fighter movie review

fighter movie review

Analyzing the Evolution of Fighter Movies: A Critical Review

1. Introduction to Fighter Movies

Naturally, there are those heroes who are unbeknownst to the rest of the world, “World War II ace.” The villains are either the Germans or the Japanese. The plot concerning fighter warfare varied from heroic precision bombing missions, a typical example of which is Command Decision, to the barnstorming “you be the bad guy” scenes wherein the intention is for the audience to root for their guys to win the fight. It is this former breed of fighter movies that has given rise to the perception of those in military aviation as “The Glamor Boys,” a term used by Wynn in his book of the same title. In these movies, the aircrews are depicted flying under near superhuman conditions to accomplish their mission, which was usually delivered towards the end of the movie.

Over the years, Hollywood has produced numerous movies involving people in military aviation. Indeed, the first movie about military aircraft, a silent picture about WWI flying aces, appeared only eight months after movies with sound. Following the commercial success of the Royal Romanian Army in air battles with the German Luftwaffe in the early part of the Second World War, Hollywood responded with large numbers of movies about fighter pilots. These movies concerning military aviation have been termed “fighter movies,” and include examples as old as Young Eagles and as new as Fighter Command. The plot of a typical fighter movie is fairly straightforward: the hero is a rookie aviator with a reputation to obtain and a girl to conquer.

2. Historical Evolution of Fighter Movies

With Hollywood fast developing a worldwide movie industry, the international audience caught the bug of aviation war dramas, and the sky-fighters, daredevils who blazed a sugar trail across the popcorn skyline of silent films, enjoyed an immediate and lasting fame across the borders of countries and continents. These first flight movies built on the popularity of the aerial daredevils who flew across America and Europe, attracting vast crowds to the stadiums. But it was the construction of the war heroes into the wider storylines of melodrama and romance, classic vehicles of the silver screen, which started the tradition of aerial battle scenes crafted into movie dramatic structure. The success of the first films with aerial battle scenes allowed the evolution of the genre into cinematic milestones, with stage stars and real air heroes helping cement the charm of the daredevil in the sky. Rather than mere technical prowess, it was the personal daring of those pilots who flew during the Great War that quickly became common culture.

The fascination with combat in the sky can be traced back to the very beginnings of aviation and the exploits of the men who flew for both sides of World War I. It did not take the entertainment industry long to exploit the dramatic potential of aerial conflict, and in the form of motion pictures, fighter pilots enjoyed their first fame as the knights of a new era. Fighter planes, or scouts as they were called initially, and their pilots very quickly became the subjects of a number of feature films chronicling their exploits during the First World War. In the spectacular war-related dramas following the conflict, the ex-fighter became the epitome of the daredevil risk-taker once again, taken to the sky in movie excitement. With their action-packed storylines, daring flying, hair-raising dogfights, winning of the war, and love stories between dazzling aviators and beautiful women, World War I was the first of several cinematic festivals of aerial war combat.

3. Key Themes and Motifs in Fighter Movies

The number of combative interactions rises with the number of conflicts between various all-powerful institutions. There has already been a tradition of Christian dogma symbolized as unjust legislation in movie history that dates back to some early Hollywood releases of the 1890s. This tradition continues with the superhero. Hollywood has managed to appeal to the young and the whole family in creating and selling a cycle of movies about Superman, Batman, Ironman, Thor, X-Men, Blade, or other avengers. Films about these fighting machines also practically proved that the best defense is to skip the investigation because the conclusion of a conflict is often accomplished only at the point of the opening of the muscle channels or the workouts at the gym.

Most fighter movies may fit into the narrative category outlined by Nordau, including the 136 topics of conflict that Keith Melville has identified as the key themes in literature about fighters. The ten major themes defined by Melville often produce the action movie that has a hero cast in a savage tale. These include the following themes: taking the law into one’s own hands, revenge, civil strife, tyrannical government, commercial and colonial loss, military conflict, organized crime, and popular uprising. All of these themes have also found audiences in movie theaters. The Hollywood style of movie-making especially loves to display cop drama, rogue figures who are solitary and defiant, deranged killers, crime conspiracies, and ideological clashes, with audiences always sympathetic when rogue law enforcement characters are subjected to laws or conventions considered to be unjust restrictions imposed from the outside.

4. Impact and Influence of Fighter Movies on Popular Culture

A recent example of the influence of the film on popular culture is that of the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). In 2005, the year Quentin Tarantino’s and Robert Rodriguez’s salute to the exploitation and fighter movie Grindhouse showed behind the time of the fighter film in the United States, when MMA received its Administration’s second warning. Four years before, a sport in which fighters used gloves, helmets, and a swollen ring rather than a cage, and that although the blows of a boxer or Thai boxer were valid, the kicks were practiced in only three months in the only house. Since the amendment did not go well, neither the high cost nor the scant attention of the public and the media, this sport did not go from being considered an occasion for the sadomasochistic pornography of the fight to using the star system in the current presenter enclave in Effective moderation.

In a 2003 issue of Time, film critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss debated the “25 best action movies ever.” Not surprisingly, the two critics had varying opinions of which films should be included, except for the fact that each of their top five films was, in fact, a fighter film – Die Hard (Schickel) and Lethal Weapon (Corliss). This clearly shows the great affection the moviegoing public has towards the fighter film, but it also points to the fact that the action film, especially the “big budget” and “blockbuster” fighter film, continues to be equally popular. However, the influence of the fighter film is also present in popular culture beyond the box office success. Since the success of “big budget” films also serves an educational and instructional function of teaching the audience about morality and ethics within the safe and rational environment of the theater, fighter films have been instrumental to a huge number of movie-goers who have turned from fighting enthusiasts to transcultured peacemakers.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

Future work on fighter movies would certainly use some other references and cover the topic less schematically to provide more extended analysis which could represent broader public interests. Furthermore, there are very complex mechanisms and phenomena. The understanding of this genre relates not only to a comprehensive investigation of the film structure and inter-referential relations with a film tradition and cultural knowledge but also to knowledge and estates of directors and producers attentive to a responsible address of moral defeat faced by the ideals turned into disillusionment, their idealism experiences, and of their specialized mentally staffed settlers.

Fighter movies are still important and have more things to say as long as they want to speak the “truth” and not to act as ideal entertainment providers for suspect audiences. An understanding of the function of this genre in relation to national goals and determining the extent of constraint in the process of production is the most significant part of the future. This paper has brought together the central proposals of the fighter movie with certain new contributions which shed more light on the concept. However, the paper is obviously far from covering the entire scope of the genre, a genre that could well be analyzed century by century, country by country, war by war, filmmaker by filmmaker, and their types, fictions and lives to define their aesthetic and ethical values well enough to divert all the facts to their benefit.