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The somewhat amorphous length of a generation is, give or take, about twenty-five years. This means that as of today, the Wing Commander movie is a generation old… and, it follows, so are those of us that once eagerly anticipated its coming. I've written extensively about whether or not it was good (it was not) and what it means to me (I love it dearly) and I don't need to relitigate any of that today. In fact, the war movie cliches about old soldiers are more accurate than ever: the guns have stopped, we're the old men, all quiet on the western front and alike. The bickerings and debates and once-so-important battles of our youth have passed us by as gracefully as such things ever do. No one in 2024 could conceive, for instance, of caring about the Tiger Claw's missing possessive or what the Ralari /really/ looks like or even particularly to complain about Freddie Prinze Jr.'s casting.
If anything, the Wing Commander movie has settled into an interesting little niche we didn't see coming: people kind of like it. It's not the second coming of George Lucas (sorry, Chris Roberts)... but it's also not really trash anymore, either. Every time it's mentioned on social media you get an inevitable host of people who view it as a guilty pleasure or a fun escape or a movie they thought deserved more attention. And that's kind of neat! Much of that is the sheer uncaring numbers of it: many, many more people can (fondly?) remember seeing Wing Commander the movie on DVD or cable TV than ever considered playing Wing Commander the game. Some frustrating old fictions remain–like the idea that including the Star Wars trailer printed money for the project (Wing Commander was a giant box office flop!) or the endless incorrect claim that the movie thinks the characters need to be quiet in space to escape the Kilrathi (thank you, Mr. Ebert)--but they're occasional bits of interest to politely point out instead of life-or-death challenges to nerd battle. The Wing Commander movie has improbably, probably done better for itself than anyone could ever have anticipated.
Instead, today I'd like to answer a question I'm asked regularly: why study Wing Commander today? On the surface there's not necessarily anything there. We aren't going to cure any diseases or change any minds or break open the universe in some shocking way. If we're lucky we might play a new game someday and that's about it. Even in the realm of liberal arts, there clearly aren't deep meanings or ideas to uncover. So why spend my time, say, charting out all the battles from the movie to make an accurate kill score, or tracking down all the background characters, or contacting costume makers to help identify illegible name tags? Why do these things that don't seem to add up to any satisfying whole?
It's because loving something this way is where the journey starts and not where it goes. We aren't celebrating Wing Commander because Wing Commander is the greatest movie or the best game or the most perfect story… we're celebrating it because it's ours and from the understanding we have of it we form connections to each other and to new ideas. We learn new things in every conceivable field because we take a harder look at some piece of Wing Commander. It's a compass or a Rosetta Stone: from considering the movie we come to new things we never could've considered otherwise. Whether that's diving into some piece of source material the movie references or learning how the game worked its magic under the hood, we start from loving Wing Commander and we come to know and think about other things. I've experienced art and music and political thought and ideas and an understanding of how other people create because I started from trying to understand Wing Commander. And that's even more important because the biggest lesson I've taken in three decades of fandom is that it is deeply important to surround yourself with people who love things regardless of what those things are.
The connections we've made over Wing Commander have made us better, more whole people and they've given us such important relationships. I did not feel like writing this update today. I've been having a bad time lately and I frankly would have rather hid in a hole somewhere. I was content to let the anniversary pass with the lazy man's option (some tweets). But my dear friend Chris Reid, who I have enjoyed Wing Commander with for all these years (including the movie on this day way back then!), messaged me and asked me if I could write a few words. He said he thought I would do a good job of capturing the anniversary. And immediately I was excited to contribute: to help my friend and to say something that someone seemed to want to hear. And when I can't manage to make anything else work right in this universe, I can still fall back on Wing Commander. And I know Chris BECAUSE of Wing Commander and we've come to have lives and families and dreams and hopes and all that bullshit together BECAUSE Wing Commander has been our lingua franca. And I remain so excited to find new ways to speak it and to see all the new places that will take me.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm needed at the edge of the universe. You see, all hell is about to break loose.
