Wing Commander (Film Review)

1999 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Chris Roberts; Written by: Kevin Droney
Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard, Tchéky Karyo, Jürgen Prochnow, and David Suchet
MPAA Rating: PG-13; Running Time: 100 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 3/10

Humanity ventures into deep space and finds they aren't alone in the universe. Apparently, they're sharing it with a lion-like humanoid species called the Kilrathi, who wants nothing more than to wipe the human race from the cosmos. Fortunately, the Kilrathi don't don't know the location of Earth. Unfortunately, they've just captured a human computer that contains the coordinates. Now, it's up to one lone ship to get back to Earth first and rouse the defenses, before the Kilrathi arrive with genocide on the mind.
For much of Wing Commander's runtime, it is simply mediocre, a forgettable 1999 space combat film with unremarkable characters, okay special effects, and a simple plot that's somehow rendered incomprehensible by script and directorial failures. And then the aliens show up. 

The computer game series upon which this film is loosely based didn't have to worry about dropping millions of dollars on CGI to make its enemy Kilrathi believable. This movie does, but due to a stingy, greedy studio, it doesn't have millions. It apparently has virtually nothing. The moment the Kilrathi are fully shown, 3/4 into the movie, Wing Commander goes from a mediocre, forgettable film, to one that's memorable for the worst reason: the aliens look like a straight-to-VHS $5 CGI monstrosity that I wouldn't even be able to take seriously if I watched this with my glasses OFF. It's insane how badly the Kilrathi look, and even more insane that Chris Roberts, who also created the computer games, decides to include so many clear shots of them in the film, instead of just filming them as silhouettes, shrouded in darkness.

Suddenly, Wing Commander isn't just a mid-tier 1999 film. It's one of the worst films of the year, and one I'll never forget it.