Ah Top Gun movie mistakes. The biggest mistake was the fact that they only spotted bogies when they were about 500 yards away. Imagine that in AH. This in an F14 which can track 20 targets 200 milies away. Still I really enjoyed the movie. Fast jets do it for me every time.
As for the BoB movie, well Cruise is a warbird fan, he owns a P51 after all. But this quote from the webpage. Well I hope it's not indicative of the film.
Based on a book proposal by historian-author Alex Kershaw (The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice) that has been garnering buzz around Tinseltown, The Few would see Cruise starring as Billy Fiske, an Olympic athlete and pilot who, because he was also part British, defied U.S. neutrality laws in 1940 to lead a small group of American aviators to aid the Brits' ailing Royal Air Force, which was being outgunned by the invading Luftwaffe fighters.
The RAF sustained heavy losses in the early days of the war, and Britain was unable to persuade the U.S. to send its own fighters. That prompted Prime Minister Winston Churchill to launch a secret mission to recruit civilian American flyboys to fight against Germany.
At the risk of being thrown into prison back home, a small group of aces heeded the call and joined the RAF. (Spoiler alert: Fiske was the first American pilot killed in action during aerial combat in WWII.)
That blurb contains so many inaccuracies, 'ailing Royal Air Force', 'outgunned by the invading Luftwaffe fighters', 'a secret mission to recruit civilian American flyboys'. I must have been reading the wrong books all these years.
I suspect that Kershaw's book is a little more accurate. It has the potential to be a very good film and is a story that deserves to be told. Americans did fight in the BofB but not that many. Later when the Eagle Squadrons were formed might make a more bankable movie.
Ironically now days WW2 films have the potential to be more accurate than they ever were. There are so many restored warbirds out there including Luftwaffe. There have never been so many restored WW2 military vehicles and AFV's available. Every year in Kent Southern England there is a military vehicle meet which attracts over 3000 entrants. No more will we see M3's doubling as German and Patton tanks as Tigers. With CGI techniques you can make anything fly so in theory authenticity is possible. But you never know how it will turn out. Look how badly wrong they got Pearl Harbour. The worst movie I ever saw for inaccuracy was one made in the sixties by the British I might add, where the RAF used real ME109's, actually Spanish Buchons, which fought out unrealistic dogfights with Luftwaffe marked model SPITFIRES! I nearly died laughing.
Michael Mann the director is known for his style over substance. I personally would prefer a British director, maybe Ridley Scott although Spielberg could do justice to it too. But really I wonder how come the British don't make decent war films anymore rather than moaning that the Yanks distort everything a la U257.
Whatever, we will all go to see won't we? How can we resist all those Spitfires and Hurricanes and 109's.
