Worst war movie with good airplane scenes?

[cbk57]

There are a lot of "Bad" movies on here that I have liked or loved.  Back in the 80s I loved Top Gun I was a teenager and really enjoyed it.  There are some I did not even think of I very much enjoyed Pearl Harbor.  I only admit to watching the first Iron Eagle movie but do not recall if I watched any of the sequels.  At the time I liked it a lot.  I recently rewatched The Final Countdown.  It has a lot of great Carrier stuff in it, I enjoyed watching it again.  It certainly is a bad movie but a fun watch.  I am very entertainment oriented when it comes to movies so will forgive a lot of problems.  

 

So far no one has mentioned the original Mid Way or Tora Tora Tora, back in the day I enjoyed those also.  However today they get a lot of criticism.  At lease Midway does.  I do not know if Tora Tora Tora is better thought of or not.  Also I believe there was a pilot/movie version of Black Sheep Squadron, again another guilty pleasure that I enjoyed very much. 

 

I know the series was not a movie but my Grandfather would record the episodes for me and we would watch them, one of my great child hood memories and I miss my grandfather.  He actually had learned to fly before WWII but he served as a technician mostly in rear areas.

Edited May 1 by cbk57

[Christa]

Thank you eoyguy.

 

I believe Pentagon script approval affords film makers some U.S. military collaboration, putting military assets under a film director's directions. A script that depicted naval aviators as smart, brave, sensitive, fun and sexy, PLUS that product was expected to fix falling Navy aircrew recruitment, could comfortably embrace outrageous BS with a nonchalant smile and a knowing wink.

 

Original Top Gun was and is still the tip-top smiling winker, imho.

[R Palimaka]

Probably the worst movie I ever endured was "Eagles Over London" starring Van Johnson. Completely wild deviations from history, including a 1000 plane raid on London. The "Hurricanes" were Buchons dressed up, and the "109s" were Spitfires (!!!) painted with black crosses! It was campy and bad.

 

Not worth looking up even for a laugh.

 

 

[Oldbaldguy]

You’d think directors would be wise enough to let the airplanes do the acting in these movies, but noooooooo.  They gotta put overpaid and often talentless people in ‘em and have them act out some absurd story line that, sadly, the great unwashed often think is true.  No matter what you may think of TG1, the movie was not good enough to cost Art Scholl and his dog their lives.  But it did.  (Aileron always flew with him.)  And all he got was the tiniest one line mention at the very end of the credits.  The on-set caterer got more screen time than that.  I’ll bet the perpetual man child Tom Cruise doesn’t even remember the guy.  I’m a bit surprised nobody mentioned Catch 22.  That movie saved a lot of B-25s, but I still don’t know what it was about. And then there was the one about the two guys and some chick who befriended an AI wingman that becomes sentient and goes rogue and shoots up half the planet including a giant flying gas station floating over bad guy territory.  That one sucked and not even the flying was any good.  But I digress.  Tea and scones, anyone?  I’ll be mother.

[MikeC]

15 hours ago, Oldbaldguy said:

633 Squadron was pretty crappy, all in all.

I will never understand why they picked what must have been the highest-risk plan for neutralising the flak. Would it not have been better to send in 632 Sqn (or 634, or whoever) with rocket-armed Mosquitoes to do the job?

 

15 hours ago, Oldbaldguy said:

And I didn’t much like Dunkirk, either.

I take it you mean the later, more recent one, rather than the excellent 1958 film with John Mills, Bernard Lee et al?

[Timmy!]

The Great Santini 

[Archimedes]

Pearl Harbor is awful and sadly the flying sequences are also abysmal - but why?

 

When it came out on DVD some friends and I watched it. When we saw the Zeros go by the battleships in some cuts, we all thought “that looks a bit fast” so out came the calculators and it turned out that Mitsubishi’s finest were doing Mach 0.89 in level flight. No wonder Hollywood needed to break out the F-14s in ‘The Final Countdown’. 

 

The best review of Pearl Harbor I ever read however was “A love triangle interrupted by some thoughtless Japanese pilots.” 

 

Kind regards,

Paul

[thierry laurent]

1 hour ago, Oldbaldguy said:

You’d think directors would be wise enough to let the airplanes do the acting in these movies, but noooooooo.  They gotta put overpaid and often talentless people in ‘em and have them act out some absurd story line that, sadly, the great unwashed often think is true.  No matter what you may think of TG1, the movie was not good enough to cost Art Scholl and his dog their lives.  But it did.  (Aileron always flew with him.)  And all he got was the tiniest one line mention at the very end of the credits.  The on-set caterer got more screen time than that.  I’ll bet the perpetual man child Tom Cruise doesn’t even remember the guy.  I’m a bit surprised nobody mentioned Catch 22.  That movie saved a lot of B-25s, but I still don’t know what it was about. And then there was the one about the two guys and some chick who befriended an AI wingman that becomes sentient and goes rogue and shoots up half the planet including a giant flying gas station floating over bad guy territory.  That one sucked and not even the flying was any good.  But I digress.  Tea and scones, anyone?  I’ll be mother.

I think you're referring to "stealth"!

[LSP_Ray]

7 hours ago, Archimedes said:

Pearl Harbor is awful and sadly the flying sequences are also abysmal - but why?

 

When it came out on DVD some friends and I watched it. When we saw the Zeros go by the battleships in some cuts, we all thought “that looks a bit fast” so out came the calculators and it turned out that Mitsubishi’s finest were doing Mach 0.89 in level flight. No wonder Hollywood needed to break out the F-14s in ‘The Final Countdown’. 

 

The best review of Pearl Harbor I ever read however was “A love triangle interrupted by some thoughtless Japanese pilots.” 

 

Kind regards,

Paul

 

I knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bad from the start. If you recall, the movie begins with our two "heroes" in a movie theatre watching the newsreels before the movie in 1941. The moderator talks about German tanks blitzing through France while we watch US end-of-the-war M26 Pershings probably during training. As much money spent on Pearl Harbor and they couldn't even find some clips of Panzer II's and Pz 38t's in France? Wow.  

[Archimedes]

9 hours ago, Oldbaldguy said:

You’d think directors would be wise enough to let the airplanes do the acting in these movies, but noooooooo.  They gotta put overpaid and often talentless people in ‘em and have them act out some absurd story line that, sadly, the great unwashed often think is true.  No matter what you may think of TG1, the movie was not good enough to cost Art Scholl and his dog their lives.  But it did.  (Aileron always flew with him.)  And all he got was the tiniest one line mention at the very end of the credits.  The on-set caterer got more screen time than that.  I’ll bet the perpetual man child Tom Cruise doesn’t even remember the guy.  I’m a bit surprised nobody mentioned Catch 22.  That movie saved a lot of B-25s, but I still don’t know what it was about. And then there was the one about the two guys and some chick who befriended an AI wingman that becomes sentient and goes rogue and shoots up half the planet including a giant flying gas station floating over bad guy territory.  That one sucked and not even the flying was any good.  But I digress.  Tea and scones, anyone?  I’ll be mother.

Fully agreed on the B-25 flying sequences in Catch-22: the mass take-off was fantastic Here. No music, no dialogue and a full squadron take off.

 

Most people who’ve read the book don’t know what it’s about either… 

 

Kind regards,

Paul

[coogrfan]

Von Richthofen and Brown (1971), directed by legendary schlockmeister Roger Corman. Not a good movie, but since Corman was able to obtain the services of a number of the aircraft and pilots used in the filming of The Blue Max the aerial sequences are top notch. 

 

 

[eoyguy]

1 hour ago, LSP_Ray said:

 

I knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bad from the start. If you recall, the movie begins with our two "heroes" in a movie theatre watching the newsreels before the movie in 1941. The moderator talks about German tanks blitzing through France while we watch US end-of-the-war M26 Pershings probably during training. As much money spent on Pearl Harbor and they couldn't even find some clips of Panzer II's and Pz 38t's in France? Wow.  

I knew it was going to be bad as soon as I heard "Michael Bay"...

[JeepsGunsTanks]

18 hours ago, eoyguy said:

Yes

 

My choice(s) for worst are Pearl Harbor and The Green Berets. 

 

Pearl Harbor had the only flying Zero with a real Japanese Radial in it at the time. They BARGED it to Hawaii with most of the warbirds from the Planes of Fame, and, I think, the other Air Museum right next door, to Hawaii. The movie was horrid, but the iron flying around was pretty cool, and it had some very hot women in it. But yes, other than the flying scenes, bad.

 

I love the Green Berets though, even though it's terrible, it's terrible in a good way

 

[Borsos]

I think “the Red Baron” with Schweighöfer could be even worse although it is quite ridiculous in some ways anyway (Richthofen and Brown Meeting between the lines, having deep-meaning chats…), but the airplanes and flight scenes are actually well done.

[CaptainA]

If you think about it, you can nitpick just about any show out there. I always find myself complaining about the uniforms and awards in just about every military show I have ever seen. It really detracts from the quality of the movie for me. Some of the mistakes even make the movie ridiculous and hard to watch. 

 

When I was a kid and Blue Max came out, I knew the camo schemes were all wrong. In Flyboys, all the Germans seem to fly red  triplanes. And I could go on and on. 

 

I have recently watched some of these shows again without the critical eye for minutiae, and they were more entertaining. So I will stive to make my models as accurate as possible,  and just let Hollywood make stupid mistakes. But if Hollywood ever needs a technical advisor, I am available.