Display MoreGreetings WingNuts,
We all love Alien! Is there anyone that doesn't love Alien? It holds up so well today, despite how 'slow' the first half is compared to movies today. But you aren't bored slowly creeping through the Nostromo's empty rooms for minutes and minutes at a time… if anything, the quality of the visual world building around you makes you wish you could stop and look around. And then once the movie gets going, you're in.
The biggest connection to Wing Commander is that both Wing Commander II and the Wing Commander movie referred to the Ripley character in adapting Angel. In both cases, it's clear what they were trying to do… but making your love interest a stronger female character doesn't approach Alien's treatment of Ripley as the lead. In the case of Alien, the character wasn't gendered until casting, leaving her the sum of her actions. Wing Commander couldn't really get there!
Here's John Hurt as Kane in Alien and as Joe (Kane!) in Privateer 2: The Darkening. Despite the seventeen years between the two roles he's effortlessly charming in both.
Of course, we've also got the famous seats! Ron Cobb designed these acceleration seats for the Nostromo's bridge and then the Wing Commander II team… borrowed… the design for all of the rear cockpit views!
But that's not the only piece of Ron Cobb art Wing Commander borrowed: Privateer's Galaxy freighter is a tribute to Cobb's Nostromo. The ship is often obscured in the final film…
... but looking at the original concept art makes the connection pretty clear!
Alien also created visuals that are 'tropes' today, imitated unconsciously countless tiems. A little example: the alien being 'spaced' at the end of the film is the standard for something being thrown out an airlock. Here it is in the first episode of Wing Commander Academy!
The Wing Commander movie's official magazine features Peter Lamont talking a little bit about how H.R. Giger's biomechanical sets (seen in Alien on the space jockey derelict) was both an influence and something to specifically avoid for the Kilrathi ship sets. In the final movie, you see so little of them as to make it hard to compare!
As the plot evolved, they became more bionic, or bio-mechanical, though not as much as H.R. Giger's stuff. These were different creatures, not oxygen breathers; they lived in an atmosphere of green mist. Their controls aren't screens but long slits of moving lights which look almost cat-like."
Although the word "bio-mechanical" has been used over the years to describe countless ALIEN knock-offs, Lamont was careful not to fall into that trap with the Kilrathi sets. "Look at Giger's work, like the early ALIEN, and you'll find a lot of repetition [in other films]. We wanted to keep away from that. These ship interiors looked almost like entrails, and the set decorators had a great time creating it."
And then there's the alien itself! It would be a stretch (well, a lie) to say that Alien's magnificent creature inspired Wing Commander's rubber Kilrathi… but Alien did inspire the final edit of the Kilrathi which sought to follow in that film's footsteps by reducing the amount you actually see the Kilrathi to simple flashes until the climax. Wing Commander was shot with multiple cutaways to the Kilrathi planning their attack and that was all dropped in the hopes of making the awkward costumes seem scary. Alien had pioneered this but it wasn't to hide a faulty creature… they had a perfect life form and they knew how to present it!
Sully is glad that Ripley rescued Jonesy. Although he also kind of looks like the alien.
