Anyone Else Critiques Aviation Movie Scenes?

[rcdude07]

I ended up with free sneak passes to "2012" tonight. And I found myself biting my lip on the 3 main aviation scenes. Well, for one the transition from live action to blue screen to computer graphics (CG) was horrible and the flying scenes were obvious CG. And two, the "stunts" pulled by the types of aircraft were unrealistic.
For example:
Scene 1: John Cusak's and Amanda Peet's characters with 3 others board a twin engine Cessna or Beechcraft to escape the crumbling earth. The man flying says he doesn't know this aircraft, then later he says he has to have 85 knots airspeed. (how would he know this without training/reading?) Then he pulls off at 80 knots, from the animation it was obvious he was flying in a stall with no flaps. So instead of climbing up above the land, he flies down in the crevess opening by the earthquake, no flaps. Then from a shot behind the plane, he has full flaps and is weaving in and out and around falling objects and buildings. Completely unrealistic for the full-scale, if you ask me.


Scene 2: an Antonov 225 (in the movie the nose is painted with Antonov 500)
Fully loaded cargo with 10 people and the runway crumbling the plane goes into a nose dive off the end of the runway and some how the pilots are able to pull it into an upward climb almost, but not quite 90 degrees, and roll it with the ailerons quick enough to miss objects. Not to mention they show the pilots jamming the throttle for all 6 engines to full and immediately pulling up. Not taking into account the time for the engines to spin up and start producing thrust.


Okay. Enough of my complaining about the aviation scenes of this movie. If you do the same during movies (point out wrong type of flying for the aircraft, names of aircraft, shots that are supposed to different planes but are the same, just flipped, etc....) post it here. Be sure to include the name of the TV show, cartoon, movie, etc...

If someone else wants to do the proverbial "Top Gun" aviation errors/wrongs/problems, please go for it.

[WingingIt74]

As I recall, just about any 80's movie the Mig was always a F-5 Freedom Fighter, LOL.
http://www.military-aircraft.org.uk/jet-fighter-planes/northrop-f-5-freedom-fighter.jpg
http://www.military-aircraft.org.uk/jet-fighter-planes/northrop-f-5-freedom-fighter.htm

[apprentice1]

O'boy,,,I could go on and on. It is interesting IMO I have noticed that the two most misunderstood "things" in our life is aviation and medicine. I love the terms:
-air pockets
-the engine stalled
-those clouds look dark (that's because the sun cant shine on the bottom of them)
-it looked like a Lear Jet (every small jet is a lear)
-any plane under 130 seats is a "puddle jumper" (that's funny, a 747 can jump a lot more puddles than a 152)
-after I stumble over a crack in the sidewalk my friends say "i'm not flying with you"
- friend "I heard that you are a commercial pilot" me "yes I am" friend "what airline do you fly for?" me "I don't fly for an airline" friend has puzzled look I have to explain that a commercial pilot gets paid no matter what you fly.
they go on and on.
"If someone else wants to do the proverbial "Top Gun" aviation errors/wrongs/problems, please go for it."
OMG, I was instructing and getting started in charter flying when the moving top gun came out, I never watched more than 30 min of that movie before feeling sick. I must admit that we had a lot of people start flying lessons because of that movie over half would not finish because the Tomahawk just wasn't the same as a Tomcat.

O' one more "you don't look like a pilot"

[ATIS]

I can watch war movies without getting mad...18 yrs in the Corps and counting and I pick everything apart...weapons ranges, rate of fire, uniform mistakes, you name it.

[apprentice1]

Sorry about getting a little OT but my last sentence on my last post reminded me of of someone that "did not look like a pilot".

In the early 80's when I started working at a small airport in Lockhart Texas once a day a farmer in a beatup old Chevy would pull up to the ramp and watch a couple of planes takeoff and land and drive away.

One day I ask my boss if he knew who that was? He just said that he's a local farmer that must like airplanes, he comes out here all the time but had no idea who it was. Months went by and almost every day the farmer would stop by for a few minutes.
I happen to be towing a plane near him so I stop to say hello, he told me his name Ronnie Griffith and that he use to be in the Air Force and was a pilot. I started to ask him what he flew but he said he needed to go. I would see him every now and again before I left the area for 10 years
He died in 2002. Turns out he was a UH-1 pilot in Vietnam and had rescued over 200 people. He was also a fix wing pilot (not many were duel rated) and was AC commander of C-141's with over 10,000 hours. We were floored, I wish we would have got to know the......pilot.

I have some more incognito pilot stories for y'all for another time, you never know who you're talking to!

[WJCJR1]

Great stories, spoofs and examples. Keep em coming.

Wayne

[bassfisher]

I love watching "Great Planes" on the Military Channel and start picking it apart. In one of the episodes on the C-123, the narrator (former AF pilot) is describing the C-123 on take-off, but the film shows at C-7 Caribou (my Dad was a Bou pilot) taking off. Other screws up, they love to reverse the film (you can tell when the numbers are backward), constantly show the wrong aircraft, etc.. etc.. Growing up as an AF brat, finally getting ready to retire myself after 29 years in the Army, being a pretty good aviation historian (have a BA in History, after all), I wish I could be a film editor or consultant on these shows to get things right. I really love when the shows screw up WWII bombers (i.e. describing B-17 and showing a B-24). My wife refuses to watch any aviation shows with me.

[rcdude07]

Bassfisher, good eyes! I haven't paid enough attention to Great Planes on the Military channel to catch such goofs. And you would think they wouldn't since the show is about the history........

[WJCJR1]

My wife refuses to watch any aviation shows with me.

Nice! Well then the popcorn's all for you.

Wayne

[bassfisher]

I tend to do silly stuff like that when I watch TV or go to the movies. The new Transformers movies is full of mistakes - if you watch the girlfriend in the big battle near the end of the movie - in some shots she wearing a blouse over her tank top, but the next scene its off, then its back on! And she never gets dirty.

Another funny that I just remembered, on "Greatest Planes" on the P-51, watch some of the flying scenes with the FW-190 and another plane, think it was a Corsair (don't know why it was in that particular part of the show, they were not making reference to combat missions at the time)- they are both RC, you can see the exhaust cloud and the muffler hanging down from the cowling. Near the end of the show, it shows two P-51 that hit each other, narrator says its during a combat mission, but it was actually during a training misison in Washington State.

[rcdude07]

So, this isn't aviation related, but a movie goof in general.

My fiance and I watched "A Christmas Visitor" over the weekend and I noticed every time the TV movie did a flash back, the kids were younger, but the parents never got younger.

[Radioflyer]

I believe I'm finally among me people:laughing:I couldn't believe the beginning of the television series "Lost" where the jet engine is sitting on the beach running. That completely ruined the whole series for me.

Blessings,

Jay

[rcdude07]

Watched the move "Phone Booth" on TV last night. Couldn't help but notice if the sniper was supposed to have been from 1 window the entire time, then why did the direction the red laser was coming from kept changing? For example: Colin Ferrell (spelling?) is shown with the red laser on his chest while he's looking in one direction, then when people come up to the phone booth while he's still facing the same direction, the red laser shows on that person's chest.















*****SPOILER ALERT******










At the end of the movie, Colin Ferrell doesn't have the brains to realize the person thought to have been the sniper isn't because he was on the phone with the sniper at the same time as the other person was talking to him at the phone booth.

[tkrahlin]

Yeah, nobody wants to watch movies with me either...

I haven't been right since the days of Hawaii Five-O when I saw Jack Lord shot the guy off the water tower with a 2" S&W Chief's Special... from the hip.

However, I did learn how to fly watching Sky King!!! :-)