Forum: Off-topic

These are actual reviews from internet movie review sites:

Iron Eagle (1986) Surprised

When Doug's father, an Air Force Pilot, is shot down by MiGs belonging to a radical Middle Eastern state, no one seems able to get him out. Doug finds Chappy, an Air Force Colonel who is intrigued by the idea of sending in two fighters piloted by himself and Doug to rescue Doug's father after bombing the MiG base. Their only problems: Borrowing two fighters, getting them from California to the Mediteranean without anyone noticing, and Doug's inability to hit anything unless he has music playing. Then come the minor problems of the state's air defenses.

Iron Eagle II (1988) Surprised

Chappy Sinclair is called to gather together a mixed Soviet/U.S. strike force that will perform a surgical strike on a massively defended nuclear missile site in the Middle East. Chappy finds that getting the Soviet and U.S. Pilots to cooperate is only the most minor of his problems as he discovers someone in the Pentagon is actively sabotaging his mission. As they begin their assault, Chappy finds that a nuclear strike has been ordered should they fail, which will catch his forces on the ground next to ground zero.

Iron Eagle III (1992) Surprised

Chappy Sinclair is back. This time he tries to help a woman, whose South American village has been taken over by a former Nazi, who is now a cocaine dealer and who uses her village as his base of operations. She manages to escape and goes to the States and meets up with Chappy. When Chappy tries to get help from the Air Force, he discovers that the General he is speaking to, is the Nazi's partner. So, he along with three ageing pilots, take some vintage fighter planes and go there to try and help.

Iron Eagle IV (1995) Surprised

General 'Chappy' Sinclair starts a school for young offenders. Whilst in training the youngsters discover a group of Air Force officers moving canisters containing toxic substances. So enraged by the potential dangers, the youngsters decide to take action. When an evil conspiracy is uncovered, only one man can prevent mass destruction.

Thankfully, Lou Gossett (Chappy) moved on after IV and ended this cruel joke. Cool

Reading that plot for #3 had me laughing out loud...

F-16.net Sponsor

Last edited by elp on Dec 08, 2003 - 10:30 PM; edited 1 time in total

Pumpkin wrote:

elp,

you seem to have a very strong opinion on that show? I remember when Pearl Harbour was screened, someone on ARC actually commented that, "the machine gun belt of the Spirit Fire was not moving". Perhaps we can enjoy these Aviation Movies better when we have zero or even -ve expectation prior? Nonetheless, I must say that, I agree on your opinion. Cool

What about Iron Eagle II. If I remember correctly, part 2 was inspired by the famous IAF Operation Opera.

cheers, Very Happy

You can hit Pearl Harbor over the head with a shovel too.
*The P-40 in combat encounter never happend that way: Not even close.
*The alternate field the P-40s in question were at were small, not all the support junk around.
*The same people that saw combat in the P-40 were on the Doolittle Raid later ??? WTF ???
*The guys friend was an American Volunteer in the RAF based in England doing fighter combat... possible I guess, except that by the summer of '41 most of Germanys air assets were on the East Front. Again possible but questionable.
The producer should get the Joe Pesci treatment in Goodfellas. Beaten severly and buried. Kids will watch the movie and think it has something of historical accuracy in it. Weak, Weak WEAK! Want to see a good movie on that topic: Try Tora, Tora, Tora If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

After I saw IE II, I gave up on the series. IE I was somewhat silly, but not a bad way to waste a few hours. IE II was so pathetic that I don't recall anything about it except they had to attack down a canyon with a SINGLE gun defending against them ala Star Wars Ep IV. That and the gun was a gatling gun that someone had forgotten to speed up the film to make it go fast. It looked like it fired with a cyclic rate of a muzzle loader.

After that I decided to avoid IE III and IE IV to allow me to retain some sense of respect for Lou Gossett....

Broken Arrow was a pretty mindless movie too. Not bad visually, and Travolta was o.k. as the villian, but the tech stuff was pathetic. If you watch the video of the T-birds ejection that is floating around all over the place (not me either!) you can see what a bad idea it is to yank a seat firing handle on some other seat! If the seat launch doesn't break your arm, the rocket blast will make the cockpit rather unpleasant for a while.

In this thread many people have mentioned the Black Sheep and Top Gun. Both of those were pretty cool, if silly also. I watched Black Sheep all the time. Always cracked me up how they had to squeeze their throat mikes to talk. I'd love to see a real pilot deal with that in a dogfight.

Top Gun had great visuals. The cockpits were pretty cool, except I was waiting for Tom Cruise to fall out when flying inverted or pushing negative Gs... (anyone know why?) The story wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't the worst I have ever seen of the genre. At least the love interest was nice on the eyes, and so were the jets...

Flight of the Intruder. I have a soft spot for that movie because I have had my hands on the cockpit used for filming it, and the jet used for the crashed jet scenes over at the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum (don't bother looking now, they are gone, the cockpit back to Paramount, and the plane went to Connecticut I believe.) The book was MUCH better in my opinion, but I didn't feel cheated paying full price to see it in the theater. I have been passing up the DVD at the supermarket because I don't quite see spending $13 on it when there are other things I could spend the money on.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Ah yes Broken Arrow. There is no way two mental weaklings like those would get near a B2. B2 doing "routine" training missions with nukes. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wrong. Most of that stopped after the Palermo incident.

Flight of the Intruder was an Excellent book. I believe they could have made the movie waaaay better. Given the other examples above on a class curve, it gets the gold standard for ultimate accuracy. Twisted Evil

Funny that Bridges at Toko Ri Is still a powerful ( and well done ) movie even today. Yet clueless movie types still get away with trash like Iron Eagle and Pearl Harbor.

Top Gun - I heard that Tom Cruise had to sit on a phone book for the cockpit shots (TC is not very tall)

Broken Arrow - Travolta is actually quite a pilot in real life. I have seen him at the AA Flight Academy to get his recurrent training on their sims. Somewhere on the web I saw an aerial photo of Travolta's house. He can actually taxi his 707 right up to the house!!! (I think it was a 707, can't remember)

Pumpkin wrote:

one more Viper movie came to my mind. Kinda crappy. Again, I can't seem to remember the title... It was about a USAF pilot, stole a Viper armed with Nuclear bomb. Another good guy gave chase, and shot him down eventually......

I saw that one also, don't remember the title either, IIRC the 'good' one smashed his F-16 on the other F-16 right?

Travolta's humble abode:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/upfiles ... x71457.jpg Shocked

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/22/State ... _set.shtml Shocked

They did hit a tankers from Spain in Iron Eagle.

IIRC they tanked mid-atlantic and they had reasonable amounts of fuel onboard as well.

habu2 wrote:

Top Gun - I heard that Tom Cruise had to sit on a phone book for the cockpit shots (TC is not very tall)

Broken Arrow - Travolta is actually quite a pilot in real life. I have seen him at the AA Flight Academy to get his recurrent training on their sims. Somewhere on the web I saw an aerial photo of Travolta's house. He can actually taxi his 707 right up to the house!!! (I think it was a 707, can't remember)

WTLW!!!
Hellooo anybody hooome? Razz

I started this thread a while ago...http://www.f-16.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=297

Last edited by habu2 on Dec 09, 2003 - 01:45 AM; edited 1 time in total

Wow I must be visiting too many forums, can't keep them all straight. Embarassed

habu2 wrote:

OK here's my recollections of Iron Eagle, from 17 years ago:

Young kid with a walkman jumps into an F-16 and manages to fly all the way from the US to the Middle East without refueling, then shoots down everything in sight with unlimited weapons, and without ever getting himself hit. Oh, and the Walkman has a cassette tape with magical powers that enable it to predict everthing that will happen on the flight (can't make myself call this a mission) and tell him what to do. AND he never has to use his piddle pack!!!!

Ebert gives this one two thumbs down. Rolling Eyes

Ah, but he did refuel....there was part when they were going over the procedure, and Doug had to make his voice deeper, so he didn't sound like a kid. And also on the way over, they do show them actually coming up to a tanker...it looked EERILY similar to the ESCI 1/72 kit...I bet it was....

Forum Veteran Joined: Nov 07, 2003 - 09:12 PM Posts: 901

Hajoreh,

Quote:

IIRC the 'good' one smashed his F-16 on the other F-16 right?

he did!?

I remember the good guy and the bad guy are good buddy!? Rolling Eyes

I wish someone can enlighten us on the title.

hahahaha... Laughing

elp,
I shouldn't have started the Pearl Harbour, should I?

Okay, what about JAG?

I've only got one thing to say about JAG....

GRRRRRRRRROOOOOOWRRR!!!
That my friends, is the lovely....Catherine Bell.....Mac on JAG.

OK seriously....yeah, Harmon Rabb is a JAG lawyer and a fighter pilot...yeah uh huh.
And MacKenzie is a 30-something Colonel in the Marines...riiiiiight....

But ya know what, the stories and cases are pretty interesting, and I can sit through the episodes and not be bored out of my mind. And if I do get bored out out of my mind, there' always Catherine to look at....[starry eyed look]....

Forum Veteran Joined: Nov 07, 2003 - 09:12 PM Posts: 901

Habu, is that Catherine Bell!? Well, I guess no one knows better than you!!

What about Sandra Hess (Lt Alexandra "Ice" Jensen) Pensacola: Wings of Gold? Wink

I always find the way she walks in her G-suit, ....kinda funny. Razz

Forum: Off-topic

The Falcons of Iron Eagle/Aviation movies