Strange coincidence

[R Pope]

In the cheapie basket at the supermarket I found a DVD of "Hell's Angels" and brought it home. Hadn't seen it in a dog's age. Then, a day later, I rented "Flyboys".
Is it just me, or did Howie H come back to life to make this movie? Same death dive into the Zepp, same vendetta against the black Fokker, same bombing run on the ammo dump....Slightly different lame love story, and even less attention paid to historic accuracy, but then we are talking Hollywood here, so that doesn't matter, I guess.
Computer generated special effects and all notwithstanding, I prefer the original.

[Blue Max]

I thought Flyboys was miles better in terms of story telling, and in fact having a story, emotive range elicited from the actors.

The Hell's Angels love triangle seems to have more in common with Wings but that may just be me. There are certain tropes that are common in the tiny WWI flight genre, such as the personalization of the war against a single individual (usually "von not-Richtofen"). And of course they're going to bomb an ammo dump. How else are you going to make a HUGE Hollywood explosion?

You are right about the death-dive into the Zep, I hadn't made that connection. I believe they refer to it it as an homage. Calling it "stealing" would be rude.