Now THAT'S what I call...

[33LIMA 972]

You've seen it before doubtless but just LOOK at that rate of roll, and those half-loops...who's afraid of the Big Mad Screaming Lanoe Hawker???

My own Red Baron DVD - I couldn't resist the lovely Albs, even tho they messed up most everything else in the MvR storyline - had those combat scenes split, either the poster spliced them or there's a version of the movie where they did a better job on the air fights.

The air battle with the O/400s that foolishly came out before dark - not that coming out AFTER dark does them much good, later on in the movie, is also worth watching, especially the clip where Wolf shoots the wing of a Camel and it goes whooshing over his head, also the VFX reel on Youtube, which has some flying sequences not in my DVD, too:

[Dej 17]

Oh well, if we are idly to speculate I think MvR in a D.III might actually have had cause to fear Lanoe Hawker in a SE5!

 

Absolutely dreadful movie, I'm afraid, too ridiculous even to be entertaining. Worse than Flyboys, worse even than Pearl Harbour.

 

But for me, what they did to the memory of Lanoe Hawker is the greatest crime... one that won't be eradicated 'til the replica DH2 flies over the new monument erected where he fell by the present No. 24 Squadron, this November... God willing.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Dej

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Oh well, if we are idly to speculate I think MvR in a D.III might actually have had cause to fear Lanoe Hawker in a SE5!

 

Absolutely dreadful movie, I'm afraid, too ridiculous even to be entertaining. Worse than Flyboys, worse even than Pearl Harbour.

 

But for me, what they did to the memory of Lanoe Hawker is the greatest crime... one that won't be eradicated 'til the replica DH2 flies over the new monument erected where he fell by the present No. 24 Squadron, this November... God willing.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Utter Drivel (imho)

[33LIMA 972]

From the clips I've seen, I doubt ANYTHING could be worse than Flyboys, another potentially fine story is mangled beyond recognition by the same fine tradition of movie-making that brought us U-571 - pass the sick bag, somebody...reminds me of that quote in Macbeth, how does it go...'A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

 

Thanks to Flyboys, a generation will now grow up, thinking you could shoot down Fokker triplanes with a few rounds of trusy ol' .45 ACP - it's a good round and a nice pistol, but it ain't THAT good.

[Dej 17]

At least Flyboys is historically accurate... I mean, you know, it's got lions and all that.

 

Hadn't meant to be quite so acerbic in my initial post, for which I apologise, but the portrayal of Lanoe Hawker in Red Baron I find genuinely offensive.

 

And on the same point as your last, I do fervently hope that no generation will grow up thinking that yon idiot movie (nor Flyboys indeed) is an accurate depiction of a D.III's capabilities, nor those of any other machine therein depicted.

[Hellshade 110]

Yes, I hear there was serious consideration by the Pentagon to scrap the whole Raptor F22 project and just start building Albatros DIIIs. More or less the same flight characteristics, but I hear the pilots objected to the open cockpits at those speeds. :P

 

Hellshade

[Olham 164]

I guess, we have yet to receive a good modern WW1 air combat film.

So far, they were all more or less biased in favour of the nation they were made by.

It would be very welcome, if they could do a proper job in presenting all the known

historical facts right, without any additional emotional trimming, without making

one side look as the good boys and the other as the badies; one side clever and

smart, other side fools and idiots etc. - without all those old rotten war film clichees.

Edited June 28, 2011 by Olham

[Burning Beard 14]

Alas poor Olham, people are human......

 

Beard

[carrick58 23]

:good:Hollyweird will still make Hollywood type films . The Gov will go on financeing the F 22 ( when the current generation of a/c is good enough F-15 ,F-18,F-16 to fight any aggressor nation we might have in the next 10 yrs.) and if it has airplanes in it , I will buy it.

[MikeDixonUK 5]

Well, could've been worse - at least they didn't all start the film flying a squadron of bright red Fokker Dr.1s

[Olham 164]

True, Mike - that is what I still like about these newer films - that you see planes in action,

which you haven't seen like that before, like the Albatros fighters.

If now they would even also care about a believeable FM...

Peter Jackson, how much longer must we wait for you wingnut to come up with all this?

[itifonhom 6]

Well, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Til Schweiger, the actor playing MvR, but you can't expect from him to act!!! IMO his even worse than Schwarzenegger and you know what they said about Arnold, that he is actually worse than Lassie!!! :-)

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Well, there are other candidates in the category of 'Worst Actor in a WWI Aviation Combat Movie', not the least of which is the entire cast of the 1971 stinker, "Von Richthofen and Brown". However, as atrocious as the acting is, and despite a total disregard for actual history in any way, shape or form, at least they flew REAL aeroplanes:

 

 

 

.

[Olham 164]

itifonhom, I'm sorry but the role of MvR wasn't played by Til Schweiger, who played Werner Voss (still terrible casting!).

Manfred was played by Mathias Schweighöfer, who could IMHO have played the role, if they had only cared in writing

about Manfred's carreer instead of a WW1 boygroup.

[33LIMA 972]

Maybe this one will get made, see below. This Aerodrome thread wanders off a bit but at the end OFF is suggested as a possible source of footage, which is far from impossible, remember the UK's Channel 4 used the CFS2 Dambusters addon (with some FS200X scenery?) to enable a modern RAF crew to 'fly the mission':

 

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/movies-television/51769-new-mvr-movie.html

 

I'm with Olham on this. Red Baron was a poor movie for all kinds of reasons but I just love watching those CGI planes, especially the Albatrosses, to the extent I can kind of just wince briefly at the Raptor moves, the silly mass formations and that night battle; glass half full and all that. The sequence in the clip above where the flight emerges from the clouds, then is seen in line abreast, then the view from the Hawker non-lookalike's SE as MvR's DIII swerves away, beautiful stuff...in the 0/400 daylight battlle, Wolf's rounds tearing a wing off a Camel and the 'woosh!' as it flips past over his head...great little snippets, oases in a desert, all the more delectable for that perhaps. The aerodrome views are also very evocative and well done. I'd love to import the MG firing sound into OFF.

 

Probably one day I'll buy and watch Flyboys for the same reason, tho to me it really looks an order of magnitude worse than Red Baron, a few nice sequences but a much higher dose of Hollywood BS to swallow, in between.

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

33Lima,

 

What makes it laughable for me with the battle with Lanoe Hawker, is the fact that the filmmakers did no research i.e. Hawker was shot down and killed on the 23rd November 1916 flying a Dh2, the SE5 first got to france to see active service with 56 squadron on the 7th April 1917. Aside from the fact that the DH2 and SE5 do not even look similar.

 

Also as Dej pointed out Hawker in an SE5 would have killed MVR in a heartbeat, something MVR freely acknowledges in his diary/autobiography when he say that if Hawker had been flying a better plane he would have won the dogfight.

 

Also do you not find it strange that the film only shows aircraft that MVR would have encountered from mid-late 1917 onwards. Considering that he had amassed 52 victories by the time he left the front in late April/early May 1917.

 

Dej,

 

Thank you for the interesting news on the flypast of Lanoe Hawker's memorial with a replica DH2, do you have any other information about the flypast that you could post, or indeed could you post any new information as it becomes available.

[Dej 17]

Dej,

 

Thank you for the interesting news on the flypast of Lanoe Hawker's memorial with a replica DH2, do you have any other information about the flypast that you could post, or indeed could you post any new information as it becomes available.

 

No problem Rugbyfan, if you go to the Cross & Cockade website at www.crossandcockade.com and click on 'Hawker Memorial' under 'Latest News' you'll learn as much about it as I know.

Edited June 29, 2011 by Dej

[33LIMA 972]

33Lima,

 

What makes it laughable for me with the battle with Lanoe Hawker, is the fact that the filmmakers did no research i.e. Hawker was shot down and killed on the 23rd November 1916 flying a Dh2, the SE5 first got to france to see active service with 56 squadron on the 7th April 1917. Aside from the fact that the DH2 and SE5 do not even look similar.

 

Also as Dej pointed out Hawker in an SE5 would have killed MVR in a heartbeat, something MVR freely acknowledges in his diary/autobiography when he say that if Hawker had been flying a better plane he would have won the dogfight.

 

Also do you not find it strange that the film only shows aircraft that MVR would have encountered from mid-late 1917 onwards. Considering that he had amassed 52 victories by the time he left the front in late April/early May 1917.

 

I expect the film-makers were very well aware of the facts of the Hawker air battle, and the various service histories of WW1 planes; I very much doubt it was lack of research. Even well-regarded air war films like the Battle of Britain took some liberties with the truth. In Red Baron the Director chose to re-write MvR's story quite substantially, deliberately, by his own account. And in doing so, badly distorted both MvR's and Hawker's stories. I'd rather he hadn't, or course, the frustrating thing is that the real stories are interesting enough without that. But it was artistic licence, rather than research errors. Students of gangsters were probably appalled by the inaccuracies in 'Bonnie and Clyde' but it was still a watchable film (and that plunka-plunka car chase music was catchy)

 

The aeroplanes and the aerodromes are beautiful and evocative, and the music score is pretty good too. Glass half full.

 

U571 was a much worse submarine film, than Red Baron a WW1 airwar film; what I'm saying is, it was bad, but there are some good bits and it could easily have been a good deal worse.