Flyboys

vonSchaller · 22 May 2007, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Der Grüne Flieger

One the whole, the individual people you meet from any country are usually terrific. If you keep an open mind and try not to let the press or popular opinion cloud your impressions, things usually turn out fine.
Phil

Phil, this sentence says it all. 100% agree

BTW: "Kampf in den Luften" is a little wrong. "Kampf in Lüften" is better.
(Or "Kampf in den Lueften")

@David: This is a 1971 2,2l 911 E (E for Injection). The car was born in the
same month and year as i was.

David_Layton · 23 May 2007, 11:06 AM

My ride is a 1966 Triumph TR4A irs.

vonSchaller · 23 May 2007, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David_Layton

My ride is a 1966 Triumph TR4A irs.

that`s funny...my boss owns one of these. He`s a Triumph-fan and has always a bad joke for me and my "allday-MX 5"

BTW: picture ?? irs means "independent rear suspension", right?

Der Grüne Flieger · 23 May 2007, 05:31 PM

vonSchaller,

Thanks for the help on my "Kampf in den Luften", I'll make the change right away. You may be interested to know that tag line came from a medal or commemorative made in honor of

Oswald Boelcke. I'm not sure if I made a mistake when I wrote down the line or it was wrong on the medal, I don't have that book now.

Phil

vonSchaller · 23 May 2007, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Der Grüne Flieger

Thanks for the help on my "Kampf in den Luften", I'll make the change right away. You may be interested to know that tag line came from a medal or commemorative made in honor of

Oswald Boelcke. I'm not sure if I made a mistake when I wrote down the line or it was wrong on the medal, I don't have that book now.

that is new to me. I know "Kampf in den Lüften is a painted picture from a well known WW1 - art painter named Harry Heusser (Austrian). He created that one in 1915. There were more pictures of him following later on.

Romani · 30 June 2007, 05:37 PM

It was finally shown on theaters yesterday, and I just have returned from seeing it.

I had purposefully avoided all spoilers and trailers, but knew enough of what to expect to have very low expectations.

My take on the movie? What can I say? Saying that it has been filmed by a 10 year old and the script was made by somebody whose idea of WWI aviation is having leafed through an "Enemy Ace" comic would be inaccurate and an insult to the intelligence of children worldwide and a superb piece of art.

Looking at movies like this... I wonder if the people who film them and the people who dig them are aliens, because I can't believe they inhabit the same planet as I do.

Made by a mental retard for a lobotomized audience. Par for the course for an awful lot of American movies recently.

As an unintentional farce it was amusing. I pity the poor actors and anybody associated with this movie since they have dug themselves into a deep grave.

Summing it up: A waste of fine CGI and special effects.I don't care if the rest of the movie is crap, I went in for the aerial scenes. And I must say the CGI were really good and the fights, unrealistic as they are, were at least entertaining and give the viewer some idea of the whirlwind of air combat. The Nieuports were very good, the Gotha and the Handley Page were gorgeous, and I couldn't get enough of that Sopwith Strutter, though that one was real.
I must say I liked the colors, and the airplanes looked more convincing than those of Pearl Harbor.

I can't understand the guy that perpetrated this movie. If the know how and the money was there, why waste it in the all red triplanes? It's a given a triplane has to appear in a WWI movie, but is sooooo trite and lame to have all them. The battles would have benefited from using Albatros or DVIIs for the enemy and the Dr I for the villain. I'd expect that somebody whose brain has been rotten by gaming consoles like the director, scriptwriter and the target audience would understand the concept of "end of level boss".

I would like to forgive the director thinking he had absolutely no clue of what he was doing, but the movie looks like a copy paste from scenes of "Dawn Patrol", "Hell's Angels" and *groan* "Lafayette Escadrille"

I don't mind a cartoon if it's well done, I'd have enjoyed a movie adaptation of the "Enemy Ace" comic and history be damned, but I found offensive the "based in true facts" title at the beginning. I also think it's in bad taste being so frivolous with the subject matter. A war movie should be serious. Throwing in a couple scenes of wounded, mutilated and a guy that roasts alive seem like a perfunctory nod to the cliches of "war is hell" before going on with a rip off Star Wars scenes with biplanes. Glorification of violence is ok, Peckinpah did violence porn after all,and with good results, but Flyboys did something worse, it banalizes it. War is not a videogame.I am sorry but that's the impression this movie gives.

So in the end, the only thing that can be salvaged from this movie is about 10 minutes of flying sequences and the pretty French girl. The scenes in the bordello were a good idea, but needs to be taken further in the next WWI movie. After all, drinking is not the only thing WWI airmen did when off duty!

From the technical viewpoint, the movie suffers from a slow start. The introduction of the characters was slow and boring until the action started. Aviation movies should always start with an action sequence.

Flyboys is a bad movie, but not the worst I've seen, it's not as bad as Peal Harbour. 2 hours of passable entertainment if you have time to waste.

As for WWI aviation movies, better than "Lafayette Escadrille", "Dawn Patrol" (sorry guys, but is dated) and "Aces High" purely on the merit of flying scenes, a draw with "Von Richthofen and Brown" , worse than "Biggles" (wich I enjoyed, B-movie as it was) and faaaaar below "The Blue Max"

Peter Jackson, hear our prayers, there's the potential to do a great WWI aviation movie more or less realistic and historically accurate, or to do a great pulp cartoon, but Flyboys falls somewhere in between and fails badly.

Kilian · 1 July 2007, 02:22 AM

100% agree! I wont spent more time on talking about this more than disappointing movie.

Yeoman · 1 July 2007, 02:56 AM

It actually opened here on the first of June but Unfortunately closed so quickly that I didn't get chance to see it!

I think I shall wait untill someone lets me borrow their DVD copy before I see it.

28 July 2007, 06:36 AM

Why is it that Hollywood always rewrites history in a vindictive insidious way? Those dozens of red Fokker triplanes? Just Hollywoods way of showing that "Americans shoot down red barons all the time". The German ground troops taking over the fair French maidens house. Given the chance, the director probably would have had the Germans dressed in SS uniforms. He stereotyped the behaviour and implicit intentions of the WW1 German soldiers as typical big bad SS type Germans. I knew this movie would be a crock of shite before I watched it. I just steeled myself because I wanted to see just how bad Hollywoods attempt at rewriting history would be. The Yanks were nothing but a post-script to WW1 despite all the chest beating on their part. Given another couple of decades and more movies like this, it'll soon make another movie "based on fact" where a yank gets a score of 80 in WW1. The only fact correct would be that some-one in WW1 actually did shoot down 80 confirmed enemy. Hollywood won't tell the audience though that it was a German.

Kilian · 28 July 2007, 02:18 PM

Beside Flyboys beeing a bad movie, i do not agree with you in seeing any anti german tendencies in it. It was simply bad researched and not spent too much attention to historical details like planes and markings. This movie is fiction why beeing mad about it. More critical i would find if the coming MvR movie would be like you described Flyboys but that will not happen since its not a hollywood movie.

regards
Kilian