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I think every member of the Wing Commander movie club can agree that 1492: Conquest of Paradise was not the most thrilling film in the world. It's not that it wasn't well made but it just… sort of sat there with lavish production values that never seemed to quite live up to the story it was telling with characters that just weren't engaging enough for you to put your full head into them. But my philosophy is that mediocrity should be met with a little extra work to make things better… so we're going to use our viewing of 1492 as an excuse to really look at part of the Wing Commander movie!

We watched 1492 for a very important reason: its opening titles were a major influence on the ones Chris Roberts created for the 1999 Wing Commander movie (alongside Sphere and The Fan, which we will be viewing in the future). So technically our Wing Commander interest was over in the first four minutes but it was

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Robocop 3 (1993) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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The rarely seen 2006 film Visual Futurist: The Art and Life of Syd Mead is back! The group responsible for preserving Mead's legacy has remastered the film and made it available for sale and rent on streaming services:

• AppleTV
• Amazon
• Google Play
• YouTube

I watched Visual Futurist in advance of this update and found it very compelling! I went in knowing that Mead was both an incredible talent and someone loved by their peers... and the documentary quickly confirmed both of those things. The film doesn't cover his work on Wing Commander Prophecy's Nephilim but it does showcase a lot of incredible art from his storied career, with extended sections covering fan favorites like Blade Runner, TRON, 2010 (topical!) and Aliens. Learning about his thought process about industrial design was fascinating and there was plenty I'd never heard before. I had no idea that he had designed a luxury yacht for Donald Trump and

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Bitterman stopped by the CIC Discord the other night with a cool present for the community: scans of four Wing Commander cover stories from French magazine Joystick. The Wing Commander Prophecy preview is especially interesting... look carefully at the right VDU images in the screenshots and you'll see that some--but not all!--are from the E3 demo.

Joystick 62 - August 1995 - Wing Commander IV preview

Joystick 68 - February 1996 - Wing Commander IV review

Joystick 77 - December 1996 - Privateer 2 review

Joystick 89 - January 1998 - Wing Commander Prophecy review

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GOG.com is turning 17 years old! The Wing Commander series is discounted by 50% to celebrate the milestone. We first reported about them back in 2008 when the company was announced, and their first WC title was Privateer in June of 2011. It's pretty wild how long they've been serving up classic Wing Commander!

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The Wing Commander movie club is home from exploring the new world with sexy Columbus. I wouldn't say anyone loved 1492: Conquest of Paradise but it was certainly a movie you could think about. This week's movie is... not that. We'll be watching RoboCop 3 (1991), arguably the third or fourth best of the RoboCop movies. But it also may just be the kind of movie you need after a week of taking things too seriously! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The big connection for RoboCop 3 is once again that Chris Roberts used some of its music when temp tracking the 1999 Wing Commander movie. RoboCop 3's score is by Basil Poledouris who we previously heard in StarShip Troopers. Chris used "Murphy's Memories" embedded below for the early version of the scene where Blair confronts Angel about Maniac (after the depth charge attack).

RoboCop also reminds us of this classic fellow (robot?