4/10
Embarrassing to Show in Museums
27 March 2011
Warning: Spoilers
There are so many flaws in this film. I am a military buff and I've worked at an IMAX for years, so I've seen this film hundreds of times. I'm just going to list a few of the errors I've found in the film.

Fake explosions. Clearly pyrotechnics during the last bombing run. When the A-10 shoots at the tank a fireball appears from the ground.

Some scenes they reuse. They a mirror image in one scene fire the rockets at the air. I can tell because the writing on the rockets is reversed.

They show a female pilot boarding a plane that says Captain Jim Worley on the side.

They show American pilots boarding an Israeli Air Force F-16.

In one scene they say "break left" they show the pilot move the stick left, but they then show the plane from the outside and its turning right.

They show an F/A-18 approaching the runway head on, then they switch to a different camera and now all of a sudden its switched to an F-15 thats touched down on the runway.

They are not using aggressor F-16s. Agressor F-16s would have blue or brown camouflage. Most scenes the aggressors are gray.

They reuse scenes by filming a scene and inserting different CGI aircraft in. One scene they are flying over a bunch of tanks. They reuse this multiple times and simply insert different CGI aircraft to make it look like different shots.

They show John Stratton flying an F-15C but from the outside often he is shown in an F-15E.

"Tractor" the aggressor is supposed to be flying an F-16, but in shots from the cockpit you can clearly see the twin tails of an F-15.

At the end they do the picture with everyone and John Stratton blinks during the group portrait. It looks stupid, why couldn't they have freeze framed the shot a second earlier so his eyes were open? Or simply retaken the shot? Is it that hard? On a side note. Why do they keep dumping flares even when in a gun fight? Why do they never dump chaff or shoot beyond visual range missiles? I feel like they are excessively dumping flares because they think it looks cool on camera.

All in all I think this was a poorly and hastily down film. They thought they could entertain the audience with fast jets and pyrotechnics. Perhaps they did, I thought it was OK the first time I saw it, but the more you see it the more you can see its faults all to clearly. I know most people only see an IMAX once, but I have seen other IMAX films many times as well, and have not caught nearly as many sloppy or technical errors as on this film.
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