Why Do Air Force Movies Suck?
By This is the question I ask in my latest at War is Boring:
Air power should, and occasionally does, sell at the box office. But Officer and a Gentleman, Top Gun, Flight of the Intruder and Rescue Dawn all depicted Navy pilots. In Independence Day, Marine aviator Will Smith saves the world, alternating between a Marine Corps F/A-18 and an alien snubfighter.
The Air Force gets Iron Eagle, in which a teenager with a tape recorder fills in for Maverick and Goose. More recently, Red Tails flopped with audiences and critics. Only Pearl Harbor stands as partial exception. Hated by critics, historians and all right-thinking people, director Michael Bay’s depiction of Army Air Force aviators challenging the Japanese grossed $197 million domestically.
My answer: Part bad luck, part inability to convey a strategic concept for the service. Read the whole thing, lemme know what you think. We’ll have to have another Airpower Movie of the Week sometime soon…
Also, buy my book.