Getting a movie made these days costs a lot of money. I recently watched two aviation themed movies that had star power either in front of the screen, behind the screen, or both yet disappointed because the people behind the film didn’t care enough to get basic details right about the world they were trying to portray. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any dumber, like having escape pods on Air Force one, or Denzel Washington pulling fire handles on both engines but still being able to have power afterwards, or seeing a man sucked into an engine in Die Hard 2 and the engine keep running, here comes Flight Risk and Aftermath.
First up is the film Flight Risk starring Mark Walberg and directed by Mel Gibson. With a budget of twenty-five million you would think that they could have splurged a little and hired an aviation consultant to make sure they had their shit together. But no. Mel was too eager to get to his crazy, bald-headed star Mark Walberg creating chaos aboard a charter flight with a female FBI agent and her witness. I knew things were going to be bad when Mark starts the plane and then immediately proceeds to takeoff. So, was the plane sitting at the end of the runway when everyone boarded, Mel? Not too long into the flight they have a bird strike, which nearly knocks the plane out of the sky. I’ve had bird strikes. The only way you know you had one is because of the thump you hear. Before long Marl Walberg’s character shows his true intentions when he attacks the FBI agent. A fight ensues, and Mark is eventually constrained after being hit with a taser. That leaves the FBI agent the only one left to fly the plane. She climbs into the pilot’s seat, puts on the headset, and then immediately starts calling for help. As if once the headset is on all you need to do is start talking. The writer was so ill-informed that he didn’t realize that you needed to push a transmitter button in order to speak to anyone. Did I mention that the plane has a rearview mirror?
The film takes place in Alaska, so the scenery is beautiful. At one point they’re flying over what looks like Danali National Park. The controller asks for her altitude. The camera pans to the instrument panel where it says 8,750 feet. She replies 3,000 feet. At 3,000 feet they would have crashed into the first mountain they came across.
Then she finally gets someone on the radio who is going to help her land the plane, but Mel has more shit for Mark to do so he just comes on every twenty minutes or so to give her some guidance and flirt. I actually sat through the whole thing.
Next up is the film Aftermath starring an out of shape Arnold Schwarzenegger – a 10.5-million-dollar movie. The premise for the movie is that Arnold learns of the death of his daughter, who is also pregnant, from a plane crash caused by controller error. Okay, I thought. It’s got Arnold. How bad could it be? I’m sorry to say I could not finish this one. The opening fifteen minutes had so many stupid lines of dialogue I couldn’t take it.
When they get to the part of the story where the air traffic controller makes his fatal mistake, they have him all nice and comfy in an air traffic control tower. Then you hear a fellow controller give an aircraft instructions to taxi on 23 Bravo, or some similar nonexistent taxiway. Then our main guy starts giving descent instructions to another aircraft on radar, except this guy is at altitude and would be talking to a center controller and not a local controller. Then he tells the aircraft to descend to 3330. WTF?
Now the controller is all alone in the tower. There are some distractions. He gives one aircraft descent instructions that conflicts with another aircraft. The other aircraft starts to descend. He announces over the radio that he has a TCAs alert. Okay, I thought, at least the writer knew enough to use the acronym for Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). Unfortunately, that’s as far as the writer got in his research. If he had done even a google search, he would have known that the TCAs system doesn’t just give an alert, it also gives avoidance instructions such as climb or descend to avoid crashing into another aircraft. But then you wouldn’t have a movie because all that would happen would be a near miss and two pissed off pilots. Instead, you got one pissed off viewer who had had enough of dumb movies involving aviation.
My recommendation is to head over to my documentary films section where you will find a long list of highly recommended documentary films and documentary series.