Paul Sir!, I love reading your articles and watching your videos. I’m especially appreciative of your dry wit and your on-the-mark accuracy.
In the interests of encouraging the accuracy… “ …Cruise is in the back of an F-18, including a carrier launch. A Navy pilot is in the front seat doing the flying, …” It’s interesting that the Navy allowed a harbor pilot whose job it is to guide ships in and out of harbors fly one of their F18s. I’d have thought they would have INSISTED upon an actual Naval Aviator. ;>)
Quite true how the story is pretty shallow. I’m wondering why on earth a movie like this can’t fetch a good story. It is a ‘set your brain at the door’ sort of flick. You go here and ignore the story and wait for the flying sequences.
The first eye-roll I had was in the beginning when Maverick takes off with the test plane and looked behind him (his helmet would block his view and so would the cockpit) as he blasted the admiral standing at the end of the runway. I’m not convinced that admiral wouldn’t have been at least slightly singed from being blasted by an afterburner.
Oh hear hear R.N,!
“ultimate hive of curmudgeondry it the Interweb”
Sublime use of verbiage.
It was built as a P-51K and modified as F-6K (prior to delivery), not an F6-K (no such thing). It was restored back to look like a P-51D (basically removed the cameras, changed the propeller and added a second seat). And it is registered with the FAA as P-51K and owned by Valhalla Aviation Inc., of which Tom Cruise is president. So, his company does own a Mustang, but Tom Cruise technically owns neither a P-51D, P-51K nor F-6K, but certainly no F6-K.
I am a NFWS graduate, right as the first movie released. Other than a few flying scenes, I thought it was embarrassingly stupid. The “plot” was which infantile pilot would do the dumbest thing while trying to get their name on the trophy. To hell with aircraft, to hell with RIO’s, to hell with the mission, just get your name on that (completely fictitious) trophy.
The actual school as you might expect, was completely different, the most professional training I ever attended anywhere, with the best lecturers I’ve ever seen. One of the best aspects was that we learned to give far better presentations ourselves, which served us well throughout our lives. Crews took the information back to their fleet squadrons, and gave the lectures and shared the latest and greatest tactics and training with their unit.
I heard this one as a plot, which is to take out a target that a single Tomahawk Land Attack Missile could do after a few minutes of programming, and a Tactical Officer pushing a button while drinking coffee.
The movie is heavily promoted as it the lead in a massive push to get customers back in theaters. Not in any hurry, but I’ll have a look in due course. Probably on my nifty 4K HDTV in a few months. BTDT, have the patch.
Whatever you think of Cruise personally, he generally makes good movies. Nothing wrong with putting your mind in neutral and just enjoying the fun.
Well worth masking up for. Managed a matinee in the IMAX and some social distancing too.
Can’t imagine seeing this on a wide screen after IMAX. It is immersive. The plot stretches it a bit, some ranks seem to manage to get transferred all over the world at a drop of a hat to keep the story going and some operational points are simply eliminated. You know - the usual movie “some events have been condensed” type disclaimer.
There are some lovely nods at the original, some nods at a few other Tom Cruise movies too. Anyone get the one at “An Officer and a Gentleman”? And the Dambusters and Star Wars get their nods too. But at the end of the day - while knowledge of the first movie adds to the experience - this movie stands on its own. And with a lot more hardware in the air and at least three “acts” featuring different hardware - you get a lot more flying for your money. It’s better than the first.
Sure there is some CGI in there. The F14 is real on the ground, but in the air - well… But a chunk of this flying is real. And it’s just worth it for that.
Of course the good guys win - but so what?
For the folks who think it “would never be like that”. Here are two YouTube videos showing this is trained for all the time by a whole raft of the NATO inventory.
First video - from the cockpit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyzAAcpsdEQ
Second video from the plane spotters’ viewpoint (watch out for a flight of 4 x C130’s flying the profile)
Sorry - Richard Gere’s Officer and a Gentleman.
Thanks Brian, it is and was a dang movie for us flyer types, and we enjoyed it for the entertainment. How often do we get to do that?
As to Tom Cruise, thanks. We don’t know who you are as a private person, and really don’t or shouldn’t care. You did your job just as all of us do, and I don’t see what else anyone should expect of you.
I’m looking forward to anything aviation related, good bad or indifferent mainly because it helps all of us escape this insane world and we need those few moments.