[Pete Hill]

The Der Rote Baron is not a bad film (I have certainly seen a lot worse). The excess gloss, the sentimentalism and the enormous licenses taken with historical fact are its major flaws. The air-fight sequences, although there are too few, are excellently produced. If the film had got greater exposure outside Germany, the movie could have garnered an oscar nomination for its special effects and CGI.
Will Peter Jackson ever produce his rumoured desired WW1 air-war epic? At the present time, that would be doubtful given that movies are business afterall and must turn a profit. After 'Flyboys' and 'Der Rote Baron' bombing so spectacularly, WW1 air-war films now look like a very bad investment. Indeed War films and historical epics in general are now seen as un-attractive proposals, given that most of the big-budget ones produced over the last ten years have performed either poorly or only moderately well at the box-office. War films like 'Windtalkers', 'Enemy at the Gates' & 'Flags of our fathers' have all done relatively poorly, as did historical epics like 'Kingdom of Heaven', 'Alexander', 'Troy' & 'The Alamo'.
However, the long-rumoured remake of 'The Dambusters' is finally under-way, with production beginning in New Zealand a few months ago after two or three years of delays. Peter Jackson is producing and British Comedian and Writer Stephen Fry, well-known for his enthusiasm for military history, is writing the screenplay. At first I feared that Jackson would let his imagination run wild and succumb to the temptation to exaggerate the action into a CGI spectacle. I worried that I would see ranks of Lancasters being attacked by hundreds of Messerschmitt nightfighters swarming down like hordes of bloodthirsty Orcs! But then I remembered that Jackson has a genuine passion for wartime aviation and history and I am confident that he will be respectful to the historical truths.

Pete