X-Wing Linkblog Friday
The Aftermath continues to be one of the few bright spots in the cursed wasteland of the digital media. And yes, I realize Icecano is slowly devolving into just a set of links to the aftermath that I gesture enthusiastically towards.
Today’s case in point: X-Wing Is Video Gaming's Greek Fire
And, oh man, Yes, And.
This gist here is that not only were the X-Wing games the peak of the genre in terms of mechanics, and not only has no one been able to reproduce them, no one has really even tried. It’s wild to me that space fighter “sims” were a big deal for the whole of the nineties, and then… nope, we don’t do that anymore. Like he says, it’s remarkable that in the current era of “let’s clone a game from the old days with a new name”, no one has touched the X-Wings. Even Star Wars: Squadrons, which was a much better Wing Commander than it was an X-Wing, didn’t quite get there.
And yeah! You boot up TIE Fighter today, and it still genuinely plays better than anything newer in the genre. It’s insane to me that the whole genre just… doesn’t exist any more? It feels like the indy scene should be full of X-Wing-alikes. Instead we got Strike Suit Zero, the two Rebel Galaxys and thats it? Yes I know, you want to at-me and say No Man’s Sky or Elite and buddy, those could not be less what I’m talking about. That goes double for whatever the heck is going on down at Star Citizen.
(Although, speaking of recapturing old gameplay mechanics, I am going to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Descent 4 came out, it was just called Overload.)
A while back my kid asked me what video game I’d turn onto a movie, and without missing a beat and not as a joke, I answered “TIE Fighter.”
“Dad!!” he yelled. “That already has a movie!”
And, obviously, but the Star War I keep wishing someone would make is the X-Wing pilot show; Top Gun or Flight of the Intruder, but with R2 units. I don’t understand why you spend a quarter billion dollars to set some kid up to fail with his bad Harrison Ford impression before you do this.
So, he said as an artful segue, in other X-Wing news, remember Star Wars fan films?
There was a whole fan film bubble around the turn of the century, during the iMac DV era. The bubble didn’t pop exactly, but now that energy mostly gets channeled into 3 hour Lore Breakdown Videos on youtube that explain how the next 200 million dollar blockbuster is going to fail because it isn’t consistent with the worst book you read 20 years ago. ( *Puts finger to earpiece* I’m sorry, I’ve just been informed that The Crystal Star was, in fact, thirty years ago. We regret the error.)
But! People are still out there making their indie Star Wars epics, and so I’d like to call to your attention to: Wingman - An X-Wing Story | Star Wars Fan Film | 2023 - YouTube
(Attention conservation notice: it’s nearly an hour long, but all the really good ideas are in the first 15 minutes, and in classic fan film fashion it just kinda keeps… going…)
It’s the fan-filmsiest possible version of the X-Wing movie idea. It’s about 20 guys filming an X-Wing movie in their basement for something like 4 grand. They only have one set: the cockpit, and some really nice replica helmets. They use the sound effects from the cockpit controls in the X-Wing games! The group that this this are all in Germany, so the squadron looks like it’s made up entirely of the backup keyboard players from Kraftwork. It’s an interesting limit case in “how can we tell a story when the characters can’t even stand up or be on screen at the same time.”
I was going to put some more snark here, but you know what? It’s a hell of an impressive thing, considering. I’d never show this to someone who wasn’t already completely bought in at “surprisingly good X-Wing fan film”, but I think it demonstrates that the basic premise is sound?
This feels like the ceiling for how good a fan film should get. Could it be better? Sure. But if you put any more effort into an indie movie than this, you need to pivot and go make Clerks or El Mariachi or A Fistful of Fingers or something. The only person who got a ticket into Hollywood from a fan film was the guy who made Troops, and even he never got to direct a big-boy movie.
So, okay, what have we learned from today’s program:
- Someone needs to make an X-Wing-alike.
- If you’re about to spend a second thousand dollars on your X-Wing cockpit, maybe try and make an indie festival film instead?
Now that Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron movie is cancelled, someone pitch a fighter pilot show to Disney+.
I should probably have another paragraph here where I tie things up? But it’s Friday, don’t worry about it.