I should begin this with an effort to be fair. When I agreed to go see "Wing Commander" with a friend of mine, I had a rather dour view of it going in. However, I was basing my view on the past performances of its two stars, Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr., in "Scream" and "Scream 1A" (otherwise known as "I Know What You Did Last Summer"). While neither movie was all that great in my opinion, I did develop a much greater respect for "Scream" after watching "Scream 2" (I won't go near "Scream 2A," otherwise known as "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"). Also, I had never played the computer game that inspired the movie. Keeping these things in mind, I decided to keep an open mind, which wound up benefiting me later.

Anyhow, with that preamble, I can comfortably say that "Wing Commander" is not the worst movie I ever saw. But it tried so hard to be, that it deserves points for the effort. As the opening credits roll, it tells a bit of a story of human exploration into deep space and a conflict that arose as a result. Not many details were given, but to offset that the necessary information was given during the movie (and in a very subtle fashion, too). But I digress.

Whatever hopes I had of this proving to be an interesting sci-fi movie were dashed in the first couple of minutes. Our movie begins at a Federation (ok, different movie, but same idea -- and not the last of those, either) outpost in the Andromeda galaxy. The first efforts to remove from luster from the movie came about 60 seconds later when I found out that Nokia will still be making computers in the year 2654. The filmmakers wanted so desperately to drive this point home that this was clearly shown twice (I guess buying Nokia stock will prove to be a really good long term investment). Then, from out of nowhere, our villains, the Kilrathi, attack this space station/defense outpost. We find out, via dialogue, that they must be after the Pegasus Star Navigator System, which would allow them to find the coordinates for traveling to Earth to mount an invasion. Before the station commander can hit the self-destruct button, the command center door is destroyed. Presumably, our villains enter and steal the device, but we don't get to see that. In fact, we don't get to see them at all until there are five minutes left in the movie. But we know they're out there and that they're baaaad news.

Seven hours go by before anyone realizes that the above outpost was ransacked. Now, time is against our heroes, as by their calculations, the Kilrathi will reach Earth space in 23 hours. The fastest our heroes could get there is 25 hours. Oh no! Earth is screwed! Wait! In a plan of desperation, our good guy fleet contacts the closest group to the Kilrathi whereabouts in an effort to stall them, while the rest make towards Earth in all haste. At this point, my friend wondered why it was no one thought that Earth could not hold out for two hours until reinforcements arrived. I guess it's because we're dealing with the Kilrathi. We don't know what they look like, but we know they're out there and that they're baaaad news.

Being rushed to join the delay contingent are two recent Academy grads, Lts. Blair and Marshall, played by Prinze and Lillard respectively, on ship commanded by a gruff but congenial officer (of course). We learn (via dialogue) that reason the Pegasus Star Navigation System is important is because without one it is extremely difficult to navigate through a black hole, unless you are a Pilgrim. Pilgrims were the first human deep space explorers who, after time, developed the ability to navigate said obstacles by sense, a gift that has been passed on genetically. Lt. Blair displays such an ability when, as they are about to go through a black hole and veer a hair off course, Lt. Blair brings them through unscathed. Here is where the open mind helped, because we are introduced to brand new physics! For those of you believing that black holes are sources of ultra-dense matter that collapses on itself due to intense gravitational fields, you would probably be skeptical of any vessel (a) maintaining structural integrity when flying through to the center of the black hole where the field intensity is rumored to be strongest, and (b) using the black hole as like a wormhole through space. But you'd be wrong. You're probably the same type of people who don't think Nokia will still be around after 700 years. This served as the starting point for some more new physics the movie would enlighten us to later.

Upon joining up with the fleet, our intrepid heroes check in with the group leader. Lt. Blair's father had a very distinguished military career before dying, but his mother's contribution to his heritage calls his loyalty into question, as she was Pilgrim folk. We don't know why yet, but that shouldn't be important. Lt. Blair gets upset (understandably so). They go to check out the flight bay. Lt. Young sits in a cockpit and is quickly quizzed on flight maneuvering by a flight line mechanic. When Lt. Blair says he usually doesn't take advice from greasemonkeys, said greasemonkey informs him that she is in fact the wing commander (whose name escapes me, thus she will be referred to as such for the duration) for this group. Oops. Lt. Blair is next informed the he is sitting in the former Lt. Chen's plane. Oops again. This leads one to conclude that, since no fighting has taken place as of yet, and his plane is on the flight ready line, that Lt. Chen did not die in the proudest of manners. However, this is never illuminated.

After his faux pas in the flight bay, Lt. Blair is bumming. So, his friend Lt. Marshall takes him to the cantina and shows him how to make friends in the true fighter pilot fashion (bravado and alcohol). Of course, tension among the group forms when Lt. Young mentions Lt. Chen's name. Lt. Blair is then informed that Lt. Chen never existed (which leads one to wonder why he has a fighter on the flight line). Lt. Blair retorts that, while he's never met the man, he's pretty sure the Lt. Chen did exist. Some pushing and shoving abounds, and Lt. Blair's cross, which he wears around his neck, comes out. This cross, though, is the one worn by the Pilgrims. Now his fighter wing starts to doubt the loyalty this kid has. The wing commander enters, and order is quickly restored, though tensions are still thick. As Lt. Blair leaves, he finds out that out here, if you die, you never existed. I guess this makes that whole part of writing "the letter" to the next of kin easier for commanding officers.

Lt. Blair walks into the quarters of the commander of the vessel he came in with and delivers one of the best lines in the whole film. Holding his cross out, he says, "I've been getting crap for this my whole life, and I don't know why!" I stopped laughing in time to hear the reasoning (kind of interesting but not really important). Anyhow, it turns out that the Pilgrims thought their gift for navigating black holes was a gift from God, and made them superior to humans. This led to unpleasantness between the humans and the Pilgrims, culminating in a war in the not too distant past.

I understand the filmmakers' desire to make sure this point is illustrated. The difficulty I have is that our hero has been oblivious to this information for his entire life, whereas no one else he has ever met has had trouble putting the pieces of this puzzle together. I can't imagine this didn't come up at some point before now. Oh well, maybe he forgot. This would not be a stretch because Prinze's acting style is such that his character has a confused look on his face 80% of the time (the rest is split between anger and happy). I think this is consistent with his other films as well.

I could continue on in this fashion, but two things will occur. I will bore you to tears, and I will get carpal tunnel. Plus, those who don't get to see the film will not have the pleasure of seeing the film the way I did, an experience all should have. So, in an effort to condense this somewhat, the remainder of the story may be told as such:

- Lillard's character pulls some crazy stunt coming into the flight bay after a patrol and gives himself the call sign "Maniac." (Where have I seen this before?)

- With the entire wing out on patrol, they encounter the Kilrathi. The wing commander's ship is near where the Kilrathi are sweeping, so Lt. Blair breaks with orders (a recurring theme) to save her. This is bad because the Kilrathi know that the good guys are out there, and that they are baaaad news.

- After fighting off a group of Kilrathi, "Maniac" performs a stunt in finishing off the last enemy that winds up killing a fellow pilot, who happened to be female and who he happened to start sleeping with shortly after his arrival and who happened to be the only other female in the squad and therefore had a special bond with the wing commander. (Where have I seen this before?) It is during one of the touching bonding sessions that we learn the wing commander and Lt. Chen were a bit of an item, usually something frowned upon in military circles.

- **New Physics!** Maniac's girlfriend dies after her ship hits the runway leading to the flight bay. Since no other ships can land with her there and no rescue is possible, a bulldozer pushes her wrecked craft off the edge of the runway, where it falls. In space.

- "Maniac" is in trouble with the rest of the squad. Lt. Blair tells everyone to get off his back -- that he feels bad enough. Apparently, this makes everything better.

- Fighting with a large Kilrathi vessel damages the main battle cruiser. One such unsettling example is a hole in the flight bay, causing air to rush out into the "vacuum" (I'll explain that next). This is fixed by four guys picking up a very large steel door, which does not look like styrofoam at all, and allowing it to fly across the bay, thus plugging the hole. "Maniac" gets hurt during all of this. Now he's not such a bad guy.

- **New Physics!** The main battle cruiser is severely damaged and so must hide from a very large Kilrathi cruiser in the area. They do so by hiding on an asteroid in the vicinity. The Kilrathi are clever, though, and begin bombing runs and dropping probes on each of the asteroids to try and find the good guys. The good guys are wary of this and are under strict orders to be absolutely silent. This tends to suggest that sound waves do in fact travel in a vacuum, different from the conclusions of some rather smart people in the early 1900s.

- To help restore the battle cruiser's damaged fuel cells, a clandestine assault team infiltrates the very large Kilrathi vessel. The team is made up entirely of pilots, not Marines, or anyone else remotely qualified for such an undertaking. The entire squad encounters all of one bad guy. The one person attacked by the lone bad guy is Lt. Blair, who, after turning around and seeing him quickly and accurately, blasts him. And what was he doing all by himself? No idea. It gets better. Lt. Blair has inadvertently found the Pegasus device on this vessel, with the coordinates they will be using to attack Earth. No attempts are made to take or destroy Pegasus, but the clandestine assault team makes sure to note those coordinates.

- **New Physics!** With apparent disregard for how many of the reinforcements actually need to make it to Earth (at least three are lost en route), the fleet makes up the two hour discrepancy by running engines at 120% power rating, making it into position at least an hour before projected Kilrathi arrival. Somewhat bothered by this, I made a quick calculation (ok, I'm a nerd). If the fleet traveled at 120% the entire time AND the engines were all 100% efficient (only theoretically possible), then the fleet would have made it to Earth at the exact same time as the Kilrathi. Since they did not start at 120% power rating and got there early, one must assume one of three things: (1) the engines the fleet uses are better than 100% efficient (suggesting that, once again, long held scientific principles are grossly inaccurate); (2) since the time difference between the Kilrathi and the fleet is never mentioned after the first ten minutes, it's possible the filmmakers forgot this somewhat important piece to the story; (3) the filmmakers have absolutely no idea how time progression works.

- The only way to get these coordinates to the fleet in time is to fly through a black hole. Since there are Kilrathi fighters everywhere, the fighter wing must go out and cover "whomever" is selected to do this mission. At Lt. Blair's not-too-subtle objections over the silliness of the if-you-die-you-never-existed rule to the wing commander (his superior officer), the wing commander visits "Maniac" and helps convince him to fly again by telling to do it for his now dead girlfriend. Since the wing commander is willing to admit that his girlfriend once existed, "Maniac" gets ready to fly.

- Obviously, Lt. Blair is chosen to fly through the black hole (the Force is strong in this one...oh, wait, different movie). He is given encouragement by his former commander, the deep cover intelligence officer (where have I seen this before?), who shows Lt. Blair his Pilgrim cross, which had been hanging around his neck for some time, and something about the intel officer that was not really disguised anyway. But remember, Lt. Young = confused look.

- The fighter wing clears out the Kilrathi fighters. However, the wing commander's ship is hit and damaged, so she must eject via a small escape pod that has one hour of air in it. Lt. Blair flies his ship up to hers to make sure that she is all right. He then admirably states that he will get her to safety and his mission is not that important compared to her. Ignoring for a moment the professional miscue for a junior officer trying to carry on a personal relationship with their commanding officer, it would seem there exists a remote possibility that delivering a piece of information crucial to saving the world as they know it carries a little weight, maybe. After being convinced by her to leave and continue on his mission (which took some prodding), he puts his hand up against the glass of his cockpit, and she does the same. It is nearly impossible to convey the sappiness of the moment to any justice, but I can warn you to be prepared to laugh quite a bit.

- Lt. Blair makes it through the black hole and gives the coordinates to the fleet. However, the very large Kilrathi vessel, the one with the Pegasus Star Navigation System that was not disabled or destroyed or taken back, comes in right behind Lt. Blair. He decoys them out to a black hole that emits a beacon of whatever collective organization Earth is now represented under. He evades it, they don't, and so they are sucked in and destroyed.

- Lt. Blair flies back up to the fleet, where they are destroying the Kilrathi as they come out of hyperspace. Lt. Blair then flies all the way back to the battle cruiser, back through the black hole, and STILL makes it back to his ship before the wing commander does (and there was no question she wouldn't). Upon greeting a superior officer back onto the cruiser, it is followed with an embrace (awww). Now nobody doubts Lt. Blair's loyalty to the Earth people (where have I seen this before?).

Again, not the worst movie I ever saw, though not for lack of trying. The unintentional laughs alone make this movie almost worth seeing. Almost.

Scene to watch for: The fighter getting pushed off the flight deck.

Best line: "Why does everone think my orders are suggestions?" uttered by the Wing Commander, who apparently failed to realize her orders were issued like suggestions.

Things that make you go "Huh?": Choose your favorite.