We went to see Django Unchained the other week in the cinema. It was exactly like all other Quentin Tarantino films. Get over it.

My point is in the pre film trailers was one piece for a film which is being released this week I believe. A film call Flight. Staring Denzel Washington is Man On Fire. One day I will probably watch this film but it will not be soon. From what I understand the film is about what happens to the hero pilot after the crash but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what we know about the film before we go in.

What we know about the film is what we get from trailers and reviews. So to start here is the trailer:

The thing that jumped out at me when I first saw this is the statement given by whoever Don Cheadle plays concerning 10 pilots attempting the landing in a simulator and nobody emulating the result. This is a near verbatim statement which was given by the NTSB when they gave their report on how Sullenberger handled his ditching of Cactus 1549 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549) back in 2009 and I feel there may well be many subtle references to the event and inspiration drawn from it. Though whether or not that is credited remains to be seen.

The big thing which jumped out me about this film only happened a few days ago when I was flicking through my wifes copy of Empire Magazine and came across the following

“The plane is a JR-88, a fictional model, so not to identify the crash with any one aircraft type or airline.”

 
Clearly this is bunk and we will get onto why in a minute but I want to examine the reason for the bunk first. The film as we are informed at the beginning is from the director of Castaway (Robert Zemeckis) which, if we all remember, focuses on how a man attempts to come to terms with the result of a plane crash (Running out of ideas Robert?). Sure in Tom Hanks’ case he was more dealing with surviving in a physical way. But Denzel Washington is Man On Fire’s character is also attempting to put his life together, just in a more legal and psychological way. I’m getting side tracked. My point is that in Castaway the aircraft that crashed was an Airbus A300 and it belonged to FedEx. No issues. No hiding.

This is a problem, as we encountered with Specsavers almost a year ago. The fact that they’ve tried to go into detail to make it more believable makes it stupid. If they had ignored the make and branding I wouldn’t have noticed and wouldn’t have cared. It makes me sit up, take notice and want to look even deeper to find other mistakes you have made. I can understand that a company would not want to be associated with a film depicting a crashing aircraft. And the only reason Zemeckis got away with it in Castaway is because when all is said and done and after all the trials and tribulations Tom Hanks delivers the package and the moral of the story is something good.

But to “fictionalise” an aircraft type just so that real companies won’t sue you is a bit much surely? People that don’t care about aircraft won’t care and people who do care about aircraft know that it’s the norm to make up a fake airline for your film. In fact it’s weird when an actual one shows up because you know someone is probably paying a shit tonne to get some screen time…

By the way the aircraft is actually a variant of the venerable McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family. A type used by both Delta and American Airlines.

American

Delta

Trailer Still

Oriented Trailer Still

The glasses store Specsavers has been running this ad at fairly high frequency for at least the last 6 months:

The premise is simple. The commander of a Space Shuttle lands at the wrong airport due to the fact that he needs glasses. Many, many holes that can be picked in this advert but here is the thing that really grinds my gears:

Now we will ignore the fact that despite being on short finals the Space Shuttle in question is not lined up for landing. Several sequences after the screen-shot above comes the image of the Shuttle crew standing at baggage reclaim with the public address system announcing that “Luton Airport regrets delays due to an unscheduled arrival”.

Now here we are at the crux of the matter. Someone in the production cycle of this commercial decided that to improve plausibility they would give the destination a name. Great, I’m all for this. What I’m not for is choosing one airport as your arrival point and then use footage of another.

With this in mind could someone please identify the second runway the director would have us believe that Luton has (and is plainly visible in the above screen-shot) in the below image.

Seriously.

What is going to follow this opening paragraph of this opening post is the post that just wasn’t enough to ease my heart. I have posted Journals/Blogs in the past about the occasional mistakes that film makers make across media either by ignorance or laziness. But until Dark Knight Rises I never felt the need to dedicate a space to this. Unfortunately the event I describe below infuriated me so much, I just had to create this space. Let’s see how we start shall we…

Approximately a third of the way into the film Catwoman is arrested in what I presume is Gotham City Airport . I don’t know much about the DC Universe but I think I can safely assume that Gotham City is a hypothetical metropolis in the United States. Therefore logic would dictate that Gotham City Airport is an airport in the United States.

Why then during the arrest can an Easy Jet A319 be clearly seen taxiing through the window in the background? By using some basic deductive reasoning I could ascertain this scene was clearly filmed in either Gatwick , Stansted or Luton. It was later confirmed to me that the scene was in fact shot in Stansted (which through my incredible powers of awesome I had guessed due to the architecture of the windows themselves… I know).

My gripe is why when they had what I presume was a humongous budget and a butt load of post production time did they not just edit the thing out?

For non Europeans, Easy Jet is a low-cost carrier based in the UK using the same business model pioneered by South West they are easily identifiable by their lurid Orange on White livery and definitely do not fly to the US in any capacity. Not even to fake cities.

After posting this as a Journal on one of the websites I use someone commented asking why I hadn’t questioned the opening scene of the C-130 dragging an EMB110. Clearly no way in hell is this scene realistic, but then this is a film about a rich guy who dresses up like a Bat to combat super villains…

Opening Scene = Artistic License.

Easy Jet at Gotham City Airport = Laziness