Well guys, went to see the remake of "Flight of the Phoenix" yesterday. The short version of this report is: don't throw away your copies of the original. Hollywood, once again, has opted for snazzy, highly improbable, special effects to cover-up totally gutted character development and plot. About the only two things not wrong with this film is the restaging in the Gobi desert and the additional of a female character -- but no romantic interest. If I had never seen the original film, I might rate this as a two-star Hollywood potboiler.. as it is, give it 1.25 stars.
Our first problem is with the first sandstorm. How winds of, say
75mph, in a sandstorm can rip-off antenas, engine cowlings, and most amazing of all, a huge cargo door on an aircraft built to fly at 200+ mph is beyond me. But this flimsily built cargo plane loses bits and pieces of itself all over the place. But never mind, because before it loses the cargo hatch, it engages in aerobatic maneuvers that would make a 1920's barnstormer proud. Engulfed in a huge sandstorm that looks like left over footage from "A Perfect Storm" tinted orange, this big bellied cargo plane spirals, twists, spins, stalls, barrel rolls, inverted flight, Immelman turns, and just about every aerobatic maneuver known to man except an outside loop. No wonder the cargo door came off. but again, that's okay because the opening footage of the film has this crazed crop-duster of a pilot hedge-hopping a few hundred feet above the sand dunes and doing 4g banking turns between the hills. No wonder he loses the cargo door later.When they're about to take off, our hero (the nerd engineer) exclaims, from just looking around, that the aircraft is overweight. One hell of an engineer who can estimate weights and balance of an unfamiliar aircraft to a nicety just by watching the cargo being loaded. What's a talent like that doing at a failed oil exploration rig in the middle of the Gobi desert? At least the Hardy Kruger character was visiting his brother. This guy is just "hitch hiking around the world and landed up here." Of course, they had to get the nerdiest looking stereotype of an actor to play the role. I'm surprized that they didn't try to ressurect Wally Cox for the part. But for all the animation this hack portrayed, maybe they did use the late Wally Cox for the part.
So they crash. Spend a lot of time pissing and moaning over water, food, etc. etc., as in the original film, but with nowheres near the same conviction or urgency. These characters have no soul .. actually, these characters don't have much in the way of characters. They're just a bunch of losers lost in the Gobi desert sand dunes with no interactions beyond "pass the canned peaches." Finally, after the mandatory fights, the aborted walk-out attempt, the rescue by captain Townes, etc. they agree to try to build the Phoenix. They don't have a very tough job of it. They have all the pipes and clamps needed to build a-frames, scaffolds, braces, etc. They have a generator, power tools, (none of that gruesome bloody-handed sawing with a bent hacksaw blade as in the original) welding gear -- I was disappointed because I expected someone to trot out a Bridgeport mill and a
14" lathe .. they seemed to have everything else. But they're very slow at it and very ineffective. There's a spectacular fuel explosion (caused by negligence and gross incompetence) that leaves them without lights or fuel to waste on the generator.If the one storm that downed the plane wasn't enough, we get two more. One a thunderstorm and the other yet another sandstorm that buries the Phoenix when it is all done. Anyhow, here's this fat pig of an aluminum aircraft half-buried in the sand and the sagacious captain realizes that the thunderstorm is "electrical" and in a panic gets the crew to throw a loop of cable around the tail of the aircraft and run the cable out a few hundred feet and bury the winch in the sand in order to "ground the plane. "Got to ground the Phoenix .. those wings are full of fuel...." I don't know how much more "grounded" the addition of a cable and winch could have made that buried aluminum airframe.. but it seemed to work. I don't know why they didn't just stick some of those long pieces of pipe they had lying around to attract the lightning. I guess physics works differently in the Gobi desert and in Hollywood.
There is the wonderful "toy airplane" scene. In the original our hero say's "A toy airplane is a thing that you wind up a spring and it rolls along the ground." In this version "A toy airplane is thing that you wind a rubber band... " Wow! an insult to all the old farts like me who flew competitive rubber-powered models. And what about Stringfellow and his rubber-powered model of 1886 or so? Anyone who has ever wound up and handled a big rubber powered model knows that it is no "toy." And one of the most important lines of all, as to how a model has to be more stable than a full-sized aircraft because it doesn't have a pilot is totally garbled. And doesn't make any sense .. who builds free-flight models without radio control these days?
I really have to admire our nerdy here. He does all his calculations long-hand, without the help of a calculator, or even a slide rule. But he isn't very consistent in his design. Early on, he points out that the tail is fried. There's a reasonable rudder and an intact, outboard stub of the horizontal stabilizer. But the inboard portion, with the elevator is wrecked .. "we'll have to do something about that.." he muses. And he does, later on in the picture, the Phoenix has a V-tail -- great solution -- but he changes his mind again, because on take off, it is back to a standard empennage. He's not that good an engineer, though, because he never managed to give the pilot rudder pedals. That means that nerd has to sit in the cockpit, facing backwards, and work the rudder for the pilot. This guy is not only a great engineer, but he manages to establish instantaneous telepathic communications with the pilot. And he does this without ever once over-correcting .. doesn't even have a pilot's tickets.. but he can do that kind of coordination just by feel. Any of you guys who have taken flying lessons know just how ridiculous the two-man pilotage scenario in a jury-rigged monster is likely to be. But we have to have this weird control system because otherwise, he wouldn't have had to crawl out on the boom to re-attach the rudder cables that had been shot off by hostile nomads (lucky shot) on take off.
At the (thankful) end, we have yet another sandstorm. And in that storm, all doubt is dispelled. The Phoenix will fly. We can see it. The wind blows so hard that the plane is bouncing up and down, gear off the ground. It will fly. IT WILL FLY! This guy is one hell of an engineer. And he is visibly impressed by his design.. by the proof that "IT WILL FLY!!!!" There they are, standing straight up in a 45mph gale (their clothing barely fluttering and they are not leaning very hard), but the wind is lifting the aircraft off the ground. And it is that bouncing up and down that convinces them that the Phoenix will fly. It wants to fly.. It is straining to fly. Even the pilot is impressed ... as if stability and control weren't ever an issue and that only lift mattered. Can't figure out how this jerk ever got his wings.. no wonder he's a wreck of a has been pilot flying freight out of the Gobi desert in a 50 year-old beat-up cargo plane that loses cargo doors.
The sandstorm buries the Phoenix so that only its V-tail is sticking out -- either that, or it has been turned to a 45 degree bank, but one wing is mysteriously not sticking out. We get the pep talk and in the next, in a matter of hours, they have completely cleared ten feet of sand from the plane, dug a ditch to get the plane out of the sand, cleaned and serviced the engine, and now they're hauling in harnesses to get the plane moving. This Phoenix, by the way, has an intact landing gear, so it isn't that tough a haul.
The only real drama is at the end, the bit with the Kaufman starters and "wasting" the penultimate cartridge to clear the cylinders. In the original, Jimmy Steward was visibly shaken and conflicted. This guy just goes to it with alacrity and no hint of conflict. Steward was an experience pilot and knew what was what and probably contributed to believability of the film and to preventing the copious Hollywood goofs that plagues this sorry rerun.
Boris