2. Wing Commander
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAxG4u_rqug I'm a massive fan of combat flights sims like the Ace Combat series, so when I managed to pick up a SNES at a car boot sale I made sure to get myself a copy of Wing Commander as it seemed to fit the genre of combat flight sims - the story line did throw me at first as the "cats in space" enemy seemed a tad too silly but I went with it anyway. What followed was a good 5 hours of fun that I thoroughly enjoyed. Sure ,the graphics weren't great, the music was kind of annoying and the controls a tad simplistic - but hey, this game came out over 20 years ago, who was I to complain? I stored the game away for another time and thought nothing more about it until I saw that there was a film based on the game. I was hesitant at first due to Uwe Boll ensuring I'd never trust a video game adaptation again, but if I'd given his movies a chance why shouldn't I give this movie a chance? Unlike with other video game based movies the person who created the Wing Commander series, Chris Roberts, wrote and directed the Wing Commander film. Now surely if you were behind the games and directed the cut0scenes for the third and fourth game you'd try and make sure that the movie was as close to game as you could get, right? The main issue I had with the film was that it felt rushed, but according to an interview Chris gave to PennyArcade, Fox gave him 2 months to create the film to ensure it was released before they closed the deal for the Star Wars prequels. Now when you're going to be making a special effects-driven film that's set in space, you're going to need a rather large budget - sadly, they only gave him $20 million to work. Let's not pull apart the cast and instead concentrate purely on the story. In the games the Kilrathi are cats, sure they walk on two feet and just like most cats are covered in fur; in the film they appear to be completely hairless. This may seem as a pathetic point to grasp onto, but when I'm fighting giant space cats in the game, I want to be able to see this in the movie, not see a bunch of cats that have somehow got their hands on a few bottles of Veet. Not to mention the last time I checked, the character I wasn't playing was a normal human being not someone out of Star Wars. Why Chris decided to portray him with latent mystical powers is beyond me, there was no mention of this in the game at all. It seems that he also decided that the ships designs that fans had started to recognise in the games weren't good enough for the films. Being a patriotic Brit I'm all for using the design of British fighter jets in games, but not when I'm trying to watch a film that's primarily set in outer space. It may seem like I'm trying to defend Chris Roberts here and I kind of am: the Wing Commander games were great fun and although they have dust all over them, they still hold a place on my shelf. The film may have got a lot wrong and it may have been a downright terrible film, but at least he tried. Unlike Uwe Boll, he's accepted that the film was bad and has apologised to fans and seems to be generally disappointed in the outcome of the film. I've ranked it as number two because no matter what, it was a terrible film that did seem to conflict with the game in many places. That being said, I forgive Chris because he gave us so many great games and doesn't seem to have the god complex that Boll has adopted.