Saturday, January 23, 2010

Another Hollywood Ending

Sigh.
Sometimes the worst thing about having a lot of knowledge on varied subjects is watching how Hollywood can completely fuck things up and yet still gain praise.

For example, most everyone who knows me will agree that my aviation knowledge base, particularly on the military aviation history side, is immense. That's not me being immodest. When you study something for 30 years, you tend to know a bit about it, lmao. I routinely amaze museum staff when on vacation by the amount I will know about their collections. That makes for a huge upshot, I can start a conversation with people at any time that work at an aviation museum, and most of the staff at Fantasy of Flight know me on sight. The downside? It tends to ruin movies for me. I'm the guy you DON'T want in the theatre for Top Gun, because I know how fucked up the flight scenes are.
Perfect example? The Scorsese film, "The Aviator".
I could go on for hours on the inaccuracies in the movie. For instance, 90% of the XF-11 crash scene is pure Hollywood bunk. He never spoke to anyone over the radio while flying the XF-11, which was part of the reason he crashed. Odie was not on the ground talking to him, he was in the air in a modified A-20 as a chase plane, but on a different frequency from Hughes, so the two never talked. He was not supposed to have retracted the gear at all on the flight, but did so because he thought he knew better than the military that had set up the flight test schedule. After the crash, he never muttered a word to the Marine that came to his rescue, according to all reports, and only shook his head no when asked if anyone else was in the aircraft, then passed out. Odie chased the ambulance to the hospital, which was the first time anyone knew who they were treating.
As for the Hughes HK-1/H-4 Hercules flying boat (Commonly called the Spruce Goose as a derisive term by the press), Hughes himself did not draw up the plans for it. Odie, with other engineers at the NACA facility in Langley, worked on the initial designs. The name "Hercules" came about as a contest at Hughes Aircraft among the employees to name the aircraft. Howard Hughes never named it this and never referred to it as anything other than his flying boat.
Let's not even get into the mental illness side of things, which was portrayed WELL out of timeline.
Those are small examples, but you get the idea.
Still, even with its, Top Gun's, Into the Sun's, and many other aviation films' utter BS, I still enjoy the movies themselves, though grit my teeth through them. With two exceptions. Though there are some inaccuracies in both Amelia from last year and 1983's The Right Stuff, they are among the best, and most accurate, aviation films I've ever watched.
What kinds of films bother you in that way??

1 comment:

  1. I know that you are really good friends with my sister. I am going to write a blog about how she is doing. I don't know how to get in touch with you apart from on here, she didn't leave me people's emails.I hope it is ok.

    Melissa

    ReplyDelete