vary, usually 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. -
For those of you who believe Wing Commander will suck because it's based on a game, there are two things you really should consider first. (1) the Wing Commander series (before Roberts left Origin and we were stuck with Prophecy) was a very CINEMATIC game, with strong characters, great music, and a good story. Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and Street Fighter were fun games, but guess what? They had cartoony, unrealistic characters and silly plots, both of which tend to make a movie suck. (2) Guess what? When Star Wars came out, a lot of people thought it would suck because it was sci-fi. Before Lucas, sci-fi was a genre given in to B-movies and cheesy horror flicks. Well, Wing Commander will be the Star Wars of game movies. So far, the only game movies have been sub-par, mainly because the original games lacked the proper elements to create a good movie. And you know what? Wing Commander doesn't lack any of it. So, make sure you leave plenty of room for supper this winter--you're gonna be eating your words.
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Personally, I think it's great that a really good sci fi movie can be made for only $27 million. How do I know it'll be good? I have faith in Chris Roberts. :> I mean, he came up with the WC universe in the first place, right?? The only thing I'm really disappointed about are the Kilrathi. They called in what's-his-name that made the Xenomorphs for Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, etc. so now of COURSE, the Kilrathi look like a Xenomorph. And they need Firekkans. ;>
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Firstly, Chris Roberts wasn't involved at all with Wing Commander Prophecy. Prophecy doesn't follow the Blair storyline, but merely has our hero as a cameo. Wing Commander IV had a good story, following Tolywn's downfall and a war with a fake cause (hence the subtitle : The Price of Freedom), but it wasn't as strong as the first three. Incidentally, the Wing Commander movie is based loosely on the first WC game. Knowing Chris Roberts, this probably means the same concept and basic plot with a few more characters. As for the story being "a combination of every sci-fi in the last twenty years," that couldn't be farther from what Chris Roberts wants. And Roberts isn't the type who'll just let his vision be butchered (ahem, ya listening, Todd McFarlane?). Wing Commander will most likely turn out as Roberts describes it, Das Boot in space.
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After all, the game wasn't really reminiscent of any other sci-fi movie I'd ever seen. It was essentially a WWII dogfighting game set in the future, with a good plot and strong characters.
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I'm not so thrilled about the concept "Das Boot-in-space" because i think that movie was boring. I think (and hope) that Roberts was mainly referring to the look of the movie based on the images i've seen. I mean, the sets for the movie are almost exactly like the ones in Das Boot (pipes and stuff all over the place, the kinda unfinished look). If story is like Das Boot too then dah.. Boring!!
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Satanluvr wrote:
"I know this sounds rude, but seriously, you should write more often for this site. You can spell and have a way of communicating things lucidly that I appreciate"
I'll agree it was a generally well-written post, but if I see one more person use "do" when they mean "due", then I'm gonna' track 'em down and give a "boney-five" to the snotlocker. -
I can't wait for the movie to come out. I've only played Wing Commander III but as soon as I got really into the game I instantly loved Wing Commander. The movie may only cost $27 million but jeez, you can make a kick ass film with just 27 mil. It also includes a great cast. Sure Mark Hamill isn't in it but come on, the man is just too old to play a 20 year old fighter pilot (no offense Mark, loved ya in Star Wars by the way). I think the cast will do great and the movie is going to definitely make lots of money. As for all you lamers posting messages that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the movie, I have three things to say: GET...A...LIFE
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Also, I heard the battle scenes will be done totally by CGI. That oughta rock. Some movies with huge battles only use CGI for a few things, but the battles in the WCM should kick because they're made completely with CGI.
This movie should have great battles. Big battles always play a big part in sci-fi movies such as this. Let me name a few...Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Independence Day, Star Trek: First Contact, The Last Starfighter...you get the point.
Let us also note that WC is more than just blowing up enemies in space. It DOES have a plot. I'm not sure about the plot for this movie yet but knowing that Chris Roberts is directing it I know it will kick ass just like WC3 and WC4 (I watched my friend play some of WC4). When I tried WCP over at my friend's house I immediately decided not to play it. I hated it. Thanks a lot Origin, you're reeeeeeeeeeeeeal great... ::snort:: NOT!
Now, let us all lower our heads and praise the mighty Chris Roberts and his creations, Wing Commander! -
I can't believe the posts on this topic, Das Boot is one of the finest war films ever, if character and atmosphere are boring then it's no suprise that studios keep churning out films based on video games and toys. If Wing Commander comes close to the power of Wolfgang Petersons film then it may not be as bad as the sum of it's parts.
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I dunno, what's with ur spelling for this article. I mean COME ON, get a SPELL CHECKER!!
I don't remmeber "due" being spelled "do", etc.
The article on a whole was ok, but PLEASE get someone who can SPELL! -
Forget the fact that the WC Movie is going to based on a game. That's beside the point in making a good movie. A movie like this hasn't been made in a really long time. Can someone tell me that last mainstream Sci-fi movie that had to do with Space Naval Battles? It matters not the origin of the CONCEPT of a movie, but what the current writers, producers, director, and actors do with it.
FYI for those people who want to know who's in the movie:
Freddie Prinz Jr. is Blair
Jurgen Prochnow(who was in DAS BOOT by the way) is Commander Gerald
Matthew Lillard is Maniac
David Warner is Tolwyn, those are just a few -
Wing Commander is simply to me the most amazing game series of all time. I was practically raised on this game. I've played every single spin off and regular series games. I've even seen the cartoon aired on USA. Chris Roberts is a hero to me. There was one thing that the series had that held it a level higher than most any other game to me and that was plot. The games were smart, emmotional, and purely amazing. (not much to say about part V but hey, it was fun) I have almost no doubt that a story written by Chris Roberts and a movie directed by Chris Roberts has not chance of being a bad story or a bad movie. I have great hopes of this movie to be one of the greatest sci fi movies of all time. (a couple notes: I am a HUGE Star Wars fan, this is my first post here on this site and the Super Mario Movie was an at least DECENT movie) If anyone disagrees with me, fine. If anyone thinks of me being a committed fan to the games has nothing to do with what I really think of how the movie will do, fine. All I really wanted to say is, I believe in this movie to be a movie to remeber as all of the series will find their way to be embodied into a grand movie. I just hope the actors are good enough to play their characters, but with 27 million, what are you gonna do.
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Am I the only one who's pissed that this film is a prequel? I mean this isn't Star Wars for crying out loud. Roberts is no George Lucas. I doubt he can write and direct well to make us forget there's no Hamill, Davies etc. This film will be another Prophecy. Not the WCP was a bad game, it has great gameplay but the FMV stinks. Roberts was going to do a sequel with Hamill and the rest of the WC3 cast two years ago but he's too cheap... hence the 27mil budget.
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